hoi laai pat nahm prik pao

My sister and brother-in-law have recently started their own fruit and herb garden. I never paid much attention to it until just a few weeks ago when I wandered around their backyard. Don't you think it's kinda nice to have your own personal greengrocer? Wandering in their garden, I found some lemongrass and kaffir lime plants. I instantly thought, Thai food! Surely there's an easy meal from David Thompson that uses these two ingredients: stir-fried clams with chilli jam and thai basil.

I bought some clams from my local seafood market, but they must not be in season (either that or the clams were on a diet?) because their flesh were really quite sparing. Plus, the chilli jam that I bought was not a thai chilli jam. It made the sauce a bit sweeter than I anticipated. I don't think my first attempt was very successful taste-wise, though it kinda looks beautiful.

assam fish

This recipe is another keeper from Food Safari (google: SBS food safari). I got a chance to do this one because the cleaner at my work just came back from a fishing trip and she gave me two steak chunks of mackerel from the fish that she caught herself. Thanks Flossy, you're tops!

I kinda butchered this recipe, because I couldn't find a mortar and pestle to grind the rempah to a fine paste. So I used a blender which couldn't make the rempah into a fine paste. Added to that, silly me, I tried to stir the rempah with a chopstick while the blender was still on. Can you believe it? So I had to throw away that chewed up chopstick and start over. In the end, I think I did an OK job. Maybe that'll teach me next time to stick to the instructions to a tee.