Coldbacon04

09/07/2005/07/20

Larb moo – Thai spicy pork mince in lettuce leaf

A very simple and tasty dish – perfect on its own or with some rice.

This dish has a very distinctive flavour in the combination of lime juice, fish sauce and palm sugar. Try it and you’ll see. It’s very moreish and you will be fighting over the last lettuce leaf to scoop up every fiery morsel.

The chilli is optional to be honest, make it as spicy or not as you like.

Have everything prepared before you start cooking the pork mince as it really doesn’t take long at all. This is definitely one of those dishes where it calls for a little fat in your pork mince if you can get it, I’m talking about choosing 10/20% fat rather than 2% fat pork mince. 500g should be comfortable for feeding two, you’ll wonder why you didn’t make more once you start…

Use the lettuce leaves as boats and spoon over that juicy pork.

See full receipe

Happy eating!!

05/07/2005/07/20

Roast lamb shoulder joint with anchovies, garlic and capers

roast lamb, roast potatoes, carrots and suede

Can’t beat a good ole’ roast lamb on a Sunday. Also can’t go wrong with pairing anchovies, garlic and capers with lamb. So this recipe is for a stuffed lamb shoulder joint with the delicious anchovies stuffing.

boneless lamb shoulder, anchovies, garlic and capers

I used a boneless lamb shoulder joint but you can also debone your own (lamb) shoulder if you want, I went for the easy route this time. Prep your shoulder joint by making small shallow cuts on the surface of the lamb where the stuffing marinade will be smeared on shortly. Prepare your trivet in your roasting tray, I usually use roughly chopped onion, carrots or celery, any vegetables that will create a layer at the bottom of your roasting tray so that your meat can sit on the vegetable bed rather than directly on the tray. It helps the juices from the meat run down during cooking which can be used for making the gravy later.

To make the stuffing, chop up some anchovies, 3-4 cloves of garlic and around 10-15 capers then place these in a pestle and mortar with some ground sea salt for the mixture to grind against. Add a glug of olive oil (or use some of the oil from the tin of anchovies) to the stuffing mix before pounding this mixture with the mortar until you get a rough paste.

Now spread roughly half to two thirds of this stuffing on one side of the lamb shoulder joint, massage it in. Roll up your shoulder joint and use some cooking string to hold the joint together. Place the joint roll on top of your trivet in the roasting tray and spread the remaining anchovie mixture on top of the joint, like a crust.

Pre-heat your oven to 200C, pour approximately 1 cup of water into the baking tray before placing a piece of foil loosely over the joint on the tray. This will create a little steam within the foil and your crust won’t be burnt to a crisp. Once the oven has been pre-heated, place the lamb in the oven and turn the temperature down to 180C to cook according to the weight of your joint. In the last 30 minutes, remove the foil for the remainder of the cooking time to allow some browning.

At the end of the cooking time, remove the meat onto a pre-heated tray and cover tightly with foil to allow to rest for 15-20 minutes whilst you prepare the gravy and everything else. Carve and serve with roast potatoes and veg of choice.

roast lamb stuffed with anchovies, garlic and capers

Happy eating!

17/06/20

Wing’s Diner @ Small bar

This is one of those places where I’ve been meaning to go to for ages and before the lock down, it was always so busily impossible to get a table that I never got to go. But I kept hearing good things about it.

I finally had a chance to taste their food recently during lock down of all times and I can see why they’re so popular.

Wings has started doing an online booking system during Coronavirus lock down where you order ahead from Monday of that week for a timed collection slot between Thursday and Saturday that week, or until the food runs out. This also meant I had a guaranteed slot to try their delicious Asian fried chicken.

It works rather well, you simply make your order online on their website like you would any online food order, select a day and time slot before paying. When you turn up at the venue, it’s all very well signposted where you’re supposed to pick your order up from (the door on the right). The white, smaller door on the left is for buying your favourite tipple from the small bar selection, served in what looked like 2 pint milk bottles.

We ordered the Korean burger, Malaysian burger, chicken wings, Dirty Chicken fries and some kimchi slaw.

I can probably give the kimchi slaw a miss but everything else exceeded my expectations. When I saw the burgers I had an initial pang of fear that it may be yet another sloppy, dirty burger that seems to be all the rage at the moment where you cannot hope to eat one of these burgers without the sauces and juice going everywhere.

To my surprise, the burgers held together really well. The Korean burger consisted of a fried piece of chicken dressed in a sticky Korean sauce which I think is gojujang based, with a bit of the kimchi slaw (maybe if you’re getting the Korean burger anyway then don’t bother with the separate kimchi slaw). The chilliness of the sauce worked very well in the burger.

In contrast, the Malaysian burger was a fantastically crispy piece of fried chicken with peanut sauce. Most importantly, the fried chicken remained crispy throughout. A classic flavour combination that you cannot go wrong with.

It was on the chicken dirty fries that we got to taste their saracha mayo and it was a very well blended flavour of chilliness (from the saracha), a little bit of tanginess which I can only assume is from lemon juice or something, and mayo. This sauce was doused over a piece of katsu chicken over fries. (You can choose other sauces for your dirty fries)

All in all, it was a lovely bit of normality being able to try a new eatery again. I just hope I’ll be able to get a table once all of this is over. For now, cluck and collect!

Happy eating! 🤤🤤🤤🤤

12/06/2012/06/20

Aubergine and minced pork (魚香茄子）

Usually, this dish is served in a sizzling hot pot at a restaurant, ideally after hours of slow cooking so the aubergine and mince pork practically melt into one within the fragrant salted fish sauce.

In order to replicate this at home, you would have to be able to find Chinese salted fish (鹹魚) and have a ceramic pot that you can get up to a searingly hot temperature. Not to mention time.

I came across this Lee Kum Kee sauce satchet for this dish and you know what, it wasn’t bad at all! All you needed was pork mince and aubergines (pre boiled) and simply add the sauce mix. I added about a tbsp of light soy sauce and a tbsp of fish sauce to the mix and it turned out quite well.

Nice, quick dinner dish, perfect with a bowl of rice.

Happy eating!

07/06/2003/06/20

Pad thai

A quick, easy dinner. Also very versatile and you can use any meat you want, here I used chicken thighs that I had in the fridge. You can even use prawns instead or as well. The key is the flavouring to pad thai.

This is the type of rice sticks that I used, there are a variety of these available at Asian supermarkets of different thickness. You’ll see that I am using the Vietnamese rice noodles here which is fine for pad thai. All you have to do is soak the noodles in hot water for about 10 minutes then they’re ready to be used whether for frying or in soup (as in Pho).

To make sure your noodles will be fried in high heat later, cook your chopped meat in the same wok you will be using later. Remove from wok and set aside.

Make sure you have all your ingredients ready to hand before you move onto the next step.

In a hot wok, heat a tablespoon of oil, fry the shallots/onions until softened. Add preserved radish (if using) and beansprouts and fry for a couple of minutes. Add your cooked chicken and softened noodles. Add the sauce mix (see recipe) then mix into the noodle mix quickly.

Serve with chopped coriander, peanuts and a slice of lime.

See recipe

Happy eating!