Kai Larp (Spicy Minced Chicken Salad)

More August Cooking

The recipe from this fresh, herby and flavourful salad comes from my Lao-Thai Cooking Class at the James Street Cooking School. This was far and away my favourite of the dishes we made in class and I couldn't wait to try it at home.

It's so simple. All that needs to be done is to poach some chicken minced with salt and garlic in a heated stock seasoned with salt and sugar (in class they minced thier own chicken, I just used chicken mince and mixed through some salt and crushed garlic). Once the mince is cooked, season it to taste and then add copious amounts of herbs and serve with sticky rice. It's just awesome. I really need to make this again and soon.


Spicy Minced Chicken Salad (Kai Larp)
adapted from James Street Cooking School

200g chicken mince
pinch of salt
1 tsp crushed garlic
3 tbs chicken stock
pinch of extra salt
pinch of white sugar
3 tbs lime juice
pinch chilli flakes
1 tbs fish sauce
3 shallots, sliced
handful of mixed mint and coriander leaves

Mix the chicken mince with the salt and garlic.

Heat the stock and season with salt and sugar. Add mince and simmer, stirring often, until just cooked. This will take about 3-4 minutes and it's important not to overcook the mince or it will toughen. Season with lime juice, chilli flakes and fish sauce.

Mix in the shallots and herbs and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Serve over sticky rice.

Microwave Thai Sticky Rice
from ThaiTable.com

This recipe is absolutely fantastic. It's the easiest way to make sticky rice and it comes out perfectly every time. It's amazing and you should visit the ThaiTable.com website for more great Thai recipes, but I have given the instructions for this one below.

1 cup sticky rice

Soak the rice for 10 minutes in warm water in a bowl (the recipe recommends that you use a non-plastic bowl so the plastic doesn't melt during cooking).

Cover the bowl with a dish and cook at full power for 3 minutes. Stir the rice around to move the rice from the top to the bottom. At this point there will be a mixture of cooked and uncooked rice.

Heat for another 3 minutes. When fully cooked, all the rice should be translucent. If it needs more cooking, continue heating and checking every 3 minutes or so. The length of time depends on your microwave.

Brownie Roll-out Cookies

What does one do when they are craving cookies but one isn't really well enough to bake? Well, I searched through Google and delicious for "easy chocolate cookie" and "simple chocolate cookie" and found a recipe for these browne roll-out cookies at Smitten Kitchen.

It was easy, simply combine the wet ingredients in the mixer and the dry ingredients in a bowl and then add the dry to the wet. Chill the dough, then roll out and cut out. I halved the dough and put the other half in the freezer for later.

I had trouble with the rolling and the cutting. My cutting board defies all efforts to make it non-stick and normally I roll out between sheets of baking paper. That wasn't working very well (probably because of me) so I ended up rolling it out on the floured board. I tried using a cookie cutter, but the shapes kept sticking and in the end, I just cut it into rough rectangles. I cooked them too long, which meant that the softness that Deb talks about wasn't really there once the cookies cooled. Crispyness notwithstanding, I took Deb's advice and made them into icecream sandwiches anyway, and the melting icecream (it's been hot here) softened them nicely.

A few days later I defrosted the frozen dough and tried again, this time working a little bit more slowly. I used my baking paper method for rolling out but took it in stages, working with a smaller lump of dough each time and it was much more successful. I tried cutting down the cooking time but since I was making little sakura-shaped cookies, they were much smaller than my initial rectangle cookies and these little guys still were a little over-cooked. However, they did retain a small amount of softness and were much more successful than my first batch.

In hindsight, a roll-out cookie probably wasn't the best choice for someone wanting an easy cookie recipe. I was looking at the mixing method and didn't think further than that. My impatience and frustration didn't do these lovely little cookies justice. Their potential is huge and the cocoa flavour really comes through well. They are perfect with a glass of milk. I might give them another try when I'm baking at full-strength again.

See this post at Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.

Does anyone have any foolproof, easy, non-technical biscuit recipes that they can recommend?

Fruit Coolers

It was quite a hot August in Brisbane, the weather was (and still is!) quite summery. It was quite hot where Deb from Smitten Kitchen is too, and she made these melon coolers in an attempt to cool down.

I am a big fan of unsweetened fruit drinks. I hate the syrupy sugary taste of bottled drink, whether it be fruit drink or soft drink. Unfortunately, I do have a weakness for Coke, but I can only drink it while it's still really fizzy because if it sits it just becomes a syrupy goopy nasty concoction. This is a good thing, because it means I can rarely drink a full bottle and I prefer the new small 200ml can sizes. Anything that limits my intake of that much sugar and processed crap is a good thing, I just can't seem to kick it entirely.

Anyway, back to fruit. Fake sweetness really turns me off, but I love fruit juice. I have to be careful, as some juices can trigger migraines but I still really love fruit juice. I've never had a melon drink, but it was really hot and the thought of an icy fresh fruit cooler was way too tempting to ignore.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any honeydew or rockmelon, so I gave this a try with some ripe pawpaw. Pawpaw probably wasn't the best idea as the fruit is quite soft, and once pureed it didn't want be strained through my cheesecloth, the solids persistently seeped through when I attempted to squeeze it. I don't think I got the maximum juice out of my fruit. I used a bit more lime to make up for the pawpaw's more subtle flavour and it turned out really really well. It's a bit more effort than I would normally go to for a summer drink, but it would be spectacular for entertaining as it looks gorgeous.

If you want to try this for yourself, see this post on Smitten Kitchen.

Okonomiyaki

One of the stalls at the brilliant Eumundi Markets makes awesome looking okonomiyaki. I've never tried it, because D isn't a fan of some Japanese flavours but I have spent a lot of time watching him trying to work out how he makes them.

I decided to give it a try at home, so I went looking for a recipe. I found this recipe at Because you can't make a meal out of Pocky. I liked this recipe because there were no ingredients that were too unusual and I had everything on hand. It was easy too. You just need to mix some flour, eggs, water and spring onions together and then mix through some Chinese cabbage. Then you put some meat (I used some teriyaki chicken) into a small frypan and then add the cabbage mix. Form it into a disc and flip it over when the bottom colours. I had trouble keeping mine together. I think I may have used too much cabbage. After the bottom has coloured, top with some okonomiyaki sauce (ketchup, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce mixed together) and some Japanese mayonnaise and sprinkle with shredded nori.

Despite being mainly cabbage, this was quite filling. The only problem I had with it was that it was a little bland, I added some salt, but it still felt that it was missing something. Maybe it was because I went for the recipe that didn't use the more obscure ingredients. I'm not sure. More experimentation is needed.

If you'd like to try this recipe for yourself, see this post on Because you can't make a meal out of Pocky.

Green Papaya Salad Two Ways

I have seen so many food shows making gorgeous looking Thai salads using green papaya and they look so fresh and crisp, but I had never tried it myself. I just had never come across it either prepared on a menu or in a store to be purchased. I googled it many a time, but I honestly had never seen it before.

Then I attended a Lao-Thai cooking class at the James Street Cooking School and one of the recipes was a lovely spicy green papaya salad served with crispy marinated pork neck. I saw and tasted green papaya for the first time and I liked it, even though the instructor said that the salad tasted better when made with green mango. Then, while shopping at the James Street Market I just happened to be wandering past the fruit section when they brought out a tray of halved green papayas. They were quite expensive compared to the other fruit, but I really wanted to try out some recipes so I bought some.

On the way home from this very exciting shopping trip we stopped at a local Asian supermarket to pick up some other ingredients and in their produce section we found not only green payaya much cheaper and fresher than what I had bought at James Street but they also had green mango. I bought some more and headed home to make some salad.

The green payaya salad from the cooking class wasn't the only green payaya salad to have caught my eye.

Recently I picked up a new cookbook Essentials of Asian Cooking by Chuck Williams/Farina Kingsley. It's really cool, with lots of fresh new recipes and masses of Asian flavours. There's really interesting explanations and backgrounds at the beginning of each section and large beautiful photos. I've tagged so many recipes to try that I ran out of tags and had to improvise.

I did have some problems shredding my green papaya. My mandoline just wasn't cutting it. This isn't the first problem I've had with my mandoline, so in a fit of temper I threw the whole thing out. Calming down, I improvised by using a vegetable peeler to make thin strips and then using a sharp knife to cut long, thin strips. It took a long time, but it turned out quite well.

The two salads couldn't be more different in their final taste. The first salad makes a paste with shallots, garlic and sugar which is then mixed with rice vinegar, fish sauce, lime juice, Sriracha chile sauce and oil. The second salad makes a paste with garlic, salt, chillies, peanuts and dried prawns and then mashes that paste with lime, cherry tomatoes and snake beans with palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and tamarind water only used to season.

I found that the first salad was much lighter but was much gentler in its flavour. I'd cut back on the Sriracha but next time I'd add more chilli. The second salad was packed full of flavour and tasted even better the next day, except I added too much garlic and made the second salad death to any vampire in a ten kilometre radius, not to mention it was quite embarrassing to try and eat it in front of my office-mate. Luckily, he likes garlic, but I still couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Green Payaya Salad 1
adapted from Essentials of Asian Cooking by Chuck Williams/Farina Kingsley


1/2 green payaya
1/2 carrot
2 shallots, thinly sliced, plus 1 tbs chopped
1 red chilli, seeded and cut into thin rings
2 tbs chopped fresh coriander
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs lime juice
1 tsp Sriracha chile sauce
1 1/2 tbs canola oil

Shred the papaya and the carrot into long thin strips. In a large bowl, combine the papaya, carrot, sliced shallots, chilli and coriander and toss gently.

Combine the chopped shallot, garlic and sugar and process in a food processor or using mortar and pestle until a smooth paste forms. Add 1-2 tbs water if needed. Transfer the paste to a bowl and whisk in the vinegar, fish sauce, lime juice and chilli sauce. Gradually drizzle in the oil while continuing to whisk.

Pour the dressing over the papaya mixture and toss to coat thoroughly. Refrigerate for at least two hours or up to overnight before serving.

Green Papaya Salad 2
adapted from James Street Cooking School


2 garlic cloves (this was too much for a halved recipe, go for 1)
Pinch of salt
1 red chilli
1 tbs roasted peanuts
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
4 green beans, cut into 1cm lengths
1 cup shredded green papaya
1 tbs palm sugar
1/2 tbs lime juice
1/2 tbs tamarind water
1/2 - 1 tbs fish sauce

Pound garlic with sald and chilli in a pestle and mortar. Add peanuts and pound into a course paste. Add cherry toamtoes and beans to the mortar and gently mash together. Add green papaya and bruise. Season with palm sugar, lime juice, tamarind water and fish sauce.

Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc

I love creamy desserts. They are a big weakness of mine. Tiramisu, trifle... if it's creamy, I'm there. I also like sweetened chestnut puree, but I never know what to do with it when I buy some. D loves this Coffee and Chocolate Meringue Cake, but that was the only recipe in my delicious collection that used sweetened chestnut puree, and it's quite a complicated process which I don't tend to do unless it's a special occasion.

This may make you think that I had some sweetened chestnut puree that I needed to use, but I actually didn't. I don't know what I was reading that made me think about sweetened chestnut puree. I still don't have any recipes in my delicious collection but I wanted something with sweetened chestnut puree. I thought Nigella's Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc might be an easy way to ease my cravings.

There was a small hurdle when there was no sweetened puree at the local gourmet supermarket. I ended up buying unsweetened and tried to emulate the dark smooth paste of the canned sweetene puree. It kind of worked but the prepared sweetened stuff is much much nicer.

So, for this dessert I sprinkled some chopped Lindt dark chocolate into the base of the glass, followed by some of my home-sweetened chestnut puree, followed by some cream (should be whipped, but I couldn't be bothered. I paid for this when the cream came out of the carton faster than I expected and nearly overflowed the glass). I finished it off with some crushed meringue nests and a sprinkling of malted milk powder. I was so lazy making this that I almost feel guilty passing it off as a Nigella-inspired recipe, because the domestic goddess would not put together something this sloppy.

Despite my sloppiness, it wasn't bad. The lashings of cream and the cocoa-flavoured meringue balanced out my not-quite-as-sweet puree and the malted powder actually added a nice dimension to the dessert. I think I used chocolate with too high a cocoa content though, it was just too bitter and really fought with the creaminess of the rest of the dessert. I don't think I would use dark chocolate again if I repeat the recipe.

Below I'm posting Nigella's recipe rather than my adaptation of it, if you really want to try it my way, I've detailed my changes above.

Now, what to do with a large amount of leftover unsweetened chestnut puree?

Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc
by Nigella Lawson

Makes 6 when made in shallow glasses

100g good quality dark chocolate
500ml oz double cream
2 meringue nests
500g sweetened chestnut purée or spread, from a can

Place the chocolate into the bowl of a food processor and blend until it forms large, broken grains. Divide the chocolate equally among the six glasses.

Place the cream in a large bowl and lightly whip it until soft peaks form. Crumble one of the meringues into the mixture and mix well.

Place the chestnut purée or spread on top of the chocolate in the glasses.

Spoon the cream and meringue mixture into the glasses on top of the chestnut purée.

To serve, crumble the remaining meringue over the top of the cream and meringue mixture.

Gozleme

We love gozlemes. We first tasted them on a trip to Sydney where the markets have a stall that makes the most spectacular gozlemes. We have missed them up here in Brisbane where there is no substitute. Then a stall at a local farmers' market started selling them too, but while they were tasty but they weren't quite as good as the Sydney ones.

Then we tried making them at home, complete with homemade dough. They were really good, but we had to stop comparing everything to the Sydney gozlemes.

The next time we had a gozleme craving, I was lazy and used tortillas in place of making my own dough. This made the final sandwich a little crispier than it should have been, but it saved an awful lot of time which makes this a really easy weeknight dinner.

I tweaked the mince mixture a little bit after being inspired by a recipe in the Woman's Day Marvellous Mince and More cookbook which I picked up cheap at a newsagent. The last time I added some tinned tomatoes to my mince mixture, this time I used some feta stirred through after cooking. I think this version is much closer to the spicy meat mix you get in the gozlemes from the market.

Easy Gozlemes
adapted from The Woman's Day Marvellous Mince and More cookbook

1 tbs oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crused
1 tbs ground cumin
1 tsp paprika (hot or mild)
1 tbs sumac
1 tsp chilli flakes
500g beef mince
200g feta, crumbled
flour tortillas

Heat oil in a large frying pan over a high heat.

Add the onions and garlic and fry until soft. Add spices and cook for 1 minute.

Add the mince and fry, stirring, until cooked.

Transfer mixture to a bowl and cool for 10 minutes. Stir through the feta cheese. Season to taste.

Heat up a sandwich press.

Spoon filling evenly over a tortilla and top with another tortilla. Cook in the sandwich press until browned and crisp.

Serve with lemon wedges.