Spanish Fry...

I managed to get hold of some  pimientos de Padrón last week from an exclusive deli in Nottingham...okay from Lidl on Hucknall road.  Lidl seems to have them every September, when these delicious small green Galician peppers are coming to the end of their season.  I've never seen them in any other supermarket or grocery.  I decided to take it to the next level and rather than just having them as a bar snack I incorporated them in a recipe I'd had my eye on for a while...

Huevos Fritos con Ajo y pimientos de Padrón:  

Fried eggs with garlic and Padron peppers.  It sounds so much better in Spanish!
You need (for 4)
Olive oil
4 large garlic cloves
12 small green Padron peppers
Sea salt and cracked black pepper
4 eggs (duck eggs if you can get them, we couldn't)

Stir fry chopped garlic and whole peppers in olive oil.   (I used the same pan I'd used to cook some chorizo which we added to some diced potatoes and roasted in the oven, to have with the eggs and peppers.)

Remove with a slotted spoon when the peppers start to brown and blister; this won't take long.
Crack the eggs into the pan and as the whites start to solidify, add the peppers and garlic back into the pan.

Cook eggs as you like them.

Serve with crusty bread, or with the chorizo potatoes that we had.  The chorizo oil really added another dimension to the eggs / peppers / garlic combo.  Happy days.

I'm going to be craving a Spanish fry up instead of a full English for the forseeably future!

PS I didn't have this for breakfast, just in case you were wondering...

Thai Tea

Thai Tea, a set on Flickr.

 A visit to Chung Wah in search of green papaya resulted in me taking a trip down memory lane.  I remember eating these fish balls whilst living in Brunei aged about 7 or 8.  Every time I've been in Chung Wah I've wanted to buy some and this time I did!  With a big bottle of sweet chilli dipping sauce to go with them...msg-tastic.
The fish balls possess a rather unique texture, kind of like surimi (fish sticks) but not quite,  Biting into them is not unlike biting into a frankfurter sausage, the same "skin pop" sensation, with a dense and smooth inside.  I'm selling it to you, non?
I was delighted to find I had remembered texture and flavour (spicy and fishy) accurately, and thoroughly enjoyed eating them.  The boy wasn't so sure about them, he claimed, although he still scoffed the lot.
The green papaya?  Yippee!  We found one.  I wanted one to make Som Tum, my new favourite Thai salad, recipe to follow.  I got a bit of a shock when I got to the cash register though, the lovely lady who owns Chung Wah put this bad boy on the scales and it clocked in at over £6!  Could I have used a marrow instead?  No, not really...

To me, Som Tum is the epitome of Thai food.  The sweet, sour, salty, fishy, spicy balance is close to perfection.  A wonderful mix of textures too.  You need (per person):
1 small green papaya
1 tsp palm sugar
a pinch of chopped garlic
a pinch of chopped red bird's eye chilli
5 french beans halved lenghthways
a few roasted peanute, coarsley chopped
a pinch of chopped, dried shrimp
1 tbsp of fish sauce
1 tbsp of tamarind water
4 cherry plum tomatoes, halved
juice of 1 lime.
I got everything in Chung Wah.  You can make tamarind water by soaking a lump of tamarind pulp the size of a tangerine in 150ml warmish water, then agitating the pulp with your fingers until the seeds are released.  Drain it through a sieve and the resulting liquid is tamarind water. 
Peel the papaya and shred it using a mandolin, or large sharp knife.  We bought a mandolin especially for this purpose (£12, Lakeland) and I shredded my thumb too!
Discard the core and seeds of the fruit.  Put the shredded papaya in a bowl.
Put the garlic, chilli and green beans in a mortar and bruise lightly with a pestle.
Add the sugar (moistened with a little water), peanuts, shrimp, fish sauce, tamarind water and lime juice and bruise everything again.  Think muddling a mojito.
Pour this mixture over your shredded papaya, mix well and serve at once! 

Thanks to Rick Stein for the recipe.
I'm making this again tomorrow.  Trancendental.
We also made Cambodian marinated beef with a lime and black pepper dipping sauce, but that's another story...