Defeated by a first recipe

"sometimes the wall is just a wall. There’s nothing to be done but go somewhere else." Margaret Atwood

This book has been sitting on my desk for ages, waiting for its moment in the sun as a first recipe choice. I have picked it up at least three times to see what I could make of it, and each time I have returned it to its spot in the pile - defeated.

It's old - 35 years old - having been published in 1990. The very first recipes were how to cook rice - been there, done that somewhere I'm sure - although truth to tell I can't find it. Although maybe that's me just being inefficient with adding tags to posts. Anyway that's pretty boring - or at least it seems like that to me on all the times I have looked at this. Though in amongst all of that there was this useful advice on the importance of washing rice before you cook it, whatever method you choose to use:

"It is a ritual which signals the beginning of the meal preparation ... Put the rice in a bowl, cover with water and move it around with your hands; the water will become cloudy in about 10 seconds. Drain and repeat, returning the rice to the bowl and covering again with water. Each time drain well, and stir with your hands, but more gently as the water comes clear because the rice can begin to break as it softens. (Just rinsing briefly under the tap does nothing, so either give it the proper 3 minutes' rinsing in water or don't bother at all.)"

The first sort of 'real' recipe is Prawn soup - or Tom Yum as we now know it.

I say 'now' because times have changed.

In her introduction to the book she goes back even further than 1990 and talks about how as a child she would occasionally be taken out to dine in the local Chinese:

"For years, I naively believed that dining out meant eating chop suey, sweet and sour pork and fried rice in a restaurant with Laminex tables and red lanterns."

As did I - but not as a child, as a worker in London town, fresh out of university and into marriage spending my luncheon vouchers in such places. The Chinese restaurants I now dine in occasionally with my fellow Italian learning students are the palaces that are dotted throughout Melbourne's suburbs, packed with predominantly Chinese/Australian families enjoying yum cha, with nary a chop suey or sweet and sour pork to be seen.

Elsewhere in her introduction, she talks about how her perception of Asian food changed - but from a 1990s perspective of course - when she began to travel to Asia, and found that:

"I then realised that the structure and history of each country was reflected in its cuisine."

And so, like most Australians she began to take an interest in cooking Asian foods for herself in spite of having:

"once read that nobody can truly understand and cook the food of a country unless they have spent most of their lives there. Perhaps this is so, but even if true understanding is not attainable, the enjoyment of and adventure of cooking foods from other countries is open to us all."

Which, of course, here in Australia - a country of immigrants from everywhere - applies to just about every other cuisine that exists in the world. Back then, however, she was able to say in her introduction to the section on Thailand - the first in the book - that:

"Thai cooking has become the flavour of the year, a cuisine which displays a skilful balance between sweet and sour, herbs, spices and salt; the five often being included in

the one dish."

Which is much the same as Ottolenghi was talking about yesterday and which is becoming a bit of a mantra everywhere.

I'm not sure where I first experienced Asian cuisine in the country it came from. (I'm not counting Indian food here.) Maybe Singapore on our way to Australia as new immigrants, when we were grounded there for 24 hours because our plane had finally broken down and we had to wait for a new one to come from Australia. They put us in a hotel and so we made sure that we ate local food, having spent 36 hours in Delhi where they patched up the plane, and we ate terrible pseudo English food in the hotel restaurant before David discovered that they also had 'real' Indian food, which was, of course, delicious. But I don't remember those meals in Singapore very clearly - so maybe it was Bali, or Hong Kong on another stopover where we dined in a restaurant where the menu was in Chinese, people were gambling and playing mah jong in a back room, and we had no idea what we were eating. It was all very authentic and a little alarming. I do, however, remember Thailand where we stayed for a few days on another different kind of stopover, and being blown away by the delicacy, lightness and spiciness of the food.

So here I am - having rambled away from the first recipe - at the first recipe and its country of origin Thailand - Prawn soup - pictureless and brief - in terms of ingredients anyway. Also with a recipe title in English with no reference to the Thai name - Tom yum - which I suspect we all use for this classic Thai dish these days.

The picture I present here of Tom Yum Goong is from Charmaine Solomon's Thai Cookbook, which I bought shortly after returning from that trip to Thailand. I was just so impressed by the food there. At least one of the dishes in there is something I make on a semi-regular basis. Charmaine has a few more ingredients than Beverley but it's fundamentally the same as hers.

One of the key things according to Beverley is that:

"You must buy prawns with shells on to get the flavour for the base of the soup, otherwise it will be an insipid copy of the real thing."

She also gives recommendations for serving:

"It is hot, sour and clear, and is eaten throughout the meal in Thailand. Usually served in a charcoal-heated steamboat, the pink prawns are fished out and eaten first, while the stock reduces, becoming more fragrant and intense as the meal progresses."

Thai food is no longer as fashionable as it once was, although there are still many Thai restaurants scattered aroud the suburbs. Here in Eltham I know of at least two, and there may well be more, not to mention Thai style dishes in the cafés and restaurants that serve a bit of this and a bit of that. But that's the way of things is it not. One cuisine becomes fashionable. The high end of restaurants opens a few, they flourish, with some becoming institutions - Longrain here in Melbourne would be one of those with Chin Chin being a more modern and buzzy example. The food has become so well-known that the supermarket magazines feature Thai dishes on a regular basis, and you can buy pre-made sauces and pastes everywhere. It's just a normal part of Australian dining.

Since we are now 35 years older than that original recipe from Beverley and 36 years older than Charmaine Solomon, I thought I should present you with a more modern take - Tom yum soup - from Nagi Maehashi of Recipe Tin Eats who gives two versions - the first being the Tom yum goong nam sai that we have been talking about here and the second Tom yum goong nam khon which is creamier and includes evaporated milk, coconut milk and 'a good hit of Thai Chilli Paste'.

Now Beverley Sutherland Smith may not have included the second version because of the milks. The subtitle of her book is Healthy, Easy Recipes from Asia and she means it because in her Thailand Introduction she says:

"I found the most popular dishes on most menus tend to feature coconut cream or milk which is high in fat, so these have been omitted."

So yes I may donate it to the street library, although why? Am I punishing her for having very few pictures? After all I learnt to cook from books with no pictures. Beverley's recipes are always easy to follow, and easy to make. I cannot remember a single failure from any of her recipes, and I have tried a lot. She is one of my favourite cooks. Maybe I should keep it and plan to explore it again. I'm sure I shall find something worth making.

And look I've written a post - although probably not a great one but then as Margaret Atwood says: "If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word."

Maybe I just did what I used to do as a university student - in the words of Jodi Picoult - who can certainly write lots of words:

"I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands."

And it's certainly true that I have too much time on my hands - day by day that is, though probably not in terms of year by year. And I certainly remember sitting up all night writing that paper that I've had over a week to write, but which was due the next morning. Failure to deliver something however imperfect - and they all were - I never got a score higher than B+ - was a bit of a disaster and would probably have counted towards my final score.

Alas removing this book from the pile will not diminish the pile, as it was/is a 'first recipe' book and will therefore be replaced by another - another one from Beverley as we are now in the Beverley section of my bookshelf.

This one is not my favourite however and it might find it's way to the street library. I think this is something to do with my whole attitude to Asia. I am uncomfortable there, because I do not speak the language and I am not really aware of how to behave - what is polite and what is not. The food is generally delicious - although I'm less of a fan of Japanese and Chinese food - but it's not the kind of food I can cook with confidence and without a recipe. I need to be told what to do. And I do every now and then. But I can't experiment.

Oh well - there are now words in a post, a book to remove from the pile, and a tick on my to do list. And the sun is shining.

These happy sunshiney flowers were found on my walk back from the shops today. They made me smile. I'm not sure whether they are deliberately planted and lovingly cultivated or whether they are a kind of the dreaded shasta daisy. How can one noxious weed and one cultivated plant look the same and produce the same feeling of joy?

Maybe a bowl of tom yum soup would give me the same sense of joy, and remind me of happy times in Thailand long ago. I think I was enjoying myself so much I took very few photos.

YEARS GONE BY

September 18

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Australian/Asian - another coincidence

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Peppers from Piedmont - or Elizabeth David?

2020 - Missing

2019 - The answer to the gherkin problem

2018 - Routine and the poetry of everyday

2017 - A treasure from Coles Magazine - and halloumi - the treasure is BBQ halloumi with strawberry salsa - and yes I had forgotten that one - will make it again soon

2016 - Lay off the cheesecake!