Prawn and peanut chiang mai curry

For those who know me, everyone knows I love a good fresh curry. I hadn't had one for ages so I said to my friend that we should make one. We both agreed that we fancied a Thai curry and I found a curry recipe for northern Thailand with peanuts and pork (we swapped pork for prawns). Chiang mai is a Northern Territory in Thailand that has very different food combinations than that of the south. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to go to the north when I went travelling.

As always with curry, you need a good paste otherwise the curry will flop. The chiang mai curry paste consists of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, chillies, salt, galangal (ginger), lemongrass, shallots, garlic, turmeric, shrimp paste and cinnamon all blended together. I'd never used turmeric in a Thai curry before so I was quite excited to see what the results were! (They were no photos of the final result of either the paste of curry in my recipe book).

For the curry, I needed some prawns, bit of oil, garlic, bit of curry paste, shallots, galangal (ginger), roasted peanuts, tamarind paste, fish sauce and palm sugar.

The paste was fried until fragrant and then the shallots, galangal and peanuts were added. After being cooked for a few minutes, I poured in half a litre of water with some tamarind paste and bought to the boil. I then added the fish sauce and sugar and simmer for about an hour. After an hour, I added the raw prawns and they were simmered for about 15/20 mins while the rice was being cooked. This was also the first time curry that I had never used coconut milk! That's one of the differences between the north and south curries of Thailand.

It was quite a thin curry, but it was extremely tasty and I had never had peanuts and prawns as the two main ingredients in any meal. It was served the rice and garlic chilli spinach

Peanut and fluff marshmallow sandwich

To continue with the roasted flavours in the book, peanuts were next on the agenda. Rooting through my friends cupboards, he suggested I try peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. Fluff is a marshmallow spread (the same idea as Nutella or peanut butter) which is sickly sweet and very sticky. Apparently a character from The Sopranos asks his mother to make him a peanut butter and fluff sandwich, so can't be that bad, can it?

Referring to the book, it is simply making a sandwich with peanut butter on one side, fluff on the other. I could see why people might like this, but for me, I'm not that keen on either peanut butter or marshmallow. It was a bit like eating a snickers without the chocolate...so maybe add some Nutella next time? I won't be eating this again in a hurry to be honest!

Coffee and banana mousse

It's been a few weeks since I've had the chance to do some more exploratory cooking with flavours from the book, but I had a bit of a binge today and managed to cook three things from two sub-sections from the 'roasted' chapter of the 'The Flavour Thesaurus'. To continue the flow of the book, I firstly focused on coffee.

I have worked in cafés and restaurants since I was 17 and have always had access to freshly roasted and ground coffee. As a result, I've become a little bit of a coffee snob! I was really looking forward to making something really yummy other than boring coffee sponge or a mocha coffee.

Reading through the chapter, I came across coffee and banana. The only recipe that was suggested was to make a banoffee pie with coffee cream, but I find banoffee pie a bit mundane so I did some research and came across a coffee and banana mousse. I've tried to make chocolate mouse before with eggs but it was a disaster! Luckily this mousse recipe uses cream and there isn't an egg in sight!

Firstly, I had to heat a tin of condensed milk with butter, a couple of shots of espresso and then stirred in some cocoa powder.

After leaving the mixture to cool, I stirred in a couple of bananas that I had finely chopped. I then whipped some double cream until it was medium peaks and then folded the coffee/banana mixture into the double cream.

This wasn't as adventurous as the bacon, maple and chocolate concoction but it was extremely tasty and its a good recipe for a family dessert. Although I didn't use a lot of coffee, I think it could have done with a little more, maybe another shot to offset the sweetness of the condensed milk and another banana too. I always feel that the two main ingredients should always be the stars of the show! (Those are the hands of my friend who was my sous chef for the day!)

Bacon, maple syrup and dark chocolate cupcakes

Ok, time for a re-launch!!! It's been way too long since I have put my focus and energy into something that I'm truly passionate about so I've decided to completely put 100% into exploring new flavours, tastes and techniques. I was watching tv on Sunday morning and one of the guests mentioned a book called 'The Flavour Thesaurus'. I had a little browse on amazon and came across the book. I instantly pushed the buy now button and four days later it arrived!

I began reading and instantly started getting inspired about how I can incorporate what was on paper into lovely bite sized portions of exploration and total yummy ness! I am planning on cooking something from each subsection from each chapter.

Chapter one, roasted flavours. Chocolate.

Reading through the chocolate subsection I came across the combination of chocolate and bacon. I know, sounds a bit weird but I thought I would give it a go in the form of a maple syrup cupcake with dark chocolate topped with crispy smoked bacon.

I looked online for a maple syrup cupcake recipe and found a beaut.

I made a normal cupcake batter with some maple syrup and added dark chocolate chips, baked for 20 minutes. As soon as they were out of the oven I drizzled some more maple syrup over the top so it seeped through the sponge.

The buttercream icing had some maple syrup added to it also, but just enough so it can still be held together.

I cut all the fat I could off the bacon (I used smoked back bacon) so it wouldn't be greasy when eating and cooked it until it was nice and crispy.

I assembled them and this was the final product! They were a hit with the whole family and all were very surprised that the combination worked so well together! I would definitely recommend this to anyone.