Thailand here we come!

Those of you who read this will undoubtedly have at some point  in your lives, eaten Thai food.  More fragrant and delicate than Chinese food,  where the texture of the food is equally important as the taste.  Today was Thai day with Joe, James and Luke.  Luke had recovered from yesterdays severing of his thumb on the mandoline and the start of James' TV series "Out of the frying pan" has been delayed until March 1st!
On the menu today - Lunch -  Poh Pia Pod (Thai Spring rolls) and Tod Mum Pla (Thai fish cakes) both with a Tamarind dip and Nam aa-jaad. A three course dinner of Tom Yum Kung (Hot and sour soup with king prawns and mushrooms), Gang Kiew Wann (Chicken green curry) with Kaw Savy (Boiled jasmine rice) followed by Pon-la-mai nam-cheum (Fresh chilled melon with a Thai syrup).  So our taste buds were in for a real bashing!  Not only our taste buds but our muscles were also in for a pasting!  Authentic Thai food requires one to mix all the spices and ingredients together in a stone or granite pestle and mortar - if you've missed out on going to the gym for a week, I can highly reccommend this as a great form of weight training! So our first job of the day was to roast some garlic in oil in the wok!  Then came the preparation of our spring roll filling - this was the easy bit - rolling the spring rolls became more difficult - particularly when your hands and fingers resemble large pork sausages! 

Undeterred by my first effort, I proceded to make a dozen perfectly shaped spring rolls ready to be plunged into the deep fat fryer.

Then came the fish cakes - a mixture of white fish, salmon, spices all mashed up in a food processor and rolled by our own fair hands into a small cake - also ready for the deep fat fryer!  The accompanying dips were diametrically opposed to each other in taste - something that apprently in Thailand is good - the Tamarind dip was very sour whilst the Nam aa-jaad had both sweetness and heat - 8 small chillies in it along with cucumber, shallots, sugar and coriander and rice vinegar.  With all this done we then had the task of preparing the green curry paste for our curry.

Out came the pestle and mortar and into went things I'd never even heard of - galangal, birds eye green chillis (not the frozen type!), star anise powder to name but a few.  Once all the ingredients were assembled the hard work came - 20 minutes of bashing and crushing and beating the mixture into a paste.  If you ever buy green curry paste in supermarket, it bears no resemblence to what we produced today!  The paste was then fried in oil and left to cool ready for the afternoon!  Into the deep fat fryer went our spring rolls and Thai fish cakes and out came a delicious cacophony of tastes, ready to excite and tittilate our palates.

After our mouths and stomachs had a had a deserved rest we set about making the green chicken curry and the hot and sour soup.  More slicing and dicing, more crushing and mixing - lashings of coconut milk and chilli and boiling and simmering until the temperature of the kitchen rose to a level which was akin to the back streets of Bangkok (or Thump willie as my friend Malcolm affectionaly refers to it as).  A slight disaster occurred, not for me but for Craig, who is allergic to prawns, shrimps etc - an itchy rash appeared on his arm and hands so that was his day over - boy was he gutted!  On the plus side it did mean that there was going to be a spare bottle of Singha Beer with the meal!  Luke was finding it  difficult to keep up in the dish washing area with woks flying at him from all directions but his professional pride came to the fore - pots and pans were washed and replaced on the cooking stations with military precision.  All our dishes were sampled and scutinised under the watchful eyes of  Joe and James whose combined ages don't come any where near mine!  More fish sauce, more sugar, more garlic - Fem and I tweaked our food until it was spot on!

Sammy the Shrimp Head trying to escape from the soup!

Thai green chicken curry with a fragrant jasmine rice and a beer!

Back into the kitchen to clear up and then the coup de grace - the pudding - served in a chilled martini glass - the end to a perfect meal!

And so I can honestly say that my taste buds have been teased and tested  - balanced and not whirled to a pulp.  Did you know that most Thai people believe that women make the best cooks as they apparently have the patience to deal with the complexity of Thai recipes?  Try telling that to the two Vickis!