Thursday, 10 March 2011

Thai inspired stir fry

Just got back from a fabulous holiday in Thailand. The food was incredible, cheap and everywhere, day and night.....

....the ultimate destination for the lazy cook!!
But sadly, I live in France, where they don't really do takeaway except for Macdo....so I have to try and make it myself. Have a fabulous book full of Thai recipes, trouble is they're very faffy so not suitable for inclusion here.

But here's something Thai-ish that I made up for my dinner earlier:
Chop some shallots and lemongrass, fry. Add some chopped chicken. Then add chillies (of course!), fish sauce, ginger, lime juice, bit of sugar, chopped mushrooms. Stir fry til cooked, serve with rice or noodles, add coriander to taste.

I didn't go mad with the chillies and even the kids ate some!

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Duck au curry......

Just invented a delicious curry, using what I had in the cupboard, namely a tin of duck confit. We may not be able to get decent supplies of chilies and coriander out here, but there's more tinned duck products than you know what to do with in south west France.

So I put my tinned duck legs in the pan and fried them for a bit. They are really fatty, so I drained the fat off a few times as they fried, never throw this stuff away, keep it in the fridge and use it to roast spuds in, it's delicious!

In a seperate pan I fried up sliced onions and peppers in a bit of oil so you get that nice charred flavour, the duck is too fatty to fry all the stuff together really (I know, TWO pans, extra washing up, sorry!!)

Then I removed the bones and skin from the confit which had kind of dismantled itself anyway during cooking so not as faffy as it sounds. Drained off the fat yet again and added a large dollop of my trusty favourite curry paste, I used the hot stuff but I'm sure it'll be just as good for those of you who are chilli wusses and have to use mild curry paste ;-)

Then in go the onions and peppers and a tin of chopped tomatoes, and voila, curried confit. Leave it to simmer for ages, stir occasionally, add water if necessary,