Fried Curried Rice

From Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion, 1991.

When there is cooked rice left over the most obvious thing to do is to make a fried rice. I varied from my usual mix to try out this different one.

I prepared all of the ingredients first. An onion and a potato were finely diced. A garlic clove was chopped. Half a cup of peas were measured out. I made a sauce mix of 3 tablespoons soy sauce, ½ teaspoon sugar, a teaspoon curry powder and ½ teaspoon white pepper. It was time to begin.

In a wok I heated about 2 tablespoons olive oil and fried the garlic for a minute watching carefully to see it did not burn. Two cups of boiled rice went in next and was stirred around to ensure that all the grains were separated. Now the rest of the ingredients went in and were cooked for a minute or two more. The rice was served with sliced cucumber.

This was an acceptable fried rice though I do prefer the one that was taught me. The curried one was quite subtle and seemed to lack a bit of bounce.  I think perhaps it needed something like a chutney to accompany it.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Steamed Stuffed Won Ton

From Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion, 1991.

I really wanted to succeed with making won ton and I felt sure that with this book I would probably not go wrong. So far, all that I have made from Thai Vegetarian Cooking has been a success.

It was not difficult making the filling. Boiling an egg and chopping the white couldn’t be easier.  Making a paste in the mortar and pestle with coriander roots and peppercorns no problem. Frying some garlic in oil to make a garlic oil was pretty basic.  Chopping and mixing the final ingredients: bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and onion, and some bindings like flour and egg white, together with flavourings like soy sauce, sugar and the paste was the most difficult process so far.

It was filling the won tons and making them into the required shape where I fell down. The instructions were not completely clear in that it just said to gather the edges together and crimp them to form a money bag. I tried to close the bags tight which apparently was not what was required. They would not stay closed. The bags would not hold together. I have a feeling that I did not get the filling satisfactorily sticky to hold the pastry. After a lot of squeezing and binning of a few, some cursing and complaining, I had enough to put in the steamer.

They were all right, I suppose, but they weren’t right. They had a nice crunch and the flavour was not too bad, but they looked wrong.

I have since been shown what they should have been. The money bag is left open rather than closed tightly.

I might have another try at a later time, perhaps from a different recipe.  

                                                                                                                         

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔

                                                                                               

Chickpea Curry

Chickpea Curry

from Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion, 1991.

I have two different Thai vegetarian cookery books. My impression is that each one approaches their recipes from a different direction. One uses traditional recipes and then modifies them to make them vegetarian. The other creates the recipes from the start.

The few recipes I have cooked from the former have not been overly successful as far as flavour has been concerned. They have missed out on the rich tang of Thai cooking.

From the second book I have only made two recipes and these have pleased with the richness of the flavour though, so far, they have not, to my mind, been flavours that have been particularly Thai. Nevertheless this is the cookery book which I prefer out of the two.

In all fairness to the books I'll keep cooking from both. Once I've tried a bit further it's quite possible I could change my first impressions.

The chickpea curry from Thai Vegetarian Cooking was an easy one to make once the herbs and spices were pounded in the mortar. From then on it was only a matter of adding the ingredients into the saucepan in the specified order. A warm and satisfying meal.  

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Fried Rice with Turmeric

Fried Rice with Turmeric

from Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion, 1991.

I’m never successful when I try to cook Asian food. I don't seem able to get the flavours right. Now I have been given a new cookbook to try and so it looks like here I go again.

The book has an introduction that is full of interest for vegetarians for the author was not vegetarian before they began the book nor are they now. However they have been won over by true Thai vegetarian meals. 

In Thailand they looked for meals that were not just modifications of meat meals with items such as fish sauce left out. They had a difficult search but eventually found places where the meals were genuinely vegetarian. The author has since gone back to London and helped open the first Thai vegetarian restaurant in Britain. 

After reading this introduction I was certainly ready to try the recipes.

I began with a simple recipe for fried rice with turmeric. Now the one Asian meal I can cook successfully is fried rice and I can do this because over time and over many repeats I have been carefully drilled into how to go about a Malaysian fried rice. I am quite proud of my efforts in this. 

So I now tried this particular fried rice with some trepidation as I knew it was not just a matter of tipping all the ingredients into the wok and stirring them together.

The dish turned out to be somewhat easier than the one I usually make. But I was very pleased with the result. It was full of flavour and very colourful. In fact I think I’ll have to make another one for the teacher of the Malaysian fried rice.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔