Thai Red Curry Paste & More Keith Floyd Worship

The bad news – Sky 3 have just stopped running repeats of the excellent Far Flung Floyd TV series from 1993 in which Keith Floyd popped up on beaches, boats and other odd locations right across south east asia armed only with a wok and a sackful of chillies, lemongrass and other ‘exotic’ ingredients - before proceeding to throw together some of the finest hot, sweet and sour dishes you could ever hope to taste.

It’s a genuinely inspirational series that makes you want to rush out to your nearest asian grocer and load up with gallons of fish sauce and coconut milk, a kilo of root ginger and a carrier bag full of kaffir lime leaves and then make some scorching, salty curry pastes which transform a humble bit of meat and fish into a delicious bowl of supercharged, spicy slop. As I mentioned in an earlier post I recently picked up the accompanying book of the series, and I’ve been dipping into it on regular occasions. However, if you fancy a crack at an authentic Thai red curry, here’s Keith’s red curry paste mixture to get you going:

Take 10 hot red chillis (I don’t de-seed, but you can if you prefer it milder), 6 cloves of garlic, 3 tablespoons of chopped onion, 1 tablespoon of chopped lemongrass, 1 tablespoon root ginger and 1 tablespoon coriander leaves, a teaspoon of shrimp paste (or fish sauce), a teaspoon of ground cumin and half a teaspoon of salt. Whiz the lot together in blender or food processor until you have a smooth reddy/brown paste. Then gently fry the paste mix in some oil (ideally ground nut) for a few minutes and then stick the sauce in a jar or airtight tub and pop in the fridge for later use.

It’s great with fish, chicken and meat – and much tastier and more authentic than some Sharwood’s sugar and additive packed crap you find in Tescos.

Anyway, no doubt Sky 3 will run Far Flung again – but in the meantime if you want an introduction to the greatest chef that has ever blagged their own TV series in the history of broadcast, then re-runs of Floyd Around The Med are beginning on Monday October 9th also on Sky 3 at 11.30 am & 4.00 pm. Set the video/hard drive for it and be inspired.

And you can read an interview with Keith about this series here.

Asian Steamed Sea Bass

Chinese/Thai Steamed Sea Bass

Guess the fish thing is working out because I’ve just had the most wonderful steamed sea bass with Asian spices on a simple bed of basmati rice. However, I was torn between two variations – Chinese or Thai – so I decided to combine the two because ‘fusion’ cooking is where it’s at allegedly. Or then again, I had stuff in the fridge to use up so I bunged it all in cos I hate waste and love experimenting.


So, method – Get 1 whole, scaled and cleaned sea bass from fishmonger. Cut slits in the fish and rub into the gaps (and belly cavity) a mixture of chopped up lemon grass (1 stalk), chopped garlic (2 cloves), chopped green chilli (2 hot ones), finely sliced ginger (a thumb sized lump), finely chopped spring onions (a couple), chopped coriander leaf (a fistful) plus a teaspoon of ground turmeric, a good tablespoon of dark soy sauce and a tablespoon of oil (ideally nut - but olive, sunflower or veggie will do the job). Leave for at least 30 minutes. Have a drink.

30 minutes later- well, at this point traditionally you’re supposed to have banana leaves to hand - but seeing as many of us have to shop in the city centre and don’t frequent markets in Bangkok or Malaysia you can instead use tinfoil or the green tops of large leaks if you have any kicking around. Anyway, whatever you use it’s simply there to be another barrier between the fish and the boiling water/steam below – so don’t get hung up about it.

Line your perforated steamer bit (the steel bit with holes that fits over you saucepan, the bamboo one you bought rashly but rarely use, or the humble colander that reminds you of childhood) with tinfoil, leak leaves or even just a small heat proof dish. Place the marinated fish on top (together with a couple of spoonfuls of marinade) and then bring a pan of water to the boil.

When the water is boiling, place your steamer ‘basket’ on top and cover with a lid/plate/more tin foil for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix up some chopped chilli, sesame oil and soy sauce (about a teaspoon of each) in a bowl. Lift out the steamed fish, pour over the chilli/soy/sesame dressing and eat (NB – you can also heat up the dressing mixture before spooning over if you wish). Watch out for bones but otherwise enjoy.

Oliver's Army

Turns out someone has recently given this site a plug in one of Jamie Oliver's forums - which is nice.

So, to any Jamie fans that are visiting please enjoy the site and leave any comments. In fact, that goes for anyone with a view or contribution - and I promise I'll publish all comments unless very offensive or just plain dull.

Spicy Baked Mackerel, The Obit Of My (Middle) Namesake, And A Cure For Short Distance Sea Sickness

Return Of The Mack(rel)

As I posted earlier, me and fish have never really bonded in the kitchen – but mackerel is one fish I feel somehow comfortable with. It probably goes back to a day when I was aged 10, or around then, when I was taken on a fishing boat in Lyme Regis to catch the darned things.

All I really remember was being very sea sick – but the captain sorted that out by telling me to ‘suck on a polo mint and look at the land’.

It must have worked, because ten minutes later even my puny hands were pulling out of the choppy, grey Dorset sea half a dozen wriggling, shiny mackerel on a very basic multi-barbed line.

Turns out the packet of polos wasn’t just a device to distract the queasy stomach of a young land-lubber – the tin foil wrapper was also torn into postage stamp pieces and used as bait - because apparently mackerel are suckers for any kind of bling that they mistake for whiting or other tiny fish that they devour. I also remember that our catch was cooked simply on a barbecue on the pebbled beach later in the day – all very River Cottage in retrospect. So, me and the mackerel had some history - which meant I was brave enough to buy a couple and attempt de-heading, de-boning and stuffing with a spicy Goan filling before baking in the oven.

The Goan spice mix was about a teaspoon of ground cumin, coriander, black pepper & cloves (I used whole spices for this bit, briefly roasted in a frying pan and then ground in a coffee grinder) together with half a teaspoon of powdered fennel and a teaspoon of ground turmeric. The ground spices were then combined with a handful of chopped hot red chilli, 3 chopped garlic cloves and a 1 inch lump of peeled and chopped ginger. Traditionally it would also have tamarind water in the mix – but I substituted this for a tablespoonful of lemon juice because my last block of tamarind pulp had sat in the fridge for a year and had never been used so it was ditched about a month ago.

Finally a bit of salt and a tablespoon of white wine vinegar were added – and the whole lot then blitzed in a blender until I had a runny paste.

The gutted mackerel came out, the heads were duly lopped off and I sliced each one carefully from neck to tail along the route of the spine. Then I prised the two halves apart and pulled the spine up and snipped it off by the tail. I was then left with two ‘fillets’ - still adjoined at the tail end – and proceeded to spoon a thick layer of spice mix onto the lower fillet. I then replaced the top half and secured the ‘body’ with a few ties of string. Then it was wrapped in baking paper, then wrapped in foil, then banged into a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes. Later, served with some plain rice, it was pretty darned good – fleshy, fishy, hot and sour.


Thinking about that first (and only) fishing trip I took now reminds me of our host on that day who arranged it all – an ex-serviceman who went to be a great military historian in the 1970s and 80s. Spike Milligan once cited that one of his books, The Crucible Of War , was the best book he’d ever read – so he must have done something right. ‘He’ is a bloke called Barrie Pitt – and my middle name is Barrie, named after him by my father, who was one of Barrie's best friends.

Barrie died this year - but you can read about him here , if you’re interested.

A Hot Dog Fit For A King- Pity About The Movie

On Sunday we watched King Arthur on DVD , the first DVD we’ve played on the new LCD HD telly. It’s a medieval fighting extravaganza about the ‘real’ King Arthur, the lead being played (a bit woodenly) by the usually good Clive Owen backed up with Ray Winstone, Ioan Gruffudd (that Hornblower chappy) and a number of other chiselled faces all overacting in the role of Arthur’s honourable (but highly lethal) knights .

It was ok, but only just ok - and it did regularly stray into the clichéd warrior/freedom territory far better serviced by movies like Gladiator and Braveheart - with a bit of Monty Python’s Holy Grail (unintentionally) mixed in to boot.

So, to liven up proceedings I decided a superior cinema snack was in order halfway through – and I baked a delicious pork sausage from the Sillfield Farm in Cumbria (they have a stall in the new Arndale Market – see link in previous post) in the oven with some olive oil and half a sliced onion for about 20 minutes, before wrapping a piece of Sillfield’s dry cured streaky bacon around the nearly cooked sausage. Ten minutes later the sausage and bacon combo was sat inside a fresh piece of crusty baguette, topped with caramelised onions together with a good dollop of tomato ketchup mixed up with some Indonesian red chilli sambal. It was simple, low maintenance & delicious - and much more satisfying than most of the stilted dialogue in the movie.

Oh, and King Arthur also starred the ‘English rose’ Keira Knightley - who put in yet another performance as a flat as her chest. Not even a billion hi-resolution pixels could bring her pouting, ‘I’m great with a bow & arrow me’, Guinevere to life.

Wrestling With Rick Stein's Conger Eel - And Winning

Fish cooking is bit of mystery to me to be honest, but this weekend I bought and cooked conger eel for the first time. It was my first tentative step into murky depths of snappers and skates, mullets and mackerels, bouillabaisse and bass which I’m hoping to master over the next year or so. One of the reasons for not getting stuck in to our finned friends before was the lack of a decent fishmonger near by - and my negative feelings about supermarket pre-packed portions especially applies to fish because everyone says it’s got to be as fresh as possible to be really appreciated. However now the ‘new’ Arndale market in Manchester features two very large fish counters - stocking what looks like pretty decent, fresh product – so I’ve decided to take the plunge.

And there will be no more intentional aquatic puns from this point forward.

As it happen near the new market in the Arndale is also a new Waterstone’s – who had Rick Stein’s Seafood paperback on special offer. Seeing as Rick is famous for fish, and having enjoyed his attitude to food and cooking on French Odyssey and Food Heroes, I figured he was a good chef to help me through the mysteries of the deep – so I bought it.

First thing about the book is a useful guide at the beginning about how to prepare most common fish and seafood for cooking. Step by step instructions, accompanied by decent photography, shows you how to carve up all types of fish and gives the novice a basic grounding in fish mongering – and that’s exactly a beginner like me needed.

Well anyway, the fish stalls in the market had some large slices of conger eel (about 400g) that looked meaty and substantial - and Rick’s book had what looked like a fairly straight forward recipe for a ‘poêle of conger eel’ which I thought sounded rather sophisticated and très Francais (pretentious? moi?) .

Turns out that ‘poêle’ simply means ‘pan’ – but I was still impressed by the name and had the basic ingredients sat in the fridge so I cracked on.


The bit I thought that would be most straight forward was removing the silvery grey skin from the eel but this was actually quite tricky. It wouldn’t easily peel away, so working a sharp knife under the skin for a good five minutes was required, freeing up about a centimetre of skin at a time. Once finished I was rewarded with a firm, fleshy white lump of eel but with evidence of quite a few bones (both in the centre of the steak and around the edges). Still, ignoring this potential choking hazard, I pressed on – inserting very thin slices of garlic into deep cuts made into the eel before wrapping two slices of dry cured streaky bacon around it and securing with string.

Then into a cast iron ‘poêle’, containing a good lump of sizzling butter, I added diced up celery (one stick), carrot batons (half a big carrot cut into little sticks), four or five chopped shallots and two whole cloves of garlic. You then stick the lid on for five mins and then put in the eel/bacon parcel, turning it a few times in the butter. Add salt and pepper and a bit more butter if it looks a bit dry and stick in a hot oven, lid on, for 25 minutes – taking it out and turning the parcel over in the butter a couple of times as it cooks. You then check the seasoning and return to the oven for ten minutes uncovered. And that’s it – no wine, no stock or herbs – and what you get is a very pleasant buttery, fishy and bacon flavoured sauce, nicely cooked vegetables and a tasty, meaty fish/bacon centrepiece. The bones were a bit annoying but that’s a small sacrifice when you consider how simple the dish was to throw together and how well it went down with a glass of dry French white wine sat watching CSI. Highly recommended - and I’ll be trying more Rick/fish market culinary experiments over the months ahead which will be reported here.

Betcha can’t wait…..

The West Wing, Kitchen Knives And Blue Catering Plasters

"And I believe I'll use capital, lower-case, or Sanskrit, right up until the moment the Font Police cuff me and read me Miranda." -Josh Lyman, The West Wing

So how do we get from a belting quote from Josh in The West Wing, referring to being ticked off for using capital letters when responding to a entry on a fan forum about him, to cooking?

Well (and stay with me) …. one thing about cooking is your knives. A good set of knives to a budding cook are as precious/important as a good tool box is to someone who likes DIY (and apparently such people do exist). Years ago, working in the staff restaurant of the Reading Post Office depot on Caversham Road, I remember slicing tomatoes with a knife that had seen better days and proceeded to nearly lop the top of a finger off when the blade slipped. Being strangely squeamish when it comes to my own blood I nearly passed out – but all I really remember was the chef in the background saying ‘it ain’t sharp knives that cut you, it’s blunt ones’ as I tried to stay on my feet.

Of course, I’d rather he’d be telling someone where the first aid box was - but I'll let slide the fact that Chef had endangered the wellbeing of a novice 17 year old catering temp (who was simply trying to slice beef tomatoes as instructed) because, as the the blood flow was being stemmed by a kindly kitchen employee called Marge before the application of one of those funny blue plasters that you have in catering, he also shouted "You've learned a lesson son!". And indeed I had - good knives are important in the kitchen, apparently more so than having all your fingers. Thanks Chef.

Anyway, because I don’t have a massive budget and can’t really afford a set of Henckels Four Star or some hand forged Japanese blades made by Hattori Hanzo , I have over the years invested in couple of Sabatier classic and other half decent knives. However, recently I was rather taken with a swish set of discounted Sabatier ‘Stella’ knives in the homewares bit of TK MAX (of all places) and, having disciplined myself to ‘sharpen little but often’ they’re excellent.

But then I had the quandary of what to do with my other old, assorted yet still perfectly useful knives. And at this point is where The West Wing kicks in – the episode where the President gives his carving knife to Charlie, his personal aide, as part of a long tradition of passing on knives from father to son. President Bartlett has no sons, and Charlie has no parents – so thus he gives the knife to Charlie, who beforehand had been sent all across Washington to buy the President a new carving knife for thanksgiving. Now I have no kids (and have no intention having them), OXFAM won’t take knives (quite reasonable policy to, in the current social climate) and all the other foodies I know have got more knife blocks than casserole dishes. So, I’ve offered them ‘on loan’ to a bloke at work who is vaguely interested in affairs of the kitchen. Yeah, it's not exactly got the same spiritual/moral/emotional gravitas of getting an antique knife from the President of the USA - but they’re yours anyway Pete, so use them wisely.

Footnote – the big kicker in the West Wing scene is Charlie asking about the brand name on the knife – ‘PR’ (oh, the irony). Jed tells him they were made for his family by a Boston silversmith called Paul Revere. Turns out he was a bit of a hero/legend during the US revolution – and you can read about him here.

And with regard to Josh and the 'font police' there's more to come on that subject. I mean who can resist a free font download used primarily for Motorway sinage called "Transport Heavy"?

Madur Jaffrey, The Sweeny, Danny Baker & Being 'HD Ready'

They're The Sweeny Son - And They Haven't Had Any Dinner.....

Well, I've just had mine lads so not to worry. In fact it was a decent chicken and red lentil indian stew culled from Madhur Jaffrey's orginal Indian Cookery book



But considering it was first published/broadcast in 1982 when in many British kitchens a Chilli Con Carne was a daring adventure in terms of making 'foreign food', and your average supermarket herb and spice selection consisted of a jar of dried rosemary and some ground black pepper in a little plastic shaker, you come to realise it was minor foodie miracle that Madur was suddenly on screen waving clumps of fresh coriander leaves and extolling the virtues of grinding your own asian spices in pestle and mortar. Anyway, if you taking your first steps in exploring indian cookery you do worse than pick up a copy (it was republished in 1996 and second hand copies via Amazon appear to be still available) and get stuck in.

The said curry tonight was rapidly consumed in front of my new Sony Bravia LCD/HD-Ready/Future Proof/Digital switchover compliant blah blah telly whilst watching United do marginally better against Benfica than they did against the mighty Royals at the weekend. Living in Manchester means I allow myself to be glory seeking red or blue moon botherer whilst also celebrating my home town's successes because deep down I just like a bit of footy in my life - but not at the exclusion of all other cultural or social life. Heck, I love the whole North West so even the toffees, shakers, trotters and other funny nicknamed local teams within a 30 mile radius can feature in my affections depending on the circumstances.

I think the broadcasting genius that is Danny Baker summed it up when he tried to explain to his various disgrunteld media bosses that it's about football supporting - not the football itself-which is where the heart and soul of the game is - and that's how I feel about it. Danny would, I imagine, take the view that my extreme supporting promisecuity deserves a slap (I think he got sacked from the BBC for suggesting on air the same physical action should be dished out to a ref - so I'm probably safe) but he also pointed out that 'football is chaos' - so I'll embrace my contradictions in that very spirit.

Talking of cockneys, my other recent indulgence (beyond buying a ridiculously expensive TV) has been renting The Sweeny collection from my DVD club. If anyone thinks Life On Mars and its 70's retro style is entertaining you really must check out The Sweeny. It began in 1974 and was possibly the most explosive drama ever to hit UK screens. From the belting opening theme music - to the language, fisticuffs, drinking, sexism, racism and all round two fingers up to authority attitude - it's still a powerful body of work that goes far beyond just laughing at the clothes, cars and now legendary catchphrases. I thinks it's also shown on Granada Men & Motors sometimes (NB this fine channel has now been kicked off Freeview to make way for one of those terrible 'tax on the poor, thick, vunerable or just dead drunk' interactive quiz shows that are I read somewhere being investigated by Ofcom for being a rip-off). Still if you can your hands on a bit of Sweeny action then I thoroughly recommend you indulge. See, this blog's not all about food - so shut it you slag, get your knickers on and make me a cup of tea.