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Posts tagged chicken

Postcards from Thailand – shopping for essentials

Mar15
2011 4 Comments Written by chefshane

Just a few images from Thailand to keep you entertained, awed or amused.

First up is a shop with chillies.
When I say 'dry red chillies' it sounds reasonable. Then when you go to buy them it's not as simple as you thought…….

Then there's the chicken.
Fried chicken is everywhere.
You have KFC, supermarket, local market, or street hawker.
It's not just breast or leg – you can also get feet, heads, gizzards, skin, hearts, maybe even minds too.

You can pop down to the chicken vendors and ask to get a little head…….and they'll be happy to give you a whole bag full.

Rice. The staple of Thailand.
Don't expect to get off easily. Which grade of rice would you like?

It's also easy to find a little pussy in Thailand.
Cats and dogs everywhere, and I always get sidetracked by the kittens.
Is there anything cuter than a kitten?
Doesn't look in the best of shape – but still. Awwwwwwwwwwwww.

Som Tam. The green papaya salad that's found everywhere.
Sometimes, a hawker trolley-full of papaya just isn't enough……

Something smelly?
No need to waste all that money on cologne or perfume at KingPower duty free.

Just crack open a durian and take it back to your car or hotel room.
Durian is the "King of Fruit" and it has a crown of thorns to protect it.
Once opened it has a heart of pure evil that wafts through the air towards unsuspecting foreigners like Pepe Le Pew.
When you get used to the taste, it's pretty good. Like single malt, fine cheese or cigars.
Before you get used to the taste, the smell hits you like dirty babies nappies or a scat playroom.

Once you get used to it, you may need more durian. It's not hard to find.

Not smelly enough?
No worries.

We can find you food items at Tak market that would make a skunk feel nauseous.
Along with the normally pungent gapi, we also have garish plastic buskets of slowly fermenting seafood that bubble like a dying Rotorua mud pool. Blup, Blip, Blup.
Yuk.

This is the 'aromas' section of the market.
I dare Heston  or Ferran to blindfold people in a dark room and carry platefuls of this past guests with a soundtrack of slowly bubbling liquids playing in the background.

They could have served this for breakfast on the first day at Guantanamo and had things done and dusted by lunchtime. Game Over.

Posted in The essentials, Uncategorized - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An easy, impressive chicken mandarin salad recipe

Jan20
2011 1 Comment Written by chefshane

It's time to make chicken mandarin salad

It's still that time of year in Vietnam when mandarins crowd the markets in vibrant clusters of orange and green.
Unlike back home where the wee, sterile, waxed objects sat sullenly in a tissue-lined box, these bad boys are hacked straight from the tree and sit amongst a mass of leaves and branches.
They're fresh, tasty and well worth using.

Of course you can just sit at home like a smug primate, chomping through a kilo or two as you litter the ground with skin and seeds.
That's the obvious choice when it comes to consuming mandarins – do it 'en masse' and get it out of your system until next season.
But why not take a break from chomping primary foodstuffs and combine them with a few other tastes and textures to make something bigger and better?

Chicken and mandarin salad is a simple combo with the main flavours of chicken, mandarin, sesame and ginger.
We serve it with some romaine lettuce and crispy fried noodles for texture.

Chicken mandarin salad ingredients

  • Chicken breast fillet, sliced flat and thin 225g or 1/2lb
  • Fresh mandarins 8 ea  or 1 small can of canned ones
  • Toasted white sesame seeds 1 tbsp
  • Red shallots 6 ea or red Spanish onion 1/2, thinly sliced
  • Romaine lettuce 1 head
  • Noodles, dried, 35g / 1.5 oz. Thin yellow egg noodles or buckwheat soba noodles are great, but be creative and try others too.
    For gluten free, use buckwheat soba noodles, glass noodles or rice stick noodle

Chicken mandarin salad dressing 

  • Fresh ginger root, finely grated, 1 tsp
  • Ginger powder 1 tsp
  • Orange Marmalade jam 2/3 cup
  • Soy seasoning sauce 1.5 tbsp (Golden Mountain, Gold label or Maggi are best, but most will work OK)
  • Sesame oil 1 tbsp
  • Toasted white sesame seeds 2 tbsp
  • Vegetable oil 4 tbpsp (or other light oils like soy or peanut oil also OK. NOT olive oil.
  • Fresh mandarin juice 1/2 cup (press segments into a strainer with a spoon)
  • Natural liquid honey 3 tbsp
  • Black pepper 1/3 tsp freshly crushed
  1. First marinate the chicken with a little black pepper, soy sauce, honey and sesame oil. No need to drown it. just a little bit of each tossed through.
  2. Let it sit for an hour before grilling. Char-grilling or barbecuing is best to get some grill marks and a little flavour from the hot rocks or charcoal.
  3. Peel the mandarins. Remove seeds with a small knife or skewer. Or use seedless mandarins ;-)  You need some for the dressing and some (most) for the salad
  4. Next, toast your sesame seeds. Dry fry them in a frying pan or a wok until they're a rich golden colour.They should smell amazing. If they do, and they're golden – they're ready!

Make the chicken mandarin salad dressing.

  1. Add the marmalade, toasted white sesame seeds and soy sauce to a bowl.
  2. Peel and grate the ginger, add it to the marmalade with the ginger juice and dry ginger powder.
  3. Add honey and black pepper .
  4. Taste it and balance out the flavours into sweet, salty, spicy until it reaches your personal taste. Balance is the key.
  5. Add sesame oil to taste. This is very strong, so add a little at a time, and keep tasting until it is balanced again.
  6. Whisk in the mandarin juice – again to taste.
  7. Whisk in the cooking oil/vegetable oil/sunflower oil/peanut oil/grapeseed oil <any light oil without overpowering taste)
  8. Add some chunks of mandarin, no seeds

Make the crispy noodles.

Deep fry dry noodles in very hot oil (190 degrees C) until puffed and crispy.
Don't break them. Lift them from the oil and let the drain.
You want a nice, light 'nest' to rest your salad on, not a mass of broken noodle bits. Handle with care.

Grill the chicken
Make sure when you grill the chicken that it's properly cooked through.
Most chicken has salmonella kicking around inside it – a nasty thing to get, and mainly experienced when one eats under-done chicken.
To check, just let it rest for a couple of minutes after cooking to let the juices settle, then cut through the THICKEST part of the cooked chicken.
If there is any pink colour or blood, cook some more.
Clear juices are what you want in chicken – not rosy pink juices!

If you don't want to char grill it, then don't!
You can also pan fry, roast, stir fry, sear or grill under a salamander.
Just don't boil, steam, microwave or poach it.

Assemble the salad

  1. Toss the chicken, mandarin segments and toasted sesame seeds together.
  2. If you want to use red onions, add them at this stage, thinly and freshly sliced.
  3. Stir some dressing through.
  4. Put your nest of crispy noodles in the serving bowl or plate.
  5. Top with some clean chopped romaine.
  6. Place the dressed chicken on top.
  7. Surround with crunchy inner leaves from romaine lettuce hearts.
  8. Dress the lettuce leaves and the chicken once more with ginger mandarin dressing
  9. Eat it! (or for the more chivalrous or more community-minded amongst you, serve to others)

Posted in Fusion & Contemporary, Gluten free, Salads and light stuff - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thai banana flower recipe stewed with chicken

Jun19
2010 4 Comments Written by chefshane

banana flower growing

Looking for an interesting banana flower recipe is harder than you might imagine.
Banana flower is an unknown ingredient for many, and most web searches turn a couple of banana blossom salad recipes.

Here's a very simple local North Thai banana flower recipe that ISN'T a salad!.
This banana flower recipe is lightly stewed with chicken, and lifted with fresh ram leaf or 'pak faai'

The plump purple blooms are peeled, cleaned and sliced. The cut flower gives a delicious creamy taste and texture to the finished dish (similar to using a dash of coconut milk)

I'm actually sitting here with a bandaged foot, hopping around like a kangaroo after a local doctor (more like a butcher) performed a pretty badly botched up foot surgery yesterday. Getting fed is a welcome break from the monotony of bruising my bum on a sweaty chair.

Getting fed THIS well is a treat no matter what the time or situation. 
This is a simple, delicious local Chiang Rai lunch made with the simplest recipe possible, so I have to share with you.

banana flower recipe

Chicken braised with banana flower

1 each         Banana flower / banana blossom
½ ea           Chicken (whole chicken, cut in half) (600 grams or 1½ lb)
2 ea            Fresh chilli to taste
¼ tsp          Salt (then finish by seasoning to taste)
500ml          Water (2 cups) 
40g             Vietnamese mint / 'pak fai' / rau ram
25g             Sawtooth coriander / Culantro / pak chee farang

****************************
You'll need steamed white sticky rice or steamed jasmine rice to serve with it

  1. Cut the chicken with a cleaver into 4 pieces. Cook it on the bone, because the flavour is incomparable! We'll take it off the bone later.
  2. Here's how to prepare the banana flower. First, keep a bowl of water with some lime or lemon juice in it. This will stop the cut banana flower from turning brown
    Pull off the outside purple/red leaves, and also discard the little 'fingers' that look like paper matches.
    You want the inner yellow leaves only.
    Stack these and cut them into strips. It doesn't really matter how, but we cut them into strips like tagiatelle or fettuccine pasta. Do your own thing. After cutting, put them in the acidulated water (water with lemon juice in)
  3. Simmer the banana flower with the chicken, water and salt, nice and gentle until the chicken is cooked through. Probably 15 minutes or so.
  4. Remove the chicken, pull it off the bone, and shred it gently with your very clean, just washed fingers.
  5. Add the chicken back in to the banana flower and liquid.
  6. Chop or tear the cilantro and Vietnamese mint and stir in. (to taste)
  7. Check seasoning. Add salt if needed
  8. Serve and enjoy!

banana flower stew

banana flower tree
A couple of tips with banana flower:

*Look for a tight, firmly packed banana flower. It shouldn't be loose, wrinkled or starting to discolour.

*When you cut the soft yellow interior of banana flower, it discolours very quickly. Just like potato or apple, but even more quickly.
 Cut it just before you want to cook, and cook immediately, OR store it for an hour or two in water with a little lemon juice, the same  as for cut apples. It's only oxidising when exposed to air, but it does look a little ugly.

*Don't eat the purple outside leaves because they're tough and hard.
 They make a funky 'dish' for serving food on though.

*When eating this dish with sticky rice, roll the rice into balls, and dip into the liquid then eat.
 That's eating in the traditional North Thai and Laos style.
 Here's another banana flower salad recipe that we make at Pullman Beach Resort in Danang Vietnam.
 Let me know how this one went.
 It is a really unusual and tasty dish to serve any time, and sure to impress.

This is real Chiang Rai food, as eaten on a mat on the floor at lunch today, and unlike McDonalds – I'm lovin' it.banana flower bird

Posted in Healthy & Low fat, Northern Thai, Quick & easy - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
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