Tamarind and Thyme

Last Thursday, The Skinny Bib met Ann, the Gourmet Traveller and me at The Heron near Edgware Road to eat excellent Thai food. On first glance, this pub looked like any old man’s boozer but on closer inspection, there’s a menu of Thai food pasted next to the door. But this menu of traditional favourites was not what we were here for – we were heading downstairs, where the writing on the menu is Thai and so are the customers. Thank goodness for The Skinny Bib – he took charge of ordering and I think we did a pretty good job sampling what they had to offer!

I arrived late and so examined the room after I’d settled into my seat. The restaurant is tiny (I reckon it can seat 20 people) and is festooned with lights and a disco ball. And you can’t miss the two large flat screen TVs constantly playing Thai music videos. Karaoke is available while you eat but you’d be sharing your voice with the entire room; we weren’t regaled with any singing that night but do keep in mind that you might be serenaded during your meal.

First of our dishes to arrive was a suki ta lay haeng, a dry seafood suki yaki. This was our only noodle dish, a dry version of the Thai version of the original Japanese dish. Mung bean vermicelli was stir fried with seafood in a tangy sauce. It was very moreish.

A yum pla duk fuu, or crispy catfish salad, was incredible – if just presented with it, you’d be hard pressed to guess it was fish. The catfish had been transformed into a light crispy cloud and was topped with fried peanuts, shallots and fresh coriander. With the hot and sweet sauce on the side, this was just fantastic.

I thought I’d tried the full colour spectrum of Thai curries – green, red, yellow – but had no idea that an orange one existed! The kaeng som goong cha om tod kai, a sour orange curry with prawns and pieces of omelette with cha om, a new vegetable to me. This was highly addictive and I found myself drinking the thin but flavourful curry straight up after all the goodies had been fished out. If you’re familiar with a jungle curry, this was slightly thicker and didn’t have any coconut milk in it.

A plate of kai yiew mar kra pow krob was a mixture of fried century eggs and minced pork. We were told that there should be crispy holy basil on top but they had run out. It was still good without it though – I’d never come across fried century eggs before!

I was particularly excited to try the sai oua, a smoky Northern Thai pork sausage, as I was looking for a particular sausage I’d had in Chiang Mai. While this one wasn’t exactly the same, it was still delicious with all its chilli and spices and smokiness. Did I mention that chilli? This was probably the hottest dish on the table!

A larb moo, a minced pork salad, was quite mild in comparison to the other dishes.

Another salad – this time a som tam with large poached prawns scattered in between the shreds of green papaya. By default, everything seems to be spiced in the Thai way – hot! I munched on a chilli from the som tam and was in tears for a bit.

A plate of stir fried kai lan with oyster didn’t escape the chillies either – large sliced red ones had been stir fried with them.

For the four of us, we had these eight dishes, both sticky and steamed rice, and a large bottle of water and with service it came to £25 each. We certainly pushed the boat out with the number of dishes we had – I’d say we overdid it by 2 dishes! But how delicious it all was and I will certainly return, especially to explore the one dish meals on the menu. Thank you again, Skinny Bib! He is hoping to translate the menu soon – watch his blog post for this.

The Heron
Norfolk Crescent
London W2 2DN

Goodness, I’m once again wholly unprepared for this but it appears that I’ve been writing this blog for 4 years! I’m quite surprised I’ve managed to keep it up for this long.

So let’s see – what’s happened in the last year? A celebratory dinner at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona. A work trip to Singapore. A big trip to Beijing. Overeating in Barcelona. Little trips to Leicester, Lille and Hastings. A cancelled trip to Vienna. I seem to measure my year in how many stamps I get in my passport.

What am I doing to celebrate? Well, um, not much since I’m so disorganised but I have updated my Recipe Index – finally, all my recipes are categorised!

As one normally has cake for a celebration, I’ll illustrate this post with a strange cake I photographed in the window of another Chinese bakery. There are some strange mixed messages here.

I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring! Thank you for coming over to my blog – do say hi if you haven’t done so already. I’m always curious as to how readers find my blog!

Hooray! The Richmond-Stratford overground line is running on Sundays again! We celebrated this last Sunday by hopping a train to Dalston; we were in search of Turkish food for brunch. I already had a place in mind – Evin Cafe, where fresh gözleme could be found, a Turkish filled flatbread I’d been wanting to try. It’s difficult to miss on Kingsland High Street – we found this sight in their window.

We entered the restaurant and were surpised to find quite a large space with lots of seating. After making ourselves comfortable at a table at the back, we ordered a range of the Turkish dishes that were listed on the breakfast menu and all turned out to be winners in my book! As you can imagine, a gözleme was part of the order.

First up was a sucuklu menemen (£5.75), a mixture of green pepper, onion, tomato, special garlic sausage (the sucuk) all bound together with scrambled egg. It may not look like much but it was fresh and delicious all scooped up with the basket of sesame-studded Turkish bread that came with our food. The sucuk tasted quite like a Spanish chorizo.

The günün çorbasi (soup of the day – £3.50) was lentil that Sunday and I had to have it, having heard great things about Turkish lentil soups. A big bowl was set in front of me and I dipped my spoon in: it was quite homogenous in colour save for the occasional speckle of green and red. It was thinner than I expected but this in no way was a bad thing. In fact, this was the loveliest, full of flavour red lentil soup we’d had in a while and I cannot wait to try to recreate it at home.

Last to arrive from the front of the restaurant was our cheese and spinach gözleme (£2.50); it was bigger than we both expected with its ends falling off the plate. This was just gorgeous – a soft, freshly made flatbread sandwiching crumbled mild feta cheese and lightly cooked fresh spinach.

Look at the fresh spinach in there!

I can’t wait to try one with potato – the last filling that’s offered (Josh of Cooking the Books says it’s a spicy and minty potato mix).

With a freshly squeezed orange juice and a can of Coke, our bill came to £15. You lucky, lucky people of Dalston; I wish I had a local place like this (but really, now I can get here in half an hour!). Service was good and you’re never put under pressure to vacate your table – I saw a couple people set up their laptops. It’s definitely worth a trip out here – we spent the afternoon exploring the local shops too and went home with quite a lovely box of baklava (including a fabulous chocolate and pistachio one).

Evin Cafe
115 Kingsland High St
London E8 2PB

Ever been to Wonderful Patisserie in Chinatown? They sell lots of Chinese breads and cakes and snacks (a good variety of South East Asian biscuits usually too) and in their window is a display of their latest cakes on offer. I occasionally take a snap of the better cakes I see and here’s what I have in my collection so far.

I can’t vouch for the flavour of these cakes as I don’t like the Chinese style cream and fruit sponge cakes you get in most Chinese bakeries. I also don’t know whether Wonderful Patisserie bakes and decorates their own cakes or whether they’re bought in. I do know, however, that whoever’s doing the decorating has some serious talent!

Wonderful Patisserie
45 Gerrard St
London W1D 5QQ

A stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock and strata is the plural of it. A strata is also this dish made of layers of bread and eggs – it’s pretty easy to see where its name must have originated. With a few hot dog buns leftover and some kale in the fridge drawer to use up, I set about putting together a strata for our dinner.

But wait! Before you read to this point and think, oooooh, I’ve got to have that for dinner, well, stop right there. This recipe requires the strata to rest for at least 8 hours in the refrigerator so a bit of preplanning is required. This was for our dinner the following day. The rest in the fridge allows the bread to soak up all the egg and milk poured overtop. All that’s needed on the day of eating is to take the dish out of the fridge, preheat your oven and then pop it in and let it bake. Simples.

The result was this golden puffy delight – all crusty on top and tender underneath. Think of it as a savoury bread pudding that’s very adaptable: I can picture lots of other vegetables and cheeses that would work here and can even imagine a bit of chopped ham or crumbled cooked sausage in the layers. We had it for dinner, with some charcuterie on the side, because I wanted to try the recipe midweek but it would also be perfect as part of an easy breakfast or brunch.

Kale and Cheese Strata
adapted from a recipe at smitten kitchen.
serves 3-4.

1 medium onion, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cups/large handfuls of chopped kale
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
3 cups/large handfuls of cubed bread
1/2 cup grated Grana Padano (or Parmigiano Reggiano)
3/4 cup grated/chopped gruyere
4 eggs
300ml milk
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add the olive oil. Throw in the chopped onion and fry until softened.

Set a pot of water boiling and boil the chopped kale until softened. Drain and squeeze out as much water as you can. (Another way to do this is to add the kale to the onion, pour in a little water and slap a lid on the pan – the kale will steam in there but it might take a while, as I learned.) Mix together with the cooked onion. Season with a little salt, pepper and the grated nutmeg.

Mix together the cheeses and set aside.

Take a small-medium baking dish and layer your ingredients in it: bread, kale/onion, cheese, bread, kale/onion, cheese, bread, kale/onion, cheese. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, mustard and milk and season with salt and pepper. Pour evenly over the layers in the baking dish. Cover the dish with cling film and place in the fridge for at least 8 hours and up to 1 day.

When you’re ready to eat it, take the dish out of the fridge and uncover it. Preheat your oven to 180 Celsius. When the oven is hot, place the dish into the centre and bake for approximately 40-45 minutes or however long it takes for your strata to be golden brown on top, hot all the way through (I slipped a knife into the middle and then tested how hot the knife tip was) and puffing up gently.

Remove from the oven and serve.