I'm one day behind but I'm going to leave it that way rather than doing several posts at once thus flooding my (two) dedicated readers with food news. Mind you, this is going to be a weekend where too much food is barely enough so there might have to be some catch-up at some point.
Last night I celebrated a Friday night at home by making neua pat nahm prik pao kaek or stir-fried beef with spices. This started off looking like a fabulous dish and ended up as a learning experience. Now in general I hate learning experiences; my character is developed enough for the time being thank-you and I have no desire to 'man-up'. This however, came with about five minutes of pure pleasure which went some way to mitigating the educational benefit. Thompson's recipe starts out with dry-frying coriander and cumin seeds, grinding them, mixing them with fish-sauce to create a marinade and using it on the beef. Thompson says to let the meat marinate for a few hours but mine got the exact length of an episode of Dexter. Then I deep-fried chopped shallots and cooked the meat with stock, chilli powder, white pepper and chilli jam. Therein lay the problem. In the spirit of slavish obedience I followed the instruction to add 2-3 tablespoons of chilli jam. I used to be a heat-wooss. I'm not any more but this was still a bridge too far. I managed to eat a fair bit of dinner - alternated with sips of milk - and I do plan to make the dish again this week with rather adjusted quantities. It did taste amazing for the minute and a half before my taste-buds ducked for cover and threatened to bring in UN representatives to monitor the situation.
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