Vietnamese Chicken Curry - ca ri ga

The light fresh flavours of the recipes in My Vietnamese Kitchen by Uyen Luu seem very appealing now that the festive season is over.
 

The Author
Uyen Luu hosts a Vietnamese supper club in her East London apartment where she cooks dishes she learned from her mother, she also holds Vietnamese cookery classes and teaches people from all over Europe. Visit Uyen's blog and find out more about her interests, including photography and film making.

The Photographer
Clare Winfield specialises in photographing food, her work has appeared in magazines and cookery books.

Introduction
The book has a foreword by Raymond Blanc who met Uyen durng the filming of his television series, How to Cook Well.  The introduction goes on to tell of Uyen's childhood an cooking inspiration. This is followed by a glossary of ingredients with alternatives which is always useful.

Chapter 1 - Awaken the Senses, Breakfast
Many of the breakfast recipes would translate well into lunch or even main meal dishes.  I particularly liked: Lemongrass Beef or Pork Baguette; Hue Noodle Soup with Beef and Pork, Chicken Curry (see recipe below); Beef Stew with star anise.

Chapter 2 - Feed the Soul, Soups
These are main course soups, full of fish, meat and vegetables including Hot and Sour Fish Soup, Duck Congee and Crab Tomato and Omelette Soup.

Chapter 3 - Sticky Fingers, Snacks
Street food is a major influence on the dishes in this chapter and there some of the tasty bites I liked the look of were Puff Pastry Chicken Pies; Spring Rolls, Sai Gon fresh summer rolls and Sizzling Crepes with pork and prawns.

Chapter 4 - Live Long, Noodles
There are many different kinds of noodles and the dishes in 'My Vietnamese Kitchen' feature a variety of these.  Here are my favourites: BBQ Pork Belly Skewers (with rice noodle salad), Stir Fried Beef and Fresh Noodles and Egg Noodles with Chinese Broccoli.

Chapter 5 - Eat and Play, Lunch and Dinner
And so to the main event, I was fascinated by the Fishcakes with Dill which are held together with french baking powder rather than potato, so all that you eat is fish!  Fish features heavily with a beautiful Fired Tiliapia with Green Mango and a Baked Seabream both of which I found very appealing.  Rich and sticky BBQ Spare Ribs would be hard to beat and a rather surprising Spaghetti Bolognese, included because of the love of Italian food in the new cosmopolitan Vietnam.

Chapter 6 - Happy Endings, Sweets
I love Mango and the Mango Smoothie looks and sounds totally delicious.  This chapter also includes Banana Fritters, Creme Caramel and Avocado Ice cream as well as Pandan Cake, coloured with an extract from Pandan Leaves.

The chapters are interspersed with interesting short essays about the Vietnamese way of eating, cooking and dining as well as information about the French influence on their cuisine. 

Who is it for? Anyone who enjoys Asian food and would like to expand their repertoire I would suggest you check out Uyen's web site and if you like the recipes she has published there, then you will love this book . Fish, seafood, beef and pork feature throughout the book with a very few vegetarian recipes, so probably not a good buy for vegetarians.

Pros:  The book is well laid out, with beautiful, tempting photographs and a fairly wide range of different recipes. The fusion of Asian and French cuisine leads to some really inspired dishes.

Cons: Some of the ingredients may be difficult to source outside a large city, although you may be able to get them online. It would have been helpful to include some information about where to source ingredients.

Ease of Use: While I have eaten curry for breakfast while visiting Malaysia, it's probably not something I would do at home, so I felt that it was easier to ignore the chapter headings when looking for a dish to cook. Otherwise, the recipe I cooked was well laid out and I had no difficulty following the instructions.

The Verdict
At first, I found it quite difficult to get going with this book,  I think because of the chapter headings as I've described above.  Once I got over this and just looked at the recipes, I found that there were many dishes here that I wanted to make.

The Chicken Curry was one of the best I have made,  similar to a Thai Green Curry, with so much flavour and just the right amount of piquancy.  I am, therefore,  excited and encouraged to make more recipes from My Vietnamese Kitchen. 




Chicken Curry (serves 2)
ca ri ga

1 tbsp cooking oil
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 thumb's worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, finely diced
2 large chicken legs, cut into bite-size pieces or 6 whole drumsticks, skin on
3 teaspoons curry powder
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
165ml (2/3 cup) coconut milk
300ml (1 1/4 cups) chicken stock
2 medium potatoes, cubed
1 carrot roughly sliced
4 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
ground black pepper
1/2 aubergine/eggplant cubed (optional)
handful of okra, cut into bite-size pieces (optional)
6 Asian shallots, peeled
handful of mangetout/snow peas (optional)
warm baguette and butter, or steamed rice to serve

Garnishes
Thai sweet basil
spring onion/scallion
Bird's eye chillis

1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over low heat.  Gently fry the red onion , ginger and lemongrass.
2. Once the onion has softened, add the chicken legs and fry, turning often until they're evenly browned.
3. Add the curry powder, stirring well until the chicken legs are well coated.  Add the garlic, coconut milk, chicken stock, potatoes and carrot and stir.
4. Cover with a lid and simmer for about 10 minutes.
5. Season the curry with the fish sauce, sugar and a pinch of black pepper, then add the aubergine/eggplant, okra, shallots and mangetout pea/snow peas.
6. Cook for a further 8-10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Garnish with Thai sweet basil, spring onions/scallions and chillies. Serve with a fresh, warm baguette and butter, or a bowl of steamed rice.

What I did differently
I used 6 chicken thighs, doubled up the aubergine, potatoes, carrots and the coconut milk.  Used a Korma curry paste rather than powder.  No okra or mangetout, so I used a green pepper and some green beans.  The fish sauce and coconut milk are both key to the flavour of this dish.

My Vietnamese Kitchen by Uyen Luu
Published by Ryland Peters and Small
RRP £16.99



I'm entering this recipe for  Bloggers Around the World,  a blogger challenge from Chris at Cooking Around the World blog.  This month the country of choice is Vietnam, thanks Chris for motivating me to make this dish and post the review. 

Labels: Chicken, coconut milk, cookery book review, curry, fish sauce, kitchen, review, Ryland Peters and Small, Uyen Luu, Vietmanese

posted by Janice @ 18:26 4 Comments

Happy New Year - What's happening at Farmersgirl Kitchen in 2014?

Digital Kit: Maya de Groot - Going out with a Bang

I wish all of you a very Happy New Year and hope that this year brings you everything that you wish for and more. 

Here at Farmersgirl Kitchen, things are going to be a little different, particularly during February and March.  Back in October we discovered that we have dry rot in our house, it's in the walls at the front of the house, mainly in the kitchen and the room above which is our bedroom.  We are hoping that it will be confined to this area, but the treatment must go 1 metre either side of the affected area, so there may be more disruption.

We moved out of our bedroom into the spare room back in October but our builder was not able to start the work until the end of January.  This is giving us time over Christmas and New Year to pack away as much as we can from two bedrooms and the kitchen, as once I am back at work I won't have much time. We have a lot of stuff, we've been here since 1985 so you can imagine how much we have accumulated.  Some of the boxes will go into storage and the kitchen units will go into another room in the house. 

This is my lovely kitchen which will have to be removed and reinstated later.  It's only been in place for 3 years but fortunately the joiner who fitted it will be taking it out and he will take good care of it.

I am extremely fortunate that we have a 'back kitchen' or utility room where the fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble drier and double belfast sink is located. I know it is bigger than many people's main kitchen.  It also has plenty of cupboards but there will be no cooker (stove), just the microwave, my new Slow Cooker and a single electric ring which I bought so I can saute, fry and boil.  The kitchen will be sealed off as the ceiling has to be taken down, we will have to go out the front door and in the back door to get to the back kitchen. 

As you can imagine, cooking is going to be challenging, I hope to share my trials and tribulations with you and I will try to find a way to continue to create tasty and wholesome meals with my limited cooking applicances!  If I can I will share what I make with you as usual, but I hope you will bear with me if there are fewer posts and the variety of makes and bakes are much more limited.

Labels: 2014, kitchen, Maya de Groot, New Year

posted by Janice @ 09:00 18 Comments

New Cooker!

Woo hoo! My new cooker (stove) arrived today, I can't use it yet because I don't want it to get covered in plaster dust when the kitchen wall comes down, so it's sitting in the dining room looking shiny and new. It seems smaller than the old one, but DH has been out with the measuring tape and the oven is actually bigger. I expect technology has moved on somewhat in 25 years! Work should start on the kitchen in a couple of weeks, I'll keep you posted.

Labels: kitchen

posted by Janice @ 20:01 13 Comments

The NEW Farmersgirl Kitchen ...coming soon!

My blog is called Farmersgirl Kitchen, and this is where I make the food that I show on this blog.

We need to do some work on the internal walls of our kitchen. There has been some water coming in from the outside wall (on the right) if you look closely you can see the marks. We have had this fixed outside, but all the plaster has to come off that wall and our joiner is going to line it with insulated plasterboard. We are also getting the wall behind the current units strapped and plasterboarded so we can have wall units, the existing wall just wouldn't support them. So....as my cooker (stove) is 25 years old and the kitchen units are about 23 years old, we decided that it was time to have a change.

I have a strange kitchen set up, being an old farmhouse kitchen there would have been no water plumbed into the building, so our sink is actually in the 'back kitchen' or scullery, a brick built extension (in the 1950's) down three steps. I thought I would never get used to it, but you do get used to it and it would be such a major operation to bring a sink into the kitchen that we have never quite got round to it. So, the fridge, freezer, washing machine, dishwasher and sink are all in this 'back kitchen' down three steps and the area we are renewing is the cooking, kettle type area.

I thought that as we were making this change, I wanted to make it different and I wanted to have more worktop space. Difficult challenge as there are many doors, windows and an inglenook fireplace with our oil stove to content with, I bought some magazines, as you do! And one of them had a breakfast bar that came out from the units at an angle, I was sold.

I found the kitchen shopping a bit of a challenge, the units I liked, didn't always do the things I wanted them to, but today, finally, I found some units I liked that did pretty much what I wanted AND I got to have solid oak worktops which is the bit that excites me most!

The illustration below is pretty much what it will be like, except the breakfast bar will have support at the end, not hanging in mid-air like it is - scary! And, those are not the handles that I am getting, the ones we will have are hammered steel and really cool (and expensive) but lovely.

I will give you step by step updates, it's going to take a couple of weeks for the units to arrive and our joiner says he will be available in 2-3 weeks, but as long as it is done before DS1 gets married in May, I will be happy!

Oh and, by the way, I have taken 4 carrier bags of cookery books out of the book shelves, which is why there are some spaces! The bookshelves were created for me by our joiner and sized to my biggest book - he is a real craftsman, but I do like to challenge him!

Labels: kitchen

posted by Janice @ 18:41 19 Comments