Asian food extravaganza

So my new favourite place to shop for groceries is T&T Asian supermarket (the one in the West Edmonton Mall). When I went there on Sunday I was blown away by the number of hard-to-find (even on Granville Island) Asian ingredients. By the end of my one-hour shopping spree I had loaded the cart with specialties like as Rose Apples, Honey Tangerines, kaffir lime leaves, betelnut leaves, and, most excitingly, pandanas leaves which I haven't come across since I went to cooking school in Thailand nearly three years ago. In addition to these goodies I decided to treat myself to a whole fish. I thought it would be playing with fire to eat fresh fish in a province that isn't attached to an ocean, but I don't intend to be without seafood for the duration of my time here. I picked out a beautiful looking 2 pounder, with bright clear eyes. I'm ashamed to say that I have no idea what kind of fish it was... there was no label and the fish monger didn't speak English. I can tell you that it was white fleshed with red scales and spiky fins (no it wasn't a snapper). The fish monger cleaned it up nicely for me (scales and all) which saved me a lot of trouble since I planned to deep fry the fish whole.

I put the whole fish in a wok about half full of hot oil. I gave each side about 4 minutes, until it was nice and crispy on the outside. For the sauce I sauteed about 3tbsp of shredded young ginger, a tbsp of garlic, in some veg oil. I added about 1 tbsp of calamansi/fish sauce (a fancy little blend I found at T&T) and 2-3 tbsp of sweet chili sauce and simmered it briefly. As soon as the fish was done, I spooned the mixture inside and over the fish and garnished it with some fresh red chilies and shredded kaffir lime leaf. The results were phenomenal. We desecrated the entire fish... only bones remained. For the side dishes I served up a quick stir-fry of tofu puffs and bean sprouts with garlic and ginger, and some gai lan with oyster sauce.

The next night I decided to try and remember a recipe from Thai cooking school: Sesame Chicken in Pandanas leaves. The original recipe calls for marinating chicken in fish sauce, sesame oil and roasted sesame seeds, before wrapping in up in a pandanas leaf to form a little bundle and deep frying the whole thing. I wanted to go for a healthier option so I decided to steam the bundles in a bamboo steamer, and the results were just as good. The chicken was extremely flavourful and very juicy. For our side dishes I threw together a quick Phad Thai (fried noodles) and some more of the Gai Lan, this time with ginger and chili. The real treat for this meal though was the Pandanas Infused Coconut Ice Cream that I made for dessert. I steeped a couple of the leaves in 180z of hot coconut milk and half a cup of sugar. On the side I whisked two eggs with a quarter cup of sugar. I tempered the egg mixture with the coconut milk and added two cups of whipping cream before chilling it all in the fridge. Once cool, I popped it in my ice cream maker and voila: a smooth, creamy, fragrant Thai-inspired ice cream.