Spicy Thai Meatball Soup

Makes 4 large bowls

1lb minced beef

½ cup rice (jasmine or basmati)

1400 ml chicken stock

2 tbsp Thai red curry

2 tbsp Tom yum paste 

2 tsp palm sugar

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp fish sauce

½ the juice of a lemon or lime  

1 garlic clove

1 shallot

5 celery sticks

3 tomatoes

Coriander

 

This recipe is my own; having cooked Thai food for quite a few years and grasping the main ingredients I decided to experiment.  

One of my frequently cooked soups is Thai chicken noodle soup which is more creamy and coconuty.   Tom yum is also a favourite and I think if you like Tom yum you will like this.  It is more of a tomato zingy soup with awesome Thai flavours. 

Get all your ingredients out ready and boil a full kettle of water for the stock. 

Break your mince up and roll it into small meatballs; don’t make them too big as you don’t want them to take too long to cook. 

I boil the rice separately which I cook slowly; if it is ready too soon it doesn’t matter as it is going in the soup and can be reheated in there.

Prep the shallot, garlic, tomato and celery.

Make the stock and add the Tom yum paste and Thai red curry paste to a large pan.      

Add palm sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, celery and shallot.

Stir for a moment until the pastes have melted.

It seems like a lot of ingredients but I find as I cook a lot of Thai, once you have the basic ingredients you can use them over and over like the pastes, the soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar.  Also in my kitchen, frozen ginger, frozen Kaffir lime leaves, Thai green curry paste, Masman curry paste and a 5kg bag of rice and several tins of coconut milk.

Pop in the meatballs; you will be surprised how quickly meat cooks when you boil it.  I have a tendency to over cook meat (inherited from my mother).   It takes about 5-10 minutes, then add the tomatoes in the last few minutes so they don’t go mushy. 

You don’t want to stir too much just leave the meatballs to cook.

Tip in the cooked rice.

 

Taste the soup and take a meatball out and chop in half to make sure they are cooked through.

Serve with a few coriander leaves.  

This is quite a filling soup and one bowl will feed 1 person but we tend to have 2 bowls each.

It is rather a hot and spicy soup due to the 2 tbsp of red curry paste.  Unless you really like it hot I’d suggest putting less curry and tom yum paste in, maybe try 2 tbsp. 

I have never cooked a mild version before, I like my Thai food hot and there are plenty of beautiful Thai recipes you can make that don’t involve tonnes of heat.

Enjoy

Missing Nemo

It has been five months now since I shared an ocean with some truly tropical treats.

I really miss the peacefulness of floating in clear blue crystal waters without a care in the world.

Before Thailand 2011 I hadn’t really done any snorkelling, neither had rhmgroo.  With our Christmas money we bought some really decent snorkelling masks and tubes. 

I’ve used borrowed snorkels in the past or bought cheap ones off the seafront but these are really the bollocks.  They really made a difference; not only are they ours which feels a hell of a lot nicer when you’ve got to put your mouth round it but they were fitted properly and we were told how to clean and use them.

Our first snorkel was in Karon in Phuket.  I was a little scared at first as we decided to get in the water near the rocks and I was being a mard arse not wanting to cut myself; rhmgroo just went off with his head in the water but I felt it was too shallow and worried I might scrape my belly on the way past the rocks.   When we finally got to a comfortable spot it was just amazing.  It wasn’t exceptionally clear but enough to see a few interesting fishes around the rocks and get used to the masks.  You would not believe in Thailand in December it got cold and we had to come out of the water.

Next was Koi Island which was a boat trip we went on from Patong.  We also got to dive off the boat and snorkel way out in the ocean where it’s really thick green and pretty scary actually to be in all that open space. 

I say dive but of course I didn’t dive, however I was fourth to jump off the back of the boat and (not use the steps) rhmgroo was the first (very proud of manly behaviour). 

We did snorkel in Au Nang, Krabi but the water was full of plankton and you couldn’t see shit. 

Next up, one of our favourite places in the world; which we had vowed to keep secret from anyone because we don’t want it to become spoiled by ‘people’.  But I know rhmgroo has shared it since and to be fair if it wasn’t for our friend sharing it with us we may have never gone. 

Snorkelling was quite fun here, we saw a few fishes hiding around the coral.  But the best was yet to come. 

Next stop, Phi Phi island, famous for its diving and its mind blowing picturesque waters.

Phi Phi is definitely the best place to snorkel; there are organised trips, clear waters and tropical fish aplenty.  After a heavy party night, we hired a longtail boat to take us out for half a day.  It was £20 and I have to say, it is so much better going on your own so you can avoid other people and the day is more for you rather than sharing the experience with strangers.  (Misery guts?) We went to Phi Phi Lay which is just around the bay and oh my god it is shocking.  The sheer limestone cliffs that decorate the beautiful blue water was breathtaking.  Sorry to bring up alcohol but imagine blue Wicked’s billions and billions of them; the blue was so intense it was stunning.  This is where I saw my first exciting tropical fish.  It was what I called ‘the rainbow fish’ it was all different colours and the colours were illuminious; I loved it.  There was one angry white fish which every time I stuck my head in the water, it came viciously swimming toward my face (didn’t like that). 

The next bay we came to, the driver threw in biscuits for the fish (Oreo’s to be exact) fish love Oreo’s, who knew; they all came swimming around the boat eating the biscuit.  Me being a soft arse again didn’t want to emerge myself in FISH so I waited till they had got fed up and they parted a little, leaving some room for my mardy entry.  There were all kinds of gorgeous fish here, all colours, all shapes, all sizes; I found my rainbow fish again too.  

We went to the famous Maya Bay where ‘The Beach’ was filmed; hangover kicking in a little by this point.  The jelly fish didn’t take too kindly to me either.  All in all this is one of the most fantastic places to snorkel, to see, to swim and to visit.

There was much more snorkelling that took place on our trip but I won’t bore you with every single time we did it. 

I must lastly mention Koh Samet; another fav and with it being the last island we went to, it seems to have stuck with me thoroughly.  I didn’t snorkel all that much in Koh Samet, rhmgroo did loads, I had a giant rubber ring to amuse myself with. 

The last morning we spent in Koh Samet we got up really early, as we did most days but this day we snorkelled together and it was really unfortunate that we had discovered just how wonderful it was to do it hand in hand.  What a lovely memory of being carefully swayed by the hand where we could both appreciate the same sightings and point things out to each other.  It was a romantic and enchanting time under the waters of Koh Samet. 

I won’t cry too much though because, masks at the ready, were off to Spain in 4 weeks and although the sea there is rough and certainly not tropical, we do know a little place we can visit called Tabarka.  This is where we bought the cheap mask from.  I am also going to try and find out if there are any other places we can go or just hope for some calm seas on the med that week.

If you’re not sure about diving, definitely get your snorkel on.     

Nemo is waiting for you.    

Conchiglie with bolognaise

For 4 people or 2 greedy ones

Pasta shells

1lb minced beef

Olive oil

1 onion chopped fine

1 garlic clove

Salt and pepper

Tomato puree

Splash Worcester sauce

Tin chopped tomatoes

Mushrooms

1-2 spoonfuls of sugar

2 bay leaves

Cheese (optional)

Garlic bread (optional)

I would say this was my own recipe as it feels like it is but it’s obviously a classic Italian dish.  I have never seen a recipe of this; someone taught me how to cook it and now I am sharing it with you.

Get everything out and get your ingredients chopped. 

I added celery on this occasion as I had some left over but it is not part of the recipe.

The mince takes about 30-40 minutes so I normally put the pasta on a slow cook.  I am putting it in with the mince at the end so if it’s cooked too soon it can always have a little extra heat at the end when it’s combined with the meat.  Alternatively put your pasta on when the meat has been cooking for ten minutes. 

I use a rather large cooking pan as I am going to combine the pasta and mince.

Fry your mince off in the large pan with a bit of olive oil.  When it’s brown, empty it out and drain the fat in a colander.  This can be a bit messy for your sink so if you’re not really bothered I often keep the fat in there.       

Fry off the onion then add the mince. 

Add the garlic and the tomato puree and stir it around so the meat appears red. 

Add Worcester sauce and salt and pepper.

Add the chopped tomatoes followed by the chopped mushrooms.

Stick in a couple of bay leaves (this isn’t essential).

You want to leave this on a medium boil for about 20 mins.  Keep a check on it and your pasta although it’s quite self sufficient once it’s all in the pan.  You’re alright to have a glass of wine while it’s cooking.

Get your garlic bread in the oven.

Add the sugar and give it a taste; this should be just right but if it’s too sweet for you add more salt.

Sprinkle with cheese; parmesan is best but it’s just as amazing with a bit of cheddar.

Last time I cooked this it was so delicious I went back for another plate J

If you want it to go further make a big bowl of salad and serve with garlic bread, salad and sour cream.

Enjoy 

About my blog

I’ve decided to sell my soul for free.

Well not exactly; I am selfishly hoping to improve my writing skills and have some laughs along the way.

Let me quickly tell you (before you open the door to my innards), a little about the blog and about the blogitta Foul Mouthed Princess.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer but up until now haven’t done a damn thing about it.  It couldn’t be a better time for me and other budding creatives to let loose with all the social networking sites and the age of digital publishing. 

I created this blog about a year ago with the silly notion I could keep it private, therefore forcing my undesired views, tantrums and utmost personal emotions on here thinking the world would cotton on ‘psychically’ and accidently stumble across it when typing something in google.  I can be a bit dense as you will no doubt discover.  Foul Mouthed I am but the Princess bit is just bollocks. 

Apart from the odd diary, which really should have been burned (not found under a chair aged 14), I have started a novel but its sitting pretty at 70,000 words waiting for my return.  I have started a travel guidebook for backpacking in Thailand but you won’t get to see that because I’m selling it on Amazon (when it’s finished).            

I’ve written a few songs and spent many a day in ‘me bubble’ thinking I’d be the next Gary Barlow but not a fucking hope in hell.  I may as well just post them on the net and hope someone nicks them.

If any of you ever hear them, be sure to let me know so I can sue the bollocks off someone.

My initial thoughts were to do a ‘Sex in the City’ / Carrie Bradshaw type blog (with a northern twist obviously) but, to be honest, I am still finding my writing style.

What I am aiming for is a mix of travel adventures, recipes, moans, opinions, songs and bullshit, cos everyone needs a little BS in their lives. 

Tip - If you don’t like swearing don’t read it.  

Crab with spaghetti and cherry tomatoes

Ingredients

3 whole crabs

200g spaghetti

1 pack cherry tomatoes  

2 or 3 garlic cloves

1 or 2 birdseye chilli’s  

5 spring onions

1 lime

Coriander handful 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364638/spaghetti-with-crab-cherry-tomatoes-and-basil

Here is the original recipe which I found on the BBC website.

I swapped the chilli flakes for real chillies, the lemon for lime as I’d no lemons left, canned crab for real crab, capers for spring onions (don’t like capers) and the basil for coriander.  Linguine would go well with this dish if you prefer. 

This recipe was inspired by our housemate who accidently left his crabs behind and kindly offered them to us as they needing eating before he was due to return.

With his assisting telephone calls, and my boyfriends help we managed to cook crabs.

Boil the crabs for around 20 mins in salted water.  I found it was more like 30 mins on our electric stove with 3 big pans of crab.  The water becomes really scummy and brown but we are told this is normal.   

                                       

I prepared all of the ingredients so they were ready to go.  With the garlic I sliced it very finely rather than using a pestle and mortar and chopped the tomatoes in half.

We made a start on the crabs before turning the spaghetti on as it does take some time to get the meat out and it is best if two people go at it.

This doesn’t sound very nice but you have to snap its legs off, after doing one or two though I wasn’t fazed and I got into a good twisting method.   We did attempt to get the meat out of the fingers but the effort really wasn’t worth it for the morsels of meat you get.  So I would suggest discarding its fingers. 

You can crack the body open with a knife there is some white meat in here.  The little brown fingers in here (dead man’s fingers) you can eat but again I would throw them away they are not very nice. 

You really do not get much meat out of 3 huge crabs although were not professional chefs so perhaps you can.  We really enjoyed having a go at cooking real crabs but to be honest it is a lot of effort and even though we were real careful to pick out any bits of shell there were still a few bits left which really put me off.  I have never used tinned crab meat before but next time I will be trying that. 

Set aside your crab meat.

Cook the spaghetti or linguine.

When the pasta has 5 or 10 mins left to go, slowly warm up the ingredients, including the crab, in a large pan with oil, using half the juice of the lime and 1 or 2 chilli’s depending on how you like the heat and add salt and pepper. You don’t want to overcook the ingredients just merely warm them.

Drain off the spaghetti and add gradually.  I added too much spaghetti and it took away most of the flavours so it’s best to add gradually and keep tasting.  Add further lime, chilli’s, coriander, spring onion, S&P if needed.   

I added a touch of peppercorn to finish off and garnished with a slice of lime.

   

Questionable Jalfrezi

Mummy bought me two amazing cook books for my birthday, one was for soup and one was for curry.  The kind of delightful recipes that excite me as they have beautiful pictures which if I am honest is how I choose things.  The ingredients are fairly standard which I always ponder over as if they are hard to locate I’ll probably never bother.  With the curries I had a scan through and there were a lot of common ingredients so I ordered a few bits.  Most other things are stuff I would already have like onion, garlic, ginger and chilli’s.

The book does look fantastic and I am looking forward to trying out some of the meat dishes.

My first recipe nice and easy Chicken Jalfrezi.  I had the in laws round and I was going to go for my Thai green curry cause I’ve got that nailed and having had some in Thailand I’d say it’s pretty fuckin good Thai curry, I’d go as far as to say it tasted the same, as does my Tom Yum soup.

  

My Jalfrezi however was not so special.  I’m not sure what it resembled but Indian curry it did not.  It was a tasty dish and no one complained but to me it was bland and lacked oommph.  I did add extra chilli’s and chilli powder and even resorted to ghost pepper sauce.

 

It was also chicken thighs which I wasn’t sure about as most common curries are normally chicken breast.  Some dishes are much better with thighs but I didn’t think this one was one of them.

I didn’t think to get a picture and I didn’t really make my usual effort in presentation.  Normally when I do a Thai curry I put the rice in a bowl so it comes out in a lovely formed lump and put the curry in a side bowl. 

So it wasn’t a disaster but I won’t be cooking the Jalfrezi again from my new curry book.   

         

Bulgaria

The plan came about at some point last summer.  I remember going for a pint with my Dad and putting it to him that me and the fella wanted to move to Bulgaria.  He didn’t like the idea much and made jokes about me having a shot gun and wearing a sheep for a coat. 

Bulgaria is a poor country yes but this is what attracts us.  The house prices start at £2,000, the food and beer is cheap and you can still smoke in the pub.  Sounds frickin awesome to me.

I am not even sure how this whole thing started it seems that long ago since we started all this talk.

My bf is a contractor and he gets paid silly amounts of money and we believe that in just a year we could save up enough money to buy a house out there, do it up and live there for at least two years without any further income.

House prices start at anything from £2,000.  The kind of house we are looking for would be around £5-10K with 2 acres of land as the idea is we grow all of our own food and become self sufficient.  We have looked at plenty of houses online and for this price you basically get a shell and a plot of land.  We could get the house done up for around £10-15K – (I will come to how I know this at a later time).

Bills are maybe a third, even a quarter of what we pay in England so we figure we can live off £300 a month but ideally would like more than that for holidays and treats etc.

Our must haves for our Bulgarian build are that it has plenty of land preferably near a stream, within a short drive of a village for shops and pubs and near a main town for anything more pressing we need.  We want it to be within an hour or two of the coast.  Two to three bedrooms and need to have tv and internet.    

The weather has proper seasons so in summer it’s very hot and in winter it’s very cold.  So we could easily spend some of our time on the beach.  Originally we looked at the coast being Bourgas as the nearby towns like Haskovo, Yambol and Elhovo are close by to Sunny Beach which I have visited in the past and I know is like any other holiday resort where I can have a good blow out and party.

We are now looking at areas in Kardjali and have found that the Greek coast is only an hour’s drive from here and will probably be much more beautiful than Sunny beach.         

It’s a massive thing to even contemplate doing but we feel we can really do it. We have been together long enough to want to make the move and we spend every single moment together as it is as we work together. 

I am a little uncomfortable with it being all his money but I would do it if it was the other way around.  Plus he gets to take me with him so it will be much better for him anyway J

We have been discussing this now for nearly a year there is so much to talk about. 

The main thing that I remain positive about is that we have absolutely nothing to lose.

We are both on temporary contracts so we are NOT giving up our jobs.  We are renting so we don’t have the hassle of selling a house.  We have no children.  The amount of money it costs to do this we are happy to take the risk and lose the money if something goes wrong or we don’t like it.  It doesn’t take my bf long to make £10K and I’ve lost plenty more than that in my previous properties/lives. 

So whatever happens we can always get on a plane come home and get another rented house and another temporary job anytime we want. 

We have done our research on buying property over there, read about the country, about the laws, seeked out others that have done this kind of thing, the first step to take was obviously to go out there ourselves.  If we didn’t like it then none of this would matter.         

We have now made it our dream to retire to Bulgaria.  Driving there by truck which I can tell you does not fill me with joy but hey it’s better than being at work and I’m sure it would be a life experience. Maybe a death experience also if you have ever seen the type of films I watch.   

We haven’t finalised where we will be whilst the house gets done up but we are thinking of getting a caravan to live in.   It will initially be a project for us to manage a build and then get stuck in ourselves doing all that we can.  So the first 3-6 months will be spent doing up the house. 

When we become settled my fella’s dream is to be out in the garden every day and mine is to write a book, many books as many as I can whilst we have this opportunity not to work. 

I have so many ideas – people think I would be bored but seriously I just think it’s a little ignorant if you can’t fill your time.  For starters I will want to write every day just as I would a real job so perhaps sitting at my laptop for 7 hours a day.  Evenings and weekends can be spent as they are here.  We both want to speak as fluent in Bulgarian as we can so we will dedicate a lot of time to doing that together.  I also like to draw so I would hope to take that up once I have the time.   One day a week I would like to spend catching up with my friends and family, doing emails, facebook, twitter and checking in on the world.  So reading the news, might sound dumb but I actually don’t read, listen or watch the news so I never know what is happening.  If I am going to be a writer I’d like to start building up some twitter followers but this takes time and effort I don’t currently have. 

I was going to say love but maybe that is too strong a word to work out so I’ll spend some time exercising, beating up my punch bag, jogging etc.   We both like to walk so we could spend a day a week having a nice walk or doing some geocaching.

I have other thoughts but I really think that will be enough to keep me going for a few years.

The bf is hoping to get some income from his business which has been going for 5 years now and we think he may be able to get contract work remotely (working via internet) one day a week he has already been offered stuff by friends.  One days wage a week is more than enough for us to live on. 

I have thought about leaving my friends and family behind but it is not like I cannot talk to them or see them on skype.  We would also have enough money to hopefully pop back to England now and again.  We have already mithered everyone we know to come out and visit us so we’ll probably have someone with us every other month. 

I spent two years away from family and friends in the past and I mean as in no contact at all and this being at the worst time of my life when I needed them the most so I reckon I can handle being without them when it’s hopefully the best time of my life and at least this time I’ll get to talk to them.  I do know my Dad is gonna freak and he has already said it is too far away for him to fly.  FYI he is just stubborn not old or ill. 

There are still obviously many questions we may not be able to answer until we go there.

But as I was saying first step after Thailand we booked our flights to a little unknown town in Bulgaria flying to Sofia and hiring a car.    

My bf had these two contacts on twitter and I think he just found a blog of a lady that had moved out there from England and made contact. 

My Dad could be right these places could be horrible, the people could be horrible, I wanted to go there, go in the shops, bars, supermarkets, see how the locals reacted to us.  I wanted to see the villages, see what was there, we need to get a feel for everything. 

January we started to learn Bulgarian.  What would you know a nice Bulgarian chap started working at our company so on Thursdays we do learning Bulgarian with him.  We also have the cd thing but we haven’t used that much. 

By February we could say all the basic words like hello, good bye, good evening, good night, thanks, please etc and some foods as well. 

I never wanted a normal life eg. to be stuck in a boring job, married with 2.4 kids.  I want to make something of myself, take risks and really live life.

Life is short and this is just an amazing opportunity for us both.  I really feel this is the correct path for us.  I’m blown away with the idea of being in control of my own life every day all the time.  Not getting up at a time when I am told because I have to be somewhere at a certain time every day, 5 times every week, every month somewhere I don’t even want to be even a little bit. 

I know everyone fuckin hates it but we have this chance to do something about it and we are going to run all the fuckin way into the Bulgarian hills with this shit.  People may think it’s a pipe dream that will never happen but so long as the bf and I are happy together than it will happen.  It is what we want and I know that he and I are people who DO stuff to get what we want.  We won’t wait around for the lottery to turn up or wait until the ‘right time’ comes.  NOW is the time and nothing is going to stop us.