meemalee

Som tam is more than a Thai salad - it's a trial by fire. Journalist Marina O'Loughlin commented that, "I had one in Bangkok that was so fiery I almost had an out-of-body experience ", and fellow blogger Hollow Legs ' verdict on a proper som tam was that, " It should be face-crunchingly spicy ". That probably makes som tam, a wondrous spicy green papaya salad , sound like a bad thing, but it's not. I guess the closest analogy for me is when you're standing right next to the speaker at a gig played by your favourite band in the world (for me right now this would be Chicago band Tortoise ). At the end you're left dazed and reeling, with white spots flashing in your eyes and a pounding ache in your ears, but the pain is spiked with the sharpest, purest, giddy pleasure. Maybe we're all just masochists. Talking of pounding, "som tam" actually means "sour pound", as it's made in a pestle and mortar - you mash away to ...

I've never been a fan of spring rolls. I'm fairly sure this is as a result of early exposure at school dinners to a comestible dubbed a pancake roll - a huge, solid, brown rectangle dripping with grease and flabby beansprouts. But summer rolls are an entirely different matter. Fresh, light, stuffed with herbs and lettuce and other stuff so deliciously good for you that it's practically a salad, without the hair-shirt. A traditional Vietnamese snack, summer rolls aka gỏi cuốn need at least one specialist ingredient (the rice paper wrappers), but it's worth schlepping out and stocking up. Classic fillings are thin rice noodles, lettuce, pork and prawns. You can leave out the pork to make it meat-free or substitute fried tofu. I like to use diced roast pork belly (ok, so the claim to health food becomes wobbly here) or sometimes chunks of roast duck. You could use leftovers from a roast. Lettuce-wise, you want to use butter, Boston or Bibb - the round, velvety type - as...

Saturday evening, I'm at a family wedding, full of cake and gazing happily at the flickering tealights dotted around on my table. My 10 year old niece comes up to me and opens her hand and says, "What are these, Daw Daw ?" Her palm is full of star anise taken from the table centrepieces. I say to her, "Smell one" and she does, and she says it smells spicy and faintly sweet. I then take one pod and wave it through a flame and say, "Smell it again", and her eyes light up and she says it smells wonderful. I tell her that it's a spice used in Asian cookery and she runs off to gather more, and then insists I give them all the same treatment. As I singe the anise pods one by one, she gets one of the wedding favours, a gauzy reticule full of sugared almonds, up-ends the sweets inside, and replaces them with the charred anise. She then reties the satin ribbon carefully and sniffs the newly-stuffed little pouch appreciatively. That scent of charred star ani...

A new series of Gordon's Great Escapes hosted by Gordon Ramsay starts tonight (Monday 9 May) on Channel 4. In the last series, Ramsay explored India, but this time round he's taking on four countries. The focus is South East Asia, and so he's travelling to Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand to taste and to have a go at cooking the local cuisines. I'm delighted to say that some of my own recipes are being featured on the Channel 4 website which accompanies Ramsay's new series. Gordon's first stop is Cambodia, so here's my recipe for Amok Trei or Fish Amok - a Cambodian aka Khmer fish curry. Amok is a coconut curry steamed gently in banana leaves (the Thais call their version "haw mok") and is considered by many to be the national dish of Cambodia. It's usually made with fish, but chicken, tofu and even snails are also used as the main protein. The curry base of amok is a deeply fragrant paste known as kroeung , and it comprises a mix of...

2011 saw a brave new world as MasterChef (aka MehsterChef ) copied its Australian counterpart by installing a fancy piece of topiary and dragging out the already interminable extravaganza by showing us the previously untelevised audition stages. Hopefuls prepared their top dish to win a place in the final 20 (twenty!), but the series began with a whimper as the best part of the show - the Invention Test - seemed to have been consigned to history. Where's the fun in watching people make the one dish they know by heart? Where's the creativity, the ingenuity? Worse was the bizarrely humiliating format, as they were forced to wheel a tea-trolley of comestibles onto a stage and turn tricks for the gurning Gregg Wallace and John Torode. Hopes crushed, unsuccessful contenders wheeled their trolleys back off again under the eyes of their disappointed loved ones. After two episodes of X-FactorChef, I got fed up and turned off - even the gruesome twosome blind-folding contestants and m...

L-R: Johnnie Mountain of the English Pig, London (Great British Menu 2011) and Marcus Bean of The New Inn, Baschurch (Iron Chef Winner 2010) at Kai We Care (photo © Kavita Favelle of Kavey Eats ) “It’s a pretty tall order given the competition, but even among chefs, Johnnie Mountain could be considered seriously eccentric” Charles Campion I'm ashamed (relieved) to say that my TV viewing has diminished greatly of late, but I'm hoping to catch Great British Menu 2011 from tomorrow. This year the chefs are being challenged to cook for the ultimate street party, The People's Banquet - inspired by The Big Lunch , a nationwide one-day event that encourages people to cook and eat with their neighbours in the spirit of community, friendship and fun. This week on the Great British Menu, it's the turn of the North West chefs Bruno Birkbeck, Johnnie Mountain and Lisa Allen to fight it out. I got the chance to speak with Johnnie Mountain , chef/owner of the English Pig on Aldersga...

Claire, David, John FACT – I watched about 4 episodes of MasterChef the Professionals this year (including the one with " 39 Year Old Lee " and the one where cocky Kevin threw a wobbly). FACT – That means I’m probably not qualified to review it. FACT – That’s not going to stop me. Our three finalists are Claire Lara, a tutor at Liverpool Community College; John Calton, chef at the Duke of Wellington pub, in Newton, Northumberland and Dave Coulson, chef at the Eden Castle Inn in Hartlepool. They’re all Northern. One of them will win. Backstory time! Some kind of MOR dross (Keane?) plays as we find ourselves in Liverpool to discover that Clare grew up on a beach with a postman who fed her on oven chips. Suddenly Air plays, filling me with intense deja vu , but it all makes sense, as next she did a YTS which sent her to Paris for five years (long freaking youth training scheme), and fell for a French chef called Marc who thought her an oddball, but married her anyway. She now t...