Friday, September 3, 2010

Thai Basil Fried Rice and Shrimp Wontons


Desperately craving the Thai Fried Rice from my local Thai take-out place the other night, but determined to use the food up in the fridge before heading back to Panama for a visit, I decided it was time for me to learn how to cook some good Thai food.

Since discovering the wonders of fresh sweet basil in Thai cuisine, that's pretty much all I can think about, so I set off looking for a recipe. This is what I found:

Thai Basil Fried Rice (serves 4 as an entrée)
Ingredients:
4 cups "already cooked" jasmine rice or long grain rice (let the rice cool before using it in the fried rice recipe)
6 big cloves garlic (crushed)
2 to 4 Thai red and green chili peppers or 1 to 2 Serrano peppers (crushed)
¼ cup cooking oil
1 to 1 ½ lbs chicken meat (cut into bite sizes)
3 tbs oyster sauce
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 medium size red bell pepper (julienne)
2 cups fresh sweet basil leaves
1 cucumber ( cut into bite sizes)
½ cup cilantro sprigs for garnish

Cooking Instructions
First, heat the oil in a deep pan or wok over high heat. Wait till the oil starts to smoke. Add crushed garlic and crushed chili peppers. Stir quickly (don’t let them burn). Then immediately add sliced chicken meat. Stir Add oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar. Stir until the chicken is cooked. through. Add already cooked rice. Stir quickly until sauces are blended with rice (a couple of minutes). Stir in red bell peppers and keep stirring for few seconds then add basil leaves, Turn the heat off. Garnish with sliced cucumbers and cilantro sprigs. Serve Immediately.

This was absolutely delicious, although I did make a couple of modifications. Firstly, I used leftover wholegrain rice, which was just fine, and I used pork instead of chicken. I actually would have preferred to use chicken, but all I had was pork, and it worked just fine. The only other thing I skipped was the fresh cilantro, as I felt it was unnecessary and might take away from the delicious stardom of the fresh basil, which was the whole point of making the dish. Note: this is one of those dishes that you want to be diligent with your preparation. Cut up everything before hand, and get all your condiments ready to throw in the pan. It's a really quick dish once you have everything prepared.

Before the Thai Fried Rice, I made something I've never done before and what's even cooler than that is that I didn't use a recipe, I just made it up, and what's even better than that is that it turned out really well! Here's how it went:

Shrimp Wontons (serves 2 as an appetizer)
6 large cooked shrimp - shelled, deveined and chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
1 tbsp chilli and garlic sauce (Thai-style)
2 tbsp chopped scallions
1 tsp oyster sauce
10 wonton wrappers
1 egg (beaten to make an egg wash)
Sweet chilli dipping sauce
Oil for frying (peanut oil works well)

Method:
Mix all the ingredients together.
Take the wonton wrappers and lay them flat on a dry surface. If they are sticking, sprinkle with a little flour. Place a nickel-sized amount of the mixture in each wonton and fold the wrapper to make a perfect triangle. Seal the wrapper in place using the egg wash and make sure the sides are sealed correctly. You don't want the mixture coming out in the pan. Heat the oil to a high heat and gently place the wontons in the oil. Don't overcrowd the pan, just do a couple at a time. They will float to the top and turn golden when ready. Take them out and place on paper towel to soak up any excess grease.
Serve immediately with the chilli dipping sauce. Yummy!!!


Monday, July 5, 2010

Chicago - BBQ Bob's Ribs


Definitely one of the most exciting things about eating in the US, compared to eating in Panama is the high-quality ribs you can find. Unfortunately, in Panama, it's just not possible to find good BBQ ribs. At least, I didn't find any in the five years I was there.


So, now I'm in Chicago, at least for the summer, and the food available simply blows your mind. A lot of the places to eat are chains, but there are some great, unique places, if you have a good look around. Sometimes you have to pay a little more to find a non-chain, but with Bar-B-Q Bob's, the quality was amazing and the value pretty good too.

We just rented an apartment in Roger's Park for a month, and on the first night here, we wanted to get delivery. There are not that many delivery options in Roger's Park, so we were psyched when we found that Bar-B-Q Bob delivers.

He offers a selection of ribs that include Baby Back, Louisiana and Rib Tips. We tried the Tips and the Baby Back and they were excellent. Be sure to order extra sauce, because it's so good, you'll want to pour extra all over everything! The ribs come with simple white bread, french fries and coleslaw, supposedly, although our coleslaw didn't arrive.

You can see the menu and order online at Bar B Q Bob's Website/

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Panama: Rincon Suizo

Rincon Suizo Restaurant

Whenever I feel like a really good meal in Panama, without pretension or having to worry about making a reservation, I turn to Rincon Suizo. Rincon Suizo is definitely one of Panama's truly great restaurants. Their menu is an interesting mix of Swiss, German and Austrian food, all made either classically, or with an infusion of local Panamanian ingredients. Rincon Suizo is not a cheap place to dine, but when considering value for money, I think that Rincon Suizo is hard to beat.

Rincon Suizo Menu

Last night, at Rincon Suizo, I decided to go to Rincon Suizo. I hadn't been in a long time, probably about one year, so I was really excited. My boyfriend and I shared the Camembert Au Gratin, a whole Camembert cheese served with a Passion Fruit and Green Peppercorn sauce. It was an interesting appetizer, the cheese was absolutely divine and the sauce sweet, but not too sweet. For a main course, I chose the Filet San Moritz, a delicious fillet steak, served with a creamy mushroom sauce with some melted cheese on top. It looks somewhat like a heart attack on a plate, but is absolutely delicious, with none of the strong flavours outdoing the others. I chose to accompany my steak with a Rosti potato, one of my all-time favourite side dishes, and one that is not often found in Panama. I could have chosen French Fries, mashed potato, vegetables or rice. My boyfriend went for the Tenderloin Trios, an attractive dish of three tenderloins with a selection of sauces: a Morel mushroom sauce, a Green Peppercorn sauce and a Cafe Paris herb butter sauce. All in all, it was delicious. For dessert, we shared a German-style Apple Strudel served with Vanilla ice cream and I ordered an Irish Coffee, another of my favourite things in the world.

Rincon Suizo Wine


Apart from the spectacular food menu, if you're a wine buff, then you will love Rincon Suizo. With the most extensive wine menu of any restaurant in Panama, Rincon Suizo has a vast selection of wines ranging from the reasonably priced Little Penguin Australian Merlot which was my choice last night (an excellent tipple, I might add), to some outrageously priced French reds at some USD $2,000 per bottle and up. I personally have a serious issue with spending thousands of dollars on a bottle of wine, and prefer to go with several 20-dollar bottles. It just seems to make more sense to me.

If you're in Panama, looking for a dinner that will leave you smiling with joy for at least 24 hours after the fact, then Rincon Suizo is for you!

Rincon Suizo is located in El Cangrejo on Calle Eusebio A Morales. Visit their website for more details.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Panama - Super Gourmet

Super Gourmet Casco Viejo



Super Gourmet Casco Viejo is one of my favorite places in Panama City to eat and hang out. It is a friendly little place that sells a selection of deli items, wines, snacks, some hard-to-find groceries and an excellent selection of sandwiches and salads. They also have daily specials including a soup of the day and treats like meat loaf, chili con carne, smoked salmon pasta salad and buffalo chicken wing dip.


The atmosphere is super laid back and it's quite a community meeting spot, with expats living in the neighborhood generally stopping by for breakfast, lunch or dinner most days.


On Saturdays, Super Gourmet hosts a barbecue party, when people gather for the street-side grill-fest featuring delicious sausages, hamburgers and chicken shish-kebabs. Again, quite a community gathering, Super Gourmet plays good music and has cheap, ice-cold beer. Definitely worth stopping by when you're in Panama City at the weekend.




Super Gourmet is located on Avenida A, next to the Canal Museum


Tel: +507 212.3487


http://www.supergourmetcasco.com/.



Saturday, July 4, 2009

Panama - Matseui Sushi

Matseui Sushi

Matseui Sushi is one of the lesser-known sushi restaurants in Panama City, but for me it has always been one of the best. It is a rather old-fashioned place, and could do with a fresh coat of paint, but apart from that, I like it. The wait-staff dress in traditional japanse attire and the sushi is generally very good.





Matseui is now promoting itself on Facebook, seemingly trying to boost their market image, and they have an "Open Sushi" promotion, which runs I think every night apart from Saturday. The deal is you pay $21.75 + 5% and you get all the sushi you want to eat, including nigiri (sushi) and rolls. The fish on offer last night was national tuna (maguro), fresh salmon (make), shrimp (ebi), yellowtail (bojala), snapper (pargo) and sole (lenguad0). For the rolls, you can choose California or Maki style, and you make your own out of a selection of ingredients or choose one of the chef's suggestions.

Everything we ate here was absolutely delicious, and the fish was some of the freshest and softest I have ever eaten. Think melt-in-your-mouth Tuna.

Matseui Sushi is located opposite the Hotel Granada in El Cangrejo.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

www.Blogbal.com

I just included a link to Travel to Eat on this great new blog directory called www.Blogbal.com. It's a directory of ALL the blogs in the world. If you didnt already include your blog there, you should... it's a great resource!!!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Panama - The Night Mail

Until a year or so ago, there was a great little company here called Domi (sp?) Expresss. You could call them any time day or night and they would go buy stuff for you, bring it to your home and then you just pay them a delivery fee of $2.00. They operated pretty much round the clock and would get literally anything, as long as it's legal, from wine and cigarettes at the store to picking up food at a restaurant. This is great, because even if a restaurant didnt do delivery, you could order it as takeout and then send Domy to collect it. Alas, Domy went out of business. Perhaps their delivery fee was a little too reasonable.

Anyways, good news!!! A new company, correo de la noche, or Night Mail has openeed up in Panama, and does the same thing, except they charge $5 and only operate from 6pm to 6am. That's fine, because I don't think Domy did much business in the day time anyways!

I used Correo de la Noche for the first time the other night to collect some sushi and was very satisfied. Call them on 393-7777.