Exploring new tastes

Exploring new tastes

There's nothing enthusiastic cooks enjoy more than expanding their repertoires

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE

People who like to cook will almost automatically cultivate the detective skills they use to track down new recipes to try. They can lose all sense of time as they fall under the spell of recipe after recipe in a cookbook or watch a chef preparing a dish on television or online. Then there is the pleasure of shopping for the fresh ingredients and seasonings and preparing them for use. They won't notice the heat from the stove and will ignore the pain from hot dishes taken fresh from the oven with ungloved hands or spatterings of hot oil from frying foods.

BUSY BRUNCH: Sandwiches and fruit can make a good breakfast on a rushed morning.

Cooks who track down recipes do it for different reasons. They may be seeking new dishes for business reasons, preparing themselves for overseas cooking jobs, or just looking for interesting dishes to enjoy with the family.

There are situations where family meals make special demands in the kitchen. Maybe it's a big family with many members where several of them usually have time to eat together, or holidays when relatives gather for a big meal. Another stimulus for recipe hunting might be foodies in the family who like to try new dishes and talk together about food. Sometimes there are family traditions about relatives or ancestors whose kitchen skills have become family legends. Whatever the case, the things needed by a committed recipe hunter are time, the proper materials, imagination and experience.

For cooking to be fun, and for the variety that makes meals exciting, it is useful for the cook to range over different cooking styles and traditions: Thai, Western, Chinese and other ethnic cuisines. Preparation and planning is extremely important. The cook has to know how much of each type of dish should be prepared, which ones should be served when, what kinds of substitutions can be made and so on, so that the ingredients can be readied in advance and be right at hand.

One example is breakfast foods to be eaten by children before they leave for school and adults before going to work. Western-style sandwiches are a good choice, because they are nutritious, do not require much time to make and are easy to eat. On days off when there is more time, fancier breakfasts and special evening meals can be prepared, a good opportunity for foreign dishes to appear in Thai everyday life.

For Thai food, really the heart of most meals, there are the pad pet dishes (spicy stir-fries), pad kraprao (spicy stir-fries with Thai basil), kaeng som (sour-spicy-sweet soups made with pureed fish, vegetables and other ingredients), and nam prik kapi pla tu thawt (a spicy chilli dip sauce served with fried mackerel and vegetables). There are also sure to be some Chinese dishes, mild recipes that can balance and douse the fires the very spicy dishes ignite. These might include pad pak (vegetable stir-fries), pla pad khuen chai (fish stir-fried with Chinese celery), gung pad prio wan (a sweet and sour shrimp stir-fry), or kai toon (a savoury steamed egg custard with vegetables and seafood added).

But when the main dish is a Chinese recipe, or when the meal includes a Chinese dish such as Sichuan-style gai chae lao pad prik haeng (chicken marinated in Chinese liquor and stir-fried with dried chillies), fish steamed with soya sauce or ginger, or pork ribs steamed with pickled limes, there should also be a fried egg topped with minced pork that has been stir-fried with fresh basil and spicy seasonings or pla duc thawt krawp pad prik haeng bai horapa (crispy-fried pieces of catfish stir-fried with dried chillies and basil). These combinations show that Thai and Chinese dishes can coexist very comfortably as part of the same meal.

Once a meal has been planned, the next step is to prepare the ingredients in advance. Among the ready-to-use ingredients there are some, such as Chinese liquor intended for cooking, soya sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, dried chillies, large garlic bulbs and small-clove Thai garlic, that can be stored for long periods of time. Many of them are used mostly for Asian food, but no cook getting the kitchen in order should overlook rosemary, oregano, thyme, paprika, olive oil or others that should be on hand for Western dishes.

As for ingredients that can't be kept for long, it is important to plan for cooking with them as often as possible so that they are used up before they have spoiled or take up too much room in the refrigerator. Foreign recipes might call for cheese or cream, and Asian dishes for pickled garlic or limes, the fermented soya bean sauce called tao jio, the sweet and spicy chilli paste called nam prik phao, kapi and palm sugar.

These are a few of the cooking ingredients that should be available in the kitchen. One more that is very important is broth or stock. These days there are plenty of ready-to-use and pre-seasoned ones available off-the-shelf, but many of them include MSG, so when approaching recipes that require stock, the best idea is to boil the chicken or pork bones or the fish yourself. Use as much as is needed for the dish at hand and freeze the rest for future use. This is cheaper and safer than relying on commercial stock from the supermarket. Preparing the curry or other seasoning pastes for Thai food is not hard, but it can take time. By making them yourself you can select and measure the exact amount of each ingredient needed to obtain the taste or intensity that you want. There are exceptions, though, for seasoning mixtures used to make specialised dishes or foods from other cultures. The seasoning for larb nuea _ Northern Thai larb _ includes many ingredients that must be combined in just the right proportions, and it may be best bought ready-mixed. Curry pastes used to make kaeng massaman or an Indian korma are best obtained ready-made from vendors in those ethnic communities.

With the fresh vegetables that have to be prepared before cooking, there are some that can be used in Chinese, Western and Thai dishes _ fak thong Yeepon (Japanese pumpkin squash) fits well into all three cuisines, and leeks can be used widely in Chinese dishes such as the liquor-marinated chicken recipe mentioned above. They can also be cooked into the stock for many Western dishes, among many other recipes.

Of course, when cooking a new dish from a recipe it is important to realise that it is not easy to have everything turn out perfectly the first time, even though you have followed the recipe to the letter. The family members or others who taste it will give their opinions and rate it, giving you a basis for corrections and adjustments to be made the next time you prepare it. Once you have finally focused the dish into exactly what you want it to be, it is yours for life.

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