laocook

Its Business as usual for Laocook.

I have managed to repost most of the photos from the posts that were recovered by Darly, with a few exceptions (mostly from October 2006), most of Laocook is back. :)

Anyway, lets move on.

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Summer Rolls. Sheets of Vietnamese Rice Paper, filled with vegetables and poached Spring Chicken, served with Basil Oil and Sweet Chilli Sauce.

Light and extremely easy to eat, especially if you add crushed peanuts to the sauce! ;)

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The Amuse Bouche for last night ,Titanic Won Ton.

Okay, there is an evident sense of humour in the kitchens :-P

Chicken Won Tons, folded in to boat shapes then deep fried. Caramelised Onions are added to a light stock along with some Chives.

All we need now is an Iceberg and annoying soundtrack

Sadly some of the photos that accompanied some posts cannot be found, and as you know, I am having to repost all the photos from last August. The reason for this is that a few of the photos were taken especially for the site, and uploaded to the server (for safe keeping!).

Therefore I have decided to “crop” the site a little and remove some posts. This will mean that there will be some chronological gaps on the site, and some posts will have some parts removed.

For new visitors, this will not matter much (and you may wonder what this and the last post is all about!), but for regular visitors, I can only apologise.

:(

You know when people tell you to “Back Up” your work, “just incase something bad happens”, well guess what!?

The server hosting Laocook.com and our sister sites received the follow message.

“Your server has experienced a rather severe RAID / Hard drive malfunction and will need to be restored from available backup data. A new OS is being prepared at this point in time and we will begin a restore from backup when the initial preparations have been completed.”

Hmm, okay, that is unfortunate and we are down. But our hoster prouds itself on its extensive backup facilities. All will be well..at least..that is what we thought until we got the next message from our technician:

“Unfortunately during the restore we noticed that the backups for the server were all corrupt and unusable…”

Hmmm, several 4 letter words spring to mind ;)

Luckily for us, Darly found a few RSS Feeds and was able to bring back some of our pages. She also did a Back Up of nearly all the sites last August (before changing to Server “Titanic” ;) )

Working all through the night, she has painstakingly put back together the majority of Laocook.com, though we are sad to say that most of your comments (since the last Back Up) have been lost.

However, we are still here and ask you to be patient whilst we repost the missing photos, and piece back together the site and restore it to what it was.

In the meantime, the site may look a bit jumbled up :?

Yum Yum. ;)

A Yum (or Ngum) can be referred to as a Salad, or a cooking techique/ method. Most meats can be used, but Seafood is most common. The dressing is based on Lime, Chillies, Fish Sauce and Sugar (Sourness, Spiciness, Saltiness and Sweetness.)

We prefer to use lightly cooked Squid or Cuttlefish, the texture is almost noodle like.

The version that we serve has the addition of Pineapple and Red Peppers. The former giving the dish a tropical taste and the latter giving the sauce its nice Red colour. Its very easy to make, especially if you have a Food Blender available.

Its a great dish at anytime, especially refreshing in the Summer.

Okay, its not really that gigantic, but it is a rather large Won Ton or Ravioli.

Our Won Ton is stuffed with Lobster, Water Chestnuts and Herbs.

We decided to serve it in a light warm Cauliflower Soup (which is also great when served cold).

Semi Dried Tomato adds a natural sweet note, and the Coriander and Extra Virgin Olive Oil not only adds colour, it also adds a nutty finish.

The Cauliflower Soup is made with freshly cut and boiled florets, mixed with a light Chicken Stock. It is seasoned and blitzed before being sieved, you can add cream if you want a soup with more “body”.

For the Won Ton, a whole Lobster is boiled for 3 to 4 minutes, and the meat removed (the Chef gets to eat the head! :) )

It is then mixed with some minced Chicken, Shallots, a little egg white, Water Chestnuts and freshly cut Coriander and Garlic Chives. The mixture is placed on a Won Ton sheet, which is covered with another sheet, sealed then trimmed to resemble a circle.

The filled Won Tons are then blanched in a light Chicken Stock and reserved until needed.

For the Semi Dried Tomatoes, the skin is removed and the whole fruit is baked at 90 degrees for 4 to 5 hours, allowed to cool, then cut in to segments.

(Reserve any juices that seep out when baking, the juice has a wonderful concentrated natural sweet flavour, ideal for salad dressings or freezing in small cubes and used to liven up a Gazpacho or any other cold soup)

For the Coriander Oil, we blanched a handful of leaves and stems and then gave them an Ice Bath, squeezed them dry then blitzed it all with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

To serve, warm through the Cauliflower soup, in a separate pan, bring the Chicken Stock to the boil then add the par-cooked Won Tons (precooking saves time).

Ladle some soup in to a warm dish, add the Won Ton and Tomato and drizzle over some Coriander Oil. Eat. Enjoy. :)

A long weekend in London was a welcome break. Time to unwind for a few days, and experience the good old British rain.

At least the food was good.

My uncle cooks up a lovely Roast Pork. The crispy skin is the best part!.

Pizza, when done well is great. Pizza on the Park, a restaurant overlooking Hyde Park Corner serves up great Pizzas from their open kitchens. My favorite has to be the Four Seasons (with an added Fresh Egg).

Crispy Flat Bread with Mozzarella, Rocket, Tomato and Pesto. Very Summery indeed.

We got a chance to catch up with former Laocook Girl, Laurene. Rose and Laurene enjoyed shopping at Harrods as well as spending lots of money! ;)

Chicken Satay, ready to be sold at my parents outlet in Brick Lane.

Eating and Shopping, thats all we did the entire weekend. Cant wait to do it again. :)

Tom Yum Goong, is, perhaps the King of South East Asian soups.

Known throughout the world, it features in nearly all Thai restaurant menus. (As it should).

Commercial “Pastes” are readily available, but in Laocook fashion, we like to make our own.

The Spicy, Sour and Herby flavours are the main characteristics of the dish. Fresh ingredients such as Lemon Grass, Kaffir Lime Leaf, Fish Sauce, Shallots, Tamarind and Chillies are added to a medium bodied stock (broth), at the very last moment, drops of freshly squeezed Lime Juice give the dish its palatable “Kick”.

It is a wonderful contrast of flavours.

We wanted to take it a step further, to make it a more “Summery” soup.

The longer days beg for cold soups, such as the Andalucian staple Gazpacho or Salmorejo. However, we found that the Tom Yum served cold, wouldn’t be clear as the flavourable particles would settle at the bottom of the dish (in our case, a Shot Glass), and we would end up with a “muddy-looking” soup.

We worked on this for a few weeks, and decided that we would have to clarify the soup, and separate the particles, without loosing the “Kick” that Tom Yum has.

After a few trials and errors, we found the best way to “clean” the soup was to let is slowly drip through a fine sieve and cotton mesh overnight.

The resulting soup was as clear as a Consommé, and still retained its flavours.

We set the soup with some Gelatine, to make a loose soft jelly. Blanched King Prawns (the Goong) we added later, as well as some chopped Asparagus, which would give the Amuse Bouche a crunchy texture.

So here we have it. Our New Style Tom Yum Goong. Especially made for Summer.

Served with a crispy Palomino wine, it is a refreshing way to start a meal. :)