(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.
I’m well thank you. I’ve had a very nice few days. A mini-jaunt at the weekend (see Cultural Fun for details) and productive times thereafter.
Also, I taught a pasta class at the Dusty Knuckle last night and there were just two attendees of the ten who weren’t part of a couple. I have no idea if either of them were single but they seemed to get on very well so I’m really hoping it is the start of a beautiful love story and that I will get invited to the wedding. Or at least asked to do the catering.
I have an excellent speedy dinner recipe for you today. Let me introduce it by way of a rambling story:
After I graduated from Leiths I spent a white working at HelloFresh, editing their recipe cards. Despite the “fun” startup energy of the place - meeting rooms in repurposed shipping containers! Office drinks on Fridays! Free yoga sessions! - it was the absolute worst job I’ve ever had.
It was so chaotic with no central server so there were always multiple versions of any one document, making it almost guaranteed errors would slip through. Having come from the lumbering legacy media I was used to systems with checks and balances and found the constant firefighting extremely stressful.
My colleagues were generally lovely and/or startlingly bright. But very young. I was 37 at the time and one of the oldest people in the office by quite some way. It meant cultural references just didn’t land and made me feel totally past it. I once made a joke about Kalettes (a vegetable that’s a cross between kale and Brussels sprouts) singing “Kalettes, uh-huh uh-huh” to the tune of the KLF’s 3AM eternal. Now I’m not saying it was a good joke but I think it deserved more than the confused silence it received from people who, I later realised, probably weren’t even born in 1991 when the song was released…
Another time I banged out some copy for a recipe card featuring pad krapow moo, a Thai dish of stir-fried pork mince. I wrote that "krapow" sounds like one of the fight scene captions in Adam West-era Batman (on constant repeat during my 80s childhood) but was actually the Thai name for a herb also known as “holy basil”. I finished with the line “Holy Basil Batman! It’s dinner dinner dinner dinner time.” Not, admittedly, a piece of prose that was going to win me a Pulitzer but I knew from internal research that a sizeable chunk of the customer base was the same age as me and thus exposed to the same playground jokes.
Unfortunately, I left the company soon after - a story for another time and, in the interests of fairness, not one in which I come off well - so the final edit on the card was done by my much younger replacement who was following a directive to standardise references to herbs and spices. The line was changed to “Thai basil Batman!” which makes no sense at all.
I think of this episode every time I make pad krapow moo, saying “Thai basil Batman!” to myself as I add it to the wok.
Although, having written it down I realise it is less an amusing culinary misunderstanding and more a story about ageing and the fear of becoming irrelevant. And for the second week in a row I have subjected you to melancholic musings on the passing of time. Damn you autumn! *shakes fist at russeting leaves*
Recipe: Pad Krapow Moo
If you fermented chillis, garlic and coriander stalks for the sweet chilli sauce last week and opted not to add them all to the sugar syrup you can use some of the leftover paste here. If not use some fermented chilli sauce or else see the notes for how to substitute it for more traditional fresh chillies.
This is such a quick and tasty dinner. It comes together in less time than it takes to cook some jasmine rice.
Serves 2
Ingredients
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp fermented chilli paste (see note)
300g pork mince (with a decent amount of fat)
200g greens (eg. green beans or tenderstem broccoli) cut into bitesize pieces
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 bunch/50g Thai holy basil leaves (see note)
Method
Cook the aromatics. Put the oil in a wok or frying pan on high heat. When it shimmers add the garlic and chilli paste and fry for a minute until fragrant (depending on the ventilation in your kitchen you may want to open a window or risk breathing in chilli fumes).
Stir-fry the pork and greens. Add the pork mince and use a wooden spoon or spatula to break it up and make sure it is evenly combined with the garlic and chilli. Fry until completely cooked through and beginning to brown (about 3 mins) then add the greens, stir them in, and continue cooking until they have lost their raw hardness but still have a little bite (depends on the veg but about 2 mins).
Season and add the basil. Add the fish and soy sauces, sugar and basil. Stir over heat until the basil is wilted then serve immediately with jasmine rice.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
If you have no fermented chillies then use three fresh Thai red chillies, finely chopped. Or adjust the amount to taste depending on your spice tolerance. But get a jar of chillies fermenting away, why don’t you? They’re a useful and tasty thing to have on hand.
The “krapow” in the recipe title means Thai holy basil. Which is actually quite hard to get hold of in the UK. Thai sweet basil, also often just called Thai basil, is much easier to come by, available in many supermarkets. They are similar but not the same. Holy basil has a very distinctive, peppery, clove-y taste and is the traditional option for this dish. Do try and get it if you can. But it will still be delicious with the inauthentic Thai sweet basil. (And yes. I do know this means that HelloFresh were technically correct in editing my joke since what they were sending to their customers was undoubtedly not holy basil. Doesn’t mean I’m not still bitter.)
You can swap out the pork mince for chicken mince (leg meat will work better than breast) or even tofu.
A fried egg on top is traditional and delicious, the fatty yolk helps to calm the chilli heat. Even better if you fry the egg in the Thai way in plenty of oil so you get lovely crispy edges.
Cultural Fun
Are you in Liverpool? Or do you know the city well? I’m going to be visiting in a few weeks time and would love some recommendations of where to eat and things to see. If you have any drop them in the comments or shoot me an email. Thank you!
This weekend just gone James and I did a nice walk from Guildford, westwards on the North Downs Way as far as Watts Gallery Artists’ Village and back again by a different route. There was a constant threat of rain so we didn’t linger long at the Artists’ Village but it’s definitely worth a look in. You can visit Linnerslease, the house where George Frederic Watts and his wife Mary (also an artist) lived and kept studios, plus a gallery of their work.
GF Watts: quite a hottie in his youth and sporting an impressive beard in venerable old age.
Watts’ symbolist work isn’t exactly to my taste but I liked his portraits. Including the old and young versions of himself. There’s a shop with a gallery for temporary exhibitions upstairs upstairs (currently showing a career retrospective of a ceramicist called Jonathan Chiswell) but the best bit is the cemetery chapel designed by Mary. Terracotta tiles on the outside and there’s a crazily ornate Art Nouveau-meets-Celtic interior. Truly incredible.
We stayed overnight in Bramley and were very taken with the Jolly Farmer. Cosy and woody, roaring fires and well-kept ales, filled with toby jugs and vintage beermats and much else to attract the idle gaze. Plus obviously a hub of the community. Food not up to much tbh but otherwise a perfect pub.
The next day we had a quick wander round Guildford (castle closed but surrounded by very nice gardens) and went on to RHS Wisley to do a bit of leaf peeping.
Autumnal colours at Guilford Castle gardens and RHS Wisley. We peeped those leaves good!
I have loved Jilly (she’s definitely an author you feel on first-name-terms with) ever since discovering a copy of The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous in a B’n’B bedroom as a teenager. My best friends Emily, Harriet and I were obsessed with her 1970s romances (Bella, Octavia et al) as teenagers - pre-bonkbuster works which are charming despite their problematic period sexism.
But Rivals is her best work. No doubt. How could it not be? It’s the book in which aristocratic uber-cad adonis Rupert Campbell-Black falls in love. This very hazy photo was taken at the inaugural meeting of the Guilty Pleasures Book Group back in September 2010 when my friends Luisa and Olivia served Coq au Vin (very Jilly) and “Rupert Campbell-Black Forest Gateau” to a group of clever, funny, smart woman who met to discuss this magnum opus. I think there was even a list of talking points including colour themes and depictions of gay characters.
Anyway. I am excited about Friday, even though the actor chosen to play RCB is - shockingly - not blonde!
There seems to be a lot of hype about it which I hope isn’t misplaced - as an ex-journalist Jilly knows how to get the press on her side. Back in my newspaper days she was known as a go-to if you needed a quote - a valuable thing when you’re up against a deadline - and often sent cards to people who wrote about her. I reviewed her 2010 novel Jump! (positively but by no means gushingly) and received a handwritten note of thanks (treasued to this day). I long to be invited to one of her legendary parties.
If you are a fellow Jilly fan and plan to watch please let me know your thoughts…
Or upgrade to paid to support the work I do. Either would mean a lot to me. Thanks so much.
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Thai basil Batman! That's hilarious 🤣
Cute - and lovely post!!!