#5 Pawpaw Salad (Som Tom)

This was my first attempt to make a Papaya salad. I think it was pretty close to a pawpaw salad which also has lettuce and tomatoes in it. The sauce for the salad is what I struggle most with. Like any sauce, the first time won't be perfect. It wasn't perfect, but it was still really good! I love it. And it's simpler than you would think.

The only advice I would give is to find a good shredder/peeler because it takes a lot of work to shred the papaya. Other than that, everything else is pretty easy peasy!

Here are the ingredients.

1 1/2 tablespoons palm sugar
3/4 lime
2 cups green papaya, shredded
6 green beans
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon dried shrimp
2 chili peppers
5 cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons peanuts, toasted


Here is also a video on how to make it if you're interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz0EH5Of63w

#4 Prawn in Coconut Milk

Cooking this wasn't too hard at all! It's similar to the Bombay curry so just refer to to that entry for cooking directions. It was really good also! I love this one! One of my favorites so far.



1 1/2 Prawn Shelled and De-vain
1 tbspn of oil
2 medium onion
2 gloves of garlic
2 red chilies, seeded and chopped
1 tbspn ground tumeric
8 curry leaves (basil would work)
2 cups of coconut milk
1/2 1 tbsp of salt

#3 Bombay Curry

I've never made curry before, but I've eaten some good curry before so I thought I'd give it a try. As it turns out, jalapenos are so super spicy but so good! I totally love this recipe! I think it will get better and better in the next 1-2 days of reheating. I can't wait.

While making this dish, I discovered that curry gets it smell from ground cumin!



To start, heat up a pan and add oil.
Add onion on medium heat and cook until soft.
Add garlic and ginger. For about 30 seconds.
Add all the spices and let it cook through.
Add beef/or lamb
Cook til meat is coated with spices and brown in color.
Add tomatoes and let it simmer for about an hour or until meat is tender
Add salt
Finally add the coconut milk and let thicken for about 5-10 minutes.
All done!


Ingredients:

1 tbsp oil
2 medium onion, diced
2 gloves of garlic, crushed
2 green chilies, chopped
1 tbsp of grated ginger
1 1/2 tsp of turmeric
1 tsp of ground cumin
1 tbsp of coriander
1 tspn of chili powder
2 lb of beef cut into bite size
1 tsp of salt
13 oz of can diced tomatoes
1 cup of coconut

#2 Spicy Seafood

To prep the food, just slice up the onion, grate the ginger and mince the garlic. I didn't have a grater, so I used a spoon. Worked just as fine. Then wash the mussels and shrimps. Cut up the squid hood into thin slices.

Add oil to a heat pan, then add the onions, garlic and ginger. Cook til onion is soft.

Add Pepper, Paprika and Turmeric powder. Cook til the spices separate from the oil.

Then add sea food and cook for about 5-6 minutes or until done.

Add tomatoes puree and the rest of the spices. ( I added salt and more sugar and paprika than the ingredient indicated but it's up to your taste buds)

Serve with rice or noodles! YUM!




This one was a new one for me. It's origin is all the way from Sri Lanka. I got to use a new ingredient so I was excited and didn't know what to expect. The taste is interesting and different! I love it.

The only thing is that I think either I had too much seafood, or the flavoring wasn't up to where I'd like. I know some culture use less spices that others so it really just comes down to taste buds. So I added a little bit more sugar and paprika. My spice tolerance is higher than most, so it wasn't spicy to me. And since it is called spicy seafood, I took the liberty of adding some Sirachi (hot sauce).



1 lb of shrimps
2 squid hood
1/2 lb mussels
3tbsp of oil
2 medium onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp of paprika
1/4 cup tomato puree
1 tsp grated palm sugar or soft brown sugar

#1 Caramelised Prawns

This recipe wasn't too hard to cook at all. The preparation was pretty easy. I decided to leave the heads on the prawns cause I like them. Otherwise I just followed the recipe and it went without a hitch. The hard part was probably caramelizing the sugar.

Here is pretty much how you make this. First cut the spring onion, shred it thinly into about 1 inch length strips. Then wash and dry the prawns. I skipped the drying part and it still worked.

Then add about 4 tbsp on water and 4 tbsp of sugar into a small pan and stir til the sugar melts on low heat. Then crank the heat up a bit until the sugar liquid browns but BE SURE NOT TO BURN! Then add 4 tbsp of water back. The sugar will then bubble and condense. It becomes lumpy. Then reheat until the lumps are dissolved and reduced down more. Sit this pot to the side.

Heat up another pan with oil and throw in the garlic and onion. Brown them a little then throw in the prawn. Cook them til they are pink. I like to brown my prawns too. The recipe calls for medium heat but I cooked on high to get the browning. Then add the prawns into the other pot and crank up the heat. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook until all liquids are reduced. It should be pretty dry in the pot and the prawn golden. Voila! It's delicious with white rice!

Ingredient:

1 lb of Prawns
6 Spring Onion
1 tbsp Oil
3 Cloves of Garlic
2 tbsp of Caramelised Sauce
1 tbsp of fish sauce
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 tbsp of soft brown sugar
1/1 tsp salt
1/4 red pepper, cut into fine strips

*Note tbsp = tablespoon tsp = teaspoon

Thinh Out of Thinh

So the other day when I was browsing through the local bookstore, I came upon a cook book called "The Essential of Asian Cooking". I have been wanting to branch out with some recipes recently and this book was a perfect find. On top of that it was only like 6 bucks! What a deal.

I also figured that I might as well start blogging all the things I cook and what I learn from each dish. So here we go, tonight I plan to make Caramel Prawns. It's a traditional Vietnamese dish that my mom cooked all the time. We'll see how that will go!

Bon Apatit!