Spice Trail Challenge: Pepper

I couldn't decide what to cook for Vanesther's latest Spice Trail Challenge which this month is focused on Pepper so in the last few weeks I have been playing with a range of dishes where pepper is a predominant flavouring, and loving every one. The dish I have finally chosen to feature though is Cambodian Green Peppercorn Prawns, a variation on a dish that would traditionally be made with soft shell crab and which uses fresh green peppercorns which I bought at an asian market.

I took a lot of my inspiration from Rick Stein's book Far Eastern Odyssey which has a whole section on Cambodia and where according to the author some of the finest pepper is produced, in the area around Kampot. I love this book and have cooked many recipes from it that are now favourites, it is one of the last ones I would give up if space became limited.

 I was delighted to find Kampot pepper could be ordered in the UK from The Spicery online spice shop and promptly put in an order for that and several other pepper spices.

I really like the small sampler packs you can order, as sometimes you know you just want a tiny amount. I did order full size packs of the two black peppers though, and have been delighted and surprised by how fragrant they are. My early memories of black pepper involved nasty stale tubs of powdered stuff liberally sprinkled on overcooked cabbage. It put me off pepper for a long time.

The packaging from The Spicery is really attractive and would make a nice present of any order. They also do monthly spice packs which include recipe cards and the website is full of useful information and inspiration. I particularly like the Spice Travels section and they are based in Bristol which is one of my favourite cities.

So as soft shell crabs are not so easily available in rural North Devon I hunted around for an alternative and found this recipe for  Green Peppercorn Prawns on the UK  Channel 4 website which was part of the 2012 series 'Spice Trip'. There is also a book of the series titled Spice Trip written by Stevie Parle and Emma Grazette.

Kampot Green Pepper Prawns
Serves 2
1-2 tsp vegetable oil for frying
2cm piece peeled ginger root finely chopped
1 large clove garlic thinly sliced
250-300g large peeled and deveined prawns
1 tbs fresh green peppercorns or pickled green peppercorns rinsed
3-4 kaffir dried lime leaves soaked in water until supple and sliced into strips
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
2 tomatoes skinned and finely diced (at room temperature)
fresh coriander to garnish (I leave this out as I dislike fresh coriander)
juice of half a lime
small amount of freshly ground black pepper (preferably from kampot)

• Heat a wok or frying pan on a high heat and add the vegetable oil
• Add the garlic and ginger root and fry until just starting to brown.
• Add the prawns, green peppercorns and shredded lime leaves and stir while cooking for 1 minute.
• Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce, and fish sauce and cook just enough to heat the prawns through.
• Add the diced tomato, coriander if using, lime juice, and a little ground black pepper and serve.

For a light lunch I just serve this with watercress but would serve rice too for a main meal.

So that is my chosen recipe but the others I have been having fun with include Beef steak with kampot pepper and lime dipping sauce from the Rick Stein book.

A home made fresh black pepper pasta carbonara where the freshly ground black pepper was incorporated into the pasta dough. Now this one I would not do again as I really don't think the pasta tasted any better than adding a good measure of freshly ground black pepper to the dish and it made the pasta turn a little greyish in tone!

And no photo for this but I also made this recipe for sichuan pepper orange truffles from the Peppermongers website. Peppermongers are another UK source of  various quality pepper spices recipes and information.

So that concludes my November Pepper Spice Trail

Kitchen Diary #7

Toad in the Hole is my idea of a perfect simple Sunday lunch at home; more than a snack but far less effort to make than a roast. It's success relies on first finding some good sausages, which seems like a constant quest for me. So often as soon as I find some sausages I really like, the makers change the formula, or stop coming to the markets where I could buy them so the search starts over again. These were new ones bought this week mail order from Albert Matthews who are based in Lancashire, UK. I will definitely buy them again as they were nice and lean, good porky flavour with no nasty gristly bits at all.

I have been experimenting with black pepper this week in practice for another blog challenge and this next dish is a fresh pasta carbonara with plenty of freshly ground black pepper added to the pasta dough.  I thought the pepper would make a good contrast to the otherwise slightly bland creaminess of the egg and cream sauce, which it did, but the pasta turned a rather unattractive greyish hue with all the pepper. So it tasted a lot better than it looked. I was also having another attempt at making fresh pasta with the pasta attachment I have for my Kenwood mixer, but for small amounts I really think it is easier to work by hand. I find it very difficult to get the texture of the pasta mix dry enough that it does not all stick together as it is extruded from the mixer attachment.

Another pepper dish that I have tried is this Rick Stein recipe for Cambodian marinated beef with lime and black pepper dipping sauce, which is made with Campot black pepper. The cut of beef was rump steak which stood up to the strong flavours and I skipped the peanut garnish as I didn't have any. It made a good Saturday night supper with minimal cooking needed at the end.

Bread & Cake Baking

My bread bake this week was this walnut loaf  which is made with a malted flour.

The recipe comes from an excellent bread book by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou who now teaches at the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, UK. They run an excellent range of courses in Baking, Cheesemaking, Butchery and much more, at both a professional and home cook level. I bought this book for the stollen recipe which I had heard was good but of course I have yet to try it even though I have had the book well over a year now.

This week the BBC tv station ran their annual appeal for the Children in Need fundraiser and I took some bakes into work to raise a little money. I made jam dodger biscuits from this daily delicious jolly jammers blog recipe. The cookie base is a french style sable type biscuit which just melts in the mouth but is a little difficult to handle if not well rested and chilled. There are many delicious baking recipes on the Daily Delicious site including a number of cookies I want to try.

My other bake was a reworking of my halloween rice crispie monsters but this time just made up into squares with the spotty decoration associated with the Children in Need mascot Pudsey Bear.

We raised £50 and had a very sweet Friday so a good way to end the working week. Next week there will be much more chocolate on the blog!