Malaysia…….a food identity crisis!

Those people that know me will know that I have an abnormal memory for food. You could ask me what I ate on my 21^st birthday, or what I ate at a restaurant on holiday five years ago and I will remember. Unfortunately this is sad but true.

The trouble is, and this strikes me as slightly strange, I can barely remember anything we ate in Malaysia, and hence the title of this blog “Malaysia….A food identity crisis”.

What little memory I do have is filled up with a strange mixture of Thai, Indian and Western style dishes which all left me feeling a little uninspired. It was almost as if Malaysia didn’t have a food identity of its own, they have just filled their menus up with dishes from elsewhere. I am sure this is completely misguided and I just went to the wrong places. If you have been there and stumbled upon some great dishes, please add a comment below.

Having read back through my journals, vague memories of venturing off to a small family run Indian restaurant down a seedy back alley in Penang come flooding back. With no idea how to read the menu or what to order I took advice from a local (probably a bad idea) and ordered a chicken dish wish nearly blew my head off. I just couldn’t eat it.

 I also remember a group of us ordering a stir-fry in one restaurant and out came a full blown fondue style set with raw chicken, eggs, vegetables and noodles, for us all to share and cook up in whatever way we wanted. It was fun, but I have to say it tasted bland.

The country itself was also a bit of a mixed bag however I have amazing memories of the Cameron Highlands and Kuala Lumpur. My next blog will be about the Cameron highlands which deserves an entry to itself.

Next blog entry: Cameron Highlands, Malaysia: Tea plantations and strawberries.

Pad Thai it is then

The people have asked for Pad Thai…. So Pad Thai is what they will get and what a good choice it is.

My story about Pad Thai starts at the beginning of my story. We had landed in Thailand about four days before, and I had been in a haze of jet lag, humidity and a pretty awful case of prickly heat. We went down to what can really only be described as a large outside shed, which enticed you to come in and eat with signs like “welcome, drink here, do not die”.

You end up sitting on the floor on these traditional Asian triangle cushions (I am sure they have a name, but I don’t know what it is) sat around glass tables and you get chatting to other travellers. Staring at the menu with complete confusion, a fellow traveller said to me, just try the Pad Thai, everyone likes Pad Thai, well he wasn’t wrong. It was simple, but delicious!

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So here it is, the traditional recipe for Pad Thai: 

Ingredients (for two people):

• 300 grams of straight to wok rice noodles or egg noodles
• 2 garlic cloves
• A handful of cooked tofu (optional)
• 1 tablespoon of oil
• 60 grams of bean sprouts
• 1 egg
• 6 Spring onions
• 2 chicken breasts and/or 6 king prawns
• A handful of crushed peanuts
• ¼ of a cup of water

For the sauce;

• 2 teaspoons of fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons of white sugar
• 1 dessert spoon of tamarind paste
• 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
• If the sauce ingredients seems too much like hard work, you can cheat and buy some tasty pre-made Pad Thai sauces.

How to make it:

Step one: Place the oil into a wok and heat. Once the wok is hot, add the crushed garlic, tofu chunks and chicken cut into small strips and cook until the chicken has turned brown.

Step two: Add the noodles and water to the wok and cook on a high heat for about 1 – 2 minutes until it is hot.

Step three: Turn the heat down slightly and add the fish sauce, white sugar, tamarind paste and soy sauce. Cook for two more minutes.

Step four: Add the bean sprouts, spring onions and king prawns and cook for a further two minutes.

Step five: The next bit is tricky and takes practice. To make it real Thai style, you need to add a beaten egg, but so that it doesn’t turn your dish into mush, you need to push all your noodles to one side of the wok, then turn the heat up really high, beat the egg, and then quickly pour it in on the empty side of the wok, you are almost trying to make it fry like a thin omelette before it hits the noodles. Mix it all back together and heat for a further minute.

Step six: Plate up your dishes and then add the crushed peanuts on top.

In Thailand, you can buy Pad Thai from any restaurant but some of the best Pad Thai is from the street vendors in the cities for around 20p. If only we could buy food from the streets of our towns for that price and it taste better than the restaurants!

As with my other recipes, if you get a chance to make it, let me know what you think!

Next blog entry: Malaysia…….a food identity crisis?

Thailand Chicken and Cashew Nuts

Well, it is finally here, the authentic Thailand Chicken and Cashew Nut recipe. This is a meal I learnt how to cook at the Thai cooking school and it is really delicious and quite healthy too. The Thai name for this meal is: Kai phad med ma-muang (gold star for anyone who can pronounce that).

From start to finish this dish will probably only take you 25 minutes at most to prepare. It is very easy to make and very hard to go wrong, so a great easy treat for a Friday “culture food” night. To buy this meal from scratch will probably cost about £6-£8 depending on where you get it and also what you have in the cupboards already.

Ingredients (for 2-4 people depending on how hungry you are)

• 1 white onion
• 2-3 garlic cloves (depends how much you like garlic)
• A bunch of spring onions
• 1-2 red medium sized fresh chilli peppers (depends how much you like chilli)
• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
• ½ a teaspoon of sugar (white or brown, it tastes just as good)
• A handful of cashew nuts
• A dessert spoon of oil

This dish is lovely served with egg noodles or rice. In Thailand I had it with both - it just depends what you prefer. This dish is also great with a small blob of sweet chilli sauce on the side. Read the instructions on how to cook the egg noodles or rice, typically egg noodles take less than five minutes and rice takes about 20 minutes.

How to cook it

Step one: Chop your onion up into medium sized slices and put your into a garlic crusher. Heat the oil in a non stick pan (preferably a wok) and fry the white onion and garlic until they just start turning brown.

Step two: Cut the chicken into small chunks and add the chicken to the wok. Stir fry it all until the chicken has cooked through.

Step three: Wash and cut up your spring onions into chunks of about 2cm, and then cut the red chilli(s) into tiny pieces. TIP: if you don’t like spicy food I would only add half a chilli and remove the seeds, if you love spicy food, keep the seeds and add as much as you like. Stir in the spring onions and chilli, and cook for about 30 seconds.

Step four: Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce, half a teaspoon of sugar and the cashew nuts. Stir for about 1 – 2 minutes until the food is piping hot.

Step five: Serve up on a plate with your egg noodles or rice and enjoy!

TIP: If you like Tofu, this dish can also be served with tofu in. The best kind of Tofu to buy is the pre-cooked stuff from most big supermarkets. Just add this in when you add the chicken in.

Once you have tried it let me know what you think…….. I had it for dinner tonight and it was delicious! Here is the one I ate earlier:

Whilst we were in Thailand, this dish made up about a third of everything we ate as we loved it so much. Although, I have to say in Thailand when you say “little chilli” it comes out with a full plant's worth of red chilli’s in it and it nearly blows your mouth off! Still somehow whilst you are there you can power through the spice and still enjoy the flavours!

Next blog: Not sure…. Some people have asked for Pad Thai, which is also delicious, but am tempted to move onto another country – what do you all think?

Chiang Mai cooking school…. A big adventure!

We left the south of Thailand and flew in to Chiang Mai at the end of November. It was almost like going to a different country. The humidity had completely dropped as had the temperature. We spent five amazing days in Chiang Mai and in hindsight I wish we had stayed longer. Every day was jammed packed with elephant rides, temples, pandas at the zoo, bamboo rafting, mountain trekking, it truly was fantastic.

 

We decided, well I decided, much to the contempt of my fellow traveller, that we should go to a Thai cooking school based in the outskirts of Chiang Mai and learn how to cook some of the delicious traditional food we had been eating on our travels. It cost us about £8 for the day and at 6am we were up and ready not sure what to expect.

Our chef and guide for the day “Perm” was brilliant, he had such a good sense of humour and he taught us all about the different traditional fruit and vegetables in Thailand as we walked around the food market purchasing our ingredients. The whole market smelt so fragrant, with the smell of Lemongrass and Thai Basil everywhere. The fish was so fresh it was actually still alive!

Once we had purchased our ingredients for our day of cooking we headed back to the kitchen. Throughout the day we learnt how to make:

-          Hot and Sour Tam Yam Soup

-          Green Curry with Chicken

-          Chicken with Cashew Nuts

-          Pad Thai

-          Mango Sticky Rice (which is where my love for it originated)

-          Spring rolls

-          Papaya Salad (which blew my head off with the amount of Red Chilli Pepper in it)

Perm kept asking us whilst we were cooking if we wanted a “big adventure” or a “small adventure”. Not knowing what would happen next, we eagerly said “big adventure” and little did we know he would then hurl water straight into our hot Wok and up it went in flames – nearly singed my hair off!

One of my favourite dishes that I learnt how to make whilst on this cooking class was Chicken with Cashew Nuts. I cook it at home every few weeks and it is really quick and easy to make. Come back for the next blog and I will include the traditional Thai recipe and how to cook it.

The Thai cooking school ended up being one of the best things we had done throughout the whole of our travels, if you are thinking of going to Chiang Mai, please take the time to go here and remember to ask for a “big adventure”.  Thai cooking school – definitely recommended!

Next blog entry: Thailand Chicken and Cashew Nuts