In the age of organic produce and slow food, there’s a heightened curiosity for what’s going into the stuff on your plate. Where does it come from? What’s it made of? And how was it made? From curry pastes with tons of salt to sausages with “eyes and bits,” there are plenty of things we consume daily that hold dark secrets. Here, we meet three foodies who have decided to take matters into their own hands, quite literally. Restaurateurs Bo and Dylan make their own curry paste. Web designer Caitlyn Webster bakes her own bread. And stay at home dad (and ex-chef) Joe Sloane makes his own sausages. Not only do they know exactly what’s going into their food, but they claim nothing helps chill you out like a long session in front of a hot stove.
Southern Style Curry Paste
with Bo and Dylan
Of the three foods in this story, curry paste is probably the most laborious, the cheapest to buy readymade in a store and the item you’ll think is the most ridiculous to make at home. But Bo and Dylan have convinced us that it can actually be a satisfying way to relieve some tension.
After working at David Thompson’s Nahm in London (among other places), they now co-run the Thai restaurant, Bo.Lan (42 Soi Pichai Rannarong, Sukhumvit Soi 26, 02-260-2962), where they create two curry pastes from scratch every single day.
Making your own paste, you get all the freshness. From the galangal, lemongrass, shallot, and the garlic. Because once you pound all this stuff up, it’s going to start fermenting within fifteen minutes. With processed paste, they’re going to say ‘no preservatives added’ but will put in 10% extra salt instead, so it’s too salty.
The dry chillies, we try to get from Ortorkor market. They sort sort all the moldy ones out before they package it up. That’s another good thing when you do your own curry paste. People in the market or big companies, sometimes they don’t care. They just shove it all in and sometimes you’ve got all sorts of things in there, moldy chillies and worse.
Don’t add too much salt at the start. You can always add more later, when you’re seasoning the curry. You just add some salt at the beginning to prevent fermentation.
Add your ingredients gradually, and make sure you have a nice, fine paste. There’s nothing more horrible than a really nice curry that tastes wonderful but has a big chilli chunk floating around in it.
Practice. Take your time. Experiment with quantities and ingredients. When they used to teach how to make curry paste, they made you sniff the pestle. And if you sniff it and it doesn’t have enough galangal you put more galangal in, and if you got enough, you stop adding it.
All old recipes, or a lot of them, are just a list of ingredients, not really recipes. So it’s up to the individual to make the paste how they see fit. You don’t need a prior knowledge of the paste if you just know what’s in it. You just start making it and say, “Oh wow, this is way too hot, I better add some of this.” Or, “Wow, this isn’t fragrant at all, I better add more lemongrass.”
It’s much more satisfying, making your own curry paste, and then eating it. It’s also probably slightly better for you because you know exactly what’s in it.
It’s good when you’re angry. You get the paste fine faster. Stress release!
The Recipe
It’s hard work, but it isn’t rocket science. Add one ingredient at a time and pound until you have a fine paste, before adding the next. We list the ingredients here, in optimal pounding order.
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 coriander roots
- 100 dried red chillies
- 10 bird eye chillies
- zest of 3 kaffir limes
- 1/3 cup fresh galangal, sliced
- 3/4 cup lemongrass, chopped
- 1/3 cup coconut, toasted and shredded
- 2 sticks turmeric, peeled
- 1/3 cup shallots
- 1/4 cup garlic, sliced
- 1 tablespoon shrimp kapi (fermented shrimp paste), roasted
This will make enough paste for a lot of curries. While you can store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two weeks, the flavor does start diminishing after three days. If you can’t possibly use all that paste, divide this recipe by a third.
Honey Oat Bread
with Caitlyn Webster
Originally from New York City, Caitlyn has lived in Thailand for over five years, during which time, in addition to working, she has baked regularly from her grandmother’s recipes. She’s even compiled an informative and friendly cookbook, American Baking (Oom Publishing, B350) which recently hit the shelves and features English-language recipes alongside Thai translations. Despite the book, Caitlyn is not a professional baker. All her breads and pastries are made at home and end up being enjoyed by her fortunate friends, free of charge!
I actually enjoy making bread. I enjoy the kneading process. I enjoy watching it rise. There’s something really nice about fresh bread right out of the oven. When you make it yourself, you know exactly what’s in it. You know if there’s preservatives; what kind of flour; if it’s margarine or butter. You can say, “Ooh I really like this seed, this nut, this whole wheat flour. I’m going to mix them all together and see what I get.”
My first few loaves were terrible. You could probably kill somebody with them. The kneading was off. I didn’t let it rise long enough. I was using bad yeast. I was scalding my yeast.
I really enjoy measuring out all of the ingredients in a scientific kind of way. It’s different than cooking, because with cooking you can sort of throw things in and taste it. But baking is a science.
It takes a lot of time, but it doesn’t actually take a lot actual work. The work time is about twenty minutes. If you’re home on a Saturday, you can use that baking time to play on your computer or clean your house. You don’t have to knead dough for three hours.
People think I’m crazy! My family in America thinks I’m crazy. Everyone thinks it’s a bit too much, because they consider this work.
I like adding seeds and nuts. I get toasted seeds, or raw seeds and toast them. I like sunflower seeds; I like walnuts. Thai pumpkin seeds are good in bread. The ones you get in the little packets at 7-11. Sesame is really good in breads.
A lot of the ingredients are different here. For instance, lemons are really expensive in Thailand; limes are not. I thought, “I have a lemon bread recipe. Why don’t I try it with limes?” So I’d been adapting the recipes and putting them up on my website. Then I realized that I had enough to make a whole book. So I contacted OOM Publishing.
I don’t consider baking work. I consider it play time. Instead of watching TV or sitting around, I bake. I like the process of creating something and I feel really good about it afterwards. It’s a solitary thing during the process, but I love to share my food with people.
If you think it’s work, it’s not for you. If you find it soothing, and the time is not wasted, then absolutely, baking bread is for you.
The Recipe
- 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted (28g)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup rolled oats
- 3 cups bread flour
1) Warm the water until it feels warm but not super hot, about bathwater temperature. Add to a bowl with the yeast and the honey and mix well.
2) Add the melted butter, salt, oats and 2 cups of the bread flour. Mix until combined.
3) Flour your counter top and remove the dough to start kneading. Knead with your hands until elastic and smooth, about 10 minutes of hard work. When the dough sticks to your hands, add a bit more flour. You’ll need at least another cup’s worth of flour for the kneading process.
4) Coat a bowl with some oil and add the dough, turning it a few times to make sure it’s thoroughly coated. Cover with a damp cloth and leave it to rise until it doubles in size, about 1-2 hours. If you are in a rush you can set it on a warm spot in your kitchen, like the top of the refrigerator.
5) Next punch down the mix to remove the air. Shape into a loaf and put into a greased bread pan. Cover with the damp cloth and allow it to rise again until it’s level with the top of the pan, about 45 minutes.
6) Bake in the center of a pre-heated oven at 175C for about 35 minutes. Remove immediately from the bread pan when out of the oven. Tap the bottom with your fingers - it should sound hollow. If not, bake for a few more minutes. Allow to cool before slicing.
Lincolnshire Style Bangers
with Joe Sloane
Former executive chef at The Landmark Hotel’s Rib Room and Bar and a true Englishman, Joe Sloane knows his sausages. But he doesn’t need a professional kitchen, a freezer room and a sous-chefs to make them. Taking time off from work to take care of his new baby girl, Joe now cooks at home, like the rest of us. In particular, he makes sausages, or “bangers” as the Brits like to call them.
It’s very hard in Bangkok to get hold of proper British style sausages. If you want European or German style sausages, you have places like Bei Otto which do amazing German style sausages, but there’s hardly anywhere in Bangkok that does a real proper British banger. That’s why I started doing them myself. I guess also because you control what you put in there as well. I like the fact that the meat that goes in there is good quality, not pumped full of hormones.
I like the fact that I know what cuts of meat go in there. It’s not the whole infamous thing of having eyeballs and this, that and the other being thrown into the sausage. It’s actually shoulder pork and belly pork, and apart from the seasonings, that’s it.
Play around as much as you want. Apples are obviously very nice for sausages. Whatever you want to put in there. I make all different sorts. I’ve been making some with sundried tomato, and garlic recently, which came out really, really well.
For most cooking I would say use fresh herbs, but for sausages I prefer to use dried. Because if you put fresh herbs into a sausage, chances are that after a couple of days the meat will still be fine but the herbs start to turn black or bitter. Also fresh herbs don’t freeze very well, so if you want to freeze your sausages, then fresh herbs would be a bad idea. They don’t defrost very well.
The biggest thing is health and hygiene. Make sure everything is clean. Make sure you keep the pork cold the whole time, especially in Bangkok’s heat. Make sure you have your aircon on. Put the sausage meat into the fridge between each stage, or into the freezer for ten minutes, just to cool it down again, because realistically if it goes above 5 degrees Celsius, it’s not good for bacteria and things. Also the sausage doesn’t come out as well. If the fat melts then your sausage won’t have that marble in it. You’ll get more of a puree, and it just doesn’t cook very well or taste very nice.
The Recipe
- 500 grams pork shoulder
- 500 grams pork belly
- 3 slices whole wheat bread crumbs
- 1 1/2 cups dry bread crumbs
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 3 teaspoons sage
- 2 teaspoons marjoram
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 1 meter natural sausage casing (try Makro)
1.) Natural casings (that is, intestines), come packed in salt. Wash off the salt and soak the casing in fresh water for 4 hours.
2.) Gently run fresh water through the whole casing by holding an end up to the tap. You’ll need to wait at least a day, to allow the casing to rehydrate.
3.) In a food processor, using a holed blade, mince your pork cuts.
4.) Put the minced meat in the freezer to let it cool down for ten minutes.
5.) In the meantime, blend together the herbs and spices with the dried bread crumbs.
6.) Take the meat out. Add this herb mix, the fresh bread crumbs and the water to the meat.
7.) Chill the meat again for 5-10 minutes. Take it out and put it through the food processor one more time. Then place into the barrel of the sausage stuffer, pushing down as tightly as possible to remove all the air pockets out.
8.) Mount the casing onto the sausage stuffer nozzle, letting it bunch along the shaft like an accordion.
9.) Push out a little bit of the meat and tie a knot in the casing, leaving about 5cms dangle at the end.
10.) Push out the rest of the meat through the casing at a steady pace. Too fast and the casing will rupture; too slow and air bubbles will form, causing the sausages to burst when cooking.
11.) When you’ve pushed out all the meat, tie another knot in the casing, as close to the meat as possible.
12.) To make a sausage chain, pinch and twist the casing at about 12 cm intervals. Twist clockwise, then counter clockwise at the next interval, alternating directions so the chain doesn’t unravel.
The sausages will keep in the fridge for 3 days. In the freezer they can last up to 3 months.
FOOD GEAR
Martha’s Little Helpers
Though not as sleek as some, KitchenAid’s standard mixer is the clear housewives’ favorite—thanks to its long term durability and versatility. Bonus: The latest series comes in cute candy colors. B28,000
The Fagor 1,350-watt espresso machine offers 16-bar water pressure, 1.5-liter water container and the Thermoblock system boils water in just two minutes. We don’t care, we just love its steely industrial look. B37,800
The Duo Prestige digital scale is not only stylish, thanks to its aluminum body, but can weigh up to five kilograms in three weight units: grams, ounces and liters. It also comes with removable stopwatch, but don’t ask us why. B2,392
The Braun portable blender gives you 15 speeds and comes with a wide selection of blades and containers so you can liquidize anything. B6,790.
This digital thermometer from KAI helps you control your cooking temperatures in case you want to get into the whole molecular cooking fad. B636
All products can be found at Central and Zen department stores or ordered online. www.central.co.th/catalog, 02-2793-7895
bk asks: If you were a food, which food would you be?
Jutharat Mingkwan, 52, lottery seller
I want to be morning glory because people will be healthy when they eat me.
Wasukit Kerdsri, 28, sales person
I want to be milk because it looks delicious. Like me.
Chayanun Buasritananon, 39, bank employee
I want to be spaghetti, because it’s slim like my figure.
Tanawadee Suwankosai, 17, student
I want to be chocolate. People never get bored of chocolate.
Non Saowako, 36, masseur
I want to be ice-cream: sweet and cold forever.
