In my recent column on pancakes, I suggested ways to use up the store cupboard ingredients traditionally given up for Lent. Having cleared your kitchen of all such temptation, might I now suggest refilling those cupboards with a selection of Asian ingredients?
Thai fried chicken with coconut sambal
Start a day ahead, so the chicken takes on the flavours of the marinade. To save myself a battle with acoconut, I have been known to use the ready-prepared fresh coconut you can get in some supermarkets. Serves four.
8 whole chicken legs (thighs and drumsticks), skin on
40g cornflour
About 1 litre sunflower oil
For the marinade
4 medium stalks lemongrass, outer leaves discarded and soft inner part finely sliced
1 large garlic clove, peeled and roughly chopped
25g palm sugar (or dark brown sugar, if unavailable)
30g coriander stalks and leaves, roughly chopped
2 medium green chillies, roughly chopped
6 stems fresh kaffir lime leaves, stems discarded and leaves finely chopped (or 10g dried, if need be)
2 tbsp coconut cream
1 shallot, peeled and roughly chopped
50g ginger, peeled and roughlychopped
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tsp salt
For the sambal
1 tbsp palm sugar, crumbled (or darkbrown sugar, if need be)
2 green chillies, deseeded and finelychopped
100g fresh coconut, finely grated
2 small shallots, peeled and finelychopped
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sunflower oil
½ tsp fish sauce
A day ahead, put all the marinade ingredients in the small bowl of a food processor and blitz to a rough paste. Set aside a third of the mix, cover and refrigerate. Lightly score the chicken three or four times, then put in a large bowl and spoon over the remaining marinade. Rub in with your hands, cover with cling-film and refrigerate overnight.
Next day, heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Remove the chicken from the fridge and let it come to room temperature. In a small bowl, stir all the sambal ingredients and set aside. Line a large baking tray with parchment.
Scrape the marinade off the chicken, then dust each leg with cornflour. Fill a large sauté pan with oil to come 2cm up the sides, place on a medium-high flame and, once hot, lay in two chicken legs (the oil will bubble, so don't be tempted to overcrowd the pan). Fry for three to five minutes, turning once, until the skin is golden and crisp. Use tongs totransfer the chicken to the lined tray, repeat with the remaining legs, then roast for 20 to 25 minutes, until cooked through.
Remove from the oven and rest forfive minutes. Spread the reserved marinade over each leg, top with sambal and serve.
Tau fu fa
I came across this tofu dish in a Malaysian food market. It is a bit like crème caramel, but even more silky-smooth (though there are many variations, sweet or savoury, hot or cold). I've used Vege-Gel rather than gelatine, to make it vegetarian (you'll find it in supermarkets, next to the gelatine). Apologies for the awkward quantity (it works out to just over a sachet's worth), but you have to be really precise to get the right set. Pandan leaves are widely used in south-east Asian cooking to infuse both sweet and savoury dishes with an almost grassy fragrance. You'll have to go to a specialist Asian food shop to find them; if you can't get hold of any, use a scraped vanilla pod instead, half of it in the milk mix and half in the pineapple. Serves six.
10 pandan leaves
1 litre unsweetened soya milk
40g caster sugar
100g palm sugar, crushed into 1cmchunks
¼ tsp salt
3cm piece ginger, peeled and julienned
½ small pineapple, peeled, quartered lengthways, cored and cut widthways into 2mm slices
1¾ tsp Vege-Gel
2 tbsp coconut cream
Tie together six of the pandan leaves in a knot andput them in a medium saucepan with the soya milk and caster sugar.Cook for five minutes on a medium-high heat, until it just starts to simmer, then set aside. Once cool, tip into abowl, cover and leave to infuse in the fridge overnight.
Put the palm sugar, salt and ginger in a medium saucepan with 50ml water. Over a medium-high heat, cook, stirring from time to time, until the sugar dissolves. Boil for two minutes, then add the pineapple and remaining pandan leaves, also tied in a knot. Lower the heat and simmer for eight minutes, stirring once or twice, until you have a thick syrup. Remove from the heat and, once cool, pour into a bowl, cover and leave to infuse in the fridge overnight.
Line a sieve with a clean J-cloth and strain the soya milk infusion into a medium saucepan. Transfer three tablespoons-worth into a small bowl and whisk in the Vege-Gel. Return this to the pan, whisk and place on a medium-high heat. Cook for five to six minutes, stirring all the time, while the milk comes to asimmer and starts to thicken. Remove from the heat, spoon off the surface bubbles and ladle into six glasses. Set aside to cool, then refrigerate for at least an hour, to firm up: you want it to be set but with a good wobble.
Put the coconut cream in a small bowl, add a tablespoon of water and stir until just runny enough to pour. Refrigerate until required.
Half an hour before serving, take the pineapple from the fridge. Spoon two tablespoons each of the pineapple and sauce on the set milk, dribble coconut cream on top and serve.
Oyster omelette
A popular Asian street food, and one of my all-time favourites. Tapioca starch is a thickening agent that gives the omelette a firm consistency, making it an ideal base for the sauce. Kecap manis – the original ketchup – is a thick, sweet Indonesian soy sauce made from fermented soya beans, palm sugar and spices. Crisp fried shallots can be bought in Asian food shops, but you can make your own or leave them out. And by all means use shrimps or prawns instead of oysters, if you prefer. Serves four.
4 tsp tapioca starch (or tapioca flour)
6 eggs
Salt and ground white pepper
4 tbsp groundnut oil
12 fresh oysters, shucked and dried with a tea towel
10g picked coriander leaves
2 red chillies, deseeded and thinlysliced
2 spring onions, trimmed and thinlysliced
80g bean sprouts
3 tbsp crisp fried shallots
For the sauce
30g tomato ketchup
1 tsp kecap manis
30ml rice vinegar
1½ tsp maple syrup
¾ tsp soy sauce
¼ tsp fish sauce
¼ tsp tapioca starch
Whisk all the sauce ingredients in asmall saucepan, and set aside.
Whisk the tapioca starch in a small bowl with 200ml water and set aside. Break the eggs into a bowl with half a teaspoon of salt and a quarter-teaspoon of white pepper. Lightly beat the eggs – I use a knife to do this, because you want just to break them up, not turn them into a hom*ogenous mass – then set aside.
Heat two tablespoons of oil in a 20cm-wide nonstick frying pan over a medium-high flame. When hot, add half the oysters (be careful: the oil will spit), fry for 20 seconds, then pour over half the egg mix. Fry for aminute until almost cooked underneath and still raw on top, then lower the heat to medium, givethe tapioca water a quick mix and dribble half over the omelette. Very gently stir the top – the gloopy tapioca will make streaks through the egg – then add half the coriander, chilli, spring onion and bean sprouts. Cook for two minutes, flip over (don't worry if it breaks apart a little), and cook for two minutes more. Set aside somewhere warm while you wipe down the pan and repeat the process with a second omelette.
At the last minute, warm the sauce until it thickens and comes almost to a boil. Divide the omelettes between the plates, pour the sauce over the top, sprinkle with the fried shallots and serve at once.
Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.
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