Ren Behan - Author Wild Honey and Rye

Food Writer

Thai Food

Restaurant Review: Thai Square, George Street, St Albans

I was recently asked to review a branch of the Thai Square chain of restaurants. Given that we have one locally here in the Roman city of St Albans, I was only too happy to pop in.

Like many of its local counterparts here in St Albans, Thai Square is a chain, with nineteen individual restaurants across London and beyond and apparently, a new health spa.

The Thai Square group came under local public scrutiny here in St Albans a few years back, when they took on the challenge of renovating the Tudor Tavern public house, a Grade II listed building. The former tavern dates back to 1400-1401 and can be found on the corner of George Street and Verulam Road, close to the Abbey Gateway.

At the time of opening, the Thai Square/Tudor Tavern St Albans conversion was hailed a success. Though many locals were quick to oppose the change, the general view on completion was that the building had been tastefully and sensitively converted. Thai Square continues to be one of St Albans’ most striking restaurants, internally. Many of the original architectural features, such as exposed wooden Tudor beams and brick walls were retained, and are complimented by Thai statues, carvings and decor.

…

Read more

Nasi Goreng – World Foods Taste Team Challenge

I’m still trying to keep up with my World Foods challenges as part of the Fusion Taste Team and this week I sampled the Indonesian Fried Rice ‘Nasi Goreng’ paste, which should be available in Tesco.

The paste has quite a kick to it and is very fragrant. It is made from tomatoes, shallots and chillies with a distinctive Asian taste. It is perfect for preparing a quick fried rice dish and it’s also suitable for stir-fry dishes. I added left-over shredded, slow-cooked pork and some frozen prawns. The fried egg, I am told, is an authentic garnish though it did seem odd sticking a fried egg on top of a fried rice dish!  
I think of all the pastes and sauces I’ve tried now in the range, including Pad Thai Sauce, Ayam Percik (Spicy Chicken) and Tom Yum Soup this one was my least favourite, but it was nice to try something different. I think I also used slightly too much paste for the quantity of rice that I had making it saltier than it should have been.
I notice that a traditional Nasi Goreng might include ‘kecap manis’ which is a sweet soy sauce, so next time I’d be inclined to throw in a tablespoon of that too to sweeten it up a touch.

Thank you once again to World Foods for sending me the hamper of goodies to try.

If you are on Facebook, you could check out their World Foods Page to find out more about stockists, get recipes and also look out for product giveaways.

Tom Yum Soup – World Foods Taste Team Challenge

This week I’ve been sampling more products from the World Foods range as a member of their Fusion Taste Team.

Challenge #3 was to try out a Tom Yum soup using the World Foods Thai Tom Yum Paste.

Tom Yum is a soup which has quite a distinctive orange colour and is quite fragrant, usually fairly spicy and a touch sour. The World Foods Tom Yum paste is with lemon grass, kaffir lime, galangal, lime juice, fish sauce and chilli.

This one was very quick and easy to make, I just added the Tom Yum sauce to a wok, added some water, brought it to the boil, threw in some prawns (to make a Tom Yum Kung) and used coriander to garnish. It is optional to add coconut milk and I did add a tiny bit towards the end just to soften down the spice a bit. My husband tried it and said “Wow, that’s got a kick to it, lovely” (translate: I love spicy food, why don’t you cook it more often?!” For me, it was really quite spicy so I added more coconut milk. It definitely had a very authentic Thai flavour and was easy to use, so a great store cupboard stand-by.
You could add chicken which makes it a Tom Yum Kai or fish for a Tom Yum Pla. You can add rice to the soup and straw mushrooms too. You can also use to paste to make a fried rice so as a basic paste I would say it is quite versatile.
Don’t forget to pop over to the World Foods Facebook Page and “like” them as they very often host some great giveaways and competitions.  The products are available at Tesco stores.

 

Ayam Percik/Chicken Splash – World Foods Taste Team Challeng

Following all our Pad Thai successes, I’m moving onto challenge # 2 with the World Foods Fusion Taste Team though challenge # 3 has crept along already so I’ll get a move on again!

This time, we are challenged to cook a dish called ‘Ayam Percik’ which is a popular local delicacy in the east coast (Kelantan) of Peninsular Malaysia. This translates to ‘chicken splash’ because as it cooks more sauce is splashed over the chicken to add more flavour. Typically, the chicken is coated in a spicy marinade which is mellowed slightly with coconut and seasoned with sugar, salt, pepper and turmeric before being cooked on the open fire of either charcoal or wood. Luckily, World Foods have given us a helping hand in the form of their ‘Coconut Chilli Marinade’, which has a wonderful red-orange colour though is again, is free from preservatives, genetically modified ingredients, gluten or MSG.
The colour of the sauce reminded me of our favourite dish in our local noodle bar called ‘Chilli Chicken Noodles’ so although this goes best with rice I went all out and threw some of the sauce into a wok with some sweetcorn and wholewheat noodles to see test whether the sauce could double up as a marinade as well as a pour over sauce. It did…
I also had a slight issue with our barbecue, so went for the safer option of pan-frying the chicken (I used breasts) skin side down and finishing off under the grill flipping over once. You could also pan fry and then bake them in the oven for 20 minutes too. The chicken was really moist and tasty, there was a good level of chilli involved with a lovely sweetness at the same time, but now overly sweet or gloopy like a typical bottle of sweet chilli sauce.
As it had quite a kick, the kids just had plain chicken and noodles though I think adding extra coconut milk or mixing the marinade with yogurt would have toned it down so I’ll try that next time. We really enjoyed the chicken with noodles and would definitely use this sauce for the barbecue next time to get that really intense hit of flavour.
The World Food range is available in Tesco. 
You can also visit the World Foods Facebook Page and click “like” to be in with a chance of winning some goodies.
Ayam Percik or ‘Splash Chicken’
Made with World Foods Chilli Coconut Marinade


Ingredients:

1 bottle World Foods Malaysian Chilli Coconut Madinade (save some to splash on top during cooking or to splash over for noddles, if using)
6 chicken thighs (I used four breasts, skin on)
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 spring onions, chopped for garnish

Method:1. Marinate chicken with the marinade for at least 30 minutes.

2. Preheat grill/oven/barbeque
3. Cook meat on medium heat, turning occasionally until done and slightly charred (barbeque about 20-30 minutes depending on size/OR pan fry for five minutes on each side then place under the grill for five minutes on each side OR pay fry and then bake in the oven for twenty minutes until cooked through) Spread on some more marinade during the cooking process.

4. Serve hot with white rice or bread or as I did, with noodles stir-fried with spring onions and baby corn.
Serves 4-6
The sauce can also be used to marinade vegetables or fish…coconut chilli prawns sound good.