I’ve noticed that ever since I’ve started cooking more and more, I’m starting to collect cookbooks. Usually nothing fancy, but the bargain section of the bookstore almost never fails to tempt me with a $3 cookbook that looks like it would offer the kind of recipes that I don’t get online. I find myself collecting ethnic cookbooks, mostly; I think that mainly it’s to get the kinds of recipes that you don’t find as often on blogs, or at least the blogs I read. I mentioned in a previous post that I had recently picked up another in the Culinaria series, which I like. But the other day I found a book that was clearly published by the same people that published my The Taste of Africa cookbook. I haven’t posted any recipes from that book yet, but everything I’ve tried out of it has been fantastic. Not just good, but pretty amazing. It has a very particular layout, with a particular typesetting and a large main picture of the dish and a few smaller pictures interspersed throughout the recipe; when I opened up a book called Thai and South-East Asian Cooking and Far Eastern Classics (how’s that for a catch-all title) and found the same layout, I had to pick it up (it helped that it was basically free with my rewards credits).

Last weekend I cracked it open and flipped through a few recipes. The thing is quite huge, so I decided I wanted to make some fried rice, and then had to narrow it down to one of a dozen recipes. The one I settled on, Thai Fried Rice, did not disappoint. I’d be lying if I said I followed the recipe exactly – there were just some ingredients I didn’t have – but I think it was the basic of this recipe that led to its success, and It certainly came out delicious.

I think one of the key things that made this recipe so good was it’s first step: cooking the jasmine rice in coconut milk. I had to add more water toward the end to finish the rice off, but otherwise it cooked up fine. After the rice cooks it has to cool completely, spread out on a cookie sheet, so I cooked it earlier in the day to give it plenty of time.

Onions, garlic and ginger all get fried in a large skillet, or better yet, a wok. I do not have a wok, and everything just barely fits in this rather large skillet of mine.

I used pork in this recipe even though the original recipe called for chicken, because it’s fried rice and the point is you can add anything, right? I cooked the fairly small pork chunks most of the way through before the next step.

The pork and rice stir fries for a while. I cooked it as long as I could before I had to add some oil to the mixture to keep the rice from sticking to the pan. The recipe called for a teaspoon of chili oil, which I did not have, so I used some Thai chili sauce and added some more vegetable oil to the pan. I added probably a tablespoon of each to the pan mainly because I felt like it needed a little more juice to keep things moving easier in the pan.

The recipe called for red bell pepper and corn, and I threw in some more fresh green beans from the garden. This only got cooked for a few minutes before the adding the final touch: two beaten eggs, seen here glistening at the end of the spatula and quickly seeping into the rice. The final stir frying happens just long enough to cook up the egg.

Like I mentioned before, this turned out awesome. The jasmine rice and the coconut milk lent a creamy texture to the dish, with two great mellow flavors. Combine that with the kick of the chili sauce and curry powder and the crispness of the quick-cooked veggies, and the egg bringing it all together… it was fantastic. So far this series of books not disappointed, and I look forward to trying more recipes from this and the African book.

Thai Stir Fry (from Thai and South-East Asian Cooking and Far Eastern Classics)

Ingredients

• 2 cups coconut milk
• 1 3/4 cups jasmine rice, rinsed
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 1 pound of pork or chicken, cut into small chunks
• 1 red bell pepper, sliced
• 1 cup corn kernels
• 1 teaspoon chili oil
• 1 teaspoon hot curry powder
• 2 eggs, beaten

Directions

1. Pour the coconut milk into a saucepan and add the rice. Bring to a boil, the reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for 12 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Add water if needed throughout the cooking. Spread the rice on a baking sheet and leave until cold.
2. Heat the oil in a wok, add the garlic, onion and ginger and stir-fry over medium heat for 2 minutes.
3. Add the meat to the center of the pan and stir fry for 2 minutes, until meat is mostly cooked through. Add the rice and toss well. Stir fry over high heat for about 3 minutes more, until the meat is cooked through.
4. Stir in the red pepper, corn, chili oil and curry powder. Toss over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the beaten eggs and cook for 1 minute more.

This is the first recipe I’ve tried out of my new Culinaria Italy cookbook. I really like the Culinaria series (I own Culinaria Greece as well) because they are packed with information and great pictures of the food and region, and contain tons of information about the ingredients and the food itself, not just recipes. The book gives the english name of this recipe to be “pasta with pork ragout,” and as given in the recipe this is true, as it originally calls for gnocchetti, not gnocchi, as the base. Gnocchetti are made of semolina, not potatoes like gnocchi, and are often dried. Not knowing the difference when I was buying ingredients for this dish, I substituted gnocchi, which worked out fine.

The dish starts out with a vegetable base: leeks, carrots, celery, parsley, and I added some green pepper, though it wasn’t in the original recipe. These are sautéed lightly in olive oil, but they don’t need to be cooked very thoroughly, as they will spend plenty of time in the pan.

In go the pork chunks, which are browned. Again, they don’t need to get cooked through, just mostly through. In retrospect I probably should have turned the heat up higher and given them a good sear to create some real browning on the outside, but by the time I thought of doing it they were already in this state.

After the pork is browned, chopped tomatoes and some balsamic vinegar go in. Actually, the original recipe called for a “1/2 glass red wine”, but having no red wine open nor the chance to visit a liquor store to get some, I used good balsamic vinegar instead. It probably changed the character of the dish quite a bit from the original, but the addition of vinegar here gave what basically would have been a tomato sauce a different kick that turned out to be quite delicious.

After cooking down for an hour, covered, the ragout looks ready to go on your pasta of choice. Nicely, most of the vegetables, including the tomato, had held up well and resulted in a chunky sauce.

The ragout worked well with the gnocchi. It’s not particularly “saucy”, but there was definitely enough to coat everything and provide a base for the meat and vegetables. I think this would work well with other meats like beef or chicken, or even sausage, and it was a welcome twist on our classic pasta and vegetable meat sauce.

Gnocchi al Sugo di Maiale – Gnocchi with Pork Ragout (adapted from Culinaria Italy)

Ingredients

• 2 medium-sized carrots, chopped
• 1 leek, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 small green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 pound pork, cut into cubes
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 4 medium tomatoes, chopped
• salt and pepper
• 1 pound gnocchi or gnocchetti, cooked

Directions

1. Sauté the vegetables and parsley for a couple of minutes in olive oil over medium heat.
2. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the pork, browning all sides.
3. Add the tomatoes, vinegar and salt and pepper and reduce the heat to low. Stir well and cover. Let simmer for 1 hour.
4. Serve over gnocchi, gnocchetti or your favorite pasta.

This quick and tasty pork recipe was based on Kay’s Pork Strips. There is something that always goes so well together about pork, sweetness, spiciness and citrus, and this recipe combines them all in a 15-minute marinade, which is always my favorite because I never plan far enough ahead to marinate overnight. I wanted to make sure I would have enough for leftovers tomorrow night, and the thin-sliced pork chops I bought came in a pack of 8 (as opposed to the 6 called for in the original recipe), so I upped most of the other ingredients also.

The ingredients for the marinade go into a bowl. I used mandarin preserves as the base, but you could use any citrus jelly or marmalade. The original recipe used apricot jelly.

Add the pork strips and mix to coat well, leaving it to marinate for 15 minutes.

In the mean time chop up some scallions and a bell pepper. You could probably even add more veggies to this, perhaps snap peas? The veggies don’t get cooked very long, so anything that has a good crunch and is tasty lightly cooked would work.

All of the pork and marinating liquid goes into the pot at once. Don’t stir it… leaving it to cook on one side caramelizes the sweet portions of the marinade to the pork, and helps to thin the marinade into a sauce. Once you can see a fair amount of white creeping up the sides of the pork, you can flip it to cook the other side.

Once the pork is flipped, the peppers and scallions can be added in to cook a bit.

Serve over rice and garnish with a few fresh scallions. It was quite tasty; the mandarin preserves I used (Bonne Maman) had pieces of orange peel in it, which remained in the sauce and imparted bursts of citrus flavor while eating. That combined with the occasional spiciness and overall sweet and salty flavors made the sauce quite well rounded and a great compliment to the pork.

Sweet and Spicy Citrus Pork Stir Fry (adapted from Kay’s Pork Strips)

Ingredients

• 8 pork cutlets
• 3 heaping tablespoons mandarin preserves, or other citrus jelly
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoon ginger, grated
• 1 garlic clove, grated
• 1/2 chopped chili pepper
• 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 4 scallions, sliced
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil

Directions

1. Combine preserves, honey, soy sauce, oil, ginger, garlic and the chili pepper in a bowl and whisk together.
2. Slice pork cutlets in to 1-inch strips and add to the bowl with the marinade. Stir so that all of the pork is coated and let sit for 15 minutes.
3. Heat a high-temp oil like peanut oil over high heat in a frying pan. When it is really hot add the pork and all of the marinade.
4. Don’t stir the pork, just let it cook for 2-3 minutes or until you start seen the bottom of the pork strips turning white.
5. Turn the pork over and add the bell pepper and the scallions and cook for a few more minutes, until pork is cooked through.
6. Serve over rice and garnish with fresh slices of scallion.