phillipe's on soi 39 is the epitome of a small unpretentious restaurant with a giant heart ...

i knew i was going out for a fantastic dinner on friday so i held off on lunch, noshed on some small stuff, and then went and had a fantastic meal at phillipe's on soi 39. this place is tops. great food, awesome service and a very pleasant decor. the menu is changed every few months and accented frequently with a specials listing. in all my visits there, i have only had one dish that was not up to the par of all the others, and it was tonight's trout. the fish was good, cooked perfectly, and the sauce was great too, but the garnishes were lacking. the concasse type veggie malange was over-wrought with fresh herbs and the mousse was also over seasoned with curry powder, which made it unpalatable for me. but, as i said, the fish was perfectly sauteed, as were the almonds.

we started it all with oysters that are imported from france, and they were great with just a squeeze of lemon and some spectacular vinaigrette. what makes his vinaigrette so tasty is the quality of the vinegar he uses, it is like fine wine. i then had a fois gras and duck breast salad that is always perfection. my main course, as i mentioned, was the trout. i finished it all off with a nice warm chocolate tart filled with liquefied chocolate and garnished with a small scoop of ice cream and a drizzle of awesome butterscotch sauce. i cleared my throat with a double espresso as i am known to do.

i was so ravenous to eat my oysters i forgot to take a picture. i know ... how many fekkin' times am i gonna do that? here is a very bad shot of my fois gras and duck breast salad. thank god phillipe cooks a helluva lot better than i take pictures.

one of my friend's had a frog's leg and roasted garlic app.
again, i must apologize for the absolutely shite picture.

my other friend's langostinne app with a langostine foam that was out of this world.

the langostine was followed by this highly recommend confit of duck leg.
i had eaten this dish the last time and it was exactly the same when my friend had it.

my trout with the bogus garnishes.

as you can see it is cooked to perfection.
it was a breeze for me to bone it myself and the flesh was succulent and moist,
it simply fell away from the comb with just one nudge of my knife.
too bad no one ever gives as many almonds as i do with trout,
i could have used 3 times what i had been given.

the frog legs were followed by this great braised ox tongue with baby veggies.
this is a dish i have never seen anywhere else.
the person who ate this has it every time they go to phillipe's
regardless of whether he has another main dish or not.
it is that good.

the confit was followed by an excellent crème brûlée.
as always, lucky for the diner it was better than my pic.

my utterly delightful warm chocolate.
i should have gotten you a pic of the sauce oozing out of the center,
it actually had enough body to it that it flowed like lava.

i know i harped on about the trout garnishes,
but this was a fantastic meal and including the three plates of oysters and the espresso and wine
which are not shown, it only cost 9,228 baht or $275.27 usd.
check out the actual bill.
i would think this meal would have been twice the price in nyc, or even more in london.

tesco-lotus food court in the on nut store (pronounced: on-nuch)

all over asia the phenomenon of food courts has preceded the trend in america by decades. they have honed and perfected this venue for foodies of all price ranges and classes, the ones at tesco-lotus, like so many others, are for the average joe who is shopping, gets hungry, and just wants something basic to eat. like all others, you go to a centralized cashier, get a tesco-lotus debit card (it used to be in-store monopoly money), and just cruise the line until you see something you like. the place where i had the duck noodles in paragon is the same, just a very high end one. the portions tend to be very small at the tesco-lotus court so i figured i would have a combination of 2 dishes. chinese roast duck fried rice "kao-phaat ped-yang" ข้าวผัดเป็ดย่าง with a side order of braised pork knuckle with out the accompanying rice "khao kaa moo" ข้าวขาหมู.



i also got myself an iced coffee form the drink dispensing counter. that is my debit card on the tray next to the plate. the whole meal cost me 90 baht, or just under $3.00 usd.

the sauce that the pork leg is cooked in is seasoned with star anise and it is quite aromatic and tasty. both the pork and the duck are very tender and falling of the bone. not a bad deal if you ask me.

here is a picture of the rig they use for people to get their utensils from.


notice the hot water bath in the upper left corner. this is there (i think) to lull people into thinking that if they dip their fork and spoon into it, it will be cleaner. why would they not just do a better job in the back where they wash the stuff is what comes to my mind. and the fact is, they did. but, some folks think it is necessary. go figure.

i always laugh to myself when i see folks rubbing the spoon and fork with a piece of tissue before they eat, like that will help. all they did was just move whatever bacteria may be on the utensil around on it, they surely did not remove it.

japanese fast food ... unless you're a japanese food snob, bangkok rocks for availability

well today, thursday the 30th, i was lucky enough to not be tied to the office, or have to cook for anyone, so i took advantage of that and had some japanese fast food at the paragon mall with my good friend mike. not the mike who has the blog, but another mike, blog-less mike. you can see his torso in the picture. he was a bit put out when i told him that i knew i was not getting his face in the frame and that it was the food i was concerned about. i also forgot that they frown on picture taking at this particular establishment (seems there is a lot of corporate spying and theft of ideas in asia so many places forbid photos. so i made it look like i was taking blog-less mike's picture instead, which didn't work out as well as i had hoped) so i did not get a shot of blog-less mike's sushi assortment, because the waitress came over and politely asked me to not take anymore pics. too bad, it was the star attraction and it looked exactly like the picture in the menu.

this is what we had:

shrimp and salmon sushi

pork gyoza

zaro soba cha zoba with pork

blog-less mike's missing sushi combo miso soup

total cost: 1,100 thai baht/$33.00 usd

it really is too bad i got caught out with the picture taking, blog-less mike's sushi was just stunning to look at, and it tasted super fresh too. one of the pieces was bbq'd/teriyaki cuttle fish. blog-less mike was stunned that it was soft, and not chewy. he was afraid to try it at first for fear of being disappointed, but he was not.

this place fuji is one of the better fast food japanese restaurants in town and the menu is probably 20 pages long encompassing a wide variety of traditional and "new-wave" japanese food. seems these types of restaurants are not so popular in japan. usually a place sticks to one type of food, like sushi, or teppanyaki 鉄板焼き, and that is it. lucky for us that we have these bastardized places to go to where we can sample a variety of japanese food all in one sitting.

here are a few picture links to fuji food i snagged off google.
obviously the waitress did not stop these folks from snapping some pics:

• pic 1
• pic 2
• pic 3
• pic 4
• pic 5
• pic 6
• pic 7
• pic 8
• pic 9
• pic 10
• pic 11
• pic 12
• pic 13
• pic 14
• pic 15

most of the above pics came from a nice blog by this girl, check it.

• note: i googled images for the word "bastardized", this is what came up. funny thing, most of the images were of food.

3rd in a series on - my tools and technologies for gettin' out this food

i figure i need to put some of this into perspective. i keep mentioning that i have only one burner, well here it is. it is the same one many of the street vendors use in bkk. works like a charm, produces a good strong even flame, and it is quite adjustable too. definitely a challenge to prep and plan a multi-course meal with only one burner on hand. back home they probably call this a camp stove.

notice the burner comes right off the gas tank's nipple.
no exhaust hood either, and perfectly legal for bkk.
i would rather have this than a four burner conventional electric stove any day.
go figure.

shopping in a store when the power goes is not my idea of fun ...

i had to go to the grocery store today to stock up a kitchen that had nothing in it, something that can actually be fun, but today ... not!

my market of choice was the one on the 5th floor of the emporium mall, 622 sukhumvit rd. phromphong station on the bts skytrain. it is actually the smaller and older sister to the paragon i wrote about yesterday.


when i arrived the power was out for a few square block radius, seems egat (the electric generating authority of thailand) was having a major problem in the area. i spoke to the staff hanging around and they said it had already been an hour so i figured it would probably be not too long before the power came back on ... not! but not knowing this at the time i trekked up the 5 long flights of escalator to where the grocery was. one thing about the 5ht floor when this happens, there is so much refrigeration that they dedicate a good percentage of their back-up emergency power to that area, not the concessions - their area :-)

so i started to pick-up all the things that any kitchen would need, and i also got everything i would need for lunch. today's menu was going to be chicken thighs and livers in a mushroom and sherry sauce, mashed potatoes, and the all-time-stand-by-favorite, green peas.

simplicity is elegance! lmao

so as i was touring around the aisles, and picking out all that i needed from my lists ,i started to get a bit anxious. no power coming back on. not too bad for the actual shopping, but a real bummer when i want to leave and go the 5 flights back down to the street level. normally no big deal, but today i will have more than usual in order to set up this new kitchen and its larder.

i know they have a "luuk-nawng" ลูกน้อง, helper/assistant who can take some of the load, but still, i am not relishing the thought. just as i am about to ask the kid at checkout to assist, the power came back up, a cheer was heard 'round the store, air-con units started to hum and we all thought it was gonna be ok ... not! i figure so many appliances and machines were still set to on that they instantly had a localized brown out in the store. groans and grunts were now emanating from the aisles. 2 more minutes went by, up came the power, and it remained on at least until i was able to get my ass into the elevator and down to the street where i caught a taxi back home.

one funny thing, when we got into the lift there was no light in the cab. as the doors shut all the thai girls that were in there started to get all spooky like they do. so me, being the arse that i am, did what my older brothers used to do to me when they would babysit me as a youngster - i started to make creepy sounds like it was a halloween house of horrors. one girl truly freaked! so i stopped. all the others laughed and gave her a hard time. boy i love it here, so much fun everyday :o)

so i arrive at home, trek up-stairs, settle down to work, and also start the prep for lunch. now i am jumping back-and-forth between the kitchen and my office doing computer work and cooking all at the same time. so please pardon the fact that i did not get a full compliment of pictures, but i do have a few good ones of the stages i was able to snap.

i am cooking for 4 adults, 3 of whom will almost always consume as much food as i will put in front of them, regardless of the portion size. i chopped up 2 medium spanish onions, one bermuda onion (they be in season and i am loving these things everyday), one stalk of a good sized japanese leek (whites with a bit of the green thrown in for good measure), 6 huge cloves of garlic, sliced, some fresh straw mushrooms, "het fang" เห็ดฟาง (if you can not get fresh - never use the canned ones, use button mushrooms instead - canned straw mushrooms are a scam and they suck big time). these are the shrooms that you also see in "thom yum goong", ต้มยำ, spicy and piquant thai shrimp soup and some "het nang lom" เห็ดหนังลม or oyster mushrooms.

i then take the very nice and good sized boneless chicken thighs and cut them in half, season them with some delicatesse paprika, not the shite that most stores have and you sprinkle on deviled eggs thinking you have decorated them, some dried thyme leaf and some fresh ground seasalt and black pepper. i toss the pieces into a recycled plastic grocery bag, add in some all purpose flour, close the bag and do the ol' shake and bake maneuver, remove the pieces from the bag and lay them out on a plate to let the coating set and congeal with the moisture from the chicken.

i am going to garnish this dish with some sauteed chicken livers, so i take those from their bag and put them int a plastic strainer that is more like a basket with large holes. this allows the blood to drain off, the livers to dry ever so slightly, and that way the will sear well when i cook them.

next my good sturdy 12" fry pan, add some good olive oil, bring it up to high temp and add the prepped veggies. as the veggies are sweating, i prepare the quick and easy knorr brand demi-glace mix, a half liter, by putting it directly into the water bottle, replacing the cap, and shaking the living sh*t out of it. when the onions and leek are translucent i pour in about a half cup of majesty thai sherry (i have said this before - do not drink it, only cook with it!), and then add the demi-glace mix (be sure there are no large lumps in it, really feks up the sauce). i let that all come up to temp, throw in some very nice fresh sage leaves i have cut not to small, and a half cup or so of the always-required-chopped-parsley and simmer it all for about 5 minutes. i see it is a bit too thick so i add another cup +/- of water.

notes:

1. typically paprika in grocery stores is dry, old and not flavorless, but skanky smelling, avoid it at all costs. pay a bit more for good paprika and savor the aroma and taste, and you do not have to use so much. any paprika from hungary is tops!
   
2. dry thyme, leaf only, never powder. make sure it is not to old for the same reason you avoid the paprika. when it gets old, it smells like month old laundry.
3. be aware that any knorr product, or similar, contains salt and food additives so be careful not to over salt your food as you will be adding salt with these mixes. also, if you are to simmer or braise the food in such a product, never add salt until you are done, and always add more water than the directions call for. this way you will not have hard meats from the salt, too much salt taste and not to thick a finished gravy.
4. i use the sherry to help cut the packaged taste of the sauce mix and to also impart a wine flavor.
5. fresh herbs can improve, or save almost any dish, or help any pre-packaged convenience additive (like the demi-galce mix) to mellow out. sage is one of my favorites, but do not use too much, or that is all you will taste. it is really good with calves liver and bacon that you de-glaze with balsamic vinegar. (did you know the american indians smoke sage in their "peace" pipes? hmmmmmmm :-p )
   

i only have a one burner contrivance so i must now put the sauce to the side and sear the chicken pieces. the pot that i have, the only one large enough for the finished batch, is a very basic, very thin, very alu-min-i-um thai pot that's 30 cm in diameter. if you ever leave these things unattended you will regret it. anything (even water) will stick in a minute, burn in to 2. i put about a cup of good olive oil and bring it up to a high temp and then i very careful, with thongs, place - not throw, not drop, not put - but place the pieces into the pot skin side down.

i start the process by placing one of the pieces on the far outer edge and continue around and circle into the center. that way the first pieces will not be burning by the time i get the last ones in, and the temperature will have balanced out nicely across the surface of the pots bottom. i let them sear - untouched, do not poke, do not nudge - until they release themselves from the bottom of the pot.

then i gently grab them with the tongs and turn them, once again placing them carefully so as not to spatter the oil and burn myself. notice that they have contracted and shrunk a bit in sieze and they now fit perfectly across the bottom which allows for every piece to evenly brown and crust up. this will make a very big difference in your final product and the final texture, which we all know affects the final taste.

• note: when turning with tongs remember these are boneless chicken thighs and if you handle them nonchalantly, they will break up int small pieces. this will not effect the taste, but it sure does effect the final serving and presentation of the dish.

when the chicken is properly seared on both sides i then carefully pour the sauce over the chicken pieces. i do not stir it, poke or shake it, i wait. i have not removed the olive oil or any of the rendered chicken fat either, to do so would be sacrilege and diminish the final taste immensely.

when i see that the sauce has come back up to temp i turn the flame down to a simmer, and after a minute or 2, i then carefully grab both handles of the pot using protection (i love using folded dry washcloths for this) and gently with a swirling motion, move the pot until i see that the chicken is no longer cleaved to the bottom and the sauce is mixing in and under. i place the lid on top and let it ride for about 5 or 10 minutes, no more. i then remove the lid and check the product. all looks good so i put it aside, grab a small saute pan, add some olive oil, and bring it up to temp.

i then carefully add the livers to that pan, let them sit while they sear, and then carefully start to swirl the pan so they will get cooked on all sides. i like my liver medium rare to medium, so this only takes about 4 to 5 minutes. when the livers are done at most, i set the pan to the side and make sure it is canted on an angle. this way any blood will collect to the side. when i see the yare drained i remove them from the pan and set them aside in a dish.

during all of this i have been running back and forth to my office, doing my daily work load, and peeling potatoes and defrosting the peas. i cut the potatoes and boil them in - water with a good amount of the sea salt, drain them when they are done - leaving a few tablespoons of water in the bottom. i have 6 large russets, so i add about 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter and about 2 tablespoons of olive oil margarine, fresh ground black pepper and i begin to mash. when that is complete i taste and correct with a tad more sea salt, and put them aside. i have had the peas steeping in hot water so they do not even need to be put to the fire.

i am now ready to deliver upstairs and plate on site as it were.

i first place the tates on the plate, make a small well for some sauce, arrange the chicken and livers as i like them, and then i carefully ladle sauce onto them. the final step is to add the peas to the plate (they are naked, they need nothing) and i we are ready to eat.

yes? no? maybe?
just like mama never made?

the best food court in the city could very well be at siam paragon now

i had to go to the bank today, sunday, and unlike most other cities, bangkok is very civilized and user friendly. banks have full service branches in the local malls and they're open 7 days a week, and usually from the moment the malls open, until the doors shut. where else can this be done? nowhere as far as i know.

so after i finished my banking i decided to have lunch. i was in siam paragon one of bangkok's newest, largest, and swankiest malls. on the ground floor you will find all the banking and all the food. miles of it. simply awesome to behold. every cuisine, country and taste is represented. i would think that there is not one thing you could think of, from anywhere in the world, that would not be there, unless it is an endangered species, or on re-call by the fda.

i took a cruise through the food court to see what was on for today and a beautiful bowl of duck leg and chinese egg noodle soup caught my eye. so i got my food court debit card from the cashier and ordered a bowl with one extra thigh just for good measure. total cost 200 baht, or $6.00 usd. i was in such a hurry to eat that i forgot to take the picture until i was half way through it, sorry. but i think you'll get the idea.

the duck was falling off the bone when the girl went to slice it, and the noodles were a perfect al dente, just as i like them. tossed with a bit of toasted garlic, mild chili paste and a small spoon of soya, it was as, i always hope to say, simplicity and elegance.

after having my bowl of soup i was in the mood for a pastry and an espresso, so i cruised across to the french patisserie lenotre. there are a few of them in bkk, but this one seems to have the best assortment, and it is all the freshest. most likely because they are doing way more business than the others do.

i had my favorite, mille-fueille. it looks so plain and as if there is nothing to it, but if i could make one half as good as lenotre, i would be very pleased with myself, and a hell of lot pudgier than i am. typically the cream in these things anywhere else gets a tough skin on it and tastes like the bag or the box the mix came in, and the pastry is either soggy or to hard. lenotre seems to have solved both of these problems (i can not imagine having one made buy the chef who taught the locals how to do it - that would be pure heaven no doubt). i took a quick stab at the top and my fork easily pierced through the crispy light leaf of puff. i then turned the fork on it's side to cut off a mouthful. it simply went straight through and the cream, although it smooshed just a tad, held its own and did not squirt out the sides. a truly miraculous feat of patisserie.

upon lifting this treat to my mouth i could smell its subtle aroma and the pleasure that awaited. i placed it on my tongue and i could feel the cream simply melting on touch. perfect taste and not too sweet like so many of the bake shops in this town (and across asia for that matter). the pastry was flaky, and it too began to melt as i savored the moment. just like the soup, it was all gone in a flash. i cleared my throat with half of a double espresso (i was quite surprised when they told me the beans come from bon cafe , thank god they weren't from starbucks), popped the perfect pistachio meringue cookie in, and then finished it all off with the remaining half of my double. total cost for that, 251 baht or $7.60 usd. i remember paying that much for 2 hard-as-nails-dry-like-sand cookies in nyc just a year ago.

all in all, a great 2 course lunch, and a great trip to paragon mall.

some really low quality video clips i took at pargon when it had first opened.

i only had a little nikon cool pix s1, which is what i use to take all of these images and videos.

small, easy to use, easy to transfer to pc, and the software works quite well too.

i simply keep it on my belt in a nylon holster.