The International Food Project

Chinese Hot Pot at Home - The Secret is in the Mix

2012-02-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Out of all of the dishes we've made so far for The International Food Project, Chinese hot pot has by far been one of the easiest to duplicate. It should be no surprise that the secret to a good hot pot is in the broth that is used to make this tasty Asian fondue, and most Chinese grocery stores sell some of the most remarkable pre-made mixtures ready to go.

At the suggestion of a Chinese coworker, we purchased the Little Sheep brand hot pot soup base in both regular and hot variety. The package has very little English and only a few pictures so you know what you are getting. Pour the contents into a wok or other large volume cooking vessel and bring to a simmer.

This particular mix suggests adding 4-5 scallions (white parts only), 20 cloves of garlic, and 6 cups of water. The rest is up to you! Add a combination of meats and vegetables and allow all items to be thoroughly cooked and enjoy a hot pot feast. For an added kick we added even more Szechuan Peppercorns which have a numbing sensation on the tongue and works in a unique combination with the heat of the hot pot mix itself. Fill a hot pot wok up with these, and you are truly doing Szechuan cooking.

For our first foray into the realm of hot pot, we chose the following items:

-Chipsteak
-Mushrooms
-Potatoes
-Cabbage
-Shrimp

The list of ingredients that can be used in hot pot is nearly endless. The trick is that everything should be cut as thinly as possible to make for fast cooking. Thanks to the slicer attachment for our stand mixer, this was relatively easy for all of the vegetables we included. We did find; however, that putting the food on skewers would make the extraction process a lot easier for those who want to take the extra step. Otherwise a large amount of chiles and peppercorns will come for the ride and will need to be removed prior to eating!

Making a hot pot feast is easy, but even more difficult is finding good sauces to dip your hot pot feast in! For different flavor combinations, we chose three difference sauces for our feast as we found on a hot pot recipe at The Spice House:

Hoisin Sauce
Sesame Sauce

1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup water
2T soy sauce
1T rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon peeled and chopped ginger
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper flakes

Garlic Sauce

2T soy sauce
2T water
1/2T finely chopped garlic (we used copious amounts)
1 1/2T lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon sugar

That is it! You're all set for your hot pot feast. This type of cooking is great for large families or for parties where there will be many people around to consume the food, otherwise expect to have a whole lot of leftovers for the days to come.

The Best Food in China - Hot Pot

2012-01-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

With 4 weeks in China under my belt, I can easily say it was a difficult experience finding food that I liked. It turns out that outside of Szechuan province my cuisine search was not in the right place. Where restaurant food was not to my palette, street food had everything I was looking for and more. Inside Szechuan province is a whole other story, as their spicy foods are some of the most inspiring dishes I can write about in this blog. One dish in particular stands out above all others, and is a staple not only in Szechuan province but all over China - Hot Pot.

The best way to describe hot pot is that it is a Chinese fondue. Custom designed tables have a central burner that a giant pot of broth with one or two varieties is brought to temperature. Naturally one of these two broths in Szechuan province is spicy and is filled with red peppers and Szechuan peppercorn to give it the authentic taste, among many other spices. From there, hot pot is anything you want it to be.

I went to two hot pot restaurants in China, a low key one in Xi'an and a high end one in Chengdu (Szechuan province) each with their own style. The hot pot restaurant in Xi'an was setup like a self serve buffet where you grab as many skewers of non-English labeled food as you want. At the end the waiter counts your stack and gives you a bill. Between myself and a friend, we had nearly 100 skewers of food and four large beers for around $5 each, including the hot pot fee itself (just a few dollars). In Chengdu, the hot pot style was more for families, and you order plates of food to be dumped into the pot. As I was by myself in this instance I could only order 3 plates of food due to their size, and the bill was around $15 for just myself with one beer.

Either way you look at it, hot pot is a feast. Between skewers of potatoes, various balls of I-Dont-Know-What, crab meat, shrimp, beef, mushrooms, and just about everything else, you will not go hungry. If your time in China is spent having a hard time finding delicious food, a trip to a hot pot restaurant will be the easiest cure for a hungry belly and a search for something familiar, yet is a perfect Asian dish.

Making hot pot at home is as simple as buying a bag of hot pot mix at a local Asian grocery store and gathering all the thinly sliced meats and vegetables you can handle. Our next post will feature the recipes we used to recreate my favorite Chinese dish at home with other recipes for amazing sauces to go along with it!

For our full take on making Chinese Hot Pot at home, check out our recipes and summary of how it all went!

Singapore's Best Appetizers - Popiah and Keuh Pie Tee

2011-12-10T16:58:00.000-05:00

The hawker centers of Singapore are famous for a number of foods as these food courts can house as little as a dozen vendors to well over 200 as is the case of the Smith Street hawker center. Sampling all of the foods available is impossible, but there were two that we went back and had multiple times during a week in Singapore - Popiah and Keuh Pie Tee. Their names are unfamiliar to most outside of this region of the world, but they will soon become a staple in my cooking repertoire as we are thinking of using them especially in our selection of unconventional Christmas appetizer recipes.

Popiah - The Fresh Spring Roll

Spring rolls come in many forms; however, the most common thought is through the use of rice paper or wonton wrappers and served fried. The Popiah variant is a fresh spring roll that could almost be mistaken as a mini-sandwich wrap made of wheat flower, with spring roll filling.

The filling varies from location to location, but is often either thinly sliced and fried jicama or radish, bean sprouts, grated carrots, lettuce, pork/shrimp/crab meat, and fried spring onions. Before wrapping a sweet sauce is added and often topped with a spicy sauce such as sambal or other local variety.

The flavors in this dish are addicting as it adds a hint of familiarity in the wrapper style with complete Asian ingredients. Although these spring rolls are served rather small, 4 or 5 inches long and an inch or two wide, they are so delicious that I envision them being enlarged to full burrito size, just because the filling is so good. Recreating this one will be a tasty experience for sure.

Keuh Pie Tee - The Inverted Spring Roll?

Keuh Pie Tee is a variant on the spring roll that is served in Singapore and is made with quite similar ingredients. A mixture of fried onions, bean sprouts, radish, and local meats are combined together to make the filling and mixed with an acidic sauce with chili mixed in. Rather than being a filling for a wheat based shell, the filling is piled high in mini fried cups and served in sets of 6 to 10 per serving. These cups are then topped with ground peanuts, although is something we passed on due to allergies.

The variant of Keuh Pie Tee is not much different than Popiah, however the fried cup is a perfect vessel for bringing the delicious fillings to your mouth. Since both of these items only cost a few dollars at a hawker center, you may begin to understand why I would order both at every possible chance.

Recreating these dishes will be quite a delicious challenge, and we've already identified a few recipes not only to make the fillings for both of these treats, but the shells as well! A new Christmas tradition is about to be born!

A View Into Our International Pantry

2011-11-28T17:55:00.002-05:00

One of the questions we frequently get on this blog is just what kind of spices and ingredients we keep on hand in our pantry. From real white truffle oil to fish sauce in the fridge, we have an impressive collection of gourmet and international necessities to make all of our favorite dishes.

As our collection changes weekly, only a few items are actually found in residence on a near continual basis. Some cuisines we have just fallen in love with, and as a result a select few staples will always be present in our pantry. The following are just a few of these items as we take you on a tour of our International Pantry.

In starting our look into our international pantry, we begin with our favorite dish of Thai curry. On hand we keep nearly every variety of curry paste, Green, Red, and Penang, to suit us whenever the spicy dish calls our name. To balance out the Thai collection, we have a nearly complete pantry of items to make every dish imaginable including the basics of Shrimp Paste and Fish Sauce all the way to dried Pad Thai Noodles, Oyster Sauce, authentic Thai Chili Sauce, and Palm Sugar.

Since east Asian cooking has been our primary focus after a recent 5 month trip around the continent, our pantry is full of other amazing spices and ingredients required to make the best dishes from the region. These include spring roll wrappers for Vietnamese spring rolls, Bonito Flakes and Okonomi Sauce for Japanese okonomiyaki, multiple varieties of rice including Sticky Rice and rice flour, Chinese Hot Pot mix of many varieties, and my personal favorite spice: Sichuan Peppercorn.

Although we have yet to visit India, my favorite meals in the country of Malaysia have been from the Indian vendors that make up a significant majority of the island. Some of the spices in Indian cooking that we always have on hand include fresh Cardamom Pods (green and black), Fenugreek, Ghee, and Mustard Seeds.

Our Latin American collection includes a number of perishable items that we pick up as we go, but we always have homemade Tortillas on hand from our local Mexican grocery store, Black Beans, and fresh Corn in our freezer.

What is perhaps the best thing about our international pantry is that the majority of items were purchased at our local international grocery stores for a fraction of the price the large, corporate chains offer them for. When a small bottle of ground cardamom costs in excess of $12, a bag of whole pods that produce more powder when ground only costs $2-$3. A tiny bottle of Thai chili sauce may cost $4 in a large grocery store but a large bottle of authentic sauce, triple the size, costs just $3 at an Asian store.

For this reason, we just can't get enough.

If you keep an international pantry, what do you have on hand? Let us know and we may stock our pantry up with your suggestions in the future for more great international recipes!

Pizza Improvement #2: The Sauce

2011-10-26T18:42:00.000-04:00

We have completed several pizza iterations since our last entry where we discussed how the pizza stone and a solid pizza peel help in forming a great crust. With a solid crust recipe down, we had to move on to a far greater challenge: the sauce. Surprisingly, a few searches on Google made figuring out how to make a great pizza sauce simple; however a vast majority of websites did not state the single most important fact about making authentic pizza sauce.

There is only one key ingredient in making an authentic pizza sauce, and that is simply the tomato. Starting at the source makes 99% of the difference in producing a great sauce, and fresh tomatoes are the key.

The first step in making the most authentic tomato sauce outside of Italy could be the most appaling, as you have to chop and blend your tomatoes. The product of this step is an incredibly watery, pink mixture. We have tried several different tomatoes to see which ones produce the best flavor, and all of them have had great final products. Out of all the iterations, a blend between several roma, one beefsteak, and a handful of plum tomatoes was one of our favorites.

To get rid of the excess water, the tomato puree was brought to boiling in a sauce pan and allowed to simmer for 20-30 minutes. At this time an array of our favorite ingredients were mixed in, all of which can be tailored to your own personal liking:

-Chopped Onions
-1-2 tablespoons of Sugar
-Dried Oregano
-Several Garlic Cloves
-Dried Basil
-Red Pepper Flakes
-Salt and Pepper
-1-2 teaspoons of Corn Starch

The last ingredient, corn starch, is significant as it helps the entire mixture thicken up nicely. Be sure to break up any large chunks of corn starch before adding it in to the sauce, as some of the larger pieces do not tend to dissolve in the mixture.

As the sauce thickens, continually taste the mixture to see if any one ingredient is lacking. The best pizza sauce is one that suits your own personal tastes, so none of these ingredients should be considered standard. Like a sweeter sauce? Add more sugar. Like spicy? More pepper flakes. When it comes down to it, these variations is what makes traditional Italian pizzas amazing to begin with, so there should be no surprise that no one recipe accounts for the perfect sauce.

Whatever You Want, Fried! Okonomiyaki at Home

2011-10-01T13:14:00.000-04:00

Okonomiyaki is one of those dishes that is different everywhere you get it at. The reason is quite simple as okonomiyaki is roughly translated to "whatever you want, fried;" easily making it one of my favorite meals for those very two reasons (anything and fried).

Watching chefs make Okonomiyaki in Japan is a bit daunting as they layer all the ingredients and cabbage so beautifully on a griddle and let it cook down to a dense and rich pancake. Then the sweet mayo and okonomi barbecue sauce that goes on top adds another level of complexity that completes the dish beautifully. Making it at home was definitely a challenge.

What can you put on it? That is easy, everything!

-Cabbage. It the backbone.
-Veggies: Onions, Green Onions, or any other you like
-Meat: Sausage, Pork, Bacon (a must)
-Seafood: Shrimp, Squid, Scallops, Fish, etc
-Noodles: Soba, Udon
-Anything else you like!

The recipe we've been trying over and over has been a modification of the "Best Okonomiyaki Recipe" from Okonomiyaki World. The site has major bonus points for bein absolutely obsessed with the dish and giving photos of each and every step. We did a modification mostly because we wanted to use our own ingredients based on whatever we had left over at the time.

Modified "Best Okonomiyaki" Ingredients (makes 2 large Okonomiyaki):

2 eggs
2/3 cup water (or more, as needed)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
4-5 cups shedded cabbage
2 stalks green onion
1/2 cup onion (to your liking)
5 strips of bacon
1 cup cut shrimp (to your liking)
Spicy Mayonnaise
Okonomi Sauce
Bonito Flakes (optional)
Seaweed Flakes (optional)

Directions

Shred cabbage and cook down in a large skillet with 1/4 cup of water. If the cabbage begins to dry, add a few tablespoons of water. Cook until soft and reduced in volume by about half (~20 minutes)
Add water and flour in a large bowl and stir until smooth. The water mixture should not be clumpy, so add water as necessary until a viscous liquid with no lumps. Most recipes call for okonomiyaki flour, however we substituted all purpose for lack of having the correct kind on hand.

Add the cooked cabbage and eggs, stir to incorporate flour/water mixture and eggs, but do not over stir.

Add chopped vegetables, seafood, meats (except bacon), and noodles and stir slightly to incorporate.

Heat a griddle on high and evenly spread the mixture in to two large pancakes on the griddle. While cooking, add the bacon strips across the top evenly such that the entire pancake is covered in a layer of Bacon goodness. Cook for 5-6 minutes or until the bottom has become crispy and darkened.

Flip the pancake over. This may be incredibly difficult with a small spatula, and if the okonomiyaki is not cooked thoroughly on all sides on the bottom, or you just have a small spatula, it may fall apart. Try and do as much damage control as possible and reform the pancake when flipped over. Make sure that the bacon is directly on the skillet as it is the longest cooking step.

Cook for another 5-10 minutes until bacon is darkened. Remove from the griddle and serve with spicy mayonnaise and okonomi sauce on top. Cover with optional bonito flakes and seaweed flakes for a more realistic serving!

Okonomi Sauce

We've tried several okonomi sauce, however we like this one the best for its simplicity. True okonomi sauce is said to take a lot of time, skill, and a number of odd ingredients to make. For our tastes we like it with a simple tangy barbecue flavor so this one from Big Oven does just fine even with half the ingredients missing:

1/4 cup Ketchup
1 1/2 tablespoon Worchestershire Sauce
1/4 teaspoon Dijon Mustard
2 tablespoons Sake*
1 teaspoon Soy Sauce
3 tablespoons Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Mirin*
1/8 teaspoon Ginger, ground*
1 teaspoon honey

*Notes items we did not include.

Kewpie Mayonnaise

Kewpie Mayonnaise can be purchased at many Asian grocery stores or online, however is quite expensive ($5-$6 a squeeze bottle in some places). Making it at home is quite simple as it is a blend of regular mayonnaise, rice vinegar, and sugar. The trick is to have the sauce a bit tangy, and the sugar removes the excess bite from the vinegar.

Try okonomiyaki at home, as it is one of the tastiest dishes Japan has to offer. We must warn you, however, that cooking it is relatively tricky and it might take a few attempts to get better at it!

Bun Bo Nam Bo - Vietnomnomnom At Home

2011-08-14T16:47:00.001-04:00

Bun Bo Nam Bo is one of those dishes that has a subtle nuance to it that makes it hard to recreate at home. You may remember my love for the noodle based dish after first arriving to Vietnam in October, and I have been craving it ever since. As it turns out, however, the place I visited in Hanoi to try the dish was one of the few that serve it in the style that I fell in love with and most of my Vietnamese friends had no idea what I was talking about when drooling over this amazing dish.

On a recent trip to a Vietnamese restaurant in the greater Pittsburgh area, Trams Kitchen, Angie and I both tried Vermicelli noodles that I opted for toppings that would closely mimic my beloved Bun Bo. Even though the dish and restaurant proved to be quite incredible, the dish was missing an acidic bite that I vividly remember from Hanoi.

Luckily for The International Food Project, I am not the only one that craves the tasty concoction found on Hang Dieu street in the Old Quarter, and many bloggers have already tried to recreate the recipe on their own (here, and here). So picking one with appropriate ingredients like cilantro, rice noodles, pork, and fried shallots, we ran with it for our first attempt at the dish.

More so than the flavor, one thing about this dish should be noted: it takes forever. You would be incredibly surprised, maybe even refusing to believe, that a noodle/soup dish would take nearly two hours to prepare, but Bun Bo Nam Bo did just that. Between hydrating and cooking the noodles, cooking the pork, frying shallots, cutting up all the vegetables, and making the sauces we were well past our normal dinner time before even trying the first bite.

The flavor made up for the wait, however was still missing a slight edge that the original recipe provided. We were perplexed, as the ingredient lists and look of our bowl matched up perfectly to that shown in the dish I had in Hanoi. Like all meals in Vietnam, however, the balance of sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, and chilis was likely to blame as even a slight different in quantity or type can drastically change the flavor of the dish. As this is not the first time this has happened I am inclined to believe that our fish sauce is of the stronger variety and may need to be replaced with a more subtle brand.

For those who have a lighter fish sauce and are drooling at the thought of Bun Bo Nam Bo, try out this recipe we modified from The Best International Recipe cookbook that was a very close match for that which you can have in Hanoi!

Bun Bo Nam Bo (Bun)

Pork

3 tablespoons veggie oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 pork tenderloin (1 lb ish)

Dressing

2/3 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup warm water
6 tablespoons juice from 3 limes
5 tablespoons sugar
3 fresh thai, serrano, or jalapenos
2 medium garlic cloves

Salad

3 large carrots, grated
1 large cucumber, sliced
1/4 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts
1 fresh chili, chopped
8 ounces dried vermicelli
4 cups red or green lettuce sliced
1/2 cup loosely packed thai basil, chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup mint, chopped
fried shallots

Recipe

Cut the pork loin into small 1/2 inch bites and marinade in the veggie oil, brown sugar, and fish sauce for an hour (do not be afraid of fish sauce, this combination tastes really good).

Dried vermicelli should soak in water for at least 30 minutes to hydrate before being added into the salad.

Prepare all salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss loosely.

Fully cook the pork loin in a skillet and put on top of the salad.

Add dressing and serve!

Asian Spring Rolls - The First Attempt With Vietnam Style

2011-06-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

Spring Rolls in Asia are one of the best appetizers you find yourself getting time and time again. At my count while traveling the continent for 5 months over 9 countries was that I had at least five unique iterations of the dish, all of which we will be trying to recreate at home. After a recent craving for Bun Bo Nam Bo from Vietnam, of which will be the topic of the next post, we decided to make one iteration of Vietnamese spring rolls to go along with the meal and turned out incredibly well.

There are two spring roll varieties served in Vietnam and revolve around either being fried or unfried. The variety we decide to make was the unfried version due to limitations in our kitchen and is probably one of the more unique versions of the dish you can make.

What makes the unfried version different is the soft texture of a hydrated rice paper outer wrapper. Rather than having that characteristic crunch of other spring rolls, the rice paper serves only as a housing for the tasty fillings and doesn't mask the flavor of the ingredients with the fried shell, perfect for the apprectiation of a fine dipping sauce and fresh ingredients.

The only choice you may have for this dish would fall to whether you would prefer shredded pork or shrimp as the filling, with us opting for the latter. No matter how many times I tried the dish in Vietnam, I just couldn't bring myself to like the shredded pork version as much as the shrimp; impressive for my abnormal love for all things pig.

Regardless, this recipe we found in The Best International Recipe cook book, and hits the major flavors spot on for the soft Vietnamese spring rolls and is a great recreation of a tasty dish!

Goi Cuon - Fresh Spring Rolls

3 ounces dried rice vermicelli
2 1/2 tablespoons juice from 1 lime
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 large carrot, grated
1/3 cup coarsely chopped unsalted peanuts
2 fresh Thai, serrano, or jalapeno chilies
1 large cucumber, sliced into small pieces
8 round rice paper wrappers
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh pint leaves, torn
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro
4 large lettuce leaves sliced thin
1/2 pound cooked shrimp
Hoisin Peanut Dipping Sauce
Nuoc Cham Sauce

Boil water and add dried vermicelli noodles and let soak until pliable. After, wet rice paper until pliable and add ingredients as desired to the center. Roll from the bottom halfway forming a tight seal around the ingredients. Pull the sides inward and roll the final amount to form the spring roll shape. Serve with dipping sauces

Hoisin Peanut Dipping Sauce

1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup water + extra
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon Thai chili garlic sauce (sirhaca)
2 teaspoons veggie oil
2 medium garlic clothes
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

The second sauce we made for dipping is a Vietnamese staple and can be found in almost every dish, on the side of every plate, and in my dreams every night: Nuoc Cham.

The recipe for Nuoc Cham is simple, as it is a balance of salty, sweet, and sour. The main ingredients are fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar with red chilies sliced thinly for decoration. Balance the flavors to your liking and serve as an added dipper!

Typical recipes will start at 1 part fish sauce to 1/2 part lime juice to 1/4 part sugar. This works out well for light fish sauces, however bolder sauces may require extra of both lime juice and sugar. It is with our recommendation to start at this, and adjust to taste accordingly.

If you are too strong on the fish sauce do not be alarmed! The sugar and lime juice really do balance out the flavor and can be one of the best combinations you'll ever have.

Thai Chili Sauce - Finding the Perfect Blend

2011-05-11T19:37:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has visited South East Asia is aware of the prominence of chili sauce. The translucent orange, sweet and spicy mixture can be found on the top of every table to every bulk dispenser at fast food restaurants all throughout the region. For all purposes of discussing the sauce, it is treated just like Heinz ketchup - even bottled by the Heinz corporation and on the tables at some establishments. As can be expected from the presence, the sauce is amazing and I wound up putting it on everything I had all the way to blending with ketchup for fries at McDonalds. So after returning home, I had to find the perfect bottle, which ended up being incredibly difficult.

The taste of Thai Chili sauce is hard to describe to those who have not had it. A good starting point would be to imagine tangy Chinese red sauce and infuse a light blend of heat and removing the normal generic flavor that comes with it. So with three trials, I found the best Thai Chili sauce that you can buy at home for just under $3.

Taste of Thailand - Sweet Or Spicy

The company that everyone in the world knows as being "Thai" is Taste of Thai - unfortunately I have found that most of their products are anything but. With two different Thai Chili sauces, a sweet version and a spicy, I thought one would have the magical combination that I fell in love with while in Asia.

Although the products are not what I remember of my beloved Thai chili sauce, they were still good on their own right. My family, who had never been to Thailand, bought some on their own to try it out to rave reviews. Both the sweet and spicy versions did not have as much heat as chili sauce in Asia, and are what we consider to be an amazing sweet and sour sauce.

Mae Ploy Chili Sauce Wins It All

So buying an Americanized Thai sauce was clearly not the ideal choice, so we purchased a random bottle off the shelf of our local Asian grocery store. The first thing we noticed was the price. For a bottle that was nearly 3 times as large as the Taste of Thai sauce, the cost was significantly less: $2.50 per bottle; further enforcing the statement that everything is cheaper in local foreign grocery stores.

Eagerly awaiting the first taste, I didn't even bother making a dish and tried some straight from the bottle - a perfect match! Within days I had added the sauce on everything, just like I did in Asia, and was out of my bottle needing a refill. Luckily for me, and everyone else reading, I've seen the bottle in every Asian grocery store in the city, meaning it should be easy to find for those willing to look.

Me? I'm looking for the industrial sized container to suit my Asian chili sauce needs:

Pizza Improvement #1: Pizza Stone and Peel

2011-04-18T20:05:00.000-04:00

By a not-so-coincidental chance, we recently acquired a pizza stone and pizza peel to pursue our quest for the perfect pizza. Angie's dismay for my purchase of expensive equipment soon dissipated when they arrived and she saw the quality and jumped at the idea of making our pizza recipe to see how the new gadgets would turn out. With that we have taken our first step in producing the real Italian pizza: dough optimization!

Pizza Stone and Pizza Peel

You may be asking yourself what a pizza stone and pizza peel are. A pizza stone is used to mimic the cooking surface of a brick oven in your home kitchen. In all reality, a pizza stone is nothing more than a heat conductive ceramic sheet that heats up to oven temperature to cook a pizza from both the top and bottom as is the case of scorching hot brick ovens. We went for the nice ceramic variety, but we have it on good word that a thick piece of steel from a home improvement store will do the job just fine as well.

A pizza peel is more straightforward and is a thin wood handle that you use to easily put the pizza in the oven and pull out when it is done. We bought a more integrated peel that had a moving sheet on it to help facilitate dough motion and it couldn't have been any easier to operate both getting dough off and picking it back up once done.

The Final Product

The first dough recipe we attempted actually had you pre-bake the dough on the pizza stone to get a moderate crispness prior to loading up with toppings and finish backing on a standard cooking sheet. While it is possible to cook a pizza entirely on the stone in one go, which we will try next time, the recipe seemed pretty simple and a good first attempt with our new toys.

With only 4 minutes of baking on the 500 degree Fahrenheit stone, we could easily see the improvements as the dough became golden brown, puffy, and authentic looking. Loaded up with toppings and baked on a cookie sheet for another 8 minutes and we had a perfect looking, and tasting, crust inside and out. Crunchy on the bottom, flaky and soft in the center, the first try turned out perfect.

The following crust recipe was used from the King Arthur Flour Book of Baking, our definitive baking guide:

1 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups semolina*
2 tbs dough relaxer (optional)
1 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs olive oil
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups water

*can use unbleached all purpose flour to balance if no semolina

Mix and knead together all the dough ingredients by hand or in a mixer until you have a smooth dough that looks a little rough on the surface. *Our dough was incredibly gummy and required more flour to be added to get until a smooth consistency that we felt comfortable with.

Put the dough on a hot surface and let rise for 45 minutes. Afterwards put in the refrigerator to cool for 4 to 36 hours to allow the flavors to come out.

Roll dough into two 9-12" round crusts and let sit to rise while heating the oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees F. Place dough on pizza stone for 4 minutes and remove when slightly browning. Top with your favorite sauce and toppings and place on cookie sheet in the oven for 7-8 minutes until cheese is melting and crust becomes golden brown.

Our sauce recipes and toppings are still progressing and will be topics of future posts within this pizza quest series. This instance we made a processed mozzarella, bacon, shallots, and mushroom pizza as well as a fresh mozzarella, cherry tomato, and basil pizza (to mimic a margherita). If we can say two things it would be this: both were incredibly tasty, but nothing was more impressive than the disparity between the two types of cheese as can be seen in the following photo:

Fish and Chips in London - A Perfect British Meal?

2011-03-29T12:22:00.000-04:00

The iconic dish of Fish and Chips is one of the first things most people would think of when posed with the topic of English cuisine. Images of a nicely fried fish on top of a basket of fries wrapped in newspaper would be enough to get most people salivating and jumping to book one of the hotels at Heathrow airport on their next journey just to taste the famous dish. However the truth of the meal is far different than what mainstream media gives off.

No Newspaper For You

The most common misconception about Fish and Chips is that it is served wrapped in newspaper in a throwback to years gone by. Unfortunately the serving style is all but extinct as health laws now bar food being wrapped in newspaper due to transference of unhealthy chemicals and hygiene concerns. If you were getting your hopes up in having the full experience, you may be in luck, as a few restaurants have specialty designed serving paper to have the look of newspaper without the harmful effects of actually serving the meal in the real thing.

The Variety is Subtle

Unlike many other dishes, Fish and Chips does not appear to have a strong departure from the standard recipe at various outlets. One fish fillet deep fried and served with thick cut fries is what you will get every single time with only as little as mayo or another condiment served on the side or in packets. What does differ, however, is the breading style which could be anywhere from crispy and thick to flaky all the way to nearly non-existent. For many vendors, the type of fish does vary as well, however the taste gets lost after the frying process except for those who are very in tune to the subtle nuances of fish so the breading choice is the biggest distinction of the two.

A Lot of Room to Grow

We think that Fish and Chips is a perfect dish that could be recreated at home with just about any recipe and would match the taste that you can get abroad at most corner vendors. What really should be done about it though, is to produce a gourmet version that is true to the essence of the dish while adding more complex flavors other than starch, fish, and breading. Doing so might be a bit more challenging and potentially ruin the simplicity of the dish, but could add a world of flavors that the current iteration is lacking for many pallets.

Egyptian Falafel, Moussaka, and Pita - Street Food at Its Finest!

2011-03-25T18:51:00.002-04:00

Eating during a holiday to Egypt can take on two forms: professional restaurants or street vendors. A nice sit down restaurant clearly aimed for tourists will cost, on average, around $10 per person per meal. Street vendors, on the other hand, rarely break $2 for twice as much food.

Why such a disparity? Unfortunately it lies entirely with the target market. Visit a street vendor, and you might be the only tourist there. Visit a sit down restaurant, and there might only be one or two locals there. The market dictates the prices.

My favorite food in Egypt is a definitive street food: falafel. Made of ground chickpeas or fava beans, falafel has an interesting green color on the inside and is fried in a large oil bath to crispy perfection.

Normally good on their own, my favorite iteration of falafel is a doozy and actually combines 3 amazing middle eastern dishes into one amazing food item: the moussaka pita wrap. Not only is the moussaka pita wrap amazing, it is cheap, about 35 cents per pita. So when I was in Luxor, I ordered four.

On its own, falafel is not the most tasteful food item, as the fried outer shell overwhelms the taste buds. Put on a good sauce and you're good to go. Moussaka is a dish comprised of eggplant and tomato with tons of local spices thrown in. Combine them in a pita, and you have a sandwich that would make any gourmet restaurant cry for not having the recipe.

But you are in luck, because if you go to Luxor, I can tell you the exact place to get this tasty concoction, thanks to the city being incredibly small! On the opposite side of the street from Luxor Temple is a McDonalds (sad to say). One block on the left are two street vendors that sell falafel and other treats. One will be more crowded than the others. Order a falafal with moussaka in a pita, pay your 35 cent bill, enjoy, and order several more for me.

Normally I would never give directions for a specific restaurant for fearing that it would be to difficult to find, but this one is very obvious. In fact, when I have specified the location of this restaurant on Living the Dream, I received multiple comments from others who have been there and also agreed on how great they are.

Recreating this dish is going to take several tries, as the three dishes need to be perfected in their own right for proper results. We have already made all three individually over the last year, and tried a comparable iteration at a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant (to their surprise at my odd request). Right now, it is not the best, but our goal will continue on for the best tasting pita wrap in the world!

International Food Project Takes on the Italian Pizza

2011-03-18T15:07:00.001-04:00

The International Food Project has been on a bit of an Asian kick recently, with great emphasis on Thai food after my 5 month experience in Asia and Angie's 2 week visit to Thailand. Along with more upcoming recipes from Thailand and SE Asia that we have already perfected, we are expanding out to other destinations we have been to in the past. Our first choice is a doozy: Italian Pizza.
I spent about a week in Italy in 2008 while backpacking around Europe and ate way too many pizzas than I am willing to admit. From this I got a fine appreciation for the art of pizza and an intense urge to figure out how to make them at home.

There are several problems: I do not have several hundred years of experience, secret family recipes, or a brick oven that is as old as most homes in my neighborhood. Is it really in the water? How can we cope with that? That is what we are going to find out!

Our goal for creating Italian pizza at home is not to find the perfect recreation, because it is nearly impossible without such equipment. What we are going to do is uncover the tips and tricks that will get your next pie closer than anything you've made at home before and be something you will be satisfied with for many years to come.

Cutting that down to size, we've picked three topics that will be covered in the future that go into greater depth of perfecting the best recipe:

1) Dough - Thin in the center, slightly thicker on the sides, amazing air pockets and a bit of char on the bottom. That's my perfect Italian pie.
2) Sauce - Tangy and sweet, luckily sauce is one that can be entirely tailored to taste!
3) Cooking Techniques - How do you get that brick oven effect without one? We have a lead for this.

With these, we foresee a lot of pizza attempts in the future but have already stumbled upon some great resources in our quest to make the best pizza pie. How many attempts will it take to get it right? We don't know, but the journey should be fun and tasty in the coming weeks.

Our Thai Obsession - Coconut Donuts at Home

2011-03-08T07:46:00.002-05:00

Let me tell you a story about a little thing we call cocodo (coconut donuts). We discovered them on Koh Phi Phi, along one of the main walking streets outside of a tiny restaurant. They were cooked in a skillet by the same smiling, long-haired guy every single day from dawn to dusk, and at 20 baht a donut (67 cents) they were hard to pass up. They became our addiction the few days that we were on the island. A little hungry a few hours after dinner? Let's get some cocodo! Stuffed to the brim but craving something sweet? There's always room for cocodo!!!

They were gooey, sweet, a little crunchy on the outside, and slightly more like a cake than a donut. Before we even left the island we knew we had to try our hand at making them at home. However, recreating them at home has proven a little more difficult than anticipated.

Our first attempt involved egg whites, dried coconut, vanilla, and sweetened condensed milk, but it didn't hold its shape in a skillet. It was one big coconut mess. For our second attempt, we used the same recipe with the addition of a little flour, and also tried to use cookie cutters in the skillet to help keep the cakes' form while cooking. This still resulted in a mess. The texture of both of these recipes wasn't quite right either. They were too liquidy, there was too much coconut, and not enough cake texture.

Our next two attempts were markedly better. We found a recipe from Thai Desserts called "Khanom ba-bin" that uses dried coconut, coconut milk, and glutinous rice flour. The pictures looked very similar to our beloved cocodo, and the recipe was from a Thai website. Promising! These cakes did hold their shape much better when being cooked, especially when aided by interestingly designed cookie cutters, and the flavor was spot on. The final texture was much closer to what we remember, but could still use some improvement. They were still somewhat liquidy and not quite cakelike enough in the center.

During our experiments, we realized that the texture issue arises from the fact that we substituted the rice flour with extra glutinous flour. Doing this did not provide the internal portion of the cake with enough structure to be that gooey treat we remember. We also did not boil the sugar and coconut milk together as we used table sugar instead, which might have added to the difference as well.

In a future iteration we have two directions that we might go with the coconut donuts. The first is to use the recipe below in its exactness all the way to the baking portion, which would give the internal components more time to solidify. The second idea would be to use additional wheat flour in order to provide a structure in the center of the donut during work in the skillet.

Regardless, the following recipe is very close to our cocodo memories and is worthy of being published. Expect an update into this treat shortly when we master it and subsequently open up a cocodo stand down the street! This recipe was first published at Thai Desserts.

Khanom Ba-Bin (Cocodo!)

Ingredients

4 cups Grated coconut meat
2 cups Palm sugar
¼ cup Pre-sifted glutinous rice flour
¼ cup Rice flour
1 ½ cups Coconut cream
2 tbsp. Vegetable oil

Recipe

Melt the sugar in a pot containing the coconut milk.
Boil this mixture until the sugar is full melted, allow to cool
Combine coconut and the flours and mix well
Add vegetable oil into a baking pan and coat
Spread coconut mixture into pan, ensuring even placement
Bake in an oven 350 F or 180 C for 30 minutes until browned
Remove from oven and let cool, cut and serve

Pasteis de Nata at Home - Portuguese Egg Tarts

2011-02-09T10:27:00.002-05:00

For the first real recipe creation after I returned home from 5 months abroad, we immediately thought of doing something breakfast or dessert related. One of my favorite dishes was the Pasteis de Nata from Margaret's famous pastry shop in Macao. Although the pastry's are of Portugese creation, the influence of Portugal rubbed off on Macau while it was a colony, and these amazing treats remained once the colony declared indepedence.

In creating the egg tarts at home, there were three main criteria that I was looking for in order to call the recipe a good reflection of Margaret's take of this international dish.

1) Flaky Shell
2) Proper Filling Taste and Consistency
3) Carmalized Layer of Tasty on Top

A recipe for the Pasteis de Nata was found online at Algarve Buzz, a site dedicated to the tourist destination of Algarve, Portugal. Already getting the boost of authenticity due to the content of the site, the number of comments disussing how delicious the tarts were made it our first choice. The comments are accurate, as the pastries turned out incredibly accurate with a rich egg flavor and slight hint of vanilla. The internal consistency of the egg tart was a bit more custardy than at Margarets, which was more solid throughout, however the taste was impeccable and made up for this difference.

Using premade puff pastry from your grocer saves a step in making a tricky dough, even if it is a bit cheating. If you know what went into making puff pastry, then you understand why we cheated in this respect. When baked, the dough is incredibly flaky and a perfect match for the shell of the egg tarts.

My main issue with the recipe, even before baking, was the apparent lack of carmalization occuring on the top of the pastries in the photos on the site, which is an integral part of the dish in my mind. After a few attempts, we achieved this delicious effect by putting ample sugar on the egg filling after it was cooked and putting in the broiler for a few minutes. Be careful when using a broiler for this effect, as the pastry crust will darken at a faster rate than the sugar layer, so using a kitchen torch would be ideal if you have one.

In addition, the recipe suggests baking at 300°F (148°C) for 15 minutes. However it took approximately 25 minutes at 360°F in our oven, and other recipes recommend even higher temperatures of up to 450°F for the recipe. So we modified the recipe accordingly.

The recipe we used for Pasteis de Natas, listed below, was first hosted on Algarve Buzz and is a very close recreation of the famous dish. We've added a few slight modifications and shared it below. Makes ~12.

Ingredients:

1 box prepared puff pastry - defrosted but kept cold
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1/4 cup cream
4 egg yolks
3 tbsp white sugar
pinch salt
2 tbsp plain flour
1/2 cinnamon stick
2 strips lemon peel
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Pastry Cream Instructions

In a sauce pan with the heat off add milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar, salt, flour mix well with a whisk to ensure all the ingredients are well combined.

Once all ingredients are combined and there are no lumps of sugar or flour add cinnamon stick, lemon peel and vanilla.

Turn heat on to low stirring continuously and gently with whisk.

Continue stirring until it cream becomes quite thick and resembles a rich pudding. Watch for thickening around the edges and bottom of the pan and stir buildup back into the mixture

Once pudding in thickness, remove from heat and let cool completely. When cooled, remove cinnamon stick and lemon peel.

To avoid milk skin from forming on custard you can place parchment paper on top of warm custard and it will lift out easily when you go to use it to fill puff pasty shells. (Optional)

Pastry Shell Instructions

Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C)

Roll out cold puff pastry dough on floured surface, until ~1/4 cm thick.

Once rolled out thin, dusk off excess flour and begin rolling puff pastry like a long cigar. Roll pastry snugly but not tight, just enough to avoid a lot of space or air pockets in roll.

Place pastry roll length wise and cut in 4cm lengths

Take one piece of dough in your hand and push down on one of the coiled sides and form the dough into a hollow cup. Make the cup even thickness of approximately 1/4cm, but not too thin that you can see your hand through it.

Place pastry in a muffin tray, and spread out the dough cups into the mold, but don’t stretch dough upwards to force the shape. It is likely that the dough will not adhere to the muffin pan, and that is ok, as long as the cup is of general size and shape of the muffin mold with a modest depth for the custard filling.

When all pastry shells are ready fill with pastry cream to between 2/3 and 3/4th of the way full. Custard will expand during cooking and this allows for room without overflow.

Place custards in oven and bake for up to 25min, but keep eye on the tarts every 5 minutes or so as some ovens may burn the top quite quickly, while others don’t cook the pastry quickly enough.

When the pastry around sides looks deep golden brown then the tarts are done.

To serve: If no browning occurs, add an ample layer of sugar on top of the egg and place in the broiler for a few minutes after baking (or apply kitchen torch). If cool, heat in the microwave for approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute, until bubbly and fragrant, and then add sugar layer and proceed as above.

The World's Worst: Durian, King of Fruits

2011-02-03T15:33:00.002-05:00

While this blog is dedicated to recreating the world's best dishes at home the same way they are made abroad, it should be necessary, from time to time, to talk about some of the world's WORST dishes we've had. Just to keep everything in perspective as to why some meals are just so much better than others.

A perfect example of this theory is the Durian fruit, often referred to as the King of Fruit. It is interesting to have such a nickname because the fruit is is described by many foreigners to be vile, smell of rotting flesh, and taste like a mix between an old she and turned custard. It is so foul that Travel Channel's Andrew Zimmern (the Bizarre Foods guy) can't even stomach it and he's tried it over a dozen times! At the same time, locals absolutely love the fruit, and describe it as being very sweet and one of the best.

So while in South East Asia, I went on a great quest to sample every Durian flavor item I could find, just to see if it is really that bad or good as everyone describes.

The entire quest was filmed for your viewing (dis)pleasure. While watching, it is best to keep in mind how grateful we are for having such tasty things available to eat and be recreated via this blog. This one goes down in the record book...

This post was dual featured on our sister site Living the Dream in a three part series about each specific item. To read more about our adventures with the Durian, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the series over there!

Mixed Fruit Shakes at Home - A Taste of SE Asia

2011-01-23T15:25:00.003-05:00

One of the first cravings I had after returning home was my daily helping of mixed fruit shake. After 3 months of having a fruit shake once, if not multiple times a day, I was going through withdrawal. Luckily, the Asian creation is one of the simplest recipes to recreate, as the ingredients are as basic as fruit, ice, and simple syrups as desired.

The one big issue with making fruit shakes at home is determining the correct proportions of the ingredients, and it is really all to personal taste. Too icy, and the flavors are hidden. Too sugary, and a similar effect happens. Figuring out the balance will likely take a few tries in the blender, and even a mistake in any one direction doesn't make the concoction undrinkable, which is always a good thing.

Traditional fruit shakes served in Asia use simple syrup as a sweetener. It is important to note that this ingredient is crucial for those who like sweetened drinks.

Fundamentally, simple syrup is made by putting sugar in boiling water at a 2:1 ratio by volume, and stirring until dissolved. When cooled, the mixture becomes viscous and is known as simple syrup. This step is crucial as the preparation of simple syrup breaks sucrose (sugar) molecules into glucose and fructose, producing a sweeter product for flavoring.

The unique aspect of the fruit shakes served in Asia is that they also use a simple syrup made out of brown sugar, which adds another unique taste to the mix. With both sweeteners, they are added well in excess, often with multiple ladle fulls of each variety for just a single serving. Sugary and delicious!

As for the fruit, you are free to add one, two, or a mix of all the fruits you have at your disposal! Mix it up, and try to find the best! The following recipe was made with blood oranges and bananas, and was incredibly delicious.

Ingredients:

4-5 ice cubes, crushed
1 whole banana
2 small blood oranges
2 large spoonfuls of simple syrup (< 1/4 cup, or to taste)
1 large spoon full brown sugar simple syrup (< 1/8 cup, or to taste)

Optional: Rum or other preferred alcohol.

Crush ice in blender.

Add fruit and blend until smooth consistency.

Add simple syrups to taste.

Serve and enjoy! Recipe makes 2 small shakes.

Khao Niew Mamuang: Fun to Pronounce and Even More Fun to Eat

2011-01-15T14:56:00.006-05:00

Hey everyone! It’s Angie here, back from my first trip to Thailand and Singapore, ready to blog about all the tasty food we ate while there and recreate it back in the states. For my first post, I’m going to tell you all about one of my absolute favorite Thai dishes, mango sticky rice.

Sticky rice is one of those dishes that requires a labor of love, but the effort is sooo worth it! One of the most popular Thai desserts, mango sticky rice is sweet, creamy, slightly salty, with a faint scent of coconut.

I have tried making sticky rice at home before, using regular white rice. Do not attempt this! The results will be gummy and not tasty. To make real sticky rice, you need, well, sticky rice. Doh! The bag will be labeled sticky rice, sweet rice, or glutinous rice.

The recipe below is from a Thai cooking class Jeremy and I took at Phuket Thai Cookery School. The instructors stressed the importance of soaking the rice extensively before you start. Also, when we took the class, it was New Years and they died half the rice green and half the rice purple for an extra special treat. For green color, pound a few pandan leaves in water and add the colored water to the sauce before pouring on the rice. For purple, they crushed several anchan flowers in water and added it to the sauce.

Pandan leaves are also added to the boiling water in the steamer to flavor the rice. If you can't find pandan leaves, you can also add a few drops of pandan essence to the cooked rice.

The rice can be topped with fried mung beans, which add a salty flavor and crunchy texture. Yum!!

Ingredients

Serves 2
2 c. sticky rice
½ tsp. salt
1 c. coconut cream
½ c. sugar
1 tsp. fried mung beans
1 mango, peeled and sliced into bite-size pieces
5 pandanus leaves

Directions

Soak the rice in water for 3-5 hours, or up to overnight. Strain the water out. Wash twice and drain.

Wrap the rice in cheesecloth and put it in the top portion of a double steamer. Add the pandanus leaves to the simmering water. Steam the rice for 15-20 minutes until cooked.

Meanwhile, make the sauce by combining the coconut cream, sugar, and salt in a sauce pan. (Here’s where you add the pandan or anchan colored water if using)

Remove the rice from the steamer and combine with the sauce. Cover the pan and let the rice absorb the sauce for 20 minutes.

Top with the fried mung beans and serve alongside the cut up mango.

Indian Food in Malaysia: Breads Are Plentiful

2010-12-23T07:44:00.000-05:00

Malaysian cuisine is not a singular style like many other countries in the world. Rather than being shaped by immigrants and neighboring countries, all cuisine styles remain present in the style from the homeland they originated. After four months on the road, one jumped out as being unique to my tastes: Indian.

The unique blend of spices and ingredients gives Indian food a punch over most others, especially in the sauce department which lets the spices thrive. Chutney, Dhall, Masala, the flavors are unbelievable. But the best way to enjoy these wonderful sauces, which require a post upon themselves, is using Indian breads as a vehicle for consumption. Specifically Naan, Roti, and Thosi.

The three most popular Indian breads are one of the finest eating experiences that can be found, and for as little as 75 cents for a full plate, they truly fill you up without hitting the wallet.

Naan

Naan is the thickest of the three breads, due to being yeast leavened. Rather than being cooked in oil on a skillet, Naan is cooked in an ultra-high temperature tandoori oven. It is baked so fast that each side only requires a few seconds exposure to the oven before being ready to serve. Favorite serving includes stuffed with cheese and slathered with ample amounts of garlic and ghee, and oil.

Roti

Discussed prior on this blog when served as a desert in Thailand, Roti is an unleavened bread that is often lightly fried in oil in a large skillet and served with dipping sauces of Masala and Yoghurt on the side. Of the three breads, Roti is of middle thickness and has a slightly crisp bite. Favorite serving, naturally, is in dessert form filled with fruit and covered with chocolate and sweet milk

Thosi

Thosi bread is served very similar to Roti, however is thinner and slightly crispier depending on serving preferences. Often times plain Thosi is served extra large in a rolled sheet larger than one persons arm span. Many menus offer more stuffing options within Thosi, such as Masala, which make the dish more sandwich like than bread. Favorite serving is the plain variety with various dipping sauces, only for the tasty sides that are given and using the bread as a vehicle for tastiness.

Of the three bread choices found in Indian cooking in Malaysia (Naan, Roti, and Thosi), Naan would be my preferred choice to make at home, however not having a tandoori oven has proved making Naan to be difficult in the past. New tricks need to be applied in order to achieve the same effect as the tasty creation, and will require more research than normal

Penang Laksa - Another Deliciously Brothy Dish

2010-12-15T05:57:00.002-05:00

The island of Penang, off the Northwest coast of Malaysia, is highly regarded as the food mecca of the country. Over the years, immigrants from all nations have come to reside on the island and brought with them their cuisine.

Walking down the streets in the city of Georgetown is like being reunited with all aspects of my Asian trip thus far. Japanese temples, Chinese shops, Thai restaurants, and more places like Little India round out the cultural experience.

Although Penang is widely known as being the top spot for food, there is one dish that is semi-unique to the island: Laksa. semi-unique, as a Laksa dish made from different ingredients is also a highlight meal in neighboring Singapore.

A difficult dish to track down, Penang Laksa didn't disappoint. The best way to describe Laksa is to say that it is comparable to Vietnamese Pho, half noodles and half soup. The difference is that Laksa is acidic base instead of savory, everything that my taste buds crave in the hot environment.

A tamarind based broth provides a crisp punch, and the flavor is topped off with Asian mainstays such as onions, ginger, chilies, pineapple, cilantro, and fish. Each slurp is surprisingly bold of chilies and seasonings, but acidic from the pineapple and tamarind.

Filled with a freshly prepared noodle and served piping hot, Laksa is a tasty treat for just around $1 for a huge bowl at hidden hole-in-the-wall looking establishments throughout the island.

The closest competing dish to Penang Laksa is Tom Yum Soup in Thailand, however with different base ingredients, a strong reliance on lemongrass, and seafood added, the taste of Laksa is different enough to stand on its own.

It will be interesting to visit Singapore in a few weeks and taste their Laksa to see how the difference in tastes really is. But judging from what I hear, Penang Laksa is supposed to be the better of the two. This comes on high authority, as my roommate that recommended the dish came from Singapore specifically to try the tasty concoction.

Roti Crepes in Thailand - A Sweet, Sweet Delight

2010-12-09T03:23:00.002-05:00

Desserts from around the world are the absolute best delicacy there is. Give me a good appetizer or succulent entree, and I'll be a better person to have tried it and often times want to make it again at home. Give me a good dessert and I'll order it every day I'm in the country.

From Crepes in Paris to Gelato in Italy, Chocolate Melting Cake from Carnival Cruise Lines to Pasteis de Natas in Macao, I've been known to eat them all over and over. However, the Thai dessert I recently discovered, might just top them all.

In a general sense, Roti is an unleavened flat bread that is a staple of Indian cuisine similar to Naan (leavened) and Chapati (thinner). The dough is often rolled out and lightly fried on a large conical skillet with oil and ghee.

During cooking, the dough is oftentimes covered with an egg to help give it a crispy, yet delicate texture. Once spread, the dough is folded into a square and flipped to finish off the crispy snack. Cut into tiny pieces, and stuck with toothpicks it is served as an ideal piece of finger food.

In dessert form, the flavor transcends most boundaries and is something spectacular. Instead of being filling-less or packed with savory items, the dessert form includes fresh fruit such as bananas or pineapple prior to being folded. As if that is not enough, once cooked the entire delight is covered with any number of toppings including chocolate, honey, sweet condensed milk, or a combination of the three!

The absolute best flavor combination that I tried is often the most popular: banana filling, ample chocolate covering, and a hefty drizzle of sweet condensed milk. But switching that up with pineapple produces a similar tantalizing effect that I look forward to making at home time and time again.

Coupling this dessert with one of the many fruit shake flavors from often nearby vendors is the best way to complete this tasty and sugary experience. And at around $2 for the combination, this splurge does not break the budget.

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As the creation of Roti is derived from Indian culture, which is prevalent in Malaysia and Singapore much greater than Thailand, it will be interesting to see how the dish progresses in style throughout the other countries. If anything notable arises, you can be sure to expect a follow up post in the coming weeks!

Tom Yum Kung - Thai Hot and Sour Prawn Soup

2010-12-05T02:09:00.001-05:00

Finding a delicious soup that is unique from those on menus at home is a difficult task when abroad. Although the filling ingredients might be different, similar broths produce a familiar taste in many cases.

Seafood soups get around this monotony of flavor by being able to incorporate various base ingredients into a delicious final product. This is especially true with Tom Yum Kung, or the world famous Thai Hot and Sour Prawn Soup.

Although prawns are the popular ingredient, like most seafood soups, all manner of sea creature can be added for a beautiful product.

The secret behind a Thai seafood broth is just a few wonderful ingredients: lemongrass, chili paste, fish sauce, and lime juice. When made into a broth, the ingredients combine to form a beautiful flavor profile, that true to its name, is both hot and sour.

Unlike other Asian delicacies that I have encountered so far in this trip, Tom Yum Kung is a bit different in that nearly half of the ingredients are inedible. Precautions need to be made while consuming the soup in order to avoid having a mouth full of lemongrass, lime leaves, or sliced galangal root.

Still, sifting through the inedible flavor additives is well worth it, because a mouth full of sweet and spicy broth with seafood, onions and a bit of tomato is one of the best flavor combination there is to have in a soup, next to maybe crab soup in the USA.

The one downside to the recipes that I see will be an issue when recreating at home is the reliance on kaffir lime leaves. So far in all the Asian recipes that we have made and markets we have visited, we have yet to find kaffir lime leaves in the States. Sadly, no Thai shop owner has ever been able to suggest a suitable alternative.

But after recreating Tom Yum Kung at home, we'll know for sure whether or not it is an essential ingredient for taste! For the delicious soups case, I sure hope it is not.

Mixed Fruit Shake Roulette in South East Asia

2010-11-26T07:46:00.004-05:00

South East Asia has proven itself time and time again to be one of the top regions of the world for all things cuisine. The reason for this is partly due to the freshness of the food, which typically goes from the ground to plate within half a day.

Freshness like this cannot be replicated easily in many Western countries, and a little bit of taste is lost in the process. This trend does not just apply to meats and vegetables, but fruit as well.

Enhanced taste at a fraction of the cost is a wonderful thing for fruit, and the flavors shine in the form of fruit shakes that seem to be served throughout every country in South East Asia.

Although I have been partial to half of a whole pineapple for 33 cents, I have made a bit of a game out of getting fruit shakes. Something I have affectionately dubbed mixed fruit shake roulette.

It is easy to fall in line with one amazing flavor of shake (pineapple for me) and order it every time. Ordering the unknown 'Mixed Fruit Shake' that appears to be on every menu adds a bit of variety to the drink!

One day it could be banana, orange, and dragon fruit (red is better than white). Another it could be pineapple, mango, and strawberry. Sometimes they are red and sometimes orange. The combination are endless, and each one is incredibly tasty.

After about the 30th fruit shake, I finally got the chance to find out what the secret ingredients were. Often times many street vendors that make fruit shakes put indeterminate liquids in with the fruit in order to sweeten the mix.

I was correct in assuming that one was simple syrup (ample sugar boiled in water), but was surprised to find that a second additive was simple syrup with brown sugar. simplistic, ingenious even, and incredibly tasty. A generous spoonful of each with a massive amount of fruit and ice is all you need for the perfect shake.

Part of me now wonders how it will taste with a bit of rum thrown in the mix. We will find out at home as we tailor make the perfect South East Asian fruit shake recipe!

To make South East Asian fruit shakes at home, check out this post!

Surprising Find - Thai Curry Pastes are Different!

2010-11-19T07:36:00.001-05:00

Thai food is easily the most prevalent cuisine of any country in restaurants back home. Everywhere I seem to go, new Thai grocery stores, restaurants, or other establishments seem to be popping up left and right.

In the last entry, which discussed having the national dish Pad Thai and learning the recipe during a cooking class, I made the statement that Thai food tastes very similar to those we have at home. This is incredibly true, but there is one thing that is a bit different: the curry paste.

Thai curry paste has no resemblance to any curry paste that I have ever seen at home. This includes both prepared pastes in stores, and homemade from recipes. Instead, it is something a whole lot more interesting.

The best way to describe a Thai curry paste is that it is almost playdoh looking in appearance. For all seriousness of the word, it is a literal paste. In fact, the only difference between red and green curry pastes in most styles is the color of the pepper that is used. Everything else in most preparations are the same.

I thought this might have been a result of the recipes that the cooking class showed, created in a way to be easier for people at home to recreate. I secretly hoped that other places would be different for more variety. But exploring a Thai grocery store confirmed that all of my observations are true as so far as I can tell. Sitting out for all to see was a curry bar, in which multiple varieties of curry pastes, in uniform playdoh appearance, were available for all to measure out and take home for use.

Thai curry paste at home, especially those sold in stores, often appear to be more liquid and less homogeneous than the varieties found in Thailand. When comparing red vs green pastes at home, the recipes and bottles available for purchase can be entirely different.

Somehow, ignoring all this, the taste is eerily similar. This means comparing the dish based on memory may not pull out any subtle differences that exist between the two. When making Thai curry at home, we're going to approach it a little differently. I've already concluded based on my palette that the many Thai recipes we've had do curry justice, especially in a restaurant setting. Still, since we eat curry quite a bit, we'll find a recipe that is the best representation of the dish, as we do with every recipe.

On top of that we are going to investigate the differences in taste between store bought paste, the paste I was taught to make at my cooking class, and pastes found in common Thai recipe books - all while keeping the recipe of the dish the same. So if there are any small differences between the three varieties, we will find out and discuss it extensively! At the very least, this will be one tasty adventure.

Thai Cooking Class and a Proper Pad Thai

2010-11-11T11:16:00.001-05:00

To start a one-and-a-half month stay in Thailand properly, I could think of no better way to get inspired by Thai cuisine than to take a cooking class. When thinking of cooking classes, Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand reigns supreme.

For just 900 baht (~$30 US) the 7 hour class included just about everything a cooking class should: 1 hour market day tour, appetizer, soup, curry, stir-fry, dessert (all individually chosen), and a printed book with every recipe on the menu including those not prepared.

The class wasn't the cheapest nor most expensive in Chiang Mai, but was absolutely perfect for free reign of a large menu, entire day of cooking, and proper facilities for culinary education. Sometimes the little things such as those are worth a few extra dollars to have at your disposal.

Rather than go off in greater detail about the cooking class, this entry will focus entirely on the iconic Thai Dish Pad Thai, which was my chosen stir-fry item of the day. Because when you are in Thailand, why would you bother choosing anything else?

The recipe is as below for one serving.

Ingredients

250 grams rice noodle (if dry, soak for 15 minutes in water to loosen)
50 grams chicken (or favorite filler)
3 tablespoon oil
20 grams Chinese chive or spring onion
1-2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 egg
30 grams bean sprouts
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
50 grams tofu, cut into 1cm cubes
1/2 cup water

Directions

-Heat the oil over low heat, add garlic and fry for about one minute
-Add chicken (or other meat), tofu, and stir until the chicken is cooked thoroughly
-Break the egg and spread in with the chicken, stir until cooked
-Add noodles, water, and stir until water begins to boil and noodles tender
-Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, and sugar, stir
-Add bean sprouts and Chinese chives, stir
-Remove from heat and serve with fresh vegetables as desired. Garnish with lime juice, ground peanuts, and ground chili pepper to taste.

After sampling Pad Thai three times so far in the country, and countless times at home, I can say this recipe is a fair example of traditional Thai cuisine.

You may be wondering why I referenced tasting it at home, and that is because I have come to realize that the Thai restaurants I frequent are quite consistent in flavor to the noodle and curry dishes served here. This, sadly, may not be the case with every restaurant outside of Thailand and others may not be so lucky.

From the perspective of desirable Pad Thai, the only changes I would make would to be sure to add sufficient fish sauce and chili pepper (maybe even fresh) to the dish, as I felt the sauce was lacking a bit of pop that chili would add.

After looking over the recipe and comparing it to how we made it in the class, I realized that we were told to put in less fish sauce than called for, and might be part of my issue. It is minor, however, because the dish was still fantastic overall and will be made at home countless times in the future.

During the cooking class I made a video as the instructor prepared the dish as a demonstration. It is truly amazing that once all the ingredients are cut up the dish takes just a few minutes to cook. Incredibly easy!