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.
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.
This place has held the position of being my favourite pizza place for some time. Not only is it on my doorstep (I wish it was even closer), but the pizzas are fantastic everytime.
Pizza Workshop (now with two branches in Bristol) probably looks like another sourdough pizza places that has been trending for the past 5-10 years. I’m not one for trends (cronuts?!) But I can honestly say I have not yet found a better place that has been able to compete with Pizza Workshop yet (in my humble opinion).
Whether it’s the slightly smokey, charcol-y scented sourdough base from their woodfire ovens, or the geniously curated combination of toppings, I just can’t get enough of it.
My current favourite topping combination is their number Two (aubergines, basil, mozzarella and parmesan) and then I like to add nduja sausages to it. That spicy oiliness of nduja and slightly meaty aubergine is cut through by the fresh basil.
No 10 – spinach, pinenuts, ricotta and added anchovies
No 8 – Italian sausage, chorizo, nduja and ham
A new combination I tried recently was their current number Ten (ricotta, spinach, pine nuts and red pesto) which I then added anchovies to. The saltiness of the anchovies combined with the woodiness of the pinenuts and the light ricotta is a taste that will make you wanting more.
Yes, you might say that I’m not strictly eating within the true spirit of Pizza Workshop’s carefully curated combinations. But the genius of Pizza Workshop is that their pre-selected combinations and beautifully oven baked base is an art form on its own and versatile enough for you to make it your own.
Ps: they’re still hard at work during these difficult times for businesses. Gives me an excuse to support my local businesses (as if I needed an excuse!)
Yes, that’s right – chocolate. Mexican inspired flavours really. Very easy to make and the meat is very tender, falling off the bone.
I used one rack of pork ribs and to achieve a maximum surface area for the sauce to cling onto, I pre-cut the ribs before marinating. You can also use this recipe on a whole rack if you like.
Mix the dry ingredients of 1 tsp salt, 1tbsp of cocoa powder, 1tsp of chilli flakes and 1 tsp of allspice. The allspice brings a slight tangy twist to the cocoa that goes really well. Add about 2 tbsp of olive oil to make it into a loose paste so that you have enough to coat your ribs. If the paste isn’t loose enough, add a spoonful or two of water.
Then using my ‘go to’ method of marinating in a ziplock bag, pour the marinade into the bag and massage your ribs through the bag so they are all coated. Marinade for at least an hour or longer if you can.
Once the ribs have had enough time to soak up the goodness, preheat the oven to 200C. The texture we’re looking for is falling off the bone yet lickably sticky sauce. Place a piece of foil that is larger than your baking tray as the bottom of your parcel, pour your ribs with all the marinade liquid onto the foiled baking tray. Then use a piece of foil which is smaller in size than the bottom one to cover the ribs loosely and crimp the edges of the foil parcel with the bottom layer of foil. You want to create a slight cavern for the ribs to steam within the parcel. Create a few holes on the top layer of your parcel so some of the steam can escape.
Place into the preheated oven and turn it down to 180C. After 25 mins, turn the ribs over and place the top foil loosely back onto the parcel for the last 10 minutes – this will give you the slight burnt edges on the ribs.
When serving, spoon over some of the juices which will have caramelised on your baking foil tray (not the oil!).
One of the challenges thrown up by an approach of cook whatever is available, is having to learn to prep something you’ve never cooked before and thinking how best to make it tasty. My local fishmonger had two big crabs in stock so I thought I would give it a go. Armed with Sam, the fishmonger’s, instructions of cooking them in boiling water for 12 minutes, I then went home and started trawling through my cookbooks as to how best to make a meal out of them.
It turned out that none of the cookbooks I had have a recipe for a whole crab. There are many recipes using crab meat but I wasn’t going to just use the meat when I had the whole crab to play with. Unfortunately we do not have a gas hob otherwise the most obvious way of cooking these crabs to showcase their freshness would be to simply fry them in a hot wok with shallots and garlic.
Fortunately my mum still has her late 80s/early 90s cookbooks from Hong Kong including the classic ⌈方太與你⌋ by the great Mrs Lisa Fong who pioneered television cooking on Hong Kong television that I grew up with. One of the recipes in this was a whole crab recipe with salted egg and mince sauce that required frying the crab and then baking in a casserole dish.
I was lazy and didn’t want to have to deep fry the crab first so I modified 方太 ‘s(Mrs Fong) recipe a bit. I also wanted a buttery richness to it so decided to make a butter sauce with some shallots that I bought from our local farm shop that morning.
with ginger and fennel
colour changes after its cooked
before gutting
After gutting, cleaning and dismembering – rearranged into shape
Prepping the crab was a bit more fiddly than I thought partly because I realised I didn’t have a pot that was big enough to cook both the crabs at once. Had to do them separately and boiled them with a few pieces of ginger and a bit from an old quarter of a left over fennel, just because… The crabs were sold to me on ice so they weren’t alive.
Then I removed the ’apron’ – that fan shaped covering at the bottom of the underside of the crab, this is also where you find out if a crab is male or female as I learnt. Removing the top shell was actually a bit more difficult than I thought, took a lot of brute force. Innards were then gutted and cleaned leaving the white meat. If I wasn’t hoping to serve the whole crab, this is when I would have picked all the white meat out for another dish.
Now to prepare the other bits:
salted eggs
salted egg yolks
for the butter
The twist in this recipe is to use salted egg and pork mince which goes remarkably well with crab. Once the mince has been mixed with the mashed salted egg. Salted egg (鹹蛋) is a pre-salted duck egg that you can buy from Chinese supermarkets. The salting process solidifies the yokes so don’t be too surprised when you crack that duck egg to find a ball of yoke. We are only using the salted egg yoke in this recipe which needs to be mashed and added to the pork mince along with the seasoning.
In the meantime, sauteed the garlic, shallots and spring onions in copious amount of butter, ready for use.
Spoon the mince pork on top of the reassembled crab, then spoon over the butter all over the crab. Place the top shell back on and bake in a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes at 180°C.
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