BASIC BREAD RECIPE

To make 1 loaf;



500g strong white flour plus extra for dusting

300ml water

25g unsalted butter plus a little for greasing

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar or 2 tsp for a crusty loaf

1.5 tsp dried yeast



A standard bread recipe that will make 1 loaf or 6 rolls.



Method;



Bring together flour,butter,salt,sugar and yeast in a mixing bowl, incorporate 300ml of warm water(use a 3rd boiling to 2/3 rds cold water), now form a dough. Once the dough is pliable, lightly flour a work surface and knead for approximately 10 minutes, you will need to put some effort into this part. Using the heels of your hands press down and stretch then fold and repeat.

After kneading the bread will have to prove. Grease a loaf tin with butter, of if making bread rolls form into the desired shape. Place in a warm place for 1 1/2 t0 2 hours until doubled in size. 15 minutes before baking pre-heat an oven with a small bowl of boiling water placed in the bottom. Oven temperature to reach 225c. Place the bread into the middle of the oven and bake for approx 35 minutes for a loaf and 15 minutes for rolls. Turn down the oven to 200c after 10 minutes of baking. Turn out onto a wire rack.

To test the bread, to see if it is cooked through, tap the bottom of the loaf, if hollow leave to rest on the rack, if not cooked through return to the oven with out the tin and cook for a further 5 minutes. Alternatively you can remove the bread from the tin for the last 5 minutes of cooking and return to the oven with a light dusting of flour.

Notes;

The bread is cooked at a higher temperature to start with to compensate for loss of heat once bread is placed in the oven. A bowl of water is placed in the bottom of the oven to create steam which gives the bread a thicker crust.

CARROT SOUP WITH CORIANDER OIL

Carrot soup anyone? To many this must sound at the fore front of bland. Carrots like the humble parsnip must be among the most versatile of root vegetables, not only can we cook them in a multitude of ways they also appear in desserts in the form of cakes!

Growing up, like most kids i was put through the torture of carrots cut into rounds, then cooked to affinity till all of the goodness had leached from the poor vegetables to form an orange tinted water that was then thrown away. I'm still convinced to this day that pouring that water on the garden would have made you king of horticulture. Many a year was spent wondering how Bugs bunny enjoyed this humble veg!

As years have passed my taste buds have developed thank god! A carrot is no longer held or seen in the light that was previously shown to it, but to reach this stage of carrot enlightenment you have to ban all carrot killers from the pot, take up the apron or find a cook that understands the humble root veg!



A recipe for Carrot soup that is lightly spiced, with the addition of coriander(cilantro) oil.



Serves 4 as a starter( Quantities can be increased, but try to keep to the figure of 250 between the carrots and liquid i.e. 750g carrot to 1000ml liquid, increase to 1000g of carrot to 1250 ml liquid and so forth), reason for this is texture and thickness. This ratio works well with a good silky texture.



Recipe:



Roast carrots:



750g of carrots

Olive oil

Sea Salt and Freshly Ground pepper



Carrot soup:



1000ml of good chicken stock preferably homemade. For a vegetarian version omit chicken stock and replace with vegetable stock.

750 g of roasted carrots

A good handful of fresh coriander

1 teaspoon of roasted and ground coriander seeds

Half a teaspoon of cumin powder

Sea salt

Freshly Ground pepper



Coriander(cilantro) oil:



100ml of extra virgin olive oil

20g of fresh coriander(stems and leaf)

A grain or two of sea salt (no more)

Method:



Top and tail the carrots and clean as necessary trying to leave skins intact. Pre-heat your oven to 190c and lightly coat the carrots in a roasting tray with the oil. Season well.Cook for 40 minutes of until roasted and cooked through.

While the carrots are roasting make the coriander oil. Bring a big pan of water to the boil and blanch the coriander for 30 seconds then plunge into an iced water bath. Pat dry and add to a liquidiser with some of the EVO oil, add the small amount of salt and blitz in the liquidiser adding the rest of the oil until a vibrant green oil is achieved that is free of coriander pieces. Transfer to a container and refrigerate till needed.

In another pan bring the desired amount of chicken stock to the boil, once the carrots are cooked add to a liquidiser with the stock, and puree. Add fresh coriander then season, add ground roasted coriander seeds(see note), and cumin and continue to puree to a smooth consistency is achieved!

Transfer to a clean pan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for at least 15 minutes, stirring at intervals.



To serve:



Transfer to serving bowls, and add a teaspoon of coriander oil to each bowl.



Notes:



To roast the coriander seeds, place a skillet or frying pan onto a hob, place the seeds into the pan and lightly toast till the aroma is released. Once the aroma is released remove from the source of heat and pound to a powder in a pestle and mortar.



The coriander oil will yield a lot more than is needed for this soup, but is very versatile and can be used as a sauce for other dishes or as an ingredient.

QUICK GUIDE TO DINING VIENTIANE

Thinking top dining destinations, I'm sure Vientiane does not even enter the list, well think again as all this could change in the coming future!

Ok, so London,New York,Tokyo and Paris first come to mind, but this charming south east Asian capital has more to offer than first meets the eye! When thinking south east Asian you automatically assume the cuisine of the big culinary destinations in this part of the world and rightly so with the vast array of delights to be had in Singapore, the fragrance of Thailand or the depth of flavours associated with Vietnamese cooking, Laos being a minor cousin, and often overlooked is stating it's claim as fast as the country embraces democracy and peace.

All of these country's have there famous dishes, but Lao's national dish laap pronounced larp is probably little known outside of the country or the Laotian community's that have settled in the USA. With tourism and the high numbers of Aid workers on the increase it could even grow in popularity world wide. Laap is a dish of minced meat normally pork, but can be made with fowl or fish,which is then tossed with lime juice,garlic, roasted sticky rice(that is ground to a powder),scallions,mint and chillies. Authentic laap is made with raw pork that is then minced, but to cater to different tastes you will normally be served the pork at least cooked. Laap can be fiery hot, but most restaurants will tone down the mak phet(chili) to western palates.
Laap is served on a salad of leafs, normally consisting of lettuce with lao sticky rice being the normal side order, Another favourite lao dish is papaya salad. Lao cuisine is very similar to Thai in its use of fresh ingredients that are balanced to achieve healthy and delicious meals that can be a little too hot for the western palate, but still achieve that perfect balance of sweet,sour,salty and hot. Vietnamese and Chinese influences are to be found throughout Lao with the noodle being a firm favourite, but Laotian food is not only confined to eastern influences with the french making an impact during there colonisation of french indo china. Not only are there french restaurants of note in Laos but the humble baguette is big on the agenda often being eaten for breakfast with condensed milk and throughout the day with lao pate( think pork luncheon meat). Baguettes can be found from street vendors throughout the day. For exceptional baguettes along the river front you will find PVO opposite the BCEL bank they have some of the best in town, along with tasty spring rolls. Full size baguettes are cheap and very filling. Bakeries are good and have a loyal following throughout the city with some great eats on offer and tasty pizzas.

A good place to ease your self into the complexities of Lao cuisine is Ban Lao beer garden on Th Francois Nginn, with a menu consisting of Lao staples with the odd western dish, the food is honest fare over seen by villay and her female cooks. With many dining options to choose from on this street, you could eat modern tapas at the Full Moon cafe, then head next door to stickies for a modern take on food that would not be out of place in the trendiest of eateries. Along the street you can dine on a mix of Lao and french fare at Douang Deuane or eat barbecue Lao style at the entrance for 50 cents a piece. For a drink in good company head further along the street to the Hare and Hound pub where john will keep you amused with his good humour and tales of south east asia, and his graceful wife will feed you if your hungry, good for imported steaks and British fare. Tasty Indian can be found around town with the Taj mahal being a popular choice and very reasonable on price, just be careful with the rice, somtimes it moves!

Dining options are endless in Vientiane with good lao food from vendors and the riverfront providing sun set dining from the numerous restaurants along the mighty Mekong. Word on the street being Le Belle Epoque is one of the best options for fine dining with other good french restaurants about town, La Vendome and Le Cote D'Azure being very popular with ex-pats. You can find Japanese, Korean, Italian, Chinese and most cuisines in some shape or form in the capital. A quote from an ex-pat living in lao and written in a top guide book, read as " Dollar for dollar the best dining in the world" He is not far wrong!

PHOTOS FROM MAKPHET TRAINING RESTAURANT -LAOS

Makphet training restaurant,Vientiane Laos.

Front sign with a description of the restaurant.

"Yum mak nee" Banana flower salad with grilled pork

fillet,tamarind and chili.

Coconut lime cake with "mar not" sorbet and Red hibiscus

flower syrup.

"Mar not" Sorbet

MAKPHET TRAINING RESTAURANT -LAOS

Modern Lao food for the uninformed can take many guises, but none more so than at Makphet restaurant in Vientiane Laos. I chanced upon Makphet after leaving the restaurant next door, although not dissapointed with what i had just eaten, deep down i was a little annoyed at not having found Makphet an hour previously. I made a note to have lunch there the following day, as a sign outside informed the public that they were to shut the day after for a ten day break!

Makphet translated as Chili in Lao language is very unique in that it serves as a training restaurant for former street children. The restaurant is overseen by the teachers with the former street kids cooking and tending front of house. Students and teachers alike are adorned in identical green t-shirts with the Makphet motif and respective grade adorned on the front.


Makphet is overseen by a charity Ngo called Friends international, a charity committed to helping former street children and there mothers through training in the hospitality industry and the making of handicrafts. http://www.friends-international.org/laopdr.html

Friends international have a similar set up in Cambodia with training restaurants in the capital Phnom penh. Makphet has a second floor that sells handicrafts made by parents with 70% of the profit being retained by the crafts person, while the other 30% is injected back into the enterprise.

The very modern menu with it's culinary roots ingrained in Lao cooking and culture is a revelation. The menu you are handed by your Laotian waitress is given with a gracefulness that could hail from the former royal courts, only this is a former street child with the determination to make good fortune of one self. If other restaurants could put the thought into the design, that has taken place with the menu you are handed at Makphet i'm sure there clientele would be back for seconds! The menu itself could hail from a Sydney cafe at the height of fashion, only this comes from a training restaurant. You are handed a lime green coloured professionally designed booklet with amazing food photography and delightful writing that describes the dishes on offer. With dishes starting in the range of 40,000 kip and ranging to 55,000 kip for mains, and desserts starting from 30,000kip(exchange rate at time of meal 8,500kip to the $) this is a little bit on the pricey side for Vientiane but offers extraordinary value for money once you have sampled the goods on offer, if you could sample food of this quality in a major western city you would be sure to pay a small fortune!

The food on offer is inventive sounding with good use of local ingredients. I opted for a banana flower salad, grilled pork fillet and chili and tamarind called yum mak nee. The dish it's self was lovingly presented, without the need to be pretentious. A nice background of sweet sour flavour with a gentle kick of chili, this salad is tantalising to the palate with the pork fillet beautifully cooked and moist with a succulent bead of crisped fat still attached. For dessert i found it rather more difficult to choose as they all jumped out to grab your attention and shout EAT ME!!!

Dessert is a big let down in south east asia with many desserts in the asian repertoire, a lot of places offer some abomination not native to the region, when all most people want to eat is authentic cuisine! For my dessert i was faced with a task of mammoth proportions-what to order! The selection starts at 30,000 raising to 35,000 kip, with Red Hibiscus,Passion fruit sorbet with Meringue and Pineapple in Palm Sugar Caramel with Coconut Gelato and chili amongst some of the selection on offer, i opted for Coconut Lime Cake,Hibiscus flower syrup and a sorbet made from a local fruit called Mar not. While not over the top with the presentation, enough effort had been taken to plate the dessert but the taste was Divine, overshadowing the presentation by a long way. The sorbet with a taste i can only describe as being somewhere between Mango and Passion fruit, was technically perfect and would not be out of place in a Michelin starred kitchen, and i would say probably the best i have ever eaten yet, the lime coconut cake was a good texture, moist and full of flavour. A sauce of Hibiscus flower syrup remained in the background ,but was a welcome taste although the dish could stand alone, if needed.

My view might read as biased, but this a genuine review and i am in no way associated with Friends International or Makphet restaurant. The food is really of exceptional quality being served from a rare little gem of a place, with happy smiling faces serving and not a hint snobbery to be found!

One main course, one dessert, a side of Laos sticky rice and two coffees 109,000kip, approx £12.50/$20 us

If you are fortunate to be visiting Vientiane be sure to drop into Makphet, and don't forget to leave a jolly good tip!!!

Makphet is located down a side street off Th Francois Nginn, next door to Ban vilaylac restaurant, directly behind Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan. Open monday to sat for lunch and dinner.

KOBE BEEF @ kABUKI: SIAM PARAGON

The search had started months before the scheduled flight to Krung thep a.k.a the city of angels but better known to you and i as Bangkok for that mythical piece of beef known as kobe. This may seem a long way to go for a sample of the worlds most expensive beef, but their was a method behind the madness. For one i would not be able to afford to sample Kobe beef in London, without a second mortgage. Bangkok seemed to be a good choice to start, seeing as japan would not be on the culinary radar for at least a couple more years, and a large Japanese presence in Bangkok, means good Japanese food. Bangkok must at least, be one of the major culinary destinations in our modern world, with some very good restaurants to boot,fabulous local cuisine, extraordinary street food that turns even the most ardent of food snobs into drooling animals whilst dripping namh prik down the front of there overpriced and over sized designer labelled clothing.


I started my search on that trusted friend google, with results showing a smattering of establishments that serve imported Kobe beef. The first was a joint that specialized in steak of all kinds and at reasonable prices with the Kobe steak coming in at 13 Thai baht a gram, on the other side there was the big hotels with even bigger names that import Kobe but again the problem being the big price! I eventually settled on Kabuki restaurant in the Siam paragon mallhttp://kabukithailand.com/. Kabuki was offering Kobe for 20 Thai baht a gram while not the cheapest, in my mind it would offer the better experience being a Japanese restaurant, and association was to be a key element of this dining experience.


To be classed as Kobe beef the cattle must be born in hyogo prefecture, fed by a farm in hyogo prefecture and be slaughtered in hyogo prefecture. The cattle being Tajima ushi breed of wagyu cattle. WA- meaning Japanese and Gyu meaning cattle, so wagyu translates as Japanese cattle. Tajima cattle originated from ancient stock, called kuroge wagyu translated as black haired Japanese cattle. Wagyu cattle are now bred in Australia,America and Britain but cannot be classed as Kobe due to the strict breeding measures! Kobe cattle and associated products still retains an air of mystery with the strange breeding practices you read about being true. The cattle are fed beer, but not as a luxury. The beer serves a purpose, and is used to help stretch expensive feeds, increase the appetite in the summer months and fatten the cattle. Another practice that is employed is massage with the use of sake! Massaging the cattle may sound extreme, but one purpose of this technique is to make the meat more tender as tajima cattle are prone to inactivity, therefor the massage stimulates the effect of muscles being worked.

Kabuki restaurant is located on the ground floor of Siam paragon an ultra modern top end mall, with the ground floor being dedicated to food.

On entering Kabuki you are greeted immediately then shown to either a private booth or a central seating area. In my case i was shown to a private booth with seating for four, probably on account of my enquires seconds earlier about the availability of the infamous and elusive Kobe beef, which incidentally is hard to find. Kobe was offered in two different cuts sirloin or fillet.

Fillet being 25 Thai baht a gram, i decided on sirloin at 20 baht a gram which was bought out on a platter with the best part of £500 worth of steak on show, the marbling of each piece being an extraordinary off white colour, with a good ratio, almost equal of red meat to white fat. My choosen steak being priced at 3900 baht for a 190 gram steak roughly- £69/$115 us.

I started my meal with an 8 piece sushi roll set that was moist and succulent with the rice clinging to the roll providing a lovely texture. A small piece of toro sushi nigiri that cost 250 baht was next and a new experience for me. The tuna belly melting into the mouth and dissolving on the tongue like a pillow of air, giving me an insight into the Japanese Psyche about quality fresh tuna of superior grade!

The Kobe arrived on a small black plate with three pathetic chips and a garnish of julienned vegetables. When you are paying this much for a steak the garnishes make little difference, a little soy would have been a better gesture, rather than an attempt at haute cuisine arrangement with crap chips that a fast food restaurant would be happy to serve!

My steak was very good but unfortunately did not compare to a wagyu meal i had in Singapore several months previous. Now don't get me wrong this was far superior to what your average person has ever eaten or will probably eat with out taking the plunge and parting with serious money, but something was lacking the steak was a little over done, and a little seasoning would have benefited the meat rather than trio of crap chips! While melt in your mouth tender, i struggled a little bit with the amount of fat content!

If i was to compare wagyu and kobe to 4 and 5 star hotels obviously Kobe is the 5 star, but i prefer to stay 4 star, much more comfortable!

I have eaten in some very top restaurants around the world, but have never managed to spend £92 on a complete meal and be in and out of a restaurant in under 40 minutes. Incidentally on leaving the restaurant prangs of guilt set in with the amount i had payed and the less fortunate i passed on the streets of Bangkok, becoming a top concern. With no access to welfare, i dug deep into my pockets and spent half that amount again in handouts to the needy and not the greedy, as i was feeling the wrath of greed!

Kabuki(Thailand)co.ltd

• Siam Paragon
• G27 ground floor. 991/1
• Rama 1 rd. Pathumwan
• 10330 Bangkok Thailand
• Tel: (66) 0-2129-4423
• Fax (66)0-2129-4424

Open daily from 11.30-2115(last orders)

Sky train stop Siam BTS.

info@kabukithailand.com

http://www.kabukithailand.com/