As soon as I land in Thailand I have a yen for Som Tam. This spicy, zesty salad is sold on the street, in the bus stations and at all the little restaurants. In fact it’s pretty much everywhere and one of my favourites. I find that I read the menu from top to bottom with all the tempting noodles, seafood and curry dishes and can’t help but order Som Tam.

It’s like a Thai version of cole slaw, with crunchy julienned green papaya, a few shredded carrots and maybe some tomato and snapped up snake beans It’s healthier than cole slaw as the dressing is made with lime juice , chopped chillies, garlic and nam pla. It’s topped with a sprinkle of roasted and crushed peanuts. I have to admit this is part of the allure as I am something of a peanut fiend.

There are plenty of  variations. The one from the bus station was served in a plastic bag, the top secured with an elastic band and it almost blew our heads off. It made my eyes and nose run and my lips were singing with the chilli. Quite a blast. Here on the island where we are staying it’s pretty spicy but it’s tame compared to the bus station version.

I like to make this when I’m home in Ireland but as green papayas are hard to come by I use green mangoes which are plentiful. I don’t usually bother with the beans even though raw French beans make a reasonable substitution for the snake beans  and I usually skip the tomatoes too as Thai tomatoes are drier than the ones that we can get.

This basically pares it down to green mango, roasted and crushed peanuts and the dressing. It’s delicious. In fact green mangoes are perhaps tastier than the green papaya. Dressed with the spicy sauce it makes a fast and tasty lunch and will add a spring to your step.

SOM TAM

1 big green mango or 2 smaller ones

Brown skin peanuts

2-4 cloves garlic

2-4  birds eye chillies

1 dsp sugar

1 tbs dried shrimp, soaked in warm water- optional

juice of 1-2 limes – depends how big and juicy they are

2tbs fish sauce – nam pla

Roast the peanuts in a tray in the oven, 180c, until the skins will rub off and the peanuts are light brown. It’s important to roast the peanuts enough as it gives a better flavour. Tip the peanuts into a clean t-towel and rub to remove the skins. Pick the peanuts out – you can take them outside and blow the skins away otherwise just sort through them. Put them into a mortar and lightly crush them, you want fairly big bits.

Chop the chilli and garlic together and mix together with the lime juice, nam pal and sugar. Drain the shrimp and roughly chop then stir into the dressing.

Peel the mango, cut into thin slices then cut into matchsticks – julienne.

Put the mango into a bowl, toss together with the dressing and sprinkle the peanuts on top.

Serve immediately.

Breakfast In Asia is nothing to do with cornflakes. In fact there’s not a cornflake in sight, it’s far more exciting.

Our day begins with all sorts, depending where we are. In the towns it’s likely to be noodles. Especially noodle soup with a range of condiments to spice up your dish – chillies, toasted peanuts, nam pal, oyster sauce, you just help yourself and add them in. There’s noodle soup with chicken, noodle soup with fish or noodle soup with just veg if you ask although that’s looked on rather strangely as it seems that you’re requesting the omission of the highlight. After my fish ball disaster I stick to the veg, it’s all very tasty

We have e feasted on Roti Canai, the Indian pancakes which are served with onions,egg and dal or bananas. Substantial and delicious

Then there’s Nasi lemak, rice cooked in coconut milk wrapped in banana leaf with sambal and little dried fish, this is pretty full on but it’s good once you get stuck in. It must have been okay as we’d eaten it before we remembered to take a photo.

Fried rice with egg. Egg in the rice or fried eggs on top. Fried egg on top is my preference.

Then there’s congee, a kind of porridge made from rice, lassis made with curd and fruit and the most magnificent fruit salads.

Now we’re on the island I feast on fruit. Most days it’s watermelon, banana, tangerine, pineapple and mango. Other days there’s dragon fruit included and there’s also ripe papaya which I’m not fond of so I always request ‘fruit salad no papaya’. Which ever way it comes it’s a healthy start to another sunny day.

I have a new addiction, Mango Shakes!

This very simple delicious drink is made with chilled ripe mangoes and ice, buzzed up and served with a straw. A fat straw to allow this delicious sludge to travel up to the mouth. Just the ticket in the sunshine. Full of vitamins and vitality, a good body temperature adjuster and thirst quencher

To make chill one ripe mango then peel and chop up. Put into a liquidiser with an equal amount of crushed ice a teaspoon of sugar and buzz.

Pour into a tall glass and serve immediately

We’ve spent the last few days in Penang, the food capital of Malaysia It’s a large island on the west coast and there are an incredible mix of people living here, Malays, Chinese, Indians and of course all of us tourists who have come from all over the world.

It’s possible to eat Malay food for breakfast, Indian for lunch and Chinese for dinner. There is an enormous amount of street food, family restaurants and a few fancy expensive restaurants. We frequent the local restaurants and street hawkers and are feasting on all sorts of surprises. Mostly happy ones.  There has only been one complete duffer so far and that was a bowl of breakfast noodles with ‘fish’ The fish were in fact a very strange fish balls which had such a disgusting texture that when I put it in my mouth I had to spit it out. The noodles were tasty though so it wasn’t a complete no no

We are staying in the home of a lady called Nazalina who has the headquarters of Slow Food in Penang and today we went on a tour of the food markets with her, bought a pile of ingredients and did some cooking together.

We headed out at 7.30, everything begins very early, as it’s very hot. We began with some breakfast next to the ‘wet market’ at an Indian eatery of roti canai stuffed with egg and onion served with a bowl of dal.

Roti canai is a type of Indian pancake and the guy who made it was delight to watch. The street hawkers are all experts in their own particular delicacies and produce the food with such ease that it’s mesmerizing.

Full with the roti canais we went over to the wet market where we bought tofu, prawns and mackerel, the mackerel was smaller than the ones we get in Ireland and are known as Indian Mackerel. We then wandered on to the main market gathering a dizzying array of exotic fruit, vegetables and spices. It was good to have a knowledgeable guide. Nazalina is well known by the vendors and we could poke, prod and sniff as we identified everything. Laden down with fresh spices, noodles, veggies and seafood we made our way back to her heritage house in Georgetown where we cooked everything up. This involved making fragrant spice mixes together with lemongrass, fresh turmeric, ginger flowers, galangal and spices in mortar and pestles. The menu was Asam Laksa which is the local spicy noodle soup with mackerel,

Otak Otak , a delicate prawn custard cooked in banana leaves and  Char Koay Teow, another dish that is the specialty of the street hawkers, made with flat rice noodles stir fried with chives, tofu, beansprouts, prawns and eggs.

It is easy to make and I’ve adapted the recipe slightly so the ingredients are easy to get in Ireland.

As with most stir-fry dishes everything needs to be chopped before the cooking starts and only one or two portions can be cooked at a time but the cooking is so fast it’s perfectly possible to make this in batches. If you are cooking for more than two don’t be tempted to heap everything into the wok at once because it won’t stir-fry. The temperature will drop and it won’t be able to cook quickly enough.

If you would like the real authentic prawns toss them in a little oyster sauce, toasted sesame oil and a tsp. sugar before cooking. Leave them to marinate for 10 minutes before cooking. This will help the prawns to char a little and give the street hawker flavor.

Char Koay Teow

For each serving you will need

Approx. 75g flat rice noodles

1 chilli, chopped or 1 tsp. Malay chilli paste

1 tsp. chopped garlic

A large handful beansprouts

2 chopped spring onions or large handful garlic chives

4-5  cubes tofu in approx. 1cm pieces

4-5 raw prawns

1 egg

2 tbs oil for frying

Half a lime

For the sauce – enough for 2 servings

1 tbs oyster sauce

1 tbs thick soya sauce

1 and a half tbs thin soya sauce

1 dsp fish sauce

1 dsp toasted sesame oil

a little ground black pepper

4 tbs water

Soak the rice noodles in hot but not boiling water whilst you prepare all the other ingredients. Leave them for at least ten minutes. Just before the cooking begins drain the noodles and put aside

Mix all the sauce ingredients together and put aside

Prepare all the other ingredients as listed above

Heat the oil in a wok, add the prawns and cook on a high heat for a couple of minutes then add the garlic and chilli and toss together for a minute then add the chopped spring onions, tofu and beansprouts. Keep tossing everything together on a high heat then add the noodles, stir in the sauce – only use half if you are making one portion. Toss everything together and cook for a couple more minutes then push the noodles to one side.

Tip the wok, keeping the noodles to the side away from the heat and crack the egg into the wok. When the egg is nearly cooked quickly scramble then mix together with the noodles. Squeeze a little lime juice over and eat immediately.

I was poking about in the freezer yesterday in search of peaches to make chutney and somehow burst a bag of blackcurrants. Suddenly there were hundreds of frozen blackcurrants on the move so I hastily closed the lid and carried on on my chutney mission. Late last night I remembered the blackcurrants and realised that they were going to be rolling about the freezer for ever if i didn’t do something. Luckily we had a bottle of poitin lurking in the cupboard. It’s been there for the past year as it tastes (to my mind) quite disgusting so today I headed out to the freezer armed with a large bowl and a torch and scooped the blackcurrants up.

I left them to defrost for while, then gave them a good bash and put them into a couple of large screw top jars. I divided the poitin between the two and now they are sitting on the kitchen counter.

The idea is to give the jars a shake every now and then and then just before Xmas strain them off and add sugar syrup.  I’m thinking of bottling it up for gifts and using some in the aperitif department to make Kir.

I’m not quite sure what the result will be but it’s definitely got potential!

I’m always curious and when I saw Ottolenghi’s recipe for spuds in last weeks Guardian I noticed there was an Iranian lime in it.

I had bought some dried limes in the Turkish supermarket some time back as I had seen a few recipes that called for limes but of course once I had some it seemed to go quiet on the dried lime front. This was the ideal opportunity for me to try them out. The recipe is quite simple ; spuds, butternut, onions etc., in a lightly spiced sauce. I didn’t have any butternut squash but I had a big Queensland Blue pumpkin which was an ideal substitute and of course I erred from the original recipe in a couple of other places too – scaling down the amounts and adding the fresh herbs toward the end rather than boiling them up.

The recipe began with cooking onions, cummin seeds and turmeric in clarified butter. I made some clarified butter – these instructions weren’t included in the original recipe – by gently cooking some butter in the pan until it frothed up and the milk solids went golden and sank to the bottom. I didn’t bother to strain it as I wasn’t bothered about the bitty bits, I just like the flavour, and continued as instructed. I didn’t have any tomato paste either so I grated fresh tomato in on top of the onions. This is always a handy trick when something like that is called for. I added in chunks of potato, pumpkin and the Iranian lime which I stabbed a few times as instructed and added a little salt and enough water tocover everything. Initially the lime bobbed about on the top like a life-buoy but with a little encouragement from my wooden spoon it did eventually submerge.

The oven was on and getting hot whilst the potatoes and pumpkin cooked until barely tender. Next in were a few quartered tomatoes, a whole chilli, a spoonful of currants (instead of barberries which I have never found in West Cork)  a bunch of spinach and a big handful of coriander and tarragon. I gave everything a big stir then dumped it into an ovenproof dish and popped it into the oven for about fifteen minutes.

We ate this with rice and a dollop of yoghurt as advised and it was delicious. The lime gave a delightful tartness to the dish and chilli had a spectacular effect when my unsuspecting diner chomped it before realising. If you make this dish and don’t feel like spiking your audience maybe take it out before serving!!

50g butter – clarified

half tsp turmeric

1 tsp cummin seeds

1 tomato or use 1 tbs tomato puree

4 small waxy potatoes

about 300g firm pumpkin

1 Iranian lime

1 whole chilli, split down one side

salt

3 tomatoes, quartered

a small bunch of spinach

a handful fresh coriander

a handful fresh tarragon

1 dsp currants

salt

Method as above

I only have a few photos of the membrillo that I made. One of the quince at the beginning, a big splatty pot and then a slab of membrillo at the end. As usual i got carried away with the cooking and forgot to take photos along the way.

We have a quince tree in our garden and this year we had our third harvest of about fifteen knobbly pears. Quince look like rotund freestyle pears and are very hard. They are not for eating raw and are difficult to peel but it’s well worth the effort in order to make delicious membrillo

.

Membrillo is a set quince jelly that is eaten in Spain with cheese. The first time that I ate membrillo we were guests in a friends’ mother s house in the north of Spain. It was a small village near the Portuguese border and the mother welcomed us into her little house and made us a feast. The dessert was fresh white cheese and membrillo. The cheese didn’t look very appealing to me but it would have been rude to refuse. It was delicious,. Somehow the musky sweetness of the membrillo opened up the delights of this otherwise quite bland cheese.  I’ve been a fan ever since although these days I usually enjoy membrillo with Manchego, which is a hard Spanish sheep cheese.

It’s very easy to make membrillo but as I only make it once a year I can never remember quite how I made it the year before.  Here’s this years version

Peel and chop the quince  – however many you have.

Put the chopped quince into a saucepan and just cover with water.

Split a vanilla pod and scrape the seeds onto the fruit and then chuck the pod in too.

Cook for about forty minutes, or until the quince are tender.

Strain, remove the vanilla pod and weight the fruit,

Blend the fruit to a puree in a processor

Put the puree into a clean saucepan with the equal weight of sugar .

Gently bring to the boil, then turn to simmer for about forty minutes.

Stir every few minutes and beware of moulten plops of membrillo.

Pour the jelly onto a tray lined with parchment paper and leave to set

My kitchen was totally trashed when I had finished, there were blobs of membrillo far and wide but it was well worth a little scrub.

I went to the market today  and bought five fatty prawns. This was even though I am home alone. Home alone with a bowlful of fresh borlotti beans that is. Prawns and borlotti beans are a mean combination and one that I hanker over each autumn when the borlotti beans are ready. It’s such a small window of opportunity to have the fresh beans and find fatty prawns at the same time that even though it seemed slightly sad that I cooked this all for myself  I had to go for it.

I cracked the heads off of the prawns and put them into large pot with a little olive oil and roasted them for a few minutes before bashing them with the end of a rolling pin. When they were well bashed I put enough water to cover, half a diced onion and a stick of celery and bought it to the boil. Once it was bubbling away I turned it to simmer.

The borlotti beans were podded and popped into a pot with a couple of shallots and cooked for twenty minutes. Once they were tender I tossed them in olive oil and a little salt.

The prawn bodies were butterflied and left to relax in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, some chopped garlic and black pepper – this is one of the best ever ways to cook fatty prawns.

I drained the prawn heads. it had reduced down and there was about half a cupful of stock.

In a small pan a I cooked half a diced onion in a little olive oil then stirred in a clove of chopped garlic then I stirred in a grated a ripe tomato – a clever Spanish trick – and the half cupful of stock.

I let this all bubble away whilst I heated a pan and the cooked the prawns

First belly down

Then belly up

I seasoned the sauce, put a puddle on the plate , then a little heap of borlotti beans and piled the prawns on top.

Yum! Absolutely yum!  Even if I do say so myself – mind you my kitchen is trashed and I’m feeling very stuffed!