Things made in our oven -part 2

Sundays are such excellent days for cooking... This Sunday we decided to make quiche! Well, Shane lay on the couch and moaned (shouldn't have eaten that McDonalds fishburger for lunch) and Hannah made quiche...
After a quick trip to the grocery store we came up with an easy quiche full of leeks, bacon and topped with cheddar cheese and tomato. Yum! We also attempted a rye flour pressed pastry crust, turned out a little soggy (next time will pre-bake the crust first!) and a little grainy (stone-ground rye flour...) but not too bad and a little healthier than the white-flour pastry option.

Creme Freche (Creem Freeche for the fans of Stan's Dad)

At home you can go to Zehrs and pick up a bag of perogies for about $2. They may not be the best perogies ever, but man are they easy! In Thailand, you cannot do this. We were craving some delicious perogies so decided to give home-made perogies a try... with surprisingly good results! Shane claims that he makes perogies as well as any old Eastern-European woman. I think this might be an overstatement but they turned out quite tasty!

We served these with a bit of creme freche, as one of the grocery stores around here is from France they have things like goat cheese, creme freche and pate at very reasonable prices.

Things Made in Our Oven -Part 1

I say part 1 because I hope that we will cook more things in the oven in the next 8 months that we are here.

As we have mentioned before, our Thai apartment does not really have a kitchen. When we moved in we bought a fridge, a hot plate, and the little convection oven that could. It looks like a giant glass bowl with a robot helmet on top, and we were both skeptical about how effective it would be... for comparables see the "flavour wave" of infomercial fame. Boy, were we wrong! So far in our oven we have cooked cheese bread, a roast chicken, pork tenderloin, cookies, a pumpkin pie AND hamburger rolls! Here are some quick pictures of some of the things we've made... here's hoping that our successes in the kitchen continue!

Cooking with KD

Today we had our first cooking lesson, provided by one of the lovely ladies who we work with. We made green curry, spring rolls and pad wun sen (mostly this was just with leftover from the spring rolls filling). The recipe for green curry is as follows.

Ingredients:
Kha (I think this is what it was called, it is related to ginger but not ginger)
garlic
shallot
rind from a type of lime (yes there are different types of limes... this was news to me) which is knocked down with a long bamboo pole from a tree by a neighbour (we didn't have any of this ingredient so had to go down the road to find one)
lemon grass (about 3X as much lemon grass as any of the previous ingredients)
paste made from tiny shrimps (and other things, not sure what this is called)
chillies (MUST be green -it is green curry after all) to taste
chicken
coconut milk
fish sauce

-Put the Kha and lime rind in a mortar and pestle -beat into submission
-add the lemon grass -beat into submission
-add the chillies -beat into a paste (if too dry can add salt here to draw out moisture)
-when the former are pastey, add the shrimp paste, the garlic and the onion (adding these together means that the shrimp paste won't stink)

-fry the curry paste with some coconut milk (apparently if you do this properly you separate the coconut milk and fry the curry paste with what is essentially the coconut cream from the top)
-add the chicken
-add more coconut milk (this would be the less fatty underneath bit)
-bring to a boil
-add eggplants, long beans and chillies that are "just for decoration" (also somewhat spicy)
-just before finishing, add Thai basil, lime leaves (from same tree as landlord lime) and coriander (if you have it, apparently not essential)

Serve with rice/roti/or croissant (one of the staff enjoys this little taste of Thai-French fusion) haha

We can't wait to learn more so that we can cook for everybody back home!!! Delicious!

Our Temporary Apartment

So this is the new digs until our new digs are ready... Fairly similar to a Canadian bachelor apartment except for a couple of slight noticeable differences... First of all, there is no proper kitchen. We are making do with a hot plate on a cabinet... Also notice the lack of food on the shelves. This is because we HAD a brand new bag of rice, unopened which apparently had a tiny hole in it. When we got home from work there was a trail of ants from a crack in the ceiling, along the wall, into the bag of rice. We aren't sure what they wanted in there but there were so many ants in the rice we had to throw the whole bag out. Now all food (including cereal and other things that do not need to be refrigerated) is in the refrigerator. Also noteable, everyone here seems to drink predominately instant coffee. We don't have a coffee maker or pot so got some for ourselves but soon realized that it was commonplace here...

 This is our breakfast nook! This is not really different from an apartment in Canada but is pretty cute.

 Our bed :) They must think farang are huge fat foreigners because King sized beds are common in our apartment complex (which houses many foreigners). Also, for some reason Thai people do not do the whole top sheet thing. When you buy a set of bed linens you get a fitted sheet and pillow cases and you can get a duvet but so far nowhere (including the hotel) has had a flat top sheet.

 The toilet and, as we affectionately call it, the "ass blaster". Since our apartment building caters to farang, our bathroom features a western-style toilet and toilet paper roll holder as well. To the left of the toilet is the shower, this is fairly normal except for the lack of hot water. Yes, all showers in Thailand (except perhaps in hotels which cater to foreigners) are cold. This will be refreshing in the warmer season but currently makes for a brisk pick-me-up in the morning.