FIELD NOTES on Asian Cooking

My friend and I went to a few Asian stores in town and came home with all kind of goodies.  The plan was to make a Korean Inspired dinner.  We ended up making Pho, Green Curry dish with Spaghetti squash (sooo good)  and Short ribs that melted of the bones.  The “Go-Chu-Jang” is a Korean chile-paste that I also recommend you get if you are into Korean cooking.  This one was not too spicy but nice flavour

 

 

I´m taking down all the recipes we made so I can do this again someday.

My Field Notes

First of all, you need to have lots of chile, garlic and ginger.  I made green curry and used ginger, jalapeno and garlic with a bit of coconut milk and made a paste in my Nutrabullet.

Green Curry with Spaghetti Squash

  • Green curry Paste
  • Chinese Cabbage, finely cut
  • Carrots, finely cut
  • Red Pepper / Green pepper, finely cut
  • And the star of the show Spaghetti Squash
  • 1 can coconut milk
  • Noodles or rice to serve it with

Heat oven 190°c  Cut the squash in half, brush with olive oil and a little salt.  Bake for 50 minutes or so.

Oil on a pan, all veggies sauteed except the squash. Green curry paste and coconut milk mixed in, then I scooped out the Squash and mixed it with the rest on the pan.

You can add Mung bean sprouts to the dish, I served it with the pho and had some with this dish on the side.

 

My friend made the short ribs, she slow-cooked it to perfection in a slow cooker.

The sauce with it was so good.  I don´t have the exact recipe but if you google “Korean Kalbi sauce” or “Bulgogi” you get lots of good recipes.

I made mango sauce, spicy Pear-Apple sauce and Thai sweet chile sauce.

The Thai sweet sauce is SO EASY TO MAKE, that way you know what you are eating and like I do, I choose my garlic well.  (I prefer Italian, but this time I used Spanish)

 

I have already blogged about Thai sweet chile sauce here.

One of the tricks I learned was to blacken the ginger over an open flame on the gas stove.

Mango Sauce

  • Mango (fresh or frozen)
  • Chile
  • Garlic
  • Ginger
  • Cilantro
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Umami Paste from Clearspring

In a pan heat up some garlic, ginger and chile.  Add mango, I used frozen one, salt and pepper.  Let it simmer for 5 – 10 minutes.  I use my Nutrabullet to mash it into a sauce.  Add lime and finely cut cilantro.

Apple-Pear Sauce

  • Few apples cut them in cubes (I used 4)
  • Few pears, cut in cubes (I used 2)
  • Chile
  • Garlic
  • Ginger
  • Cilantro
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • water- for simmer

Same method as the Mango sauce.  Heat up the spices, add apples and pears and add a little bit of water for simmer, about 10 minutes.  Get the sauce into a blender, mixer to make a smooth sauce.

I bought UMAMI paste with Chili from Clearspring.  It is really good and really gives good flavour.

The Pho was made with Oxtail broth.  I put oxtails in simmering water and cooked it for at least 3 hours.

I didn´t have anis stars, so I used Chinese 5 spices.

Here is a recipe for PHO I made a few years ago.

 

We also made rice paper veggie rolls.  So so so delicious and so so so fresh!

Veggie Rolls in Rice Paper

  • Rice Paper
  • Carrots
  • Cucumber
  • Red Pepper
  • Fresh Mint
  • Fresh Cilantro

Wet the pice paper and fill it up with goodies.   The magic here are all the dipping sauces I made.  They all go well with this dish.

I googled a lot when making this dinner and to see how to make rice paper rolls I recommend browsing through videos on Youtube.

Here are some links that help me out.

 

Rice Paper Rolls

Spaghetti Squash

Very good video about PHO

Short Ribs

PHO with Jimmy Ly at Munchies

 

This one for later

Spring Rolls

Vietnamese Dipping Sauce

 

If you have not followed the cooking with Maangchi on Youtube I totally recommend her, such a cool lady.  Her Mung beans are very very good.

 

The Northern Lights were dancing like crazy this weekend. It´s not easy to go to sleep when the view from your bed is like this!