Ken Hom’s pad thai recipe

I’ve used this recipe a couple of times now. Last time I used Amoy chilli noodles, the type that are supposed to be ‘straight to wok’ but it is better to put that type of noodle in a bowl and cover with boiling water to let them untangle without and get a bit softer. I also added some cooked beaten egg and tiger prawns when I had them to hand. I find it easier to cook the egg at least a little before adding, otherwise it gets lost in the mix during the stir-frying. The beansprouts can be (partly) replaced with other stirfry veg, although then the dish becomes more of a general stir-fry than a pad thai. I find that beansprouts do start smelling a bit unappetising after even a short time in the fridge so they are best used on the day of purchase.

The dish doesn’t need any salt; the fish, oyster and soy sauces are enough. For expedience it is useful to measure out all the ingredients before starting to cook and grouping all the ones that go in together into the same container to throw in all at once at the appropriate time. Also, it is important to check the best before dates on these packs of ‘ready to wok’ noodles as the oil coating them goes rancid eventually. It smells plastic-y and is very unpleasant.

I’ve used this recipe: Delia’s gnocci a few times now. It’s ok, but you only need half the egg specified. If you use all the eggs you have to add loads of flour, which dilutes the potato taste. Also, the gnocci have very little taste anyway and they are quite fat so taste a bit boring, even in a sauce. They need plenty of seasoning before rolling out and cutting, and possibly some internal flavouring. Paprika perhaps. Or cheese. Or both…

I used a pack of ‘stewing lamb’ I bought from Makro. They looked like four sections of neck fillet from the outside but when I opened it I discovered it wasn’t boned. So it was a bit of a pain pulling the meat off the bones and cutting it into chunks after it had been cooked.

Anyway, Moroccan lamb with apricots, almonds & mint is really good. Growing up, I never liked savoury food with sweet flavours. I suppose this was because I’d not had that flavour combo it at home. Having said that my mum does make dahl soup with a small amount jaggery in it

Used a tip from How To Cook Without Recipes: laid kitchen roll over the surface after cooking to soak up the fat floating on the top. Worked a treat.

Made couscous according to directions on the packet (from Waitrose) and it was perfect:
Allow approximately 45g of couscous per 80g serving. Place 250g of couscous in a large bowl with 400ml boiling water and 1tbsp oil. Stir, cover and stand for 5 minutes. Stir to separate before serving.

25 Feb 2013

Made this today using lamb neck fillet, with the oven at 150C. I cooked it for an hour with the lid on then half an hour with the lid off. The taste was fine but not all of the lamb pieces were meltingly soft; some were slightly chewy. I’m not sure whether this was down to the cooking time (Nigel Slater cooks neck fillet at 180C for only an hour) or that I put the lamb in with the orange juice before adding the stock or whether it’s just the meat. I have to admit that the meat wasn’t all defrosted to the same extent before cooking. Still, next time I will add the orange juice after the stock so the lamb doesn’t come into contact with it undiluted.

I also did some couscous from Sainsburys. The packet said to use less water than the Waitrose method but since the Waitrose method hasn’t ever let me down I followed that. But the couscous turned out soggy. Perhaps all couscous isn’t created equal and the packet instructions should be adhered to? Anyway, the lesson I learned there was to alway err on the side of less water since you can always add more.

Most of the Indian cooking I do is based on my mum’s recipes. The problem is that they are guidelines rather than recipes so I don’t get consistently good results. Besides, I’ve eaten my mum’s food for most of my life. It’s time I tried something a bit different. I found some easy Indian recipes by Atul Kochar. I made his coconut fish curry and home-style lentils and sauteed some sprouts in an Indian style.

18 Oct 2012
Curried sprouts
Remove outer leaves of sprouts as usual, then parboil until they are about a minute away from becoming tender. Drain off, and when they are cool enough to handle, cut each sprout into 1-2mm thick slices. Take a non-stick pan with a lid and pop some mustard seeds in oil, then add tumeric, chilli, garlic and ginger paste. Stirfry the slice sprouts in this tempering, adding a little water to help with coating properly. Add salt to taste and knob of butter.

Usually onion soup is made with a dark stock such as beef, but the recipe I used called for chicken stock.

The recipe was from this book:

We wanted to go out for a meal on a Monday night so were quite limited for choice of restaurant – most of the best are closed on Sunday and Monday. Surprisingly the Michelin-starred Simpsons was open. This was our second visit and the food was marvellous. It wasn’t quite as imaginative as at L’Enclume, which is still the best one-starred restaurant I’ve been to, but Simpsons is local so defintely worth an occasional visit.

Made from fresh cooked beetroot and based on a Delia cheese scones recipe. I was excited to try out a variation on the plain cheese scone. It worked quite well.

I made these samosa tonight. They look good but the picture doesn’t reveal the lack of crispiness in the cases. I phoned my mum after I’d made them to find out why the cases turned out more chewy than crispy and she told me I was supposed to make the dough with some oil in it. I have used oil in samosa dough before but because I’ve been in a breadmaking mindset lately, tonight I made my samosa dough in the same way as bread dough i.e. without fat. Doh!

Other points to note: As with all potato-based food, the filling needs a reasonable amount of salt. The pastry also need salting and some lemon juice too. I tried cider vinegar as an alternative but it wasn’t as good.

1 Feb 2013
I made samosa tonight using the recipe in the Indian Vegetarian Cooking book. I’ve found that you can cut down the oil in the dough by a sixth. Also, add the juice of half a lemon when doubling the book’s recipe for tasty and crispy pastry. Also, instead of making neat parcels how Mum taught me, I just made quarter-circle shaped ones by simply folding over a semicircle in half and gluing and pinching together the edges. This makes them visually bigger and gives lovely crispy edges. They seem to cook quicker too, I suppose because there aren’t any double layers of pastry. Next time I might try trying them with the lid on to see if that makes any difference.

3 Feb 2013
Now that I’ve perfected the pastry I have found that the samosa are best freshly fried. They don’t ever get quite as crispy when reheated in the oven. I could part fry them but it would be best to fry them just before serving.