Thai style mussels recipe and kaffir lime tree growing from a seed

kaffir-lime-treeAs far as you don’t know yet I am addicted to Thai food. I love to cook Thai curries all ways and noodles and everything about that. I adapt it to myself as far i don’t eat so hot dishes as they usually are. One day I decided to have Thai herbs garden. Well, it’s cold outside and I was thinking about starting indoors. I bought seeds of thai basils and the Kaffir lime at thaiseeds.com and started to propagate the Kaffir.

The first experience was bad. They died under mildew. I gave it a try for a second time with extra re-hydrating them in wet cotton for 24 hours before I put them into Jiffy’s tablets. The tablets are made from substrate for propagating seeds and easy transplanting them in a pot or a garden.

After almost 2 weeks I saw the seed raised a bit and the next day it was like on the picture one. After 4 more days it looked like at the picture two. It’s growing fast. i transplanted it in a pot and covered with a jar until it gets bigger.

kaffir-lime-from-seed

Kaffir lime leaves are most often used as an essential ingredient for flavoring many Asian dishes. I found fresh in local Mars and Spenser store for USD2.5 for just 4 leaves.

The dark green leaves come in double form – a more pointed top leaf joined to a more rounded bottom leaf. They impart not only a sweet, lemony scent but a wondrous flavor of their own to soups, salads, curries and stir-fried dishes. For watery simmered dishes, the leaves are bruised and added whole; for dry dishes, they are cut into very fine hair-like slivers. To sliver, stack a few leaves at a time and cut at a slanted angle with a sharp knife; or use scissors.

let’s return to our muttons, I meant mussels. We stuck to some Belgian restaurants for a couple of months and, of course, all that is about mussels. We tried different but the most favorite is Thai style in coconut milk.

Remembering mussel’s evenings in France we decided to repeat it here. We bought 4 kg of fresh mussels (it should be for 5 persons). My husband always wash and clean them. I tried once and all my hands was scratched and in pain, mussels still were not good enough and since then I have never tried it again. This is the most unpleasant part about cooking mussels.

The recipe contains two parts: mussels boiled in white wine with celery and onion and Thai sauce.

I prepared spices and herbs for the Thai sauce.

You need:

  • lime juice
  • lemongrass 2-3 sticks
  • ginger (I love to eat it cooked if to cut in thin pieces)
  • galangal (optional but worth to find) It’s a type of ginger but it has more specific aroma. It’s not edible by the way. Too hard.
  • chili fresh or dried
  • 2-4 kaffir lime leaves
  • coconut milk 1-2 cans depends on how thick sauce would you prefer
  • a pinch of brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp of fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp of green curry paste (as for me it would be good enough and without it)
  • 1 tsp of coconut oil or any oil

Preheat oil and curry paste, add one tablespoon of coconut milk and stir the paste.

Add all milk and all ingredients all together (except lime juice) and cook for 5-10 minutes after boiling. Add lime juice at the end and leave by side.

For mussels you need:

  • about 1 kg of them per person if it’s a main dish
  • 1 celery
  • 1 onion
  • 1 bottle of dry white wine

Cut celery and onion into small pieces. Put mussels and vegetables in a pot and add wine. Cook them about 3-5 minutes after boiling. Than pour off the wine to another pot. You will probably want to mix it in Thai sauce later. Put mussels in a big pan by portions. Pour Thai sauce and wine sauce on top.

Precooked mussels and prepared herbs and spices.

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Can be eaten with jasmine or basmati rice.

Ready to eat

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Am I a pescatarian? New life without meat, new recipes.

I was looking for a reason to stop eating meat again, remembering I had to reject this idea during my second pregnancy, because I started gaining weight too rapidly shoveling up pastas and rice. That wasn’t my plan indeed. Meat partially helped with the situation, but as far as I was not pregnant anymore, I had so many reasons going on with eating meat further. To tell the truth, I was not happy about that, but at least, it was tasty.

And now I am again a pescatarian. This word is used to describe those who abstain from eating all meat and animal flesh with the exception of fish. In other words, a pescatarian maintains a vegetarian diet with the addition of fish and other seafood such as shrimps and lobsters.

The first week was agonizing. I often found myself picking meat from a soup or anywhere else, luckily for me, always on time before I started gobbling it. I even gained half a kilo unaccustomed eating without meat. Maybe, either that happened because I was sick and did not work out at all, eating the same way, as I did train.

Now during the second, I am calm and happy living without hunger agonies. However, vegetarian or pescaterian diet can be a hell if you are eating gluten free like I do. Usually people who are vegetarians eat bread and pasta, but I cannot. So I have a lack of choice almost in all kinds of restaurants.

If you live in France or in Czech, people consider you are crazy, if you say “I do not eat meat”. But last couple of years even here, in Prague, you can find vegetarian restaurants, many of which are quite new.

_DSC0599-25Feb2015Preparing tom yum ingredients. My hubby learned how to cook tom yam and that was in our top #3 tom yam’s we had ever tried. Tom yam is not my favorite Thai soup, as far as I prefer coconut note in Tom Kha, but I added coconut in it and it was just perfect._DSC0863-02Mar2015 Continue reading