Curry Mee

I miss Malaysia. My trip there last April affected me greatly; it was one of the most hardcore eating trips I've done. After day 3 I forgot how it felt to be hungry and instead felt only 'full', 'really very full' and 'ohmygod-I'm-going-to-barf'. The ease of getting a quick bowl of noodles for next to nothing made me giddy. I hit the noodle soups hard and one of my favourites was curry mee.

Thick, spicy and coconutty soup contained chunks of congealed pigs blood and little cockles as well as tofu puffs and prawns. Alas, it's not as easy to get hold of pigs blood and cockles so my replica version leaves these out, you may well be relieved to hear.

Instead, spongy tofu soaks up the soup so that they're nice and juicy when you bite into them. There are slices of fish cake lurking in there too, underneath the mound of yellow egg noodles. For a bit of texture variation, I also added a little rice vermicelli, a tip I picked up in Penang. A few green beans in there added some crunch, and once all the sambal olek (chilli sauce) was mixed into the broth, a squeeze of lime made the dish complete. Most noodle soups in Malaysia that we tried were served with a hard boiled egg; I prefer mine a bit softer so a barely poached egg was dropped in.

The key to this lies in the paste, where most of the flavours are. You can get most of the ingredients in an Asian supermarket; in London, I use New Loon Moon on Gerrard Street.

Curry Mee

Serves 4

For the paste:

15 small purple shallots
7 cloves of garlic
3" of ginger
4 sticks of lemongrass, soft innards only
6 dried red chillis soaked in boiling water till soft
1 tsp shrimp paste (belachan)
2 tsp ground coriander
Roots or stems of a bunch of coriander
1 tsp sugar

Chop all of the above roughly and blend into a fine paste, adding some oil as you go. Any leftover paste should be kept in the fridge with a film of oil on top.

300gr yellow eggs noodles, fresh
100gr rice vermicelli, cooked and cooled
1 branch of curry leaves, fresh
4 lime leaves, fresh
A handful of green beans
100gr Chinese fish cake, sliced thinly
20 tofu puffs, halved
A handful of beansprouts
1 tin of coconut milk
250mls chicken stock
1 limes, quartered
A handful of coriander to serve
4 eggs
Sambal Olek to serve

In a large pan, fry 2 tbsp curry paste per person, so 8 tbsp in this instance. Fry slowly for 15 minutes. Add the coconut milk, the chicken stock, the lime leaves and the curry leaves. Leave the curry leaves on the branch when you add them in as this makes it easier to remove them. Simmer gently for 35 minutes. Add the tofu puffs in the last 15 minutes, the fishcake slices in the last 5 and take off the heat. Remove the curry leaf branch.

Add the eggs to boiling water and leave for 6 minutes - take off the heat and run under cold water. Peel carefully.

In another pan, blanch the beansprouts and simmer the green beans for 3 minutes. Cook the egg noodles as per cooking instructions (mine required just plunging into boiling water for a couple of minutes) and drain.

To serve, divide the egg noodles and vermicelli noodles among 4 deep bowls equally. Top with beansprouts and green beans. Heat the soup base up till simmering, then distribute soup base equally. Halve each egg over the bowl and place in carefully, then add the coriander sprinkled on top with a quarter of lime per bowl. Serve with the sambal olek.

Not Singapore Fried Noodles

Singaporeans will tell you that the popular takeaway classic, Singapore fried noodles, is not from their homeland. It's one of those dishes that popped up and got popular, and people are baffled (or enraged...) as to how they got that name. But you know, whatever, as the premise of it is actually quite delicious. When made at home, stir-fried rice vermicelli with a hint of curry spice and lots of crunchy vegetables was pretty damn good, and far away from the greasy neon yellow takeaway version.

It is Chinese New Year, a time traditionally to eat noodles as the strands symbolise longevity so don't go cutting them with scissors. This was a bit of a fridge wonder as most vegetables you've got lurking would work well so don't feel you have to follow the below exactly. Things like green beans need a bit of a blanch beforehand to lose the rawness. Doused in a chilli oil and freshened up with coriander and spring onions, this made a damn fine brunch to bring the year of the dragon in with. Just don't serve it to a Singaporean. Gung hei fat choi!

Not Singapore Fried Noodles

Serves two

150gr cooked rice vermicelli, left to go cold

A handful of green or bobby beans, blanched

One yellow pepper, sliced thinly

1 carrot, julienned

1/2 an onion, sliced into half moons

Some cabbage, or curly kale shredded

A handful of beansprouts

1 heaped tsp medium curry powder

2 tbsp light soy sauce

A splash of dark soy

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1" ginger, minced

1 green chilli, chopped

A handful of raw prawns

5 tofu puffs, sliced in half (optional, but great for texture)

3 tbsp vegetable oil

Chilli oil to serve

1 spring onion, sliced on the diagonal

A handful of coriander, chopped

Heat the oil in the wok and add the ginger, garlic and chilli. Stir fry till fragrant and then add the carrot and pepper and onion. Add the bobby beans and stir fry, then adding the curry powder. Mix well then throw in the noodles and the rest of the ingredients except the spring onion and coriander garnish. Stir fry on a high heat for a couple of minutes until the prawns turn pink, then add the spring onion and coriander. Serve immediately.

Ramenism

I suppose you could say that 2011 is the year I really discovered ramen. From Momofuku Noodle Bar's pork ramen in New York way back in June, the love affair was ignited. There are a baffling array of regional variations of ramen, and not many cover them as well as the excellent first issue of Lucky Peach. Unfortunately it seems to be out of stock and they're going for £190 secondhand but Wikipedia gives you a rough outline.

I wasn't alone in these feelings though. Tsuru, the popular mini chain of Japanese restaurants famous for its signature chicken katsu sandwich, started up Tsuru Ramen; a sporadic ramen Saturday, offering different ramens in two sittings in advance of opening up a ramen shop. They take this stuff seriously, with a 5 day ramen slurping research trip to Tokyo scheduled imminently. Their events have been selling out.

I managed to nab a ticket to the Tonkotsu event. Tonkotsu (not to be confused with tonkatsu) is a speciality of Kyushu and it translates to 'pork bone'. The broth is milky from simmering the pork bones over a long time. It gets its appearance from the fat and collagen and what you're left with is an intensely porky broth for the springy noodles to swim in. Topped with a slice of tender, fatty pork and half a soft boiled nitamago (soy seasoned egg), this was an excellent and hearty bowl of noodles. You can keep up to date with events by following them on Twitter and checking out their blog.

More of a permanent fixture is Shochu Lounge's Ramen Mondays. Bizarrely it isn't advertised at all, even their website doesn't say they're open on Monday lunchtimes but this tip came from the ever excellent Mr Noodles. Underneath Roka on Charlotte Street, this sleek and expensive-feeling bar is usually the den of the well-heeled, sipping on shochu cocktails before dinner upstairs but come on a Monday lunchtime and you find instead a vat of bubbling water in the middle of the bar, with a chef dunking balls of noodles into nets to get lowered into the water.

Only two options of ramen are offered; Shoyu ramen has a clear, light broth and is flavoured with soy sauce. Again topped with a soy-seasoned egg, this was a touch more cooked, resulting in a fudgy consistency. Toasted nori went well with the broth, being crisp above surface and slimy below. Slices of pork are plentiful, the noodles a pleasing consistency - I value bouncy springiness firstly and foremost.

The miso ramen is an altogether richer affair. A thicker broth seasoned heavily with the flavour of miso, this one is definitely for the winter months. The broth is borderline on the salty front and was more of a slurpable one combined with the noodles than on its' own. Sweetcorn bobbed about for some welcome sweetness and the strong flavour of sesame was prevalent. This was a gutsy bowl which worked well with the chewy noodles.



I decided it was high time I made my own. I followed the recipe for the ramen noodles from Lucky Peach issue 1 (top photo) which involved cooking baking soda in the oven and a lot of faff with the pasta machine but they weren't quite right; too mushy and not springy enough. Shop bought were better so I will omit the recipe until I get it right. But the broth of the noodles and the accompaniments were pretty damn good so it's here instead.

I based this on a tonkotsu-esque idea, but as I didn't have a huge amount of pork bones I supplemented it with oxtail for an even bigger whack of meaty flavour. To balance this out, I added some Chinese preserved radish which helped cut through the richness nicely. This kind of broth takes minimal fuss but a lot of time, so set aside at least a couple of days to make it. This recipe makes enough for about 6 bowls. It's rugged, but rich and comforting.

Oxtail & Pork Broth

1 oxtail, sectioned (into pieces...)
1 pork shank
3 large slices of ginger

Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the oxtail and pork shank. Boil for 10 minutes. Drain and rinse in a colander and clean the pot out. This is to get rid of all the horrible grey scum that will make your broth weird.

Add to a fresh pan of water, enough to cover and simmer very gently with the ginger for 10 hours with lid on in the oven at 100 degrees. It seems a lot but you can do this in a slow cooker. Drain, strain through muslin and chill overnight. Skim the fat off once it has solidified on the surface. there is a heart-stopping amount. Bring to the simmer.

Pork Belly

500gr piece of pork belly
1.5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt

Rub the salt and sugar all over the pork belly. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Drain the liquid out and pat dry, then roast for half an hour on full blast and then turn it down to 140 degrees C and roast for an hour. Remove, leave to cool and chill. (This last bit is only necessary if you like neat slices.) To serve, remove the skin if you have it on and slice into inch-thick pieces to serve on top of your ramen.

Nitamago (Soy-seasoned eggs)

6 eggs
1 clove of garlic
1 slice of ginger
60ml light soy sauce
60ml sake
60ml mirin
1/2 tsp sesame oil

Bring the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sake and mirin to the boil in a small saucepan. Once it hits boiling remove and place in a container to cool. Carefully lower the room temperature eggs into a pan of boiling water and cook for 6 minutes. Remove and rinse under cold water until cooled. Very carefully peel and place in the cold soy sauce mix. Marinate overnight, turning once.

Other Bits

1 sheet of toasted nori per person
A handful of beansprouts, blanched
1 spring onion, slivered finely
A handful of rinsed preserved turnip or radish
1 tsp miso per person

So the rest is assembly really. Make sure the stock is bubbling heartily and assemble the cooked noodles in the bowl. Attach the toasted nori sheet to the side of the bowl (a smear of miso did this well) and ladle the broth into the bowl. Top with beansprouts, pickled veg, slivered spring onion and the tsp of miso so that it dissolves into the broth, and finally split an egg in half and settle on top. Serve immediately.

New York - December Edition - On the Cheap

I'm a bit of a lucky cow really; I've just spent five days in New York, my third visit of the year. This time the focus was heavily on cheap and casual with a couple of blow-outs sprinkled here and there. We brunched more too; breakfast is entirely out of the question due to being an extremely lazy person, but 11am is a manageable time.

We attempted to go to well-known brunch spot on a Saturday morning and we were greeted with about 25 people milling about outside. Waiting times can be up to 2 hours so we sacked it off and headed instead for Diner, over the river in Williamsburg. In what looked like a disused train carriage the place was packed to the rafters with cool kids sipping on bloody marys. Within 10 minutes we were seated and a delicious dish of scrambled eggs with a biscuit (aka. a savoury scone) topped with pork gravy (aka. white sauce with bits of sausage in it) ($12) kept me going till dinnertime.


We didn't give up on Clinton Street Baking Company though and came back on a weekday, as several people had proclaimed theirs to be The Best pancakes in New York. We patiently waited outside for half an hour, while my still-damp hair turned crispy with frost. We were seated snugly inside and a mountain of sugar-cured bacon, eggs with fried green tomatoes and cheesy grits ($13) warmed me up. The show stopper was indeed the wild Maine blueberry pancakes, served with a warm maple butter ($12). Sweet mother of God these were good, and worth the freezing wait we endured. Warm and fluffy inside, slightly crisp edges, punctuated with blueberries within and a mound of them on top, the maple butter drenching into the pancakes was... just... uuuunnngggg. I have no words. I need a moment alone with this memory.



Seemingly my beloved can exist on merely two meals a day - the horror - so one evening I went foraging for a snack on my own. Just a block away I came across a branch of Xi'an Famous Foods, heartily recommended by many. On St Marks Place, it was tiny; two benches faced the wall, which was plastered with the laminated menu and pictures of the dishes. As I was merely snacking, I went for Chang-an Spicy Tofu ($2) and Liang Pi Cold Skin Noodles ($4.50). Within 5 minutes I was out of there, clutching my takeaway bag.

It was pretty huge for my supposed snack and goddamn it was delicious. Slippery soft, delicate tofu was bathed in a savoury, sour broth tinged with ginger and garlic and with a slick of fiery red chilli oil. Cold skin noodles (here's an interesting Wikipedia article on how they're made) made your lips go numb with Sichuan peppercorns, while the soft pliable noodles stained all and sundry with the dressing they were doused in. I absolutely honked of garlic afterwards but I immediately wanted to go back to try everything else with another serving of tofu on the side. Alas, I ran out of time.



Later that evening, we hit Corner Bistro, reputedly New York's best burger. Famed for its queues, we arrived late and got lucky; seated in 5 minutes. The burger, loosely packed and cooked as requested, came with rashers of crispy bacon and perhaps a touch more raw onion in a huge hoop than I'd have liked, but was really very good. Pickles on the side and fries that were just like McDonalds' - which is a good thing - made me a fan. At $8-ish for the Bistro burger it was insanely good value. Value aside though, Minetta Tavern's effort pips it to the post for me.



Revelation of the trip goes to Otafuku, purveyors of takoyaki. Takoyaki are balls of batter studded with cooked octopus. I'll admit it doesn't sound particularly appealing, but when I went there to yet again another hole-in-the-wall place with barely standing room for more than 3 people and no seating, I was transfixed by a huge metal pan with spherical molds, takoyaki cooking merrily inside. You'll have the excuse the photo. I am resolutely right handed and trying to wield chopsticks and take a picture while supressing the urge to stuff them in my gob was just too much.

These reminded me of a Japanese version of Jose's ham croquetas. Crisp on the outside and light and moussey inside, these are drizzled with takoyaki sauce (whatever that might be), mayonnaise and topped with a dusting of seaweed and shavings of dried bonito. $5 for 5 I think, and after I'd finished, I only wanted more and more.



Often regarded as one of the best makers of ramen, Ippudo has a legendary reputation for enormous queues and long waiting times, all for a bowl of noodles in broth. People get seriously passionate about ramen, and while I'm only just delving into this world I am fully in love with the stuff. Which might explain why I was outside Ippudo on a Tuesday morning at 10:45am, 7th in the queue, waiting for the 11am opening time. Once inside, the space reminds me of a Busaba Eathai. Seated communally, the din is incredible. Every time someone walks in, all the staff shout a greeting in Japanese to the mostly young Asian crowd. I was in and out in 30 minutes and by the time I left, pop music was pumping and the poor hapless sod opposite me was still trying to shout business down his mobile phone, with laptop out.

The lunch deal includes any ramen plus a rice with topping and side salad for merely $3 extra. I chose the grilled eel with rice, a surprisingly generous portion. The fish was soft and tender, the rice well cooked.

The curious side of me wanted to choose their 'special' which included Parmesan cheese but I knew I'd cry if I didn't like it, so I stuck to Akamaru Modern ($14). The Tonkotsu broth is topped with miso paste, pork chashu (which is simmered pork belly, unlike the Chinese char siu), scallions and fragrant garlic oil. A soy marinated soft boiled egg (nitamago) as an extra ($2) completed the bowl. The broth was deeply porky with a hint of sweetness from the reddish miso being stirred in. This was a seriously satisfying bowl, though I'd have liked the ramen noodles a bit thicker, a bit springier. Can we have an Ippudo in London please?



New York is famous for their bagels and one morning - fine, fine, afternoon - we headed up to David's Bagels. As we joined the queue we were greeted with a stunning array of bagel types so it only made sense to go for the Everything bagel. Studded with poppy seeds, sesame, onion flavourings and the like, it was served warm filled with lox and cream cheese ($8.50). It was stunning, really, like no other bagel I've had. Soft but not pappy, it held the filling well and was a far cry from those hard dry things we get in London. Pastrami and pickle-filled bagel ($6) was equally good. I suspect it's not even the best ever, but then I don't know much about them; we were nearby, hungry and it made me happy.

273 First Avenue (1st Ave. between E 15th St. & E 16th St.)

Since my first visit when I went to Torrisi Italian Specialities, things have changed and they have opened Parm, a more casual sandwich shop next door, devoting the main place to a more restaurant-like environment. I propped myself up at the bar and had an eggplant parm, served in a sweet semolina roll. I was still reeling from my ramen brunch, otherwise I'd have gone fully for the hero, a far larger affair. With slices of soft, juicy aubergine coated in gooey cheese, tomatoey sauce and sandwiched with basil leaves, the roll was perhaps a little oversweet to my liking but otherwise it was excellent, particularly for an aubergine obsessive. The Boy, a New York resident, has been addicted to the meatball parm for many weeks now and expressed disbelief at my choice. I am beginning to wonder about it myself. At $8 its not a cheap every day lunch but it makes a happy lunch.



So there ends the cheap eats. Are you still with me?

Pho Bo

I'm a huge fan of the Vietnamese noodle soup, pho (pronounced 'fur'). Recently, I stumbled upon the sawtooth leaf herb in New Loon Moon in Chinatown, and after spotting some Vietnamese basil, both prominent pho garnishes, I knew it had to be made.

Beef bones were procured from the butcher, and they barely fit in my stock pot. Unlike Chinese noodle soups, the onion and ginger to make the stock are charred to add smokiness.

After simmering for hours, filling the house up with heady smells of cinnamon and star anise, the broth is strained, meat sliced and the classic pho noodles are added. Herbs are served on the side for the diner to add as they wish.

Freshened with a squirt of lime juice, this home-made version was gorgeous (though perhaps Cafe East's version pips it to the post - but theirs is VERY good). The broth was deeply meaty, a thin layer of fat coating the surface and making it impossible to emerge from the table without a splattered t-shirt. I added only slices of brisket; in future, beef tendon and raw slices of steak will be going in for sure.


Pho Bo (Beef Noodle Soup)

Serves 4

For the soup:

1 kg beef bones - you want some with marrow in them. Alternatively, use half beef bones and half oxtail
2 onions
6 slices of ginger
4 star anise
1 stick of cassia bark or cinnamon
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp sugar
400gr beef brisket, in one piece

Put the bones in a pot and cover with water. Bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes - this helps keep the broth clear. Discard this water and wash the bones and the pot out thoroughly. Add the bones back in and just enough water to cover. In a griddle pan, cook the onion and the ginger without oil until they are charred. Add them to the stock pot. Toast the spices and also add to the pot. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, then add the beef brisket and simmer for a further 2 hours.

Remove the beef and set to one side. Strain the stock.

400gr pho noodles - if dried, cook in boiling water for 3 minutes (until tender) and drain.
A handful of Vietnamese / sweet basil
A handful of sawtooth leaf
1 lime, quartered
2 tbsp coriander, chopped
Fish sauce, to taste
Chopped birds eye chillis
100gr beansprouts, blanched

Add the noodles to each bowl. Slice the brisket thinly and add to each bowl, then top with steaming hot broth. Serve with the herbs and condiments for each diner to add to their own taste.

Stir-fried Starch Jelly Noodles

Mung bean starch is a strange beast. I found it, at a whopping £3.99 at the Korean supermarket below Centrepoint, after reading Sunflower's post on making Sichuan liang fen (starch jelly) noodles. I had to have it; in her post, she says if you like rice noodles, you'll like these - I LOVE rice noodles. My first batch failed, after I mixed the boiling water all in one with the starch in cold water; I got major clumps. But then I tried again, mixing in the water bit by bit and mixing until smooth and it was a success.



The result is this weird, liquid-solid state. Poke it gently with your finger and your finger comes away clean, the surface feeling hard. Place your spoon into it and it cuts through like liquid; I was quite amused. EDIT: I've since been told by Su-Lin that this is, in fact, a non-Newtonian fluid. So for some brain boggling, have a read about it here.



The mixture is then placed in an oiled container to set in the fridge, and you can then slice it into noodles. At first, it was dressed with spring onion, garlic, tahini, chilli and coriander (top picture). Later when I came home from work and craved something hot and spicy, this was born.



Vegetables were stir-fried with a bit of pork, and the the starch jelly noodles, having sat in boiling water for a bit, were drained and added. They became translucent and fried well, holding their shape. I much preferred them to the cold noodle salad I had and I wonder how they'd hold up in a noodle soup.



Stir-Fried Starch Jelly Noodles



Serves 2



For the noodles:



100gr mung bean starch

500gr water

A pinch of salt



Mix the starch well with half of the water. Add the salt. Bring the other half up to the boil and add bit by bit, mixing the solution until well combined. Grease a tupperware box and pour into it. When cooled, place in the fridge.



To use, slice thinly width ways and then slice again to the width of the noodle desired.



For the noodle dish:



200gr starch jelly noodles

2 cloves of garlic

1 inch of ginger

1 chilli

1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar

1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

1 tbsp light soy

1 courgette, cut into batons

A few Chinese leaves, or cabbage, torn roughly

Some meat - pork or chicken. Prawns would work too

1 egg

2 spring onions, sliced diagonally

A small handful of coriander, chopped roughly



Bring a pot of water to boil and add the noodles into it and take off the heat. Mince the chilli, garlic and ginger. Fry this in a wok for a few seconds, then add the cabbage / chinese leaves, courgette and the meat if using (prawns go in at the end, not this stage). Stir fry for a few minutes, then drain the noodles and add this. Fry on a high heat. Crack the egg in and in stir-frying this should scramble it; take the wok off the heat immediately. Keep stir-frying, add the spring onion and coriander, and serve.

Chilli Miso Noodle Soup

I recently went to Dinings near Edgware Road and one of the dishes, a chilli salmon miso soup stuck with me for a while. It was delicious; on the menu I didn't think it would work, but I was glad I ordered it as it was intensely savoury and soothing. I decided to attempt a re-creation to make a big one-bowl meal. It ended up being a mish-mash of Japanese and Chinese ingredients and was filling and nourishing.

Slippery thin rice noodles bulked the soup out, while the pak choi and mange tout added essential crunch. I had hoped to grill the skin from the rainbow trout until it was puffy and crispy to serve on top, but it was Sunday lunchtime and I knew the honk of it would be antisocial in an open-plan flat. The chunks of fish are added to the broth to poach gently; boiling miso is said to ruin the health benefits of it, so a mere bubble of a simmer is all that is required.

Chilli Miso Noodle Soup

Serves 1

1 small salmon or rainbow trout fillet, chopped into thick chunks
1 heaped tbsp white miso
1 small piece of kombu seaweed
A small handful of bonito flakes (this and the kombu can be substituted with powdered dashi, available at Japanese and many Chinese supermarkets)
1 tsp chilli bean paste
1 clove garlic, minced
1" ginger, minced
1 spring onion - white and green parts separated
A handful of mange tout or sugarsnap peas
1 head of pak choi
A splash of soy sauce
60gr fresh thin ho fun noodles, or the equivalent dried
A few sprigs of coriander
1 lime

In a small saucepan either make up your powdered dashi with 300mls water or simmer your kombu seaweed for 15 minutes. Take off the heat and throw in the bonito flakes.

Meanwhile, set another saucepan on to boil. Slice the pak choi down the middle to halve it, and add to the simmering water. Simmer for 2 minutes, then add the mange tout and noodles (if fresh) for 1 min. Take off the heat and drain, adding it to your bowl.

Drain your soup stock into a recepticle. Heat some oil in a saucepan and add the ginger and garlic. Fry slowly until fragrant, and then add the white part of the spring onion, chopped. Next in goes the chilli bean paste, and after a good 2 or so minutes worth of frying, add the soup stock. Simmer for 5 mins, then turn the heat down and add the miso, stirring well. Slide in the chunks of fish and poach on a very low heat for 5 minutes. Add the noodles and veg back into the saucepan to warm it up, and serve immediately. Add soy sauce to taste and garnish with chopped coriander, sliced green parts of the spring onion and squeeze the lime over it.

Le Wei Xiang, Lewisham

Good God, my friends are difficult to get together. Way back in December, we arranged to visit Le Wei Xiang in Lewisham, a restaurant that seemed to specialise in far more than your average neighbourhood Chinese restaurant. Four attempts later, and with only half the originally intended group, we finally got there.

So, straight to the 'genuine Chinese tastes' section. Our party of 5 kept shouting random orders: "tripe! I want the tripe!" so in the end, it was just easier to write a list of numbers. One of the first to arrive was the cold tofu, steeped in a mixture of soy sauce and black vinegar, garnished with chopped preserved duck egg, spring onion and coriander. One of my favourite dishes of the evening, it was cool, creamy and flavoursome. The egg isn't as strong as you might think; it's jelly-liked textures and mild flavour was liked by all.

Lamb skewers were, dare I say it, better than Silk Road's. Juicy, pink meat, the cubes didn't alternate with crispy lumps of fat as in the aforementioned, but each piece was generously fatty. Alongside a dusting of cumin, these were marinaded with fennel seeds and had a caramel-like sweetness to them. I could have eaten the whole plate.

Sliced sea bass with preserved vegetable was a behemoth of a pot. Bobbing in the broth was silky slices of fish. At first, it tasted slightly bland, but blandness turned to comfort when spooned over a bowlful of rice.

Cucumbers in chilli oil were garlicky, spicy and wildly addictive.

Double cooked pork Sichuan style wasn't as spicy as I'd hoped but the pork was well seasoned and tender. Potato shreds with Sichuan pepper (opening photo) were properly and utterly mouth numbing. Other dishes such as aubergine with minced pork and cold noodles in 'sauce' were fairly unexciting but well made but one total failure of a dish was pigs blood and tofu soup, which managed to taste of absolutely nothing with a hint of dishwater. It was left untouched.

For £17 a head with (sweet and friendly) service and a couple of beers, we were all stuffed to the brim. I think for the money, Silk Road perhaps edges it slightly, but Silk Road doesn't do that tofu dish. And Silk Road doesn't deliver to my house...

Le Wei Xiang

80 Lee High Rd,
London SE13 5PT

Tel: 020 8318 2525

Street Food in Bangkok

We found it fairly difficult to find street food that weren't noodle soups in Bangkok. This was no bad thing; we often started our day with a bowl of thick, hor-fun noodles and a choice of duck or goose. Chillis steeped in fish sauce and a little deep fried garlic ensured we'd be carried through till lunchtime. But where were all these som tams, the laab salads, and curries galore? Perhaps we didn't look hard enough; after our binge in Penang our palates were a touch jaded.

But what a way to liven up the tastebuds with a searingly hot seafood salad (above). Raw prawns, squid and little clams were selected from a big tray of ice and dumped briefly in boiling water, before being fished out and then added to a plate. Tomatoes, strips of raw onion, lime, fish sauce and garlic are pounded in a pestle and mortar, then added to the seafood. It was a slow-building heat, leading to proper fire in the mouth.

Our first night saw us meeting up with @NicolaChilton for some street-side eats. It's always great to be taken around a new place by a local, even though you've never met before and Nicola took us for some cracking pork noodles. We then headed off to Soi 38 off Sukumvit, to sample Pad Thai cooked ferociously in a wok, packed full of vegetables and allegedly made with condensed milk. The vegetables had a great crunch and a lovely, smoky flavour to it, without the sticky sweetness you get in London Thai restaurants.

We finished off with sticky rice and mango. The mango was soft and deliciously sweet, while the intensely coconut flavoured rice was light, not like the dense, rich examples I was used to. Outstanding eats.

Another food highlight of our trip was stumbling upon a street food vendor near the Khao San Road. Not a word of English was spoken, and in the end we resorted to pointing at another table's food with a thumbs up. A pork laab, heavy on the shallots and topped with toasted crunchy rice was accompanied with a little plastic bag of sticky rice. Tom yum soup, also with pork, came as a big vat. Sour, spicy and savoury all at once, it was as good as I've ever had it.

Staggering around Chatuchak Market with a raging hangover was pretty painful. The biggest open air market in Asia, it was heaving and hot. I took refuge at a bright cafe, and all they served were Isaan-style salads and Thai sausages. Deep fried chicken tossed with shredded papaya, chilli and limes took the edge off the Sangsom head I was sporting.

It wasn't all good. Intrigued by the 'broccoli and mozzerella pie' and the dessert 'corn pie' in McDonald's, we ordered both to try out. Both were fucking disgusting. We weren't hugely surprised.