GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA

Without thinking too long about it I bought a jar of frozen salted crab I thought I needed for my Thai Som Tam salad. When I inspected the jar more closely at home - it was wrapped in plastic so I could hardly read the label - it actually contains salted Vietnamese BA KHÍA, which are freshwater crabs from the Mekong delta. So, now I will use it for Vietnamese GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA, which translates to Ba khía papaya salad.

Fo the salad you will need to julienne 300 gram green unripe papaya.

Then make the dressing by mixing:

30 gram tôm khô ngâm mềm (dried fermented shrimp, soaked in water).
20 gram đường vàng (sugar).
10 gram tỏi (garlic).
10 gram ờt (red fresh chili).
30 ml nước mắm (fish sauce).

Add 50 ml lime juice and pound in a mortar.

Add the papaya shreds. Then add the following ingredients:

Halved cherry tomatoes and string beans
30 gram Rau răm (Vietnamese coriander).
30 gram Đậu Phộng (peanuts freshly fried, crushed).
30 gram Ngò Gai.
50 gram Mắm ba khía (the freshwater crabs with the liquid from the jar).

Mix well and pound everything in the mortar for another couple of minutes.

Bún đậu mắm tôm

This dish is typical of northern Vietnam. It is a cold platter of cooked rice vermicelli, fried tofu, cha com, assorted meats, cucumber and fresh leaf vegetables like perilla. The fermented shrimp dipping sauce is essential. It can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I had it in the evening in a small Hà Nội restaurant alongside a cold beer. I’m sure it was not the best Bún đậu mắm tôm in Hà Nội but sometimes you’re just hungry and have to walk into the nearest restaurant.

How to make the dipping sauce. Mix the following ingredients:

2 tbsp fermented shrimp paste.
2 tbsp sugar.
2 tbsp lime juice.
1 tbsp chili, sliced.
2 tbsp hot oil.
Optional: MSG, king of flavour.

Vermicelli & tofu
After cooking the rice vermicelli and cooling, they will be a sticky mess. For this dish you simply cut the vermicelli in bite sized chunks. The tofu is fried in the same bite sized pieces.

Meat
The meat can be pork leg or pork belly. Cook the pork as one big piece with some salt and when done, cool it in ice water. Cut into bite sized slices.
You can also add sliced Vietnamese pork sausage, but this will be hard to find outside Vietnam.

Cha com
To make these green sticky rice patties is more time consuming. You need young green rice, which is the first problem. I’ve never seen green com in The Netherlands so I have to skip this. The ingredients of cha com are:

• 50 g pork minced
• 100 g pork paste
• 50 g green sticky rice
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1/2 egg beaten
• 2/3 tbsp stock powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp garlic minced

Above the shrimp paste for the dipping sauce. In the background my Thai catapult for killing small birds.

Bún chả Hà Nội

If you break down Bún chả you simply have to get the meat patties right and the dipping sauce. The pickled carrots and kohlrabi/unripe papaya are essential as well, but easy to make.

Side pickle

First make the side pickle:
100g carrot, 1/2 tsp salt
100g kohlrabi (or unripe papaya), 1/2 tsp salt.

Mix above ingredients and let the salt draw out the moisture of the vegetables. Drain and wash the vegetables thoroughly.

Mix with 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp vinegar and 4 tbsp water. Chill for a couple of hours.

Below the different elements you will need the assemble this dish:

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Chả

Chả are meat patties and these are made from 100 percent pork. I asked my butcher to mince some pork shoulder. Mix the meat with the following ingredients:

1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp minced shallot
2 tbsp caramel sauce called Nước Màu (see below).
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Barbecue the meat patties.

How to make Nước Màu: dissolve 1/2 cup sugar (100g) on low heat. When caramelised add 1/2 cup hot water and mix until the sauce is a clear liquid.

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The dipping sauce

To make the dipping sauce you mix 300ml water, 2,5 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp fish sauce, 2/3 tbsp vinegar or lime juice. All according to taste. The dipping sauce is served warm, not hot or cold.

To serve you add the barbecued pork patties to a bowl, add some of the pickled vegetables and pour over the dipping sauce. Add minced garlic and sliced fresh chili. Serve the noodles on a separate dish and dip the noodles in the dipping sauce.

Below two photographs I made in Hanoi and it should look like this.

I also marinated and barbecued some sliced pork belly. You can serve this as well.

Gỏi đu đủ kiểu Thái

Thai papaya salad. Shred the unripe papaya in long thins strips and put these in cold water for 15 minutes. Then all you need to memorise is the dressing:

4 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp fermented fish sauce
3 tbsp lime juice
1 tps chilli powder
1 tbsp chilli paste

Fresh:
Garlic
Cilantro
Shallot
Red Chilli.

Above quantity for 2-3 people, I divided everything in two for one person. Save some dressing as a dipping sauce for other side dishes, like boiled meat.

First mix the sugar with lime until dissolved. Ten add the rest. I didn’t have Thai or Laos fermented fish sauce but I did have pickled krill Hanoi style. Krill are tiny shrimp. This has about the same intoxicating smell as fermented fish sauce, so it as a great substitute. The pickled krill is more concentrated and I used less than 5 table spoons. For the chili paste I used Thai chili paste with soya bean oil, which worked just fine. You can be flexible in making the dressing as long as you know the taste of the substitutes. “Normal” fish sauce is no substitute for fermented fish sauce!

For the papaya salade you will need some steamed shrimp and/or octopus, freshly fried peanuts, and before serving you mix in fresh shallot, cilantro, lemons grass (soft part) and more red chili, sliced. Serve with sticky rice. The dressing can also be used as a dipping sauce for anything you like.

Non-Thai substitute: pickled krill Hanoi style.

Sauce for ayam setan panggang

This is a recipe for a simple satay sauce based on kecap manis. You simply fry some shallot, garlic and rawit chili pepper in hot oil until fragrant.

Then you grind the shallot, garlic and pepper to a paste and mix it with kecap manis, some petis udang and salt.

The sauce is great for fried chicken but can also be used for satay. It is also popular as a sauce for fried tofu as a simple vegan dish. Add lontong rice, some bean sprouts (boil for 30 seconds), pickled cucumber and fried shallot for a complete meal.

Recipe for ayam setan panggang

Make a spice mix from 10 rawit, 5 lombok, 1 tea spoon white pepper, 1 tablespoon tamarinde juice, 1 tablespoon gula jawa (=sugar), 5 garlic and 1 tomato.

I ended up using more rawit and lombok than shown in the photo. You can use a kitchen blender. Fry the spice mixture in hot oil for 3 minutes. For the whole proces I used a wok on my Thai wood stove. I used the hot coal to fry the chicken.

Add chicken pieces and fry for another 3 minutes.

Now you will add about 300 ml water, a piece of ginger and lemon grass. Reduce until the water has evaporated. Add another 300 ml of water and reduce again.

Now the chicken is ready to be grilled.

Moong dal tadka

You can never go wrong with an Indian dal. This recipe is for moong dal tadka, made with mung beans. The mung beans are not used whole but without the outer skin and split. Mung bean sprouts are well known in The Netherlands as taugé, which is a Malay language word. In Bahasa Indonesia the proper word is kecambah.

Moong dal tadka means the mung beans are cooked with the aromatics: onion, tomato, ginger, turmeric and red chili powder.

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported(CC BY-SA 3.0): Earth100

The below quantities are for one person, or two persons if the Moong dal tadka is a side dish.

1/2 cup moong dal (very well rinsed)
1,5 cups water
1 onion finely chopped
1 tomato finely chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
1/3 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon chili powder.

Pressure cook the above ingredients for about 10 minutes and let the pressure fall naturally. After cooking add water to gain the correct consistency for a dal. Add salt to taste.

The next step is to make the tempering.

Add 2 to 3 tablespoons ghee in a tadka pan. Add 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and 1 teaspoon mustard seeds. Wait until they ‘pop’. Add 4 to 5 crushed garlic cloves and 1 to 2 slit green chilies. Turn off the heat and add 1/2 teaspoon garam masala, 1/4 teaspoon red chili powder and 1 pinch asafoetida (hing).

Pour the tempering over the dal. That’s it!

Either serve with rice or roti/chapati. I usually make rogni roti. ‘Rogni’ is the Persian word for clarified butter (ghee). This dal is northern Indian so chapati is more appropriate.

225 gram chapati flower (atta)
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons milk
50 gram melted ghee.

Mix well. This quantity will make 6 chapati.

Vietnamese soup stock

I used six chicken backs and two pieces of pork hock. After washing the bones and meat, I boiled both separately for about 10 minutes. Then I drained the bones and put them in a clean pressure pot and covered the bones with fresh water. I boiled the stock with the lid open for about 45 minutes and removed the pork hock (the meat should be soft by then). Then I boiled the chicken bones in the pot under pressure for about 1,5 hours (3 to 4 hours without a pressure pot). After opening the lid I further boiled the stock to reduce the liquid and brought the stock to taste with salt, some sugar and fish sauce.

The stock was meant for bún riêu, crab noodle soup, but I didn’t have most of the needed ingredients. I just improvised and used the plucked pork meat from the hock, fish balls, fried tofu, paksoi and egg noodles instead of rice noodles. The broth itself was amazing. Next time I will have to find crab meat, soy bean oil, minced pork meat and rice noodles. The recipe also calls for pig’s blood but this will be very difficult to buy in The Netherlands.

A very French dejeuner

The last time I was in Meursault for work was in December 2019. It was impossible to image that just two months later the world would be effectively closed for years to come. In 2019 Meursault was cloaked in a heavy fog. Now I finally got to see the village and its surroundings.

On the first day I had lunch in Le Bouchon. Address: 1 Pl. de L Hôtel de ville, 21190 Meursault, France. I ordered the salade de gésier, oeufs pochés sauce meurette and a glass of white wine.

I can’t remember if I ever had gésier before. In English this is called the gizzard, which its part of the giblets, a culinary term for the edible offal of a fowl, typically including the heart, gizzard, liver, and other organs. I loved it. The poached eggs were also perfect.

The sauce meurette can easily be made at home. The ingredients vary but the list below is a good starting point.

60 g de beurre mou, coupé en dès, 1 échalote, 50 g de lardons, 25 cl de vin rouge, 1 feuille de laurier sauce, 2 cuillerées à soupe de vinaigre de vin, 4 gros oeufs extra frais.

Pour la sauce meurette :
1. Pelez et ciselez finement l’échalote.
2. Dans une casserole en inox, faites chauffer la moitié du beurre. Ajoutez l’échalote ciselée, les lardons et laissez cuire 2-3 min jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient légèrement dorés.
3. Ajoutez la feuille de laurier et le vin. Portez à ébullition puis baissez le feu et laissez cuire 10 à 15 min sur feu moyen, jusqu’à ce que le vin réduise de 2/3.
4. Hors du feu, incorporez le beurre restant.

Pour la cuisson des oeufs pochés :
1. Remplissez une petite casserole d’eau et portez-la à ébullition. Ajoutez le vinaigre et baissez un peu le feu pour que l’eau frémisse.
2. Cassez un oeuf dans une louche et plongez-la délicatement dans l’eau frémissante en faisant attention de ne pas casser l’oeuf.
3. Laissez cuire 3 min puis égouttez l’oeuf poché sur une feuille de papier absorbant.
4. Faites de même avec les autres oeufs. Retirez les longs filaments avec une paire de ciseaux si besoin.
5. Servez les oeufs sauce meurette sans attendre, nappés de sauce meurette et décorés d’un brin de persil.

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Dîner de gala au Château de Meursault

On Saturday there was a dîner de gala in the castle. Like always each course was accompanied with the Ban bourguignon and some great wines:

Meursault ‘les Meix Chavaux’ 2019, Domaine Gilles Lafouge.

Meursault rouge 2020, Domaine Boyer-Martenot.

Beaune 2020, Domaine du Château de Meursault..

Oeuf en meurette de vin blanc, ligne croustillant et chips de lard.

Chausson de pintade aux champignons, légume de moment et risotto de pomme de terre.

Fromage avec éclat vigneron (Comté, Epoisses, Brittle-Savarin).

Paring Chardonnay with cheese

One of the French rules is to pair a wine with a cheese from the same region. In Meursault I bought one bottle of Chardonnay from Beaune to bring home. In the Amsterdam cheese shop they had only one cheese from Bourgogne: a Charolais fermier goat cheese. This cheese is from Saône-et-Loire, so not exactly from the same department as Beaune, Côte-d'Or, but close enough.

https://kaaswiki.abrahamkef.nl/artikel/charolais-fermier/

Ba chỉ rang sả (lemongrass pork belly)

In Vietnam I had several dishes, which combine lemongrass with pork. It is a lovely combination.

For 500 gram pork belly you need about:

5 garlic cloves, minced
3 shallots, minced
1 - 2 tablespoon fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
5-6 lemongrass stalks

Marinate the meat with the finely chopped garlic, shallot, black pepper, fish sauce and sugar.

Fry the meat for 15 minutes. Add the thinly sliced lemongrass and fry until done.

Below a different version with fresh lemongrass and an assortiment of meats.

I saw a different version in which you braise the pork belly in a little water with soy sauce. If the meat is half done add sliced onion, lemon grass, seasoning powder, a little sugar, oyster sauce, dried chili and kaffir leaves.

Cơm bình dân

Cơm bình dân translates as “rice for the common man”. You will find it as street food, in small restaurants or at bus stops when traveling long distance. It is cheap and served fast. I wish we could have cơm bình dân in The Netherlands instead of the ubiquitous snackbar where you will not find a vegetable of any kind.

Below rice and three dishes served on one plate at the busstop halfway Hà Giang and Hà Nội.

Fried shrimp, pork and preserved vegetables, some tofu with pork and a small bowl of soup.

Bún chả

Bún chả is served as lunch in Hanoi. The dish consists of grilled pork balls, or patties, served with rice noodles and a dipping sauce. In the south of Vietnam there is a similar dish called bún thịt nướng, which is served with grilled pork on top the rice noodles.

The grilled pork was already served in the dipping sauce with some carrot and sliced green papaya. The dipping sauce is made from diluted fish sauce with sugar, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, crushed garlic and chilli.

You add the rice noodles to the bowl and add fresh chillis and crushed garlic according to taste. Of course there is plenty of fresh kinh giới served on the table.

As a side dish I ordered fried springs rolls, which are called nem rán in Hanoi. In the South of Vietnam they are called chả giò.

Most bún chả restaurants grill the pork on the street, which is great advertising.

One night in Saigon

This was my first evening in Ho Chi Minh City. The owners of Dai Tin invited me for dinner. I was so busy deconstructing the food, and downing many cans of Saigon beer, I forgot to note down the name of the restaurant. I even forgot to take photos of everybody invited to this dinner!

First plate contained thinly sliced boiled pork with many fresh leaf vegetables, pine apple, star fruit and cóc. For sure there is húng guế (Thai basil) on the plate.

You either dip a piece of meat in the dipping sauce and eat it like it is, or take a thin sheet of rice paper called bánh tráng and make a wrap with some of the leaves and meat. You dip the rolled wrap into the dipping sauce.

The key to a Vietnamese table are nước chấm, dipping sauces. You are free to mix your own dipping sauce according to your preferences with what is available on the table. You can squeeze lime in a dipping sauce or add fresh chilli. Dipping sauces can be based on fish sauce, soy sauce, fermented shrimp sauce, fermented soy beans (tương) or simply salt, black pepper mixed with lime juice for a more neutral taste. The basic ingredients can be mixed with (rice) vinegar and sugar.

Second dish was a bowl of fried shrimp, vegetables and fruit. The shrimp are so small you eat them whole. A large rice cracker with black sesame seeds was served, which you can use as a scoop for the shrimp mixture. The rice cracker is called Bánh tráng mè or Bánh đa vừng in North Vietnam.

I think this egg was either a goose or a duck egg. Served in fish sauce. You break up the egg and add some Vietnamese luffa or sponge gourd. Mix and eat. Lovely.

Next up was fried fish. These fish are typically dried for just one day, so that they retain some moist, and then deep fried. Again served with fresh leaves. I think I recognise Xà Lách (Vietnamese Lettuce). For the fish a soy based dipping sauce is appropriate.

This vegetable stir-fry was the prelude to the final dish. The stir-fry contained the heart and offal meat of the helmeted guineafowl. This bird is native to Africa.

The final dish was the shredded helmeted guineafowl. The rich dipping sauce contained BBQued garlic and pepper corns. By then I was sure I had 20 cans of beer, poured over a large block of ice.

Amsoi

Amsoi is the Surinamese, and partly Chinese, name for a variant of Brassica juncea. Soi is Chinese for ‘vegetable’. This plant is also known as brown mustard, Chinese mustard, Indian mustard, leaf mustard, Oriental mustard and vegetable mustard, and is a species of mustard plant. The taste is slightly pungent and reminds of mustard. The leaves are rich in vitamins A, C, and especially rich in vitamin K.

In The Netherlands you can buy amsoi, which will be a bit different from the plant you would buy on a Chinese, Korean or Indian market. The plant is very common and is widely used in cuisine. The genus of the plant is Brassica which contains cabbages.

Below a typical use in the Surinamese kitchen from New Draver restaurant: amsoi with salted beef, chicken and rice. No need to boil the amsoi separately, you can just fry the finely cut amsoi and stew the vegetable in its own water, which will be released during the cooking process.

Souvlaki

When I was seventeen my first journey without my parents took me to Greece with my friend Roger Overall. We didn’t drink a drop of alcohol nor did we party. I remember eating souvlaki, which was relatively cheap and ubiquitous. Ever since, I thought souvlaki was made of lamb. Only now I learned that souvlaki is mostly made of pork, the cut between the rib eye and the belly (the loin), which contains about 30% fat. This cut is hard to find in The Netherlands. I had to settle for a piece of pork neck.

If you google the recipe for souvlaki in English you will find a lot oil based marinades claiming to be “authentic”. I dug deeper and found a recipe on the YouTube-channel Grill philosophy which reminded me of what I had tasted that summer of 1986.

The below quantity is for 2 kilo of meat. I had to divide everything by four to adjust for my 400 gram of pork neck.

24 gram sea salt
2 gram black peppercorns
1 tsp summer savory
3 gram powdered sugar (not any other type of sugar)
150 ml water

Pound the peppercorns and coarse sea salt with a mortar and pestle and dissolve everything in the water. Massage the solution into the meat.

From there on you just have to grill the skewers. Before the first turn sprinkle some smoked paprika powder on the souvlaki. Serve old style with just some bread. The version with pita and tzatziki is a recent addition.

No oregano in this souvlaki but summer savory.

Green papaya salad (som tam)

Papaya originates from Mesoamerica and was introduced in Asia in the 17th-Century. This papaya salad was possibly invented in Laos. For this papaya salad you will need a green unripe papaya. Start by frying some peanuts in oil. This version is Thai. Many other versions are possible.

Start by pounding garlic and fresh chiles, adding soaked dried shrimp and 1 tablespoon of the fried peanuts. Pound but keep the ingredients coarse.

Add some palm sugar, long beans (3 cm pieces) and cherry tomatoes. Add lime juice and fish sauce. Finally add finely shredded papaya. Add the remaining table spoon of peanuts. Lightly pound the peanuts.

Ingredients

• 2 small garlic cloves

• 2 to 3 fresh Thai chiles

• 1 tablespoon (8g) dried shrimp

• 2 tablespoons (30g) roasted unsalted peanuts

• palm sugar to taste

• 4 cherry tomatoes, halved

• 2 long beans (about 30g), 3 cm pieces

• fresh lime juice from 2 limes

• 2 tablespoons (30ml) fish sauce

• 170g shredded green papaya, from 1 green papaya

• Cooked sticky rice, for serving

Laos pot Thai steamed sticky rice

This is a traditional northern Thailand and Laotian method of making sticky rice. After washing the rice you have to soak the rice for six hours or overnight. Before steaming soak the bamboo basket in water to prevent the rice from sticking to the basket.

The steaming method takes 15 minutes, flipping the rice over and then steaming for another 5 to 10 minutes. You can put a small lid in the bamboo steamer to capture the steam inside.

Minced pork and sticky rice.

Larb Muang Moo

I liked this version of chopped pork salad the best. You make a spice mixture by toasting the following ingredients:

2 small dried hot chillis, 1/4 teaspoon coriander seeds, 1/4 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, a star anis pod, 1/2 cinnamon stick, 1 piece of mace, inner seeds of 4 Thai black cardamon, or 1 green cardamon, 1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns and 1 whole long pepper, which I didn’t have.

Toast about two minutes and grind everything into a fine powder.

Heat oil in a wok and throw in about 6 gloves or garlic, skins on but slightly mashed. Take out the garlic with a slotted spoon, and reserve. Add chopped pork, for convenience get minced pork, mixed pork offal like kidney, liver or tripe, which I sadly didn’t have. Add the spice mixture and a bunch of cut cilantro and cook for a short time. Add 1/4 cup of pork blood, which I also didn't have, and cook until thickened.

Season with salt and fish sauce and sprinkle with the fried garlic.

Indonesian table

An Indonesian table typically consists of lauk (fish, meat, egg, or other source of protein), sayur (vegetable), sambal, krupuk, and rice. Below is a mix of recipes from Java and Bali. Prep time was well over four hours, mainly because every dish needed a fairly complicated bumbu spice mixture, which had to be ground to a fine paste in a cobek. For rice we made lontong, which needs to boil for a pretty long time, at least one hour! To cool hang the plastic bag somewhere so any remaining moist can drip out. This was a collaboration with somebody who knows the Indonesian kitchen better than I.

No meal is complete without krupuk. Freshly fried krupuk is fragrant.

Sambal Matah Kecicang Khas Bali

This raw sambal is simply made by slicing the ingredients very finely and then pouring hot oil on top of it. I used pure coconut oil, about 5 tablespoons.

The ingredients:
Shallot or Indonesian onion (they are tiny)
Red chili pepper, for color green chilli pepper should be used as well.
Red lombok
Lemon grass
Daun jeruk purut (kaffir lime leaf)
Kecicang
Half a teaspoon of trassi
Lime juice
Salt
Black pepper

Sambal Matah Kecicang

Pindang Base Lalah Khas Bali

This recipe is quite simple. Make a bumbu spice paste of the following ingredients:

Shallot
Garlic
Red chili pepper (rawit)
Kemeri nut
Piece of kencur
Piece of turmeric
1 tomato
1 lombok

For this recipe two small pindang mackerel were used. Remove the head and fish bones. This is fish preserved in pindang style. Fry the pieces in oil until golden brown.

Next fry the spice mixture in oil, using the oil you just fried the fish in enhances the flavour. Add the fried fish and some water. The recipe said: add a salam leaf, I accidentally added a kaffir lime leaf. Fry until the sauce is reduced and the fish is ‘dry’.

Pindang Base Lalah Khas Bali

Asinan Sayur Betawi Bumbu Kacang

Asinan are pickled vegetables, as the word ‘asin’ implies, in salty brine. We made a version popular in Jakarta. The brine was made by boiling water (about 500 ml) and adding palm sugar and tamarind (sweet and sour) and a spice mixture made of:

3 lombok
6 small spicy chilli peppers
60 gram fried peanuts
3 cloves of garlic
5 gram dried shrimp soaked in hot water

For vegetables we used cabbage, bean sprouts, carrot and cucumber. Tofu is also a great option. Shred the vegetables finely and pour the liquid over the vegetables. Add some whole peanuts before serving.

For this bumbu you need peeled peanuts.

Satay ayam

I have made satay ayam and the dark sweet peanut sauce quite often. You can read the recipe here: Homemade sateh sauce from Java

Yam khai dao ยำไข่ดาว

This Thai fried egg salad was surprisingly easy to make. Even though there is ‘khai’ in the name, there is no chicken meat, just the eggs. Start by making a dressing of:

• 4 limes

• 1 tablespoon of palm sugar

• 2 tablespoons of fish sauce

• 2 – 3 chilies, sliced

• 1 lemongrass, sliced

Mix together 3 small tomatoes, roughly chopped, sliced shallot, a handful of cilantro, chopped, a handful of scallions, chopped. You can also add roasted peanuts.

Now fry 3 to 4 eggs in plenty of oil in a wok. You should be able to splash oil on top of the eggs. Don’t disturb the eggs until the bottom is crispy, then flip the eggs over. When done cut the eggs in about the same size as the tomatoes. Mix the dressing into the salad, but not necessarily all of it.

Teri kacang

An Indonesian side dish. The word literally means anchovy (teri) peanuts (kacang). There are three components: fried small anchovy, fried peanuts and a bumbu spice mixture.

Grind below ingredients together to a fine paste (bumbu):
25 cloves of small shallot
5 cloves of garlic
100 grams of lombok
2 handfuls of red chili

Prepare below ingredients:
3 cm galangal (smashed)
8 kaffir lime leaves
50 grams of palm sugar
1 tablespoon tamarind with a little water

Fry 200 gram peanuts with skin.
Fry 200 gram salted anchovy (they should be about 3 cm long) until crispy.

Fry the bumbu in oil, add (in this order): galangal, kaffir leaves, palm sugar, add tamarind with the water. Fry until the oil separates.
Add the anchovy and peanuts, mix and cool. This will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Teri asin

Work lunch.

Adana kebabı

In 2021 I bought some serious kebab skewers. After one year I finally used them for an Adana kebabı. Not exactly a proper authentic Adana kebabı because I used sumac, cumin and urfa biber in the kebabs. I understand my version is referred to as urfa kebab. If you really dig into the taxonomical classification of kebab things get more complicated. For the original Adana kebabı you should only use salt and sweet red peppers. Also the lamb should be mixed with 30% tail fat. The Turkish butcher didn’t have tail fat so I asked him to mix the lamb meat with 20% fat. He put everything through the meat grinder and I walked out with minced 20% fatty lamb meat.

I mixed 500 gram of minced lamb meat with 5 grams salt (about 1 teaspoon), 1 teaspoon cumin, 2 teaspoons sumac, and 1 tablespoon urfa biber. Urfa biber is also called Isot biber. Urfa biber is a red chili pepper, ripening to a dark maroon on the plant. After harvest the pepper is sun dried and tightly wrapped afterwards. This pepper is only 7,500 SHU on the Scoville scale. 500 gram is about 6 skewers and 1 skewer is really enough for one person.

If you don’t mix the cumin, sumac and urfa biber with the meat you can sprinkle those spices on top of the meat on your plate. Next time I will probably just use urfu pepper and salt. Careful with salt. Once it’s in, you cannot adjust for less salt.

The salt has the function to dissolve the muscle protein, which helps the meat stay on the skewer. During the mixing of the meat you add water and knead this into the mass. The result should be an almost clay like meat-mixture. Chill in the fridge. If you follow these steps you can mould the meat around the skewers like clay and it will not fall off during the grilling.

Cooking time should be around 12 minutes. You serve the kebabs with Turkish flat bread, a tahini-garlic sauce and a salad made of red onions and sumac. Grill some green pepper on the charcoal for extra vegetables. An easy addition is buying a jar of Türlü Turşu (mixed vegetables pickles), which goes great with the fatty meat.

The tahini sauce is easily made by mixing tahini with garlic, salt, lemon juice and enough water to make a nice sauce-like consistency. Use an electric mixer for the best result.

Sumaklı soğan salatası

The red onion salad is quite simpel as well. The ingredients are: red onion, sumac, salt, lemon juice and parsley. Add the parsley only just before serving!

Urfa biber (Isot biber).