I’ve never been to India and I’ve never even eaten at an Indian restaurant. But I was curious about the cuisine, and so it was a great pleasure that two natives, Vinod and Seema, were willing to cook for me … Continue reading Introduction to Indian Cuisine
I’ve just had this for dinner and it was so good that I wanted to blog about it straight away! Satay is Indonesian for a grilled meat skewer. Saté babi is pork, saté ajam is chicken, and saté kambing is … Continue reading Saté Kambing (Lamb or Goat Satay with Peanut Sauce)
I love recipes that use all parts of an ingredient. When I saw the recipe for deconstructed duck fried rice on Simon’s blog Stranded on the Island, which uses the duck breast, skin, and fat from the skin, I decided straight … Continue reading Duck Fried Rice
Doesn’t this salmon look amazing? Believe me, it tastes as tender and juicy as it looks! That is because it has been cooked sous-vide at 43C/109F. What makes this dish even more mouth-watering, is that the salmon has been cooked … Continue reading Salmon Sous-Vide with Thai Green Curry Paste and Bok Choy
Shrimp and mushrooms are a classic combination in stir fry dishes. In this Chinese-style dish, I’ve added another layer of flavor by braising dried shii take mushrooms in oyster sauce first. It is a bit more work, but worth it. … Continue reading Stir Fried Shrimp with Braised Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce
Char Siu is pork that is marinated in a sweet spicy red sauce, and then cooked while basting with the marinade until crispy on the outside. When the pork is cooked sous-vide, the result is even more spectacular because of … Continue reading Char Siu Sous-Vide (Chinese BBQ Pork)
Panang is a Thai curry made with meat and red curry paste enriched with peanuts, cumin, and coriander. It does not contain vegetables, except that it is garnished with chiffonaded kaffir lime leaves and thinly sliced red chilli peppers. I’ve … Continue reading Thai Panang Curry Pork Belly Sous-Vide
As dessert in our High Heel Gourmet-inspired menu, we prepared Thai coconut rice custard. This turned out very nice, with a nice contrast between the sweet palm sugar-flavored bottom and the salty creamy coconut top. This is an original dessert that … Continue reading Thai Coconut Rice Custard (Kanom Tuay)
The next dish in our High Heel Gourmet-inspired Thai feast was this simple but oh so tasty stir-fried chicken and eggplant with red curry paste. This was actually one of the tastiest Thai dishes I have prepared so far. The … Continue reading Thai Chicken and Eggplant Stir-Fried with Red Curry (Pad Phed Gai)
The second course of our High Heel Gourmet-inspired Thai feast was Thai fish mousse (Hor Mok Pla). The flavors are quite similar to Thai fish cakes (Tod Mun Pla), as it is fish with Thai red curry paste. But the … Continue reading Thai Fish Mousse (Hor Mok Pla)
Miranti’s blog The High Heel Gourmet is an excellent source for learning how to prepare authentic Thai food. Every recipe I’ve tried from her has been a success, and without ever having set foot in Thailand I somehow feel comfortable … Continue reading Thai Shrimp Cake (Tod Mun Goong)
Have you been wondering what I made with the Chinese chicken stock? Well, here it is: Chinese hot pot (also known as Mongolian hot pot), a festive dish that is delicious, healthy, and surprisingly easy to prepare for such a … Continue reading Chinese Hot Pot
To prepare a Chinese hot pot, I needed to make Chinese chicken stock. Stock is an important ingredients for soups, sauces, and risottos, and homemade stock made from scratch can’t be beaten. Traditionally Chinese chicken stock is made using a … Continue reading Chinese Chicken Stock
Thanks to The High Heel Gourmet I am cooking more and more Thai food. When I made a batch of Thai red curry paste (Kaeng Kua) to make Tod Mun Pla, I decided to use the leftovers to make another … Continue reading Shrimp and Green Beans with Thai Red Curry Paste (Pad Prik Khing Goong)
Fish is easily overcooked, and so the precise temperature control of sous-vide cooking is great to always obtain tender juicy fish that is perfectly cooked. Moreover, vacuum sealing the fish with a marinade allows the marinate to penetrate optimally while … Continue reading Thai Style Sole Sous-Vide
At the Asian market I also picked up Chinese eggplants. They are thinner, have a milder flavor, and a more smooth texture than regular eggplants. I thought it would be appropriate to prepare it Asian style with ginger, soy sauce, … Continue reading Chinese Eggplant with Chicken
I was feeling adventurous at the Asian market and bought this vegetable that I had never seen or heard of before. It looked like a cucumber with ridges and the sign said “terroi”. When I googled that on my phone, … Continue reading Stir-fried Loofah
In most cases I plan what I am going to prepare for dinner and shop accordingly in advance, but for tonight I wanted to finish some leftovers I had in my fridge and created this dish. I had some Chinese … Continue reading Rice Noodles with Shrimp, Shiitake and Cabbage
My first try making fish paste from scratch was a bit of a disaster, but the thai fish cakes (tod mun pla) made with store-bought fish paste were such a big success that I wanted to try again to make … Continue reading How to Make Fish Paste For Thai Fish Cakes From Scratch
Lately I’ve been trying more and more Thai food, using recipes from The High Heel Gourmet. Kees is working on the boat and I promised to prepare dinner for the workers. It was unseasonably cold, so I decided it had to … Continue reading Thai Vegetable Coconut Fritters (Gra Bong Tod)
My friend Melvin taught me how to make this dessert from Indonesia. They look great and when you bite into them, there is a nice surprise of melted palm sugar inside. First a dough is made of glutinous rice flour, … Continue reading Klepon (Sticky Rice Balls with Palm Sugar and Coconut)
Thanks to Miranti’s blog The High Heel Gourmet, I’ve been getting into homemade Thai from scratch. It is very different to my usual Italian stuff, but just as delicious in a completely different way. With the batch of thai red … Continue reading Thai Fish Cakes (Tod Mun Pla)
Thanks to Miranti’s great blog The High Heel Gourmet, I’ve been trying out authentic Thai recipes for the first time. Miranti is very clear about what is authentic Thai and what is not, and I really like her style. The … Continue reading My First Pad Thai
This recipe intrigued me at once when I saw it on Sandra’s Please Pass the Recipe. Firstly because I’ve never cooked Vietnamese before, and secondly because although fish and dill are a well-known combination (especially in Scandinavia), I had never heard of dill being used in Asian cuisine. This is how Sandra described it: “Cha ca la vong, originates from a single restaurant with a huge reputation in Hanoi. Essentially it’s white, firm fleshed fish marinated with turmeric, pan fried, tossed with fresh dill and served with peanuts and nuoc cham, the Vietnamese sauce that makes everything taste good.” I had picked up some fresh turbot fillets and thought it would be nice to prepare them this way. I’m glad that I did, because it was easy to prepare and delicious! Continue reading “Hanoi Turmeric Fish with Dill”
Sometimes I can be a bit of a purist (OK you may laugh). Everyone can do as he pleases in the kitchen and everybody can eat what he likes, but please let’s not confuse each other by calling things what they are not. If you want to eat spaghetti with bacon and cream, fine, but don’t call it carbonara (which is made with guanciale or pancetta and eggs, and definitely without cream). There is nothing wrong with using garlic and parsley in a pasta sauce with meat and tomatoes, but don’t call it bolognese. I always try to prepare dishes as authentic as possible, which is sometimes difficult as most of the dishes I cook have not originated in the Netherlands. So I try to research and disclose it on my blog when I am not sure about the authenticity or when I cut corners.
What does this introduction have to do with Thai green curry? I’ve never been to Thailand and I don’t eat at Thai restaurants often, but when I do I tend to like the food. And so I thought I’d do some research and try to prepare an authentic Thai green curry. I found the High Heel Gourmet blog and had a blast reading it. You think I am a purist about Italian food? Check out this lady! I quote: “If you want to follow the “Do it yourself” recipe that uses green onion, cilantro, ginger root, lime juice and THE WHOLE POD of cardamom to make green curry paste so much, go ahead, but don’t call it Thai curry paste and please, don’t serve the curry to the Thais. They would barf!” I love it! She even critiqued Richard’s green curry, but was very nice about it. (That is actually how I discovered her blog.)
As the High Heel Gourmet appears to know her stuff, I decided to go by her rules. I managed to find the authentic ingredients as specified and prepared my first Thai green curry with it, and absolutely loved it! Also my friends loved it, who have been to Thailand and who eat at Thai restaurants all the time. The curry had great depth of flavor and tasted very fresh. This was of course due to making fresh green curry paste from scratch. That is not a lot of work if you own a blender, the work is in finding the ingredients. It was hot but not extremely hot, and you can of course control the heat by using less or more chili peppers. Continue reading “Thai Green Curry with Shrimp”
One of the things you can only do sous-vide is making tough meats tender while keeping them juicy and without cooking them ‘well done’. As I am a great fan of medium rare meat rather than well done, this is one of the reasons why so far, I’ve almost exclusively cooked sous-vide meats that way. The only exceptions have been duck leg confit sous-vide and pulled pork sous-vide. This means cooking meat sous-vide at temperatures between 55ºC/131ºF and 65ºC/149ºF, sometimes as long as 72 hours to allow the meat to become tender at such a relatively low cooking temperature.
Lately I’ve started to wonder about cooking meat sous-vide at higher temperatures. The meat will surely become well done and flaky, but I’m curious whether it is still better than a traditional braise on the stove top and in the oven. There is only one way to find out, and that is to try. The first experiment in this series is pork belly. Usually I cook pork belly sous-vide for 36 to 72 hours at 60ºC/140ºF, but in this case I tried it for 10 hours at 77ºC/170ºF. After that it was briefly crisped under the broiler. The inspiration for the recipe came from a post on Serious Eats. I thought it would be nice with broccoli stir-fried with garlic (inspired by REMCooks.com) and some rice, and that did indeed work well. Continue reading “Sous-Vide Pork Belly Asian Style with Garlicky Broccoli”
Whoa! The more experience I have with cooking, the more I dare to experiment and try new things without using recipes. In this case I made up a recipe from scratch, and I am truly amazed how delicious it turned out to be. From Paul’s That Other Cooking Blog I got the inspiration to deep fry pork belly in cubes rather than as a roulade. And from blogging about Dutch nasi with atjar I got to think about Indonesian cooking. Now this recipe is not Indonesian and not authentic, but it is certainly inspired by Indonesian cooking and uses Indonesian ingredients. Don’t worry though if you can’t get Indonesian ingredients, as I’m sure that it will be just as delicious with substitute ingredients that I will provide.
This dish is bursting with flavor. It starts with pork belly cubes cooked sous-vide for 36 hours at 60C/140F with 5-spice. (You can also prepare this without a sous-vide cooker, though.) (I have since then discovered that pork belly is even better when cooked sous-vide for 36-48 hours at 57C/135F instead.) The pork is then deep fried briefly to crisp it up. The juices from the pork belly are used to create a darkly flavored sweet & sour sauce that is bursting with flavor from sambal oelek, fresh ginger, and caramelized onions. This sauce pairs well with the juicy tender pork belly. As a contrast to the deep dark flavors of the sauce, I prepared atjar-inspired spicy sweet & sour cauliflower that is equally bursting with flavor, but in a different fresher way. Served with some rice, this was one great meal! I will definitely make this again, and I won’t change a thing. Continue reading “Spicy Sweet & Sour Pork Belly and Cauliflower”
This summer we’re going boating for 10 days with a group of around 30 friends, and I’m going to be the chef on board. For this trip I’m trying out some tasty, healthy and budget-conscious versions of Dutch favorites such as shawarma and in this case nasi with chicken satay. Nasi goreng is one of Indonesia’s national dishes that means “fried rice”. Indonesian food as it is eaten in the Netherlands clearly has Indonesian origins, but has been “Dutchified” and is known simply as “nasi”. Even in Indonesia there is no official recipe for nasi goreng, as its origins are related to a way to preserve left-over rice and other left-over foods by frying them. I’m by no means claiming that this version is authentic, far from it. But it sure is good!
Continue reading “Dutch Nasi Goreng with Chicken Satay and Atjar”
A week ago we launched the international “Shanghai Chicken” blogging project together with Clayton and John. The rules we set for this project were very simple:
So far not only Clayton and John/Sybaritica, but also Genie/Bunny Eats Design and Paul/That Other Cooking Blog have posted their takes on Shanghai Chicken. It is very interesting to notice how all of their entries are very different. Some more bloggers have announced that they will participate. I plan to do a wrap up of all the entries received so far next week. You can participate whenever you like, but if you want to be listed in my initial wrap up you should post something by Saturday, June 22, at the latest.
Here’s my own take on Shanghai Chicken. Continue reading “My Entry for the International “Shanghai Chicken” Project”
Kung Pao Chicken is a dish I’ve discovered only recently because it is not on menus of Chinese restaurants or take-out places in the Netherlands. ‘Chinese’ restaurants in this country are in fact Chinese-Indonesian, the chefs are mostly trained in the Netherlands at the same school, and the menus of those restaurants are mostly all the same and have been like that for thirty years. I’ve never been to China and am certainly not a connaisseur of Chinese food, but I do know that this is healthy, very tasty, and quite fast and easy to make. Kung Pao Chicken is a stir-fry dish that originated in Szechuan cuisine, containing chicken, peanuts (or cashews), vegetables, (dried) chile peppers, and Sichuan peppercorns. The latter are not actual peppercorns but the husk around the seeds of a type of prickley ash. Continue reading “Kung Pao Chicken”
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 