plate 35: thailand

I'm in love. With my new mortar and pestle. The chemistry took hold as I embarked on my culinary adventure to Thailand this weekend, cooking from Thai food guru David Thompson's enormo and amazingly photographed book Thai Street Food (kindly given to me by J Lee - thanks Jules). We're pretty spoiled for choice for Thai food in Sydney, so I was a little nervous about making a killer phad Thai - one of my usual Thai takeaway picks (not overly adventurous I know). But there's an interesting story about the dish - I'll get to that a little later on.

While miles from the markets and street stalls of Thailand, I headed to Chinatown, where there's a little pocket of Thaitown dotted with a few Thai supermarkets - I never knew! Looking for things I'd never cooked with before was a little challenging, but certainly fun - like how you find yourself in a foreign supermarket when travelling trying to decipher a product by the strange images and 'serving suggestions' on the packet.

These were things like galangal (a relative of ginger with a pinkish hue, woodier texture and fiery flavour); and kaffir lime (looks like a geriatric lime: small with wrinkly skin) and its leaves, which are two bound into one like Siamese twins (which is interesting in itself since the first famous pair of conjoined twins were born in Siam (now Thailand) hence the term Siamese twins).

The love of the mortar and pestle developed when making the spice paste for a Green Curry of Beef. We had it for dinner, but David says it's eaten as a mid-morning snack in Thailand - a far cry from the yoghurt swirled with cinnamon and honey in my routine. Either that or an extremely pippy mandarin - ah, so frustrating! Anyway, David explains this style of eating comes from southern Thailand and that the best cuts of meat to use are the tough ones that will become meltingly tender.

I can't tell you how exciting it was pounding each ingredient with the pestle and letting the aromas waft right into my face while I watched them turn to mush in front of my eyes. In it was 15 little green chillies (the recipe called for up to 30, but our heads may have exploded), lemon grass, red shallots, garlic, galangal, kaffir lime zest, plus cardamom, coriander seeds and fennel seeds that I dry roasted. The taste was as rewarding. It was full of spicy deliciousness, mellowed ever so slightly by the coconut milk and cream the meat was cooked in. The heat was appreciated by me and our two guests. As for AJ - well, he did really enjoy it, but it took a while to get through it, what with his frequent breaks for patting the sweat off his little nose.

So green curry beef: success. Not so much for the phad Thai. (Annoyingly, for a word nerd like me, there's no conclusive spelling for this in English: pad Thai, phat Thai, phad Thai, or in David's book pat Thai.) Sadly it was just a little bland. I didn't have the 1/2 teaspoon of shredded salted radish that was required, but surely that wouldn't have made too much of a difference to the overall taste? With a squeeze of lime and a dollop of some leftover green curry sauce it was salvageable, but not as good as I hoped. At least the dish's history is interesting.

It's actually a fairly recent addition to Thai cooking, having only been developed in about the 1930s or 1940s when Marshal Phibun, who was prime minister (and responsible for the name change from Siam to Thailand), urged Thais to include more noodles in their diets. Competitions were held in schools and government offices for the best and this one, with a sauce of tamarind and palm sugar, won. Given David's credibility as Thai chef, I think I must have stuffed up the recipe somehow, but I'll keep hunting for a winning phad Thai recipe of my own. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

plate 34: pakistan

Its national cricket team may have had a win over England in the third test match this weekend, but Pakistan has been struggling terribly for the last few weeks. About 14 million people have been affected by the severe flooding; more than 1600 people have died; an estimated 300,000 homes have been swept away; and the other day I heard an area the size of Lebanon was completely under water. There are no words to describe the tragedy, but I'm trying to do good through eating.

Hundreds of thousands of people are without food and shelter, so this week I'm trying to use my Pakistani meal to help the UNHCR reach their $500,000 target. Please help me and donate even the teeniest bit you can for those left disadvantaged by this natural disaster.

I think I knew, but I'd forgotten how young Pakistan is. It gained independence from British India 63 years ago, so much of its food has been majorly influenced by its neighbours - mainly India and Afghanistan. The dish I cooked - chicken biryani - actually hails from Persia, and is said to have been brought to the region via Afghanistan and through to North India. The word biryani is Farsi for "fried before cooking" and refers to the way the rice is fried off in spices before being cooked with the chicken, lamb, beef or mutton you've been simmering.

Unlike some other styles of biryani - there are more than a dozen across many different countries - Pakistani biryani uses chicken as its main meat (especially in Karachi: the largest city in Pakistan, home to about 18 million people) and includes potatoes, too, so it's quite filling.

With 25 ingredients and more than 10 different spices, it's quite amazing how subtle the spice flavours actually were once we got stuck into the dish. You can distinctly taste a few of the spices, especially cardamom and cinnamon, but surprisingly because the spice paste cooked down quite a bit, perhaps only Matt Preston swirling it all around in his mouth, with eyes closed of course, would detect that there's actually yoghurt, tomato and fresh mint in there, too. But that's not a negative. It was complex, but all the flavours worked really beautifully together - even the rose water that was added to the rice mixture. It gave a lovely hint of sweetness, as did the fried sultanas that were added on top.

I read somewhere that to tell if you've made a good biryani you have to throw a handful of it on the floor - how outrageous to waste such a delicious bit of food - to see that no two rice grains stick together. While I didn't go to those lengths to test the success of my biryani, it was pretty easy to tell the grains were well separated right there in the bowl.

If you want to sample a few different Pakistani delights before making it at home, I've heard Faheem's in Sydney makes the best home-style Pakistani food you'll find in the city, so head to 194-196 Enmore Road, Enmore, but do try the biryani at home.

plate 33: USA

Quite aptly, it came to be "the land of the free" this week via democratic processes. I put it to the people: forget Liberal or Labor, Greens or Shooters; the real question was America or Mexico. The people voted, I listened to what they had to say and I kept my promise that I would offer them what really mattered to them: an all-American dream meal.

Apart from giving us Maccas and other hideous fast food places too awful to mention, many American classics are scarcely found here. Some people might say there's good reason for the under-representation of crappy, greasy, fatty foods, but when it's in the form of mac and cheese, I'm wanting to know why. Yes this stuff is greasy, yes it's fatty, but it's awesome and an easy way to feed 12 people. I have to agree with this cute little picture - you can really tell the mac and the cheese love each other. Their chemistry is pure magic. I heart mac and cheese. I heart it very much. I also found out that Americans love it so much they even have a Crayola crayon colour named after it!

Supplied by our American sweetheart, friend Amy J, the recipe was fantastic. It had to be good because I was cooking for none other than Miss Natty Chan and 10 of her friends for her weekend birthday bonanza. The mac and cheese was on the cover of an old American Family Circle magazine and thanks to its three cheeses - cheddar, parmesan and gruyere - it was super rich and very delicious. We made it last as long as we could, having one tray for lunch and the other for dinner. Reminiscing about its stringy cheesy golden-ness and crunchy topping is making me all fuzzy on the inside.

While I was pretty keen to make ribs for American week, I went for something a bit more crowd friendly - chilli dogs. Apparently Texas, Michigan and New York fight about who invented it, but one thing everyone can agree on is how gooood they taste. It's just a hot dog in a bun topped with chilli sauce, right? Wrong! What I didn't know was that the chilli sauce also includes meat. Ooooh yeah. The sausages themselves and the idea of the humble hot dog can't be claimed by Americans though - it was German immigrants who introduced the sausage-in-a-bun concept to New Yorkers in the late 19th century. They were a hit and, as they say, the rest is history.

I tripled the recipe, so having to cut up a kilo and a half of onions and a kilo and a half of capsicum was no easy feat, but I managed without shedding too many a tear. The sauce was pretty tasty. It's mince cooked with onions, garlic, capsicum, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and chilli powder. Then all you do is barbecue the sausages, shove it in the bun, top with a generous spoonful of the chunky sauce and sprinkle over some, OK lots, of cheddar. Deeeelicious, even though slightly tricky to get your mouth around. The flavour was great and gave a lovely little tingle of chilli around the lips.

I have to say thanks this week, too, to the lovely Jen who made good ol' Southern cornbread to go with lunch. It was divine. Hot from the oven and spread with butter that melted into it, this was incredible. Sweet but savoury, cakey, bready and even a bit scone-like, it was beautiful. We couldn't stop eating it - just one more bit, and another little bit, OK I SWEAR this is going to be my last bit.  

plate 32: venezuela

Unsure as to where to head for plate 32, chief researcher Sal thought we should shake things up here at Destination Degustation and instructed me to blindly drive a pin into a printout of a world map to find the place of origin for this week's meal. The lucky country? Venezuela. No, not vuvuzela (thank God they're a distant memory), but Venezuela - one of the 12 countries that make up the amazing continent of South America. In case you're interested, it's bordered by Guyana, Colombia and the mighty Brazil.

While today is actually another South American country's - Ecuador - independence day (it's amazing what I've learned since switching to Mornings with Adam Spencer on radio 702), Venezuela was what made my day yesterday.

I was intrigued by the country's national dish - pabellon criollo - which loosely means "creole flag". The dish consists of shredded steak cooked with tomato and served with rice and black beans. The idea is that when plated, the dish resembles the Venezuelan flag.

Well, kind of. It looked like this...

The tomato with steak isn't nearly as red, the rice wasn't yellow and the beans aren't blue, but you get the gist. Anyway, we all know it's not about the colours, it's about the flavours - and they were yummo. It's easy to cook, too. Although it takes about two hours, so if you're not happy to ignore tummy grumbles until 9pm on a Monday night, then best cook it on the weekend or when you have more time.

To make it, the meat is cooked plainly in a little beef stock and water for about 1.5 hours until tender, then cooled before being shredded or thinly sliced. Then it's added to a mixture of fresh tomato and onion cooked in butter (butter makes everything better) and some of the liquid the meat is cooked in, which added a nice extra boost of flavour. The rice was cooked with some crushed garlic, which was a tasty alternative to the plain stuff, but it was the beans that stole the show for me. Super, super delicious and extremely simple to make.

Just pour a can of black beans (with the can juices) into a frying pan and cook with onion, garlic, a bit of chicken stock and ground cumin until the liquid reduces. And that's it. (Hmmm, well as you'll see in the pic below, I kind of forgot the onion and garlic, but I cooked them separately then stirred them in later.) It becomes nice and thick with a lovely rich taste. They'd be great just with plain rice or as a side for any dinner. And we all know beans are good for us...

plate 31: greece

Lamb, lemons, feta, filo ... lots and lots of filo ... It was AJ's birthday last week and Greek is probably one of his most favourite cuisines. Being a massive ancient history buff, he's been to Greece twice so he knows a fair bit about the food, too. Needless to say I was a little bit nervous cooking a Greek meal for him. What was scarier still was that it actually turned out to be big fat Greek feast: I wasn't only cooking for him, but I was also feeding his mum, dad, grandma, sister, almost-brother-in-law and two friends. I had to pull out all the stops.

The first course was easy to settle on: spanakopita. Spinach, feta and herbs cooked between layers of golden, crispy filo. It was also easy to make and, as you can imagine, very very easy to eat. Spinach and cheese anything is a winner in my book, and apparently in everyone else's books, too - everyone went back for seconds.

I knew the main would involve some kind of lamb and my original plan was to get a whole animal and roast it on a spit in the backyard. Hiring the spit proved a little too costly, but AJ's work mate Michael, who's Greek, came to the rescue and kindly told us about a recipe his family loves: lamb kleftiko. The history of the dish is almost as wonderful as its taste - almost. The name is derived from the Klefts - the Greeks who became rebels living in the mountains when they fought against the Turks in the 1800s - who would cook lamb for hours in a hole in the ground to conceal the smell and steam so their position wouldn't be given away. The modern hole in the ground is sheets of baking paper that you wrap the lamb in, which locks in the juices of the meat, making it unbelievably tender.

To prepare, all you need to do is brown off a shoulder of lamb in a frying pan, then place it on the paper in a roasting tray, stud it with lots of garlic, sprinkle over rosemary or oregano, pour over fresh lemon juice, season with salt and pepper (lesson learned from last week) then douse with olive oil and wrap over the paper to enclose it. The parcel goes in the oven and all you need is about 40 minutes to cook it. There was one bad bit: the half an hour resting time after it came out of the oven. It was torturous - all we wanted to do was rip open the paper to reveal the magic, but we were patient and it was worth it. It carved like a dream, the taste was incredible and the meat was moist and juicy.

The kleftiko's plate partner was, of course, Greek salad. If I do say so myself this was the best-looking Greek salad I'd ever seen. The colours were so vibrant and instead of crumbling the feta through it, I did as the Greeks do - just turned the feta out of the packet and plonked it on top. This makes it easy, sure, but the presentation is awesome. Ta da! See what I mean?

Friend Sal - who I must give credit to for at times being Chief Researcher for Destination Degustation - suggested the dessert this week: galaktoboureko, which is sweet milk custard baked in filo pastry. I was going to try this recipe, but decided to go with the one from Michael's yia yia's (Greek for grandma) 1970s cookbook: Cooking from Cyprus by Nearchos Nicolaou. By now you'll probably know I'm a dessert fiend, so I was mighty upset when this didn't turn out. Making the custard was relatively easily, assembling the filo caused me no problems and making the clove and lemon infused syrup didn't seem to trouble me either. But the end product was, sadly, a sloppy mess. (This pic isn't of the end result, but it's close to it!)

You should be able to cut this into pieces and serve, but all we could do was spoon it from the baking dish and serve bowls of runny, lemony custard. Taste-wise it wasn't altogether a distaster, but it certainly wasn't how it should have been. I believe I may have had to let it cool down quite a bit to set a little before cutting, but doing this 24 hours later proved it still wasn't as firm as it should've been. Thankfully AJ's sister Serena made a supreme white chocolate cake with white chocolate and cream cheese frosting that was brilliant. Lucky, because no meal is complete without dessert.