Asian Soups, Stews and Curries

Lee Geok Boi

Description

The ultimate comfort food and the cook's answer to meals that can be cooked in a single pot, are wholesome and suitable for keeping, Asian Soups, Stews and Curries provides more than 100 easy-to-follow recipes for preparing these timeless dishes the Asian way. Discover how to stew vegetables and the various types and cuts of meat and seafood, as well as the many ways of enjoying and serving these stews. Also included are recipes for stewed desserts to wrap up the meal or serve as a pick-me-up at any time of the day.

Sujets

• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814634687
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

LEE GEOK BOI

ASIAN Soups, Stews and Curries
In loving memory of my mother, Agnes Goh Eng Thye (1922-2013), who taught me how to stew and make curries, and of my aunt, Lee Lian Kim (1926-1995), who generously shared her culinary discoveries with us and enlarged our range of home cooking. Many of their recipes are captured in this book.
May my daughters, Shakuntala and Savitri, and other cooks find them just as delicious.

Editor: Lydia Leong
Designer: Bernard Go Kwang Meng
Photographer: Liu Hongde
Illustrations on pages 14 and 15 by Tom Herbst
Copyright 2014 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Cuisine
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial .Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail] Online bookstore: http://www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
Limits of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The Author and Publisher of this book have used their best efforts in preparing this book. The Publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book and is not responsible for the outcome of any recipe in this book. While the Publisher has reviewed each recipe carefully, the reader may not always achieve the results desired due to variations in ingredients,

cooking temperatures and individual cooking abilities. The Publisher shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices:
Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Lee, Geok Boi, author.
Asian soups, stews and curries / Lee Geok Boi. - Singapore :
Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, 2014 pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN : 978-981-4561-03-7 (paperback) eISBN : 978-981-4634-68-7
Soups - Asia. 2. Stews - Asia. 3. Cooking (Curry) - Asia. 4. Cooking, Asian. I. Title.
TX757
641.813095 -- dc23 OCN880599799
Printed in Malaysia by Times Offset (M) Sdn Bhd
Contents

Introduction
Meat
Chicken and Duck
Fish and Seafood
Vegetables and Beans
Desserts
Basic Recipes
Glossary
Index
Bibliography
Weights and Measures

4
16
58
90
126
162
184
202
213
215
216
Introduction

Grilling was early man s first method of cooking after the discovery of fire. Then came boiling and cooking with moist heat which is a step up from grilling. As a cooking method, boiling and steaming signals man s cultural development. To boil, you need a pot whereas grilling or barbecuing requires nothing more than a stick to hold the meat and an open fire. Steaming becomes even more complex than simply boiling. Boiling food developed once our ancestors learnt how to make cooking pots and devised ways to hang or stand those pots over open fires that would not burn up the structure. The set-up could be a pile of stones, a kind of primitive stovetop, on which the pot rested or iron stands to hang the pot over the fire once man learnt to mould iron into objects like hooks and stands. With the development of the ability to boil, food became tastier, more interesting - and healthier. Boiling especially the extended boiling

in stewing destroys parasites in raw food and in food that may be starting to go off. Boiled food keeps better as well, making the meat of larger animals more edible over a longer period of time. Unlike grilling, boiling has the advantage of tenderising tough cuts and those parts that would otherwise have required long chewing to be edible. For early man, it meant that there was no wastage and all parts of an animal could be consumed, even the skin. This approach to using up all parts of a kill may still be seen in some aspects of Asian cooking today. In South East Asia, for example, the skin of pig, buffalo and chicken is fried or roasted to make crackling which is eaten as a snack, added to salads or into stews and soups. The Chinese eat all parts of the pig from the head to the ears to the tail to the innards, organs, feet and the blood. In Chinese cooking, there is still the practice of making a more rich-tasting stock with cooked leftover
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ASIAN Soups, Stews and Curries

meats. In every culture bones of animals, seafood and shellfish are boiled for stock and the stocks become soups with the addition of vegetables, plants, beans and tubers or added to stews to bump up the flavours. The amount of water or stock was varied to produce dishes that could be soups, coated with thick sauces or swimming in gravy.
On top of water, a wide variety of ingredients were added to the meat and seafood to create more complex flavours: fermented foods such as kimchi, belacan , soy and fish sauces; fragrant herbs, spices, both ground and whole; flavourful roots such as ginger, lemongrass and galangal; and vegetables, tubers, beans and cereal added to pad out small amounts of meat or seafood. What went into the pot at first depended on what gatherers found in the jungles and bush and eventually on what was growing, in season, and now what is available in markets and supermarkets. Simple plain ingredients develop complex flavours when combined. Nothing typifies this more than curries where spices, fragrant roots and bulbs, souring agents such as lime juice or tamarind pulp, and rich coconut cream and yoghurt combine to produce dishes with unrivalled flavours. Curries are actually nothing more than boiled food by a more exotic name. While the term boiled food sounds quite unappetising and bland, the flavours of Asian curries and stews are anything but this. Curries do not all look the same nor are they all spicy. Some are spicy without looking so. Others are only mildly so, and yet others are supposedly so fiery that the name of the dish gives you fair warning: devil curry! Curries get their fiery apperance from ripe chilli peppers, that essential ingredient in red curries, with green chillies giving some curries a deceptively mild appearance. Numerous boiled or stewed dishes that are not curries also get a flavour boost from chillies, fresh and dried, mild and spicy. The chilli pepper was brought from South America to Asia in the 16th century by the Portuguese who created the world s

first European colony in Brazil, and who were the first Westerners to set up trading bases in Goa, Malacca and the Spice Islands (now called Maluku, Indonesia). The integration of chilli peppers into the food of all parts of Asia was probably one of the earliest effects of economic globalisation. Chilli peppers even have a place in Japanese food as one of the ingredients in shichimi togarashi , a spice and seaweed blend that is sprinkled on soups and stews.
That chilli peppers should have established their place so firmly in the foods of Asia may well be because of the way most Asians eat: a cereal staple such as boiled rice, bulgur or cracked wheat, and steamed or baked bread is eaten together with several side dishes. A dish dressed with chilli peppers adds immeasurably to the flavour of the cereal. How often do we hear Asians say how much more tasty a curry is when eaten with rice or bread? Unlike Western stews, curries which may be regarded as Asian stews are never eaten as basically one-dish meals, not even when it has potatoes in it. Potatoes are considered a vegetable to be eaten with bread or rice. Iranian stews are usually served on top of boiled rice. Other West Asian stews are eaten with bread or boiled bulgur. Curries and sambals, soups and stews are the traditional side dishes to be eaten with rice or bread. There are a handful of Asian stews and soups that are regarded as one-dish meals, but even then, a small bowl of rice may be served or noodles added to the one-pot dish: Chinese steamboat, Korean samgaetang (ginseng chicken) which has some rice in it, Japanese ishikari-nabe (salmon stew) which may include mung bean noodles or konnyaku cubes, or Straits Chinese chap chye soup (mixed vegetable soup) which also includes mung bean noodles. One South East Asian stew that I might eat on its own sans rice is probably kare kare (Filipino oxtail stew) although it tastes so good with rice that I would be loathe to leave it out. In Asia, communal meals with dishes in
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common are the norm. A group of men eating out of a large common platter may still be seen in the more traditional areas of West and South Asia. The Asian way of eating curries and stews as side dishes affects serving sizes. You don t need as much meat or seafood if the dish is to be eaten together with something substantial like a plate of rice.
What is a soup or a stew is clear. A soup has plenty of liquid that is to be drunk. A stew is less liquid, with thicker gravy that is to be mopped up with bread or a cereal staple. A curry is a stew cooked with a spice blend or spice paste that thickens the gravy. This flavourful gravy may also be drunk like a soup, but is more usually poured on rice or soaked up with bread. When the curry has almost no gravy, it may be called a dry curry or a sambal, a Malay word meaning a