No Name

Yes, it really is called No Name.  I believe it was originally just an at-home concoction to use up leftovers, and when it found its way onto the menus of beachside bars and restaurants, it was listed as No Name.

These little vegetable fritters may have started life as leftovers, but they are very tasty in a bubble-and-squeak or pakora sort of way. Great as snacks or starters.

I’ve never come across a recipe for No Name, but having a craving this evening, I thought I’d try to make some.  This is a bit of an experiment and while I’m fairly pleased with the outcome, I really would love to know what you think  – from No Name authorities and first-timers alike!

Any leftover cooked vegetable should work well, but never having leftovers, I’m making it (up) from scratch …

To make around 15 small fritters

1/4 cabbage

1 carrot

1 mushroom

2 spring onions

1 clove of garlic

1 green chilli

small handful of coriander

juice of 1/2 lime

1 tsp fish sauce

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp cornflour

2.5 tbsp plain flour

coriander leaves to garnish, and chilli sauce to serve

Put a pan of water on to boil, and chop the cabbage, carrot and mushroom into small pieces.

Chop the spring onions, garlic, chilli and coriander and put into a mixing bowl.

Boil the cabbage, carrot and mushroom for five minutes, drain and leave to cool.

Add all the other ingredients to the mixing bowl.  With hindsight it might have been more elegant to have sifted the flours and baking powder together first – but I didn’t do this and it worked out ok.

Add the cooled cooked vegetables and mix well.

Heat a wok or frying pan and add quite a lot of oil to – almost – deep fry.

When very hot, add spoonfuls of the mixture straight into the pan to form separate patties and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown and crisp (turning really carefully as all that oil will spit as I now know to my cost).

Drain and blot well on kitchen paper and then eat still very hot, with some sweet or spicy chilli sauce.

Oh, and a side order of sand underfoot … beautiful dark sea all around … a big big sky … the squid fishing boats’ lights bright on the horizon … and a cold beer Chang would be great.

No Name, your name is Nostalgia.

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Pork/prawn sesame toasts

I decided to make these on a whim the other evening as I had a smallish piece of pork tenderloin left over from my Chinese-style BBQ pork, there was some sliced bread that needed using up, and I always have a bag of prawns in the freezer. So really there was nothing for it but pork and prawn sesame toasts!

You can make these toasts with either pork or prawn, or a mixture of both. I’m going surf and turf and using equal quantities of each, but you can use any ratio. There’s just one decision then to make and that’s whether to cut the toasts into little triangles which I always think of as more Chinese-style or to have them in squares as we made them in Thailand.

Street food classic, perfect appetiser or to have as a snack with a drink, and really easy to make.

This does make quite a lot, probably enough for at least eight-ten rounds of toast, but you can’t really reduce the quantity as it uses a whole egg. However, I tried freezing what was left over and it worked well. Or you can add to this basic mixture and make some little prawn and pork balls to have in soup. I actually used the thawed mixture to do both: made a round of sesame toast to check it still worked ok and then made a lovely quick soup (pork and prawn balls in noodle soup).

If you have a food processor this takes no time at all and will only take a little longer to chop and mix by hand.

You’ll need …

400g total pork and prawns (I used raw prawns but am sure cooked are good too)

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

approx 1/2 teaspoon each white pepper and salt

small handful of coriander leaves, chopped

2 teaspoons soy sauce

one egg, beaten

sesame seeds

sliced white bread, slightly stale and dry is best, crusts cut off

vegetable oil for frying

Put the pork into the food processor first and give it a whizz to mince, then add the prawns and pulse again – I would pulse rather than just blast it as it will come together into a paste very quickly.

Add the chopped garlic, pepper, salt and coriander and give it another whizz. Then mix in by hand the soy sauce and beaten egg to combine.

Spread the mixture onto the slices of bread,  sprinkle with sesame seeds and cut each slice into quarters.

Heat the oil in a wok or pan and when very hot carefully add the squares paste side down and cook for 3-4 minutes until golden brown

Then turn and cook for a minute more.

Remove from pan, put on kitchen paper to absorb excess oil and then serve with sweet chilli sauce, or soy sauce. Or any sauce really – I’m using up some nam pla prik here (fish sauce with sliced chillies).

Freeze any leftover paste straight away and thaw before using again.

Hope you like this recipe and do let me know if you make it!

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Gai gratiem - garlic chicken

It’s taken me a while to work out a recipe I’m happy with for this.

The main difficulty I’ve had with it is that what I love about having this in Thailand is the Thai garlic itself. The cloves are smaller and the skins are wispy paper thin – you just squash them rather than peel and those beautiful thin skins go crispy when fried and add such lovely texture to the dish that it just tastes different without that dimension.

Not much I can do about this though, so I’ve tried a few different recipes and ended up with this that I think gives all the flavours I want.  I’ve also eaten it before with very crispy chips of garlic on top but I’m not so successful at making those without them often tasting a bit burnt so I’m not adding those in this version.

It’s a very simple dish, often eaten just over rice for lunch or without rice as a snack with a drink. There is a lot of garlic in this but somehow you don’t end up smelling of old garlic the next day!

It’s a simple, elegant and quick recipe and it doesn’t need to be with chicken – beef, pork or squid work as well. My favourite is probably with slices of pork tenderloin.  I’m sure tofu would be good too – please let me know how it turns out if you make a version with tofu.

So, for one with rice as a main meal, I used:

about 3-6 garlic cloves depending on size

1 chicken breast

about 1 tablespoon cooking oil

1/2 tsp white pepper

1/2 tsp white sugar

a scant tablespoon light soy sauce

a scant tablespoon fish sauce

coriander leaves, to garnish, and lettuce leaves to serve

cooked boiled or steamed rice, to serve, if using

Smash gently the garlic with a flat knife and remove the skins. Is it possible to ‘smash’ gently? Perhaps I mean squash with a bit of force. Either or, up to you …!

Then chop quite finely.

Slice the meat and bash a bit with a rolling pin to flatten – you want the pieces in slices rather than chunks but quite flat so they cook very quickly and your garlic won’t burn.

Heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat until hot and add the garlic then cook for maybe a minute, stirring all the time so it doesn’t burn and until it is just starting to go a little brown.

Add the meat and again keep stirring constantly until it is cooked through. This will probably take around four minutes and do just cut or pull a piece open to check . If it’s sticking at all add a splash or water – in fact I would do anyway just to ensure the garlic doesn’t burn.

Add the pepper, sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce and another splash of water if needed to make sure it mixes together.

Mix then turn up the heat and cook rapidly for a minute or two until the sauce reduces and there is very little sauce left.

Then either serve on a plate with lettuce in the traditional ‘bar snack’ style and garnish with coriander leaves, or have with rice as a more substantial meal.

I really like the flavours of this and the slight heat from the white pepper makes a change from chillies!

Do let me know if you liked this …

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Fried prawn balls

I've been cooking so much recently (which I have loved) that I’ve now got a lot to catch up with here and lots of recipes to share. Can’t wait!

Will start with these little fried prawn balls I made a few nights ago – and I think everyone liked them. Well, they ate them! These are good served with a cucumber dipping sauce or with sweet chilli sauce.

They’re also really useful as once cooked you can just shallow fry -as I’ve done here – for a snack or starter, or use in noodle dishes or in soups and curries. Or once cooled they will keep in the freezer for a couple of months to use another time.

You can fry them as they are or thread onto wooden skewers (soak the skewers in water for half an hour before using).  I didn’t have any skewers the other evening so used wooden toothpicks with just two prawn balls on each –  and actually thought they looked so cute it’s my favourite way to serve them.

These take a little time and have a few stages in the process of making them – and generate a few pans to wash up – but are really simple and it’s well worth giving them a try!

To make about 20 small prawn balls you’ll need:

a small piece of pork or a tablespoon or so of pork mince (optional but it’s good to have a bit of fat in them)

a packet of raw prawns (approx 200g), defrosted if frozen, and de-veined

zest of one lime

a small handful of coriander leaves

half a red chilli, chopped

one garlic clove, minced

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1 teaspoon soy sauce

one egg white

plain flour

If it’s not already minced put the piece of pork into the food processor first and give it a quick whizz to mince.

Then add all the other ingredients except the flour …

Pulse to combine thoroughly and then add the flour straight in, a little at a time, and pulse again.

Add flour until the mixture starts to hold together. It takes quite a bit of flour so just add it steadily bit by bit and pulse each time.

Put a saucepan of water on to boil and whilst waiting for it to boil make the fish balls.

Using two teaspoons, make little scoops of the mixture into balls and set aside until the water is boiling.

Then drop the fish balls into the water one at a time and when they’re all in wait for the water to return to the boil – which will take a minute or two – and boil for a couple of minutes.

Drain …

… and then either cool before freezing or using in other dishes, or thread onto bamboo skewers/toothpicks to fry.

Heat oil in a pan and fry until golden, turning a few times. It will take probably a good five minutes.

And then serve with some sweet chilli sauce and eat. And that’s it!

Hope you like these – let me know in the comments.

 PS. The step-by-step pictures that look like they were taken on my phone … they were!

The two gorgeous shots were taken by my photographer friend Viktoria Kuti – and very many thank you's Vik.  (viktoriakuti.com)

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Stir fried pork with chilli and garlic

Ok so first up - this isn't going to be a very well written post.  I feel rotten.  I've had the biggest stinker of a cold for a week and all the cliches are true. Yes I feel like I'm wading through treacle and yes I feel like I'm underwater and can't hear properly. Sore throat, coughing fits, the lot.

Anyway, because I do love food, I take a bad cold as a sign to follow the old adage and 'feed a cold'. However I'm not entirely sure this meant go out and drink champagne on Tuesday. Or to go and sit outside in the cold pretending it was warm and eat tapas on Wednesday.

Haha ... so now, right now, at this blissful end of this trying-to-just-push-through-it week, right now -  it is Friday AND the Friday before the bank holiday weekend and NOW I am going to feed my cold chillies.  Or rather feed (and hope to kill it with) chillies.

This is a really nice and easy dish and you don't have to overdose on chillies if you don't want or need to.

It's not really a specific recipe as such, just a very easy dish with some traditional Thai flavours.  I did rather make it up as I went along and very good it was too.

Cold or no cold, I recommend a dose of this.

Make your rice first and then get together the ingredients.

This is roughly enough for two but do just decide for yourself on quantities and what looks right to you.

About 1-2 tbspn cooking oil

2 cloves garlic

4 red bird eye chillies

Approx 250g pork mince

1/3 knorr chicken stock cube

splash of water

1 tbspn light soy sauce

1 tbspn fish sauce

A pinch of sugar

2 spring onions sliced

a small handful coriander leaves chopped to garnish, if liked

Prepare, slice and chop all the ingredients and put a pan on over a medium high heat.

Add the oil and when hot, add the garlic and chillies and fry, stirring for up to 30 seconds, until it smells good.

Add the pork mince and stir fry for a few minutes then add the stock cube and splash of water and continue stirring until the meat is browned.

Add the soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar and cook, stirring, for a few minutes until cooked through.

Remove from heat, add the spring onions and coriander (if using) and stir in.

Serve with rice.

Simple, delicious, and - I hope -cold-curing! I'll let you know if it is  and in the meantime do let me know if you made this and if you liked it ...

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