Asian Recipes

I ended up making the Irish Times ramen for lunch, it was lovely. I would say that the eggs need at least 7 minutes if not 8, my whites weren't even fully set. That doesn't bother me but it makes them fcuking impossible to peel and halve.

Also, be warned, this is only an 8-minute recipe if you already have the chilli oil made, but you can substitute White Mausu peanut rayu for it, which is what I did and it worked perfectly.

https://www.irishtimes.com/food/recipes/2023/02/18/eight-minute-ramen-with-miso-soft-boiled-egg-and-peanut-chilli-sauce/

You cant go wrong with cooking a pad thai when starting out with Asian food, once you get it right its a dish you'll always go back to. Its just the perfect balance of sweet, sour Asian shops will have the tamarind paste, just try to get a good one like the Nishaan brand. King prawns go particularly well with pad thai but you can use chicken instead if you want.

One tip I have for Asian food is if you are cooking it once a week it makes sense to chop lots of garlic and ginger in bulk using a mini food processor and then freezing it in portions of a teaspoon of each, Sistema do small pots that are perfect for this. Once you have chopped garlic and ginger always on hand in the freezer it speeds prep up considerably for Asian meals over preparing it for every single meal. Regardless if you are cooking an Indian, Chinese or Thai dish pretty much every recipe you come across will start with garlic and ginger so by having it made ahead of time it cuts down on prep, something Asian cooking takes a lot of.

The School of Wok on Youtube is a good channel if you want to get some ideas for what to cook.

Some of the classic broths are hard to make, lots and lots of ingredients suited to making GALLONS for the pot. After going to my favourite market in Dublin City centre and basically giving the recipe to the girl working there she explained that they're designed for restaurants or street vendors that make huge vats of them. If I bought all the ingredients for meal for five the stuff would be gone off by the time I made it again.

That's why (I've often wondered) that some of the inhabitants from the poorest countries eat out a lot, more than we do! It's cheaper to go out and eat fresh on the street than to make it yourself because of the volume of product that goes in to the pot and the fact that there's little or no rent.

Take the food ranger for instance on YouTube. (he's very Canadian and enthusiastic) Some of his content is in the poorest & most destitute areas in the world. The food is cooked for the masses. I've travelled a small bit and always wondered why & how poor people eat out so often. It's affordable.

Really interesting food culture subject you've bought up @Snowcast I've looked in to this too. Of course there's a million recipes that are easily home cooked, no denying that and as @the beer revolu mentions (on the ball), there's factories concocting ready made, authentic pre-prepared intensive pastes & mixes that are amazing, traditional & from the country it's derived available in good Asian markets.