September 11, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Main dish, Soup, Noodle, Porridge
This is a sour fish soup which is also very popular in Vietnamese cooking. Only one point is that more people prefer fresh water fish than salt water fish. Of course people from coastal provinces often use seafood to cook into sour soups, and their sour fish soups are also great.
It doesn’t matter for me where the fish come from. Of course some fish cannot be cooked into soups like this one, while some are really perfect to make sour soup with. This time I cooked with king mackerel.
Live crab is not very cheap, the bigger the crab, the more expensive it is. We often cannot afford buying the big ones, but for two persons, a big crab is sometimes too much and too heavy for a meal. This time, the crab I cooked was a small one.
In Vietnam, crab can be cooked in many ways. This crab in tamarid sauce is one of the most popular and most favored by lots of people. The dish is listed at almost every eating house or restaurant near the beaches and at seafood restaurants in the mainland. It is quite easy to make this dish though.
Tamarind pulp is used quite popularly in Asian cuisine. The green ones can be cooked directly with foods in the sour dishes, and the pulps of mature pods are often packed in small packages to be sold at markets or supermarkets, which makes it very convenient for cooks. I love it for the sourness with special smell and taste.
Marinara is quite a classic and very popular pasta. However, so far I hadn’t made it since this pasta requires several kinds of seafood. Cooking for two people only, sometimes it is troublesome if I cook something too complicated with many ingredients. Buying a lot of ingredients in small quantity does not really worth the effort. So when intending to make this pasta for the first time, I needed to plan a head what other dishes I would cook with the left-over ingredients.
Anyway, this pasta really worths the time and effort. I like seafoods of all kinds. My fiance is always eager for having seafood in his meals. In this pasta, we can enjoy the various kinds of seafood with different textures and tastes. Though some ingredients were not as fresh as I wished for, wine and herbs made the final sauce really fragrant and tasty.
This is a Thai-inspired dish which is very simple and quick to make. I adapted the recipe from my book for party food and appertizers. I do not often eat spicy food, yet this dish is a good choice and pleases my stomach when the weather in this hot island gets cool (during rainy season after a heavy rain, the air may get cooled down).
I am not so sure about the yellow bean paste used in the recipe, however, I guessed it is a kind of yellow soy bean paste, so I used the spicy soy bean paste I got at home. Since the paste is already spicy, I reduced the chilli called for in the ingredients.
What I love the most from this dish is Thai basil. This kind of basil is used very popularly in Vietnamese dishes, both in cooking and eating raw as a condiment vegetable to other foods. So when you find the fresh clams sold in your neighborhood, remember this dish to enjoy another great Asian flavor.
January 17, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Fish & Shellfish
Mussels, cooked in this way, are very flavorful, tasty and easy to eat.
Ingredients (4 servings)
- 900g mussels
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 2 shallots, finely chopped
- 1 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- salt
Cooking:
- Wash the mussels well. Cook with water until all the mussels are open. Remove the shells.
- Heat the oil in a saute pan, add the mussels and stir constantly for 1 minute. Remove from the pan.
- Add the shallot and garlic, cook over low heat for 3 minutes to release the fragrance.
- Return the mussels to the pan, add parsley, salt and paprika. Stir well for 1-2 minutes.
It is done now. Enjoy.
