Saw Anthony Bourdain on TV after ages tonight. He was at Chile. As I heard him talk about his ‘dreams of fields with pork scented flowers’, I said a quite thank you to him for unknowingly inspiring me to start writing.
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| Photo credit: http://kyl.cl/anthony-bourdain-episodio-en-chile-el-13-de-julio/ |
We were faced with tons of leftovers from the NYE dinner at home. We had Thai green curry one day but I had added an excess of chicken and we couldn’t finish the meat. Pork spares for dinner. Still more to go. Shammi kebabs for lunch. More to go.
Then thought of putting the leftover chicken from the green curry to some use. ‘Let their sacrifice not go in vain’ and all that kind of thing.
Memories of a Thai curry flavoured meat dish at either Koh or Thai Pavilion, reliving the introduction to Pad Thai Noodles at the Asia Scenic cooking class at Chiang Mai, visions of the bottle fish sauce nestled in the fridge. There was something cooking in there.
Oil heated in a wok, onion rings, chopped garlic and galangal added in. When done, finely chopped chicken and shitake mushrooms, from what was once Thai Green curry, pushed. The curry long gone, the memories still green.
The meat stirred and pushed aside with a ladle, as they showed us in the cooking class, to a corner of the pan. Camera on one side. Popped in the egg. Added the boiled Chinese Hakka noodles. The missus like them flat. And walks out if they are soggy. Fold in the egg. Add a dollop of oyster sauce on the noodles and then pour in fish sauce like wads of notes over a Bombay Bar Dancer. Toss, heave, click photos, mix, add chopped red bell pepper, take a portion out for photography, put back into the pan for a final flourish, plate and eat.
The green curry flavour was subtle. The fried garlic added warmth. Galangal a very fresh and petite sweetness of the Orient. The shitake mushrooms exuded tastes of milk and cream, elegant yet alluring. Our vagabond outfit had come together well.
Always pays to go by your instincts. You might even be joined by The Master. Albeit on TV.
But then Bourdain could never resist the Orient could he?
