Birthday Thai

Hard as it is to imagine, I get older every year. This year was no exception. By tradition, Pav and I gather our friends together to celebrate our birthdays (his is shortly before mine) in an interesting way. Last year Samoa (sort of), the year before lawn bowls, this year – Thai food and wine matching.

PhuThai Esarn is one of a handful of great Thai places in Wellington. We sorted out a varied set menu for 12 and asked our friend Rebecca Taylor who writes a wine column for the Capital Times (Wine Press) to think up some interesting wine matches for us. And she came up trumps. 

Grilled squid

Our chosen menu included a good mix of spice, heat and milder flavours. Consensus says that the top dishes were the Nam-tok Beef (grilled beef with fresh herbs and lime juice), the Larb Pork (pork salad, with lime juice, chilli and red onion) and the Kang Phed Ped Yang (red duck curry). That last being a sweet, creamy mix with pineapple and duck. The fresh spring rolls are a personal favourite of mine.

Being Thai, it's all a fine balance between spicy (chilli), salty (usually fish sauce), sweet (brown sugar or similar) and sour (lemons, limes, kaffir lime leaves...). Matching wine with that's a fun game as any one of those can fight with some wines. 

 The wines that Rebecca came up with were spot on. She texted tasting notes as she was running a bit late, so we did as instructed and started with the Black Estate Riesling 2010 as an aperitif. This is a Waipara wine from a family owned vineyard and was a smooth start to the night. But it came into its own when the entrees arrived. The fruitiness of the wine was fun to roll around the mouth with the various degrees of flavour and spice in the fish cakes, fresh spring rolls, deep fried goodies and, particularly, the Meuk Yang grilled squid with a chilli dressing. No nasty sauvignon-chilli clash here thank you very much. 

Red duck curry

As mains arrived we slid gently into the Seifried Würzer 2008, another South Island number – Nelson this time. Würzer is a rare German variety with only about 100 hectares planted around the world. Seifried says it has NZ's only Würzer plantings. The founders of Seifried have German heritage, so it's not outrageous that they might give this a go. The grape is a cross between Gewurztraminer and Muller-Thurgau (don't let that last put you off) and goes beautifully with the prickly heat and saltiness of Thai food, as we discovered. The tasting notes say elderflower, peach, apricot and sherbet flavours, which is fair enough. The sweetness which might be annoying in other food matches works wonderfully here. This was everyone's favourite wine of the evening.

The third bottle was a 12,000 Miles Pinot Noir 2010 from Gladstone out in the Wairarapa. I didn't get much of this as I had been enjoying the whites so much (and briefly forgetting my obligations to you, dear reader), but the little I did have was also well matched with the spice. That's interesting because I wouldn't think to order red wine with spicy food usually – I guess it's the spicy food = hot country = cooling white wines linkage in my head. Just goes to show that we should all check our assumptions every so often.

You too should check out PhuThai Esarn in the middle of Cambridge Tce, or its sister PhuThai Lanna on the corner of Vivian and Tory Sts. And take some risks in your wine matches. Hunt down a Würzer!

PhuThai Esarn

35-38 Cambridge Tce

Wellington

04 801 5006

www.phuthaiesarn.co.nz

Some Like it Hot

It's been a week of chillis.

People know about my chilli obsession.  So much so, that I am often presented with them when there are too many in someone's garden. Suits me fine.  These from my friend's mum!

Chilli 1 - sausage
During a visit to the Harbourside Market beside Te Papa on Sunday, we purchased a piece of chilli sausage from the caravan of Milan Malivuk – branded Little Wolf (a translation of his surname). It's lovely dried spicy pork sausage which can be eaten as is or cooked in meals. So Pav stirred it into a stock, onion, chickpea and canned tomato soup. No need for other flavours as the sausage releases its spices (mainly paprika and garlic I think, but it's a secret of course) to flavour the entire soup. Marvelous, fuss-free eating. These are handmade, preservative-free and worth finding at the market, Moore Wilson's or the Mediterranean Food Warehouse.

Chilli 2 - sorbet
Then, after Pav went on tour, I went back to the Boys of Breaker Bay and made dessert again. This time poached pears and chocolate chilli sorbet (dairy free). The recipe as written doesn't contain chilli, but that's never stopped me.

Poaching pears is simple – peel fairly ripe pears, trim the bottom so the pears will sit up unaided, poach in flavoursome, preferably sweet, liquid (almost anything will do) until tender. You can scoop out the core of the pear from the bottom, but I never do. I'm not that posh.

I poached these beurre bosc pears in sugar and water and a pinch each of cinnamon, ginger (of course!) and chilli powder.

I love dark chocolate and chilli and so should you! Chilli and chocolate are double fun – the double aphrodisiac of the chocolate and the chilli justifies this combination alone. However, I believe that chilli is also an anti-inflammatory, a pain killer and an anti-depressant. Added to what we know about the revitalizing powers of chocolate, what more excuses do you need!?

This is the easiest 'ice' I've ever made. Sugar (1/3 cups brown, 1 and 2/3 cups white), water (4 cups), cocoa (2 cup) and vanilla (1 tablespoon). Melt the sugar in the water over heat, then add the cocoa and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. It thickens slightly. Add the vanilla and then chill for at least 2 hours. Then churn in your available method – machine or by hand (freeze in flat metal dish for 2 hours, break up firmly with whisk or fork, freeze for 2 hours, break up, repeat a few times). Churning in a machine produces a smoother mixture, but it's not so much better that you shouldn't do the other if you're an ice cream maker-free household. I added the chocolate/chilli nibs as the mix churned. A good half teaspoon ground up, I'd say.  See picture of chocolate/chilli nibs.

I served the pears with the sorbet and some of the left over syrup reduced by fast boiling. The more the sorbet melted, the more the essential oils of the chillis were released. Essentially it got more exciting as the temperature increased. As it should. Tee hee.

Chilli 3 - Larb Plaa
Then, a few days later, my chilli-enthusiast friend and I snuck into Ban Mai Thai at 111 Vivian St for a quick dinner. We only stayed for a main-course-sharing session, so I can't give you a full review, but suffice to say I've been about 4 times over the last few years and these guys never fail to deliver great tasting food for good prices.

This was no exception. We ordered two hot and spicy dishes and the outstanding one was the Larb Plaa, which was fish fillet with chilli, lemongrass, onion, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lime juice and herbs. It was hot-spicy-hot, but layered with levels of flavour so that there was still something to roll around the tongue. The fish had been shredded and mixed with the other flavours to make the dish like a warm salad. The beef and pepper dish was also tasty, but the fish was the winner on the night.

Hot flavours for a cold mid-winter week. I wonder how I can get chillis into my breakfast next week?