FIELD NOTES on Asian Cooking
by soffiagudrun
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.
This one for later
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!