Yak Yeti Yak - I'll be back!

By: Mrs Robot

Last night I went with a few friends to Yak Yeti Yak, Bath's Nepalese restaurant. I'd been years ago and had liked it but not felt it was anywhere to rave about. Perhaps their food has changed in the intervening years, or perhaps I have, but last night's meal was excellent and has left me keen to go back with Mr Robot at some point.

The setting is lovely, in a little basement in the centre of the city. It's not at all dingy; there are windows onto an 'area' so natural light does get in, and the walls are painted white and the rooms are decorated with Nepalese art. We're currently experiencing a heatwave, so being below ground level is lovely and cool.

For a starter I had aloo dum. I know 'aloo' means potatoes and 'dum' to a method of cooking in a sealed pot. We had an incredible aloo dum with parathas on the way to Chandernagore when we visited India earlier this year, and I wanted to see how the Nepalese version compared. Well, it was completely different, but every bit as delicious! Cool potatoes, with herbs and onions. There was a fresh, sharp note that I couldn't identify – I'd guess some sort of fruit as it wasn't vinegary – that made the whole thing really refreshing. This morning I've had a look online and it seems there are as many Nepalese recipes for aloo dum as there are people who cook it: some with sauce, some without, most hot, and none with the sesame, but the online recipes for aloo ko achar look rather more like what I ate, with plenty of sesame and a souring agent. I guess I'll just have to keep going back to the restaurant and trying out recipes till I get it right... hard life!

My main course was a Dal Bhat Masu. 'Dal' is obvious, and from the menu I got the impression that 'bhat' means rice, so I'm guessing it all simply translates to 'lentils rice meat'. I chose black dal and pork bhutuwa for the meat. There was also a side dish of small dark chickpeas, a little pot of achar (chutney) and a mountain of rice. Oh, and a poppadom on the side. I didn't manage all the poppadom or rice, there was that much. The chickpeas and pork were the highlights, the former deliciously buttery, and the latter perfectly soft, spicy and savoury, but without chili-heat.

I really enjoyed the meal and definitely won't leave it as long before going back next time.

A Mumbai feast

It's a while after new year, but I thought I'd write about our New Year's Day meal anyway. (Didn't want to do another post too soon after Mr Robot's last one, you might have run away in shock at two in a week.)

Mr Robot gave me a couple of cookbooks for Christmas: Mr Todiwala's Bombay, by Cyrus Todiwala, and Fortnum and Mason: The Cook Book. I don't know if I'd have picked up the Todiwala book myself, but it's really good. My go-to Indian recipe books tend to be by Anjum Anand and Meera Sodha. Meera Sodha is a particular favourite because her food has personality; you can really see how her family history and the ingredients around her in Britain have impacted on her cooking. Mr Todiwala's Bombay also has personality in spades. There's a real sense of place and of the mix of cultures that make up Mumbai as he shares the food that he loves: the street food that everyone eats, restaurant food, and the sort of thing families eat at home. I wanted to go to Mumbai anyhow as I love art deco and it's got some of the finest art deco buildings in the world, but now I want to go there for the food too!

I decided to make a proper dhansak (or dhaansaak as it's spelled in the book), as made by the Parsee community that Cyrus Todiwalla is part of.

Dhansaks are a curryhouse staple here in the UK, but this was very different from the oily stuff they serve up. You start by making the spicy lamb, which is then added to a pot of dal. I found the dal particularly unusual compared to ones I've made in the past as it contains fresh dill and plenty of sugar – I guess that shows the Persian roots of the Parsee people. The dal is supposed to be pureed smooth, and I did that this time but in future I might leave some of the lentils intact for a bit more texture and visual interest. There's a low ratio of lamb-to-dal. I was really worried about how all the flavours would turn out, as the mix was so unfamiliar to me, but it still tasted like 'a curry' to me, just with different herbal notes to what I'd usually expect. And that's one of the reasons I like making Indian food at home - bought ones always seem to lack the fresh flavour of the herbs.

A gorgeous brown caramelised onion pulao, seekh kebab balls (raising the amount of meat in the meal to a level carnivores will be happy with), and cachumbar make delicious accompaniments. I'd happily make all three of those to accompany other things. Every Indian chef I own a cookbook by has a recipe for cachumbar; Todiwalla's is heavier on the onion than the others that I've seen but it works really well with the sweet, lentil-heavy dhansak. And usually when a recipe 'serves four to six' there's really enough for two greedy robots plus a little leftover. Not here! Even by our standards this recipe easily serves six. I've put two meals' worth of dhansak, pulao and kebab balls in the freezer.

The Fortnum cookbook is an oddity. I must confess, while I know Tom Parker-Bowles is a food writer, I've never read any of his food writing, I only know him as 'that bloke whose mum is the future Princess Consort.' Mr Robot got it for me because I love the funny old shop, and the history of things, and this book contains little bits of Fort Noms' history. It's also stuffed with illustrations from the company catalogues of the 1930s and 1950s. I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of the recipes in the book as they're really very simple and I have similar elsewhere, though in their simplicity they do mean you need to use the very finest ingredients – replace butter with marge and it'll be all too obvious.

I made the raspberry trifle. I did vary things slightly, using cream rather than milk for the custard, and making a fresh raspberry compote rather than using jam. You're supposed to layer it jam, sponge with chambord, raspberries, custard, whipped cream, sponge with chambord, raspberries, custard, whipped cream, but I have a wide dish rather than a tall one so the layers came out a bit scanty. I left out the middle layer of cream and had a mere drizzle for the second layer of custard, so I think if I made it again I'd use far fewer sponges and only one layer of each ingredient. Still, it was jolly nice. Not over-fussy, just a tasty, creamy, fruity treat.

So, that was our New Year's Day meal. I hope yours was as good, and wish you all the best for the rest of 2017.

Malaysia - Ping Coombes

By: Mr Robot

Having already had Ping Coombes' food on one of her Laksa nights, it was inevitable that I'd buy her Malaysia book at the first opportunity, but if there'd been any doubt, two minutes leafing through it in Waterstones sealed the deal. It looks beautiful and has a vast number of recipes that are truly compelling in that they look both instantly appealing and highly achievable. Always assuming one is as highly skilled as me of course. Ahem.

In just a couple of weeks the book had already become a favourite. Idle browsing all too easily turns into a shopping list but that can only ever be a good thing. I probably bought more lemongrass and turmeric in the first fortnight than in my entire pre-Ping life. Again, this is a good thing.

So first up, and I guess predictably, we hit the Beef Rendang. Now, we've had a fair few Rendangs over the years, all of it cooked by people who do so for a living. So the fact that Ping's Rendang - as done by Cpt Ignoramus here - is without doubt the finest we've ever had, by a mile, should tell you all you need to know. It was truly outstanding.


I think the heat distinguishes it: the chilli is almost fierce as a deep, rich background which marries so well to sweet, fragrant coconut, lemongrass and kaffir lime.

And it's not a speedy dish: Ping demands tough, slow meat and it'll take a good 2 to 2 1/2 hours to do it justice.

I've always thought there's too much of the "quick and easy..." kicking around these days anyway.

Anyhoo Ping's Rendang needs devotion and love, but repays it tenfold.

From there I moved to a snack-food double feature. There was Lor Bak, pork spring rolls flavoured with five-spice, and Murtabak, a flaky bread (intriguingly made with condensed milk) stuffed with lightly curried minced lamb, and fried.

To be honest, the Murtabak was a bit of a faff - not least because it wanted to be bathed in oil all night long. Well, yes, who wouldn't, but does the dearest heart who completes your soul do that for you?

Exactly.

Plus, I didn't really achieve the hoped-for flakiness, which I put down to one or more of a) oil too hot / not hot enough, b) too much / little kneading and c) flakiness of my own.

Nonetheless as a crisp outside, gooey inside, meat-n-fats-n-carbs affair it's hard to fault and I sincerely hope to one day arrange for them to coincide with a stinking hangover.


It'll be awesome.




The Lor Bak we were already familiar with since they came as a side with Ping's Laksa and we absolutely loved them.

The recipe in the book didn't disappoint one jot, and they were so good I made a second batch a day or so later.

The fact that most of those were given away to friends says much about my great heart, and tiny brain.




Then came the other inevitability, which was the Laksa itself. To be completely honest it was a bit...off, though I have no doubt that was down to me (after all, what are the odds!).

Or rather, I blame Sainsbury's.



When Ping was in charge I raved about the intense but balanced fish note. Well, when I was driving that balance was off.

The base paste calls for  both dried shrimp, and two tablespoons of shrimp paste, which struck me as quite a lot at the time. In the eating it was just too fishy for comfort, and that shrimp paste overpowered the rest of the dish.


I strongly suspect that foil packet of supermarket shrimp paste (two tablespoons was basically the entire thing) was not what Ping had in mind.

Either that or I didn't cook the paste out long enough.

In some ways though, I'm quite glad it turned out that way.  It's been a good and rare experience of having a dish as it absolutely should be, and then failing to reproduce it myself.


An excellent demonstration of why the author has her authority.




Finally (so far) I had a bash at the Captain's Chicken Curry. I don't know why but the name made me sceptical - perhaps it sounds a little contrived - but I had some chicken to use up, so why not?

One reason why not, which gave me genuine pause for thought, was the use of 20 (yes twenty) Kashmiri chillies. Since the already pokey Rendang used 15 I feared it'd be a bit too much, and Mrs Robot might hiccup herself into total shutdown.

Well I needn't have feared - it's an absolutely stunning dish. Yes it's hot but again so perfectly balanced, this time given a real edge by a good dose of tamarind contrasting with the coconut milk, while the chicken itself is brilliantly smokey thanks to marinading in turmeric before frying.

Unforgivably, I failed to get any pictures. It just smelled so amazing, from the first minute of cooking, I didn't even think about the camera. That's how good it is.

In fact I think might even be better than the Rendang. Mrs Robot isn't sure and now demands both together for a proper comparison. I can't wait to do it.

There are so many more things I want to do from this book. We've had so much great and exciting stuff already, and t's a book that gives pleasure equally in the reading and the using. For me that's about as good as it gets.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Supperclub Nights - Noya's Kitchen

By: Mr Robot

We’ve been wanting to do one of Noya’s Vietnamese supperclubs for ages but they’re not easy to get into. At the time of writing (early August) she’s fully booked until, um, next year. With very good reason, as it turns out.

A couple of friends got word of some late availability, so naturally we piled in.

The supperclub is held in a cafe (The Bear Pad) in the Bear Flat area a 10-minute stroll from central Bath and done on a BYO basis. I put my chum Dave in charge of wine since he can’t resist a trip to Great Western Wine, while Mrs R and I trundled our way up the hill for a pint or two of aperitif before arriving, giddy with anticipation.

You see, we’ve done a fair bit of Vietnamese-ish cooking at home (thanks again to Uyen Luu’s marvellous book) but have never had it done properly by someone who knows what they’re doing.

So while we have complete faith in our books you could never describe us as more than enthusiastic ignorami. Here, for the first time, authenticity beckoned.

Clearly I can hardly pretend to give an authoritative critique, but I can tell you it’s a bloody good evening. 

Noya greeted and seated us, and we sat twitchily waiting for the booze our friends to arrive, and the food to come.

We opened with Steamed Pork Noodle Roll and Prawn Summer Roll, along with a stern warning to USE THE DIPPING SAUCE.

I am at least an old enough hand to know that one but from the gasping and oohing around us, it well aimed. 

Mrs Robot’s a sucker for a summer roll so my right ear was largely full of happy chirps, while for me the pork roll was the highlight, soft and rich and savoury and so good with that dipping sauce (a little lighter than we make at home I noted).

I confess I kept that little dish by me throughout the evening so I could dabble a fingertip when (hopefully) no-one was looking. The stuff’s addictive.

Next up came a Hue Chicken Salad, with chicken wings and huge rice crackers. Not only was this extremely delicious, the salad is a favourite at home and was gratifyingly close to what we’ve made for ourselves. +100 kudos points to us then.

The wings were an excellent addition: the salad tends to be quite crunchy, it’s very fresh of course, and I find the vegetables bring out the acidity in the dressing. The wings gave contrast on all levels being soft, sticky and slightly sweet. It even brought fingers to balance against chopsticks! A lovely combo we’ll seek to replicate.

Incidentally, two courses in the place was buzzing - a great convivial atmosphere built up very quickly and the venue makes for a fine casual evening.

As Night spread her starry wings ‘cross the sky, Dave brought out the second bottle of Riesling and Noya’s minions brought out beef wrapped in betel leaves.

This was the revelation of the night. It was amazing, and unlike anything I’ve tried. I suppose the closest comparison is a close-textured sausage, and there were almost black-pudding hints of fragrant spices and a hint of sweetness. A delicious thing.

It came with (and I’m indebted to Noya for breaking this down for me, ‘cos I’d never have remembered all the detail) lemongrass peanut sauce, mint mango, pickled daikon and vermicelli noodle. To be honest, though, that was merely a medly of background loveliness to me - I was all about the Betelbeef.

Say it three times...

For course four Noya gave us all a huge cuddle, in the form of a steaming mound of perfect Jasmine rice alongside a ginger and chilli chicken stew that was full of deep, round flavours - the kind of thing that makes you sorry to be in public because you just want curl around it and trough.

Finally, regretfully, we ended with a classic creme caramel accompanied by coconut biscuits. Very definitely my kind of pudding. It was a great way to end actually, bringing in the French influence of course, but it also felt a little like coming home after this lengthy, wonderful exotic voyage. What an evening.

As we waddled our way slowly down the hill to the inevitably missed train and eyewatering taxi bill, we vowed sincerely to do this again as soon as possible. Next year.

All images (C) PP Gettins

Cricket cuisine

By: Mrs Robot

There are lots of very good reasons to like going to watch cricket, but have you ever considered the food? Some of my best memories of cricket matches are of the food, odd though it might sound. Some years back we saved for three years to go to Barbados to watch a West Indies-England Test, and I still remember the man who'd walk through the ground selling paper bags of fishcakes, yelling, "Last two! Last two!" (It never was the last two.) Then there were fish cutters (breaded flying fish fillets in break rolls), macaroni pie (macaroni cheese) and other tasty treats sold from stalls behind the stands. At Lords, there are gourmet burger vans. The food at the ground at Bristol hasn't stuck in my mind, though the Caribbean restaurant we walk past on the way back to the railway station has.

Mr Robot and I went to Edgbaston this week to watch the first day of the third England-Australia Test match. I was looking forward to it, because Edgbaston is in Birmingham, and that means masses of good curry. Or so I thought... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 There are food stalls all the way round the ground behind the stands, but there is one main area where most of the vans and stalls are clustered. Our seats were in a stand very close by the food court, which was fab. When we walked in, we had time for a good look around. Hog roast and pizza, waffles and burritos, burgers, posh sausages and fish and chips... so much choice. Though you will notice something missing there. Where's the curry? We settled for a breakfast bap (bacon, sausage, egg, and black pudding, all in a brioche roll) and I got a free cuppa from the Yorkshire Tea stall.

Lunch was excellent soft tacos from Smoqued. The tacos were made from purple maize and were delicious. Later Mr Robot had a foot-long hot dog and I dragged him to the other side of the ground in search of Edgbaston Cheese Crunch. I'd seen it mentioned on the ground's website, with no description, and there was no description online. What could it be? As Birmingham is in the Black Country (the amount of industry there in the 19th century meant the whole region was sooty) I wondered if it was pork scratchings covered in cheese. Edgbaston Cheese Crunch turned out to be our old chum macaroni cheese*, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. Not very healthy, but very tasty.

And that curry? There was a lone curry stall, Spice Nation, which we visited at the tea break. It was excellent. There may not have been the choice I'd imagined, but the quality was definitely there. Beautifully tender lamb, well spiced... delicious!

All that, and a decent performance by England too. Owzat?

*After the cricket, I got into a Twitter chat with Mi Mi Aye about macaroni pie. I'd wondered if the cheese crunch owed its origins to Birmingham's large Caribbean community. She mentioned that macaroni pie was also a Scottish delicacy. Early in Barbados' colonial history, the sugar plantations were worked by Scottish indentured servants, the ancestors of the 'redlegs', and I found myself wondering if they'd taken macaroni pie there, and the people who came to the UK in the 1950s brought it almost all the way back. 

Anglo-Indian Pilaf

By: Mrs Robot

I'm not going to review the cookbook yet as I haven't made enough recipes from it to do the job properly, but I just wanted to share a photo of one of the dishes from The Burma Cookbook, by Robert Carmack and Morrison Polkinghorne with you.

I mentioned in a post that my family's pretty much lost touch with the Asian part of its roots, and for me cooking food from the region is one way to try to reconnect with that. Well, this is about as connected as I can get: a dish from the mixed-race community within Burma. A lot of Indians and Anglo-Indians went to Burma with the British, and took with them all sorts of foodstuffs, many of which have become part of Burmese food. (Take Indian snacks and the Burmese love of salads, and what do you get? Samosa salad.)

You don't need any connection at all to Burma to enjoy this pilaf, however. It's really delicious. You start by making a sort of spiced lamb stew, then putting the rice on top after a couple of hours and waiting for that to absorb the excess liquid. The result is wonderfully soft meat and tasty rice, which you top with fried onions and bits of omelette.

It's fantastically easy to make, and can all be done in one pot, which I definitely appreciate because I hate washing up. If you make your own curries regularly you'll have all the spices at home already, and if you don't there aren't so many that it would all be really expensive to buy them - plus then you'd have the spices to make many more pilafs in future. The meat does take a couple of hours to stew, but you could make up that part in advance and freeze it, so when you wanted some after, say, a day at work, you's just need to thaw it and bring the meat up to a simmer before adding the rice.

I think I will be eating a lot of this in future...

Remembering Thadingyut

By: Mr Robot 

Thadingyut: the festival of light at the October full moon.

M-O-O-N spells Thadingyut

We were in Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin) last time around, digging into Mrs R's heritage, and it was a wonderful experience.

We walked around the town as the sun set, and areas that were unprepossessing by day - and any other time - became magical this night. There were streets of wooden houses surrounded by irrigation ditches, with little wooden bridges across and balustrades around - all lined with dozens and dozens of candles.  Clearly there was precious little in the way of plumbing or electricity. It was dreadfully picturesque. Yet small children excitedly ran out to greet us, and everyone was smiles and goodwill.

It's the closest thing to a Dickens Christmas I've ever seen.

From our hotel. We bought our own candle elephant to remember this night

Amazing to think that was a year ago, but the moon says it must be. So we decided to mark this Thadingyut in our own small way, with some Burmese food and, of course, candles.

Since it's a 3-day festival we've had a couple of nights to play (sadly the third night - the big celebration - is logistically compromised) and turned as ever to MiMi Aye.

For the first night we returned to one of the first Burmese dishes we made: Mogok pork curry. This is a deep, dark, savoury dish, rich with soy and ginger, and soft, sticky pig. It's extremely simple to make and demands only the patience to let it simmer for an hour or so.

We're never entirely sure how runny to make it: it starts off very liquid - intuitively, too liquid - but I suspect my love of massively intense reductions pushes me a bit too far. Certainly all the curries we had in Burma were quite saucy (ooh!), no doubt to spread flavour across the customary ton or two of rice.

Mogok Pork Curry

Mind you, we hardly pretend to great authenticity but merely fudge our way through as best (and respectfully) we can. It's always jolly good anyway.

For the second night we picked up the first of MiMi's recipes we ever saw (Mrs R found it - big up her), and one of the funniest pieces of food writing I've ever read. Honestly - it's right up there with Jerome K Jerome's pineapple tin. Note, however, that this is probably not the moment to get the children involved in the kitchen.

Anyway, once you've got past the evisceration scene, there's the recipe for Gahlar-thar Hin, or Bachelors' Curry: a chicken dish presumably so called because the chances of a snog afterwards are exactly zero. It's VERY garlicky.

Actually that's unfair because I did a big fail: the recipe calls for a shed-load of garlic, onion, tomato, chilli etc to be blitzed into a paste and then cooked off. Guess who got impatient and, therefore, a load of raw garlic...

Bachelors' Curry. Enjoy it - it's the only hot chick you'll get tonight

So if you make this - and I urge you to - be sure to give it a good long time to cook the paste through properly. I mean, there's a lot of paste there. A LOT. It'll take longer than you (or at least I) think.

Happily I was making it a day ahead so was able to give it a good long time to cook most of that rawness out, and let the whole thing mature overnight to boot. This is, as MiMi says, quite a soupy dish with "rice swimming in rich gravy" which turns out to be an excellent idea. It's unusually spicy for Burmese food (in my tiny experience), not bonkers but with a decent hit, and extremely satisfying.

Oh, and if you have a stinking cold ignore all the cooking out stuff and keep the garlic nice and punchy: clears the tubes out a treat.

Happy Thadingyut everybody.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Recipe Review: Bun bo Hue

From Noodle! by MiMi Aye

 

by: Mr Robot

For some reason I got it into my head that this beef & lemongrass delight was called Bun ho Hue rather than Bun bo Hue so I fear I've been saying something absolutely dreadful for the last fortnight. So in the finest tradition of men everywhere - I'm deeply sorry for whatever it was I said. 

I wouldn't have persisted with my error quite so long were it not such an involved dish: I'd planned to cook it last week but given the vast array of meat needed, I had to put a special order in with the butcher (who did us proud as always) and try to control my impatience.

Crucial to any good recipe: vast amounts of MEAT

Pork bones, shin of beef, pork hock and oxtail all get simmered together for about 3 hours to make a wondrously rich broth served over noodles. Simple eh?

Well kind of, but there's plenty of other stuff going on - not least 12 stalks of lemongrass (basically clearing out Asda's supply for the week) - along with onion, ginger, garlic and pineapple. Supposedly rock sugar too but all I could find was palm so that had to do.

Lemongrass, and lots of it. Also pineapple, onion, ginger, sugar and shrimp paste

One thing that gave me some concern was the shrimp paste. Four tablespoons of the stuff. It's an ingredient I treat with something between caution and terror being so very pungent and frankly waaaay too fishy for comfort. But if I've learned anything from MiMi's recipes it's to shut the fuck up and do as you're told. So I did.

And of course I needn't have worried. Not only is the shrimp paste distributed in several litres of liquid (I'd kind of over-ordered on the meat!) but the hours of simmering cooked out the fishiness to leave an intense savouriness. A bit like people say anchovies will, only they lie.

In fact it was a fascinating process. Early on the smell (and an unwise tasting) was pretty grim and I feared we'd end up with a horrible waste, in every sense. But as the afternoon wore on it just smelled better and better.

This is a recipe that demands faith of its followers, yea verily and they shalt be rewarded.

A big pot o' love

So after a considerable period of lounging on the sofa saying things like, "Gosh that's starting to smell good" and, "Ooh I just got a big whiff of lemongrass" and, "Bollocks - I've just remembered I meant to save half that oxtail for something else" we eventually haul ourselves up to see what we've got.

Sorry but it actually was pulled

The recipe says to slice up the pork and beef but so very tender was it that I just gave it a Paddington hard stare and it basically dismantled itself. Perhaps that meant I'd overcooked it but it was so delicious I couldn't give a monkeys.

At this stage I did take the opportunity to remove the bigger lumps of fat and strip the oxtail from the bones. I've no doubt this would give any self-respecting Vietnamese person the shudders but I'm still dealing with the trauma of my Grandmother's cookery so believe me, it was for the best.

From there it's very simple - pile noodles, meat, broth and garnishes in a bowl and start grunting.

Do not forget the trimmings

As with so many of these recipes though, the garnish isn't some optional extra - it's vital to the overall balance of the dish. So far we have a bowl of complexity but huge - in fact challenging - richness. You need something to balance that out: in this case lime, blanched onion, chilies and coriander leaves give acidity an freshness and take the whole thing up a level. 

In fact Mrs R commented that my laying thin slices of lime on top of the warm broth caused the lime scent to rise above the bowl making the whole thing more aromatic. Naturally I feel quite smug about that even though I'd only done it to look pretty. Remember that then.

I should also have had beansprouts on there but due to the delay getting my meat in, they'd gone a bit manky, which was a shame because they would have given a nice textural difference. As it was the only crunch was from the onions and of course I didn't want to overdo those.

Overall this is a lengthy operation - a good four hours start to finish - but it's quite undemanding and most of that time is your own. Given the quantity and variety of meats I'd consider this an Occasion dish, for which a 4-hour simmering one-pot is ideal, and could see it making a great alternative for those jaded by the Christmas turkey. Because what you get after all that time and very little effort is something rich, fragrant, complex and comforting - it felt like a real treat on a miserable grey weekend.

 

Update: Mercifully the recipe makes a HUGE quantity and after accidentally losing a whole day to the pub, I can testify that it's a wonderful restorative for the filthily hungover...

 

 

As ever, if you were hoping to blag a free recipe here you’ll be disappointed – we don’t do that. These cooks need to make a living just like anyone else. However you can buy a signed copy of the book direct from MiMi's website, and isn't that much better really?

All images (c) PP Gettins

Where did all the noodles go....

By: Mr Robot

It's a while ago now, but the confluence of Sam & Sam Clarke talking about Morito and MiMi Aye's Noodle! book launch also marked the approximate end of our Asian food month.

Inspired by both the food and the surprising weight loss of our Burma trip we'd decided to go for a rematch on home turf in the hopes of eating well, learning something about cuisines we're shamefully ignorant of, and perhaps being a bit less porky. So how did it go?

Porky. Like me.

Well as far as the weight thing is concerned, Mrs R lost a little bit and I failed miserably. I think that's a combination of non-existent portion control (never seemed an issue in Burma, mind) and my taking the "unlimited beer" element a tad literally. Plus I'd find myself lunching on crappy sandwiches Chez Esso and thus undermining the whole thing.

Uyen Luu's Beef, Anise & Lemongrass stew: amazing eating

On the other hand, we ate amazingly well, and continue to do so. We would be genuinely wowstruck by both the food itself and the fact that we had made it. If for no other reason, everyone in the world should try cooking a totally new* cuisine just to get that sense of bewildered pride that comes of slavishly following instructions exploring a new flavour palette.

*ie. previous experience pretty much consisted of Mr Lau's very fine takeaway up the road and some eateries in Bath: home cooking practically nil.

We had three bibles and have come to love all of them:

Uyen Luu's My Vietnamese Kitchen was a complete revelation. We'd never eaten Vietnamese before, (never really thought of it to be honest), but it's a mighty attractive tome and the recipes are deceptively simple. Clearly with no context we could be producing absolute travesties, but if we are they're bloody tasty ones.

Summer Rolls. Probably a travesty

MiMi Aye's Noodle! which, for the pedants out there, went on sale a couple of weeks before the official launch, and has literally a hundred things to do with noodles. We're getting on for 10% in by now and nothing has let us down. It also contains recipes for things we had in Burma so carries a certain Proustian delight. Ah, sweet Madeleine - what a gal.

Shan Noodles like we had in Shan State, surprisingly

Ching-he Huang's Chinese Food Made Simple because Mrs R got bored of me constantly replaying it on TiVo. And yes it is very simple - at least to a chef of my standing. Ahem. My obsession point here was the Sichuan hot pot vat-of-chillies-thing which I've still never made because it's a hell of a faff and you really need friends round(which I don't have) BUT I do have a good inch or so extra round the tum thanks to everything else in there.

Ching-he Huang's Spiced Lamb on Orange & Fennel salad

We wouldn't pretend to be halfway competent of course, but a month focussing on a single style - even continentally broad - does wonders for the confidence and is great fun. We have eight to ten new staple dishes to roll out whenever, but more importantly our enthusiasm has only grown.

So at the end of our month, what had we learned?

• Fish sauce has a permanent place in our cupboards
• Dipping sauce
• Thai basil needs to be eaten RIGHT NOW
• Char siu is not only doable at home, it's practically compulsory
• How to make mince with a cleaver
• The less familiar the cuisine, the more fun you'll have
• Once you let the wife call a dish Snakes On A Plane, she will never stop

Ants Climbing Trees. Not, repeat NOT, Snakes On A Plane

All images (c) PP Gettins

Recipe Review: Pad Kee Mao / Drunken Noodles

From Noodle! by MiMi Aye

By: Mr Robot

Ok, so I know the internet stalking now looks all too real, but I've just made this and had quite a lot of wine and couldn't help myself.

Unacountable lack of cocktail umbrella. Sorry.

I've been wanting to cook Drunken Noodles ever since MiMi used them to call me a wally (don't ask) so finally, today, I did it. And I beg of you, make them.

The recipe claims "15 minutes to make, 10 minutes to cook" but if your knife skills are anything like mine that's a big fat lie. And pencil in a good 20 minutes extra faffing around looking for two varieties of soy sauce, wondering whether to deseed chillies (don't), forgetting to separate the noodles with a fork then remembering then trying then having to unpick the jellied mass strand by strand and, finally, negotiating with the cat to stop fighting the Thai Basil please.

Also the 10 minutes to cook is probably true, but MiMi probably has a far bigger wok/pan than you will ever, ever own. In reality it'll take twice that long because you not so much "toss to mix" as delicately coax integration whilst silently pleading with it all not to leap out and combust. 

Don't get me wrong though - it's your (my) own ineptness getting in the way of a recipe that's remarkably simple AND fun AND massively delicious. 

Anyway.

Cook noodles, mix sauce. Fry onion & garlic and then chicken & veg. then - here's the fun bit - make a well in the middle and scramble eggs in. Try not to end up with lots of liquid in the middle at this point: I did, and swore.

Then another well in the middle for sauce and noodles. 

Add other deliciousness and you're about as happy as a Greedybot can be. Mrs R reckons it's the best thing from the book yet - and she's eaten the Vietnamese Pork Patties. 

MiMi's book says it should be fiery hot but that she's moderated it, and I'd go with that: double the chilli and it'll be (I imagine) quite literally incredible.

The anise from Thai / Holy Basil gives a roundness and depth that's nigh-on addictive, eggs make it rich, the sauce is - oh jeez the sauce...

So anyway, first time up I'd give it maybe an hour or a bit more to make.

But it is SO worth it. 

Final point: the recipe claims to feed four, and for once it genuinely does. Or should. There being only two of us, we had 2nds. And then some more. And then we cried because there was none left.

Is this a dynamic stir-fry shot, or someone getting their 5th portion?

(except the tub I hid in the fridge, but don't let on)

If you were hoping to blag a free recipe here you’ll be disappointed – we don’t do that. These cooks need to make a living just like anyone else so if you like the look, buy the book

All images (c) PP Gettins