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

Laksa Mondays

By: Mr Robot

Back in the early years of this millennium, you could find me in Bath's Green Park Tavern pretty much any day of the week because it was
a) close to home,
b) even closer to the office, and
c) a proper pub complete with open fire and sticky-toffee carpet.

Sadly those days are long gone and the GPT has since been reinvented several times - most recently as a moderately swish (ie. clean) Smokehouse.

 It's a shameful admission that until recently I'd never actually had a Laksa. Not even made one of the sundry Nigel Slaters that are kicking around the house. But in menu or cookbook, whenever I think of it - and I do, often - there's always sometime a bit more exciting, so I do or have that instead.

Not least because I sort of thought I sort of knew that Laksa's a kind of coconutty, noodly soup, so what's there to get excited about? Which is monumentally stupid because Ohn No Khao Swe is also a coconutty noodly soup, and almost the best thing in the world. So I'm a buffoon.

Anyhoo, when word reached the Robot mailbox that Masterchef winner and pride of Bath, Ping Coombs ,was doing a Laksa pop-up at the GPT Smokehouse, we had to go.

Did I mention the lovely tables?
We spent a long time looking at them

The set-up was a good one, I think: fixed Laksa for the main course but with a few options around as starters/sides and puddings.

As already noted, Laksa in itself doesn't really make me gasp but I was interested to find out about the sides, (streetfoody stuff I hoped - win) and anyway if you're going to do the thing, this seemed like an excellent place to start.

How right I was.

It's not in my nature to be mean (honestly, no matter what you may hear) but I have to say the service was somewhat creaky. Talking to the staff afterwards, they freely admitted they'd been taken by surprise at the popularity of the event. Which is kind of daft on one level (Ping!), but also disarmingly sweet.

So seating was kind of chaotic ("just find a place - it'll be ok") but luckily we'd run into some of the nice people from the Pig Guide so we had strength in numbers.

I'm sure that, had it been just two Robots, there'd have been a lot of anxious whirring and some burnt diodes in the social-acceptibility networks. As it was, we were ok with chums.

The wait, it is true, was a tad lengthy, and some people got a bit grumpy. Personally I'm more forgiving of a pop-up; in this situation it's not the "professional" environment I'd expect from a regular night in a full-time establishment. In some ways it feels almost closer to a dinner party, even if I am paying to attend. Certainly I have a great deal more sympathy for (and identify with) the poor bugger in the kitchen. I don't know, maybe that's patronising, but I hope it's kind.

In any case, the ready supply of Exmoor ale and good company meant timing wasn't really an issue. Had it been just the two of us, there may well have been phone fiddling, thumb twiddling and eventually bickering and bitterness, but that's just us.

When the food showed up, it was a real joy.

Great sadness that the pork-scratchingy thing had sold out was balanced by the truly brilliant porky-rolly thing that was so intensely flavoured yet comfortingly tender it was little short of addictive.

Porky-Rolly Joy. As stolen by Evil Wife

I honestly can't convey how good this was. I know that's my failing and I should try harder, but it's late. When I make it myself, I'll wax more lyrical. Promise.

Mrs R had been hesitant about the prawn and chive fritters, until she tasted them. The texture was akin to onion bhaji (was it gram flour? I've no idea, but it was soft and nutty inside, which you can already imagine alongside sweetness of prawn lumps and oniony freshness so I need say no more).

Needless to say I had no such doubts, and hope to be rewarded for my faith in due course.

Oh ye of fritter faith...

The laksa itself as the main course really stood up, for me. Yes it was rich and fragrant, which I'd expected. I hadn't anticipated the strength of fish sauce*, or how well it would harmonise with everything else.

As we've recounted at length, fish sauce and all its ilk has been something of a learning curve. A couple of years ago, I'd have been actively put off by the very thing I'm praising now, because truly the fish sauciness made the dish for me.

That's the way (a-ha, a-ha) I laks....sorry

(*I can't say for sure it was actually fish sauce - it might have been mashed dried shrimps or something else I can't bear to think about. It was that surprisingly strong element, though, that both stood out in itself and enhanced everything else).

Delicious tender pork, prawny prawn, soft egg and softer noodles were all lovely, but oh that soupy sauce.




It's fair to say Mrs Robot wasn't quite as enchanted as I, but it's also fair to say she's both weird and wrong.

We didn't make it to pudding, which is a shame because there was some coconutty (possibly noodly) thing that really appealed to me.

But last orders was looming and by the time we noticed we were pretty much the last people standing - however unsteadily.

What was a real delight, though, was that Ping made the effort to come out and talk to every table, and gave everyone a good amount of time to boot.

We caught the end of that as we came in, when she was seeing to the earlier sitting whilst trying to set up for us lot.  At the end of the evening she was clearly knackered but still charming, and cheerfully willing to spend plenty of time with her punters.

There's an argument that, since she's trading on her TV success, we should expect nothing less - but I've seen enough great and not-so-great (frankly rubbish) behaviour to really appreciate the time and attention she gave us.

She even gave me the recipe for the amazing porky-rolly thing.

But I'm damned if I'm telling you.

All images (c) P P Gettins

Fruitful Mellowness

By: Mr Robot

There's a fair amount of misery involved in the English Autumn: it's cold, it's soggy, it's grey, it's dark... whatever all-too-brief summer we actually had disappears practically overnight and before you know it you're looking at six months of chilly rain before the slightly warmer rain comes round again.

But there are upsides: warm fires, dark beer, cosy pubs on a chilly day, bonfire night, that bite in the air that makes you glad to have a fur-lined nose, misty mornings and leaves turning and, of course, the food.

This is the season to make soups and stews, puddings and pies, and many things rich and dark and gloopy. It's my favourite time for cooking, plus it's game season.

So the other weekend I decided to indulge myself with a long Sunday in the kitchen, a brace of pheasant the butcher had talked me into, and Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food to keep me company.

Pheasant, hiding in a hedge of bacon

Actually I started off by knocking up a very fudged Onion Soup that would get me banned from la belle France if I dared call it French - but you know whereof I speak. Yes, it involved an Oxo cube and, yes, the wine was cheap Spanish, but hey, at least it had wine and the cheese was a rather nice Gruyere even if it was on top of toasted Generic White Sliced. We enjoyed it anyway. It was that kind of weather.

My deepest apologies to France

But that was merely a precursor to the pheasant, which I prepared in the Kerridge style with many well-browned carrots along with garlic, orange, stock and I can't remember what else. Everyone's favourite setting of gas bugger-all for, ooh ages, enabled me to knock up the prescribed game chips and bread sauce (Generic White Sliced sauce, to be precise), and turn my mind to pud.

Never mind the presentation, here's the dog's, er, pistols

Now, I've done the pheasant before so know it to be worth treasuring, but I'd never tried these steamed ginger puddings. It was a fair bet though, because Kerridge's book has never let me down and his little date & toffee puds would entice me under a moving bus.

In any case it's enough, I submit, just to note the key ingredients of ginger, syrup, vanilla, puddingness and custard. There's a bit of jazzing around with lemon and ginger wine but really, if that doesn't get you I don't know what will.

Honestly, what more do you want?

Happily the recipe makes six puddings, which works perfectly for the two of us.

Creaking already from the immensely rich & savoury pheasant, and a startlingly good bread sauce (I know - I've avoided it for years on the assumption that, well it's bread... made into a sauce. Idiot), we actually ate only one each.

Serves two, eventually

Remarkable isn't it? We experimented with freezing the others and it's worked pretty well - just reheated by very gently steaming. If anything, freezing brings out the ginger more. But I digress.

We were sated and then some, and insanely happy. This is food that makes you really appreciate the grotty, wet, miserable weather just the other side of the window. To celebrate we finished with a glass of mulled cider, and then a whole load more. Doesn't get much better, to be honest.

All images (c) PP Gettins

We don't give away other folk's recipes. Buy the book instead - you'll never regret it. You can probably get it cheap on Amazon, or better yet pay full whack for a copy signed by the great man himself.

Recipe(s) Review: Morito Three Ways

Recipes from Morito by Sam & Sam Clark

By: Mr Robot

So the wife has already waxed (waxen?) lyric about Sam & Sam coming to Bath to talk about the Morito book. She has also cooked the most delicious courgette tortilla though I'm afraid there are no pictures because we were both too bloody starving. But trust me it's a darn good way to clear a courgette (or indeed egg) glut.

However as I've noted before, my first instinct is to hit the pork belly, and since Morito has two recipes on adjoining pages the only appropriate response is to declare Fornicate It and do them both. 

Double pig

Perhaps facile to say (hence it comes so naturally) they are variants on a theme: rub with goodness, roast as you will, and dress afterwards. Dress the dish that is: I don't think The Sams are suggesting you dally with pork fat naked.

Why god gave us trousers

 So the recipes in question are:
     Chicharrones (described as basically pork scratchings with the meat still on!) and
     PX, meaning done with Pedro Ximenez sherry

Spagnophiles that we are, we have oodles of sherry kicking around but PX is a bit challenging for casual drinking so we're always up for a good use for it.

Pedro Ximenez is not, repeat NOT, casual

Both recipes call for a kilo of meat each, so I bought one kilo and halved them - regular readers will recognise the massive restraint involved here. Chicharrones, then, are seasoned meatside with garlic and fennel, while the PX is garlic and rosemary, then cook your pig.

I must commend The Sams for their generosity towards, and confidence in, the reader: they give a roasting method but make a point of saying, if you have a method that works, use it.

Bugger two hours roasting, this was poached Vietnamese style

This is good on two fronts: 1) a friend had already tried the chicharrones recipe and been sad about his crackling (oven seal not up to snuff would be my bet) and 2) I've found Uyen Luu's approach to be infallible.

Of course I could use my own method without the authors' permission, but it's still nice they give it.

But more, much more that this..... I did it Uyyyeeenn's Waaaay....

Anyway, do that. Hack the chicharrones into easily scoffable pieces, and with the PX piece remove crackling for serving and do same. The chicharrones simply get served with lemon and cumin, while the PX gets returned to the oven with Pedro Ximenez, sherry vinegar and bay to get stickily glazed.

Pork, you say? In sherry? Where do I sign?

By now, observant/pervert readers will be shouting YOU PROMISED ME A THREE-WAY or something and wondering where the third element is. Well it was a late decision to do what the book calls Wrinkly Potatoes but the rest of us know as spuds arrugadas. These Canarian joys are new potatoes cooked in seawater until they look like your fingers after three hours in a hot bath, but are a whole load tastier.

Now, I could've sworn an oven should be involved but the book says hob, so hob it is. Here's where it all went wrong. Undoubtedly it's my fault, but I honestly can't tell you why: maybe there was too much water; maybe not enough salt; maybe the wrong level of low-to-medium simmer; maybe it just hates me.

Whatever the reason "20-30 minutes, until water is gone and spuds are wrinkly" turned into "after an hour of getting very cross, open another beer and 17 seconds later find that all the water has gone, the pan is basically destroyed and the potatoes STILL aren't f'ing wrinkly."

See the wrinkles? Nor do I, curse it

At that point of course you curse vividly, dish up like nobody's business, try to persuade the wife that she should be at the table, the cat that she very definitely should not be on it, and admit the pork has probably suffered for sitting in a warm oven for however long. And realise you've forgotten the sodding lemon & cumin on the chicharrones.

After all that, sitting down with a triple-whack of Morito plus - bless her - Mrs R's tomates alinadas is a monstrous relief and, moreover, an absolute delight. Ok so my arrugadas were a little short on arruga but they do all the right things on the tongue.  The pork PX is sweet, sticky, slightly sour, rich, smokey; in fact it has a lot in common with char siu. The chicharrones are amazingly crispy (in your face, failure-friend) and the belated lemon & cumin give a zing to cut the fatty soft meat and increase dribblousness exponentially.

Go on - complain. I dare you.

Overall time to cook is between one hour and twenty hours, depending on how wrinkly you insist upon the potatoes being. More practically, 10-15 mins prep, 30 mins or so cooking but both pork recipes need to cool before finishing: do any of this when you can wait an hour or so before eating. You really won't be sorry.

Gratuitous pork p0rn

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

Noodlewhack! MiMi Aye's book launch

By: Mr Robot

A few months before our trip to Burma we were looking around the interweb for foodie things to get in the mood, and found MiMi Aye's excellent blog which is both stuffed with Burmese recipes and culture, and a highly entertaining read. So, as you do, we started stalking her on twitter and eventually became e-chums.

Noodlebook

So of course we were excited when her book Noodle! came out but even more excited - and not a little amazed - to be invited to the official book launch in Big London. Extra cat food was slapped in dishes and off we trumped.

It was held in the Draper's Arms in darkest Islington and naturally the combination of First Great Western, TfL, and my own poor judgement meant we got there about an hour late. MiMi was already on her feet when we arrived and, since the place was unsurprisingly heaving, we were crammed in the doorway trying not to interrupt anyone (already on the back foot, country-mouse-wise).

What you get for turning up late

Which is kind of a long way of apologising for the bobbins picture.

Anyway it was a splendid evening. Not only did we finally get to meet MiMi in person, she'd laid on a wonderful selection of food from the book, including Burmese Rainbow Salad and homemade Bombay Mix. There was also this salted-chocolate-brownie thing that was so good I practically inhaled it.

Rainbow Salad

Chocolatey Salty Deliciousness

The Vietnamese pork patties are magnificent and worth the cover price alone.

See the big empty space at the back? I did that

We already had the book (bought on the first day out, keeners that we are) and had tried a few recipes, so it's with absolutely no favouritism that we recommend it highly.

"Ants Climbing Trees" made by my own fair hand

Nontheless we had to get a signed copy too (the existing one already being shamefully spattered) and pick up extras for friends. We got to meet a couple of other twitter-pals for the first time as well, which was great, though were sad to find we'd missed some too (easily done: as a conversational opening gambit, "so who are you on the internet?" seems somewhat lacking).

MINE!

In some ways it felt a bit odd - almost fraudulent - being there, in the company of Masterchef and Bake-Off types and proper actual foodies.

Actual foodies. probably

It's a world we're a long way away from, and felt privileged to be part of it.

Thanks MiMi.


PS. We stayed on Old Street, which is full of exciting eateries. If you're in the area we can highly recommend The Reliance for lots of fine beer with a good atmosphere, and the Banh Mi place next door for an outstanding breakfast to recover

Banh Mi for breakfast: what hangovers were designed for

All images (c) PP Gettins

Morito book talk with Sam and Sam Clark

By: Mrs Robot

Last night we went to a talk by Sam and Sam Clark to promote their latest cookbook, Morito, organised by Bath bookshop Toppings. It took place in one of the churches. Both of us adore Spain and Spanish food, and we already own the first two Moro cookbooks. Of course, the Clarks don’t stop at Spain, their food encompasses a lot of other Mediterranean cuisines, but it always has strong ties to Spain and most of their other dishes work well alongside their Spanish ones - hardly surprising when you consider the Moorish influence on Spain’s food.

Morito is named after the Clarks' newest restaurant, where the method of dining isn’t based around the usual three-course structure. Instead people get a range of dishes all at once and pick and choose between them. (If you’re thinking ‘like tapas’, let me smack you. You don’t share tapas. Sharing is more akin to Greek mezze or Muslim Mediterranean ways of enjoying a meal.) Anyway, lectures on the consumption of tapas aside, it’s a jolly friendly and sociable way of eating, less formal and great fun. The recipes in Morito are therefore designed for this style of eating.

When we arrived we were given a Rebujito cocktail (a really refreshing blend of lemonade, manzanilla sherry and mint) and a Gilda. A Gilda is made with olive, anchovy, silverskin onion and pickled chili (hence its name; the slender shape of the chill was thought to resemble Rita Hayworth’s legs in the noir film Gilda!).

Put the blame on Spain, boys...

We both hate anchovies.

No, we both hated anchovies.

Last night we loved them. I don't know if it was because of all the salt in the olive, or the vinegar in the onion, but somehow the combination on the cocktail stick worked. We may have to rethink our position on the fishy horrors. I never thought I’d say this about anything containing anchovies, but I could have eaten more of those tapas. !Ay, Dios de ma vida!

The talk was fairly brief. He-Sam started off, and seemed unused to giving talks, which I found quite nice; they both came across as genuine, approachable people. To begin with they talked about almonds, and little dishes of almonds got passed round, then about making the red pepper tortilla from the book, and tortilla got passed round.

Do want!

I really liked the tortilla, but Mr Robot prefers his to be traditional, with potato and onion only. (He didn’t give me his piece, though, oh no.) There’s a courgette tortilla recipe in the book, and I’ll definitely have a go at that as we end up with heaps of the things as they arrive in our Riverford vegbox each week during summer. The veggie-packed tortillas are basically pastry-free flans, and will save me faffing around making flan cases when I get into work.

As the talk went on, both Sams seemed to relax and settle down more, and it was really good to hear about their approach to food and to running a restaurant. Not for them the building of brands (though they seem to have managed that anyway!) or the trappings of celebrity chefdom, they just like cooking and exploring food. They’re very down to earth, and that’s reflected in their style of cooking, which is fuss-free, without fancy foams or spheres, just good and earthy. It was a really enjoyable talk.

This was delicious

The Mr or I will do a full writeup of the cookbook once we’ve made a fair few things out of it, but on a read-through it looks like we’ll be using it a lot.