spaghetti meat-a-balls

I’ve always been afraid to cook spaghetti bolognaise from scratch. I'm not entirely sure if this trepidation comes from either the lack of confidence that it can be tastier than pre-bought bolognaise sauce (I know! What a foolish notion) or just from a lack of confidence, period.

pasta two-ways

A pack of beautiful multi-variety mushrooms at the greengrocer was calling out to me. The only ones I could recognise were the enoki mushrooms. But I still bought them on an impulse, eventhough I don't know what I was going to do with it.

neua pat bai grapao

David Thompson is one of the most respected chef in Australia. He made his name by getting the backing of the Thai government to re-establish authentic Thai food in Thailand, to fight the onslaught of fusion food in the country. He has a comprehensive Thai recipe book called Arharn Thai, but I was totally intimidated by it, so I never got around to buying it. So, when his new book Thai Street Food was published, I said to myself I definitely have to get that book.

My first thought was that surely street food would be easier than full-on Thai food to cook. I was sort of right, I think. Some recipes were totally do-able, like the neua pat bai grapao. But, there are quite a few pretty complicated recipes in there with a lot of ingredients. I was intimidated for about a minute, but I thought, it's totally time for me to get a bit of a challenge. To get me started, I picked this pretty straightforward recipe, with manageable amounts of ingredients.