Pakuchi som tam papaya, and baby corn

I took my mortar to prepare a little Thai style lunch around cilantro/coriander green papaya salad.

So now we have local green papaya, let’s grate it.

Garlic, green hot chili. Then red hot hot hot chili (very little, it’s so hot), ami ebi salty shrimps, toasted peanuts, kabosu lime juice, a little sugar, nam pla fish sauce. Then red sweet chili, green papaya, coriander leaves and stalks.

Tam ! Tam ! Tam ! Tam !

Fresh baby corn from Thailand.

I’ve used it for a stir-fry. Just oil and a little garlic, to cook the white parts of negi leeks, shishito green peppers, edamame beans, then the baby corn. I garnished with sweet chili sauce.

Brown rice.

A nice 3 dish meal.

A wind of Burma (via gourmande in Osaka

Last year, Shan Burmese cuisine…

Click here to read more.

Appetizers of tea leaves, then fried Shan tofu. That’s a nice week-end meal…

Click here to read more.

A wind of Burma

Appetizers of tea leaves, then fried Shan tofu. That’s a nice week-end meal. Don’t look for authenticity, I have no idea, no recipe and no access the ingredients from there. It’s surely very different.

It’s inspired by the tea leave pickle dish, lahpet. I used dried green tea leaves, infused in not too hot water, squeezed. And as the caffeine content is high, I have mixed with some sort of spinach. The leaves are simply cut, stir-fried with garlic, ginger and nuoc nam (fish sauce).
I was surprise that the leaves were spicy, even though I didn’t add any hot pepper. That taste is strong, so it’s very pleasant in small amounts or as a rice topping.

Toppings… what I had in the closet. Peanuts, goji berries, sesame seeds, coconut shreds, kimchi, dried fish, garlic chips (that I fried).

Fried Shan tofu. That’s really yummy.

Making Shan Tofu with modern kitchen equipment

Shan tofu with ra-yu sauce

I didn’t want any oily sauce. So I made 2 salsas, very simply.
Red and hot : tomato, fresh red chili.
Green and cool : bell pepper, lemon, ginger.

With 1 serving of rice
Cal : 609 F18.9g C97.9g P32.4g

That sweet fish bread, heritage from our Roman ancestors (French Pissaladiere)

The first is the eternal pissaladiere.
It’s one of the oldest food tradition we have. It doesn’t look so pretty, maybe it doesn’t even taste good for foreign taste buds, but it’s acquired taste of more than 2000 year ago.
So millions of new dishes can be created beside, but I don’t want that recipe to be *improved”, like I don’t want the pyramids of Egypt to be renovated with high-tech glass panels replacing the stones. It came to us unchanged 2000 year, I wish that in 2000 years, it will still exist, unchanged, and people can do “culinary tourism”.

When the area became a Roman port, bread-making was introduced or developed. Fish sauce (something like nuoc nam, nam pla…) was omnipresent standard in Roman cuisine, they called it garum. On the Cote d’Azur, they already had anchovies stocked in brine. That was the “pissalat” (litt : salty fish). A pissaladiere is a “pissalat bread”.
Tomatoes where not known, but later in certain places they added them to the pissaladiere.
So you can have in Nice’s style “white” pissaladiere (the real one), and in Monaco’s style “red” pissaladiere.
I like both. I won’t decide…

Let the dough raise 30 minutes.

Pissalat
Anchovie in brine, drained, pasted.
If you are not in the area, it’s difficult to find anchovies in brine. Here, it’s impossible. In some stores, you can buy “anchovy sauce” that is pissalat. Otherwise, I think that anywhere :

Compote d’oignons
The onions are very sweet, because they are cooked longly into onion jam. No sugar is added. What I did is nearly a sabotage- I was starving- only 50 minutes of cooking in olive oil… the Provencal grannies slice very finely their onions and let them on the stove several hours, the day before. Ideally, start the onion when you start making the dough. 2 hours is well.

Then let the mix cool. Add the anchovies pasted (keep a few for display), and herbs, fresh or dry.

Nice… Monaco.

I bake it like bread not pizza. Pre-heated oven, at 220 Celsius, about 30~40 minutes.

With a little glass of “rose” ?

It’s more “amber”… it’s a Japanese wine actually. I didn’t remember I had it, and I was cleaning my closets and found it. I didn’t remember it was so “corse” (strong ? deep ?), but the pissaladiere is “corsee” too, so they got along well.