Collecting recipes - hard work but worth it

I risk being thought of as a bit of a trainspotter with this post.  As I have mentioned before I got sick of having lots of cook books – most of which only had a few recipes I would ever use.  So some years ago I decided to create my own recipe book/s.

I bought some school exercise books – ring bound ones – very cheap.  I divided them up into – soups, starters, salads and vegetables, mains, eggs & sauces and desserts.

I taped all my cuttings etc into the books.  Then I started on my least favourite cook books and felt like a vandal as I ripped out the recipes I wanted.  But I did find that the recipes ended up being so much less bulky than keeping the whole book.

The key to this working, though, is that I did an index for the recipes which I keep updated.  The index is by ingredient – so if I have lots of lemons, for instance, I can just look up lemons in my index and see all the recipes I have so that I can inspired as to what to do with them.

This might sound like quite a lot of work.  But I only update the books once or twice a year – generally when I am on holiday.  And when you do it, boy do you get hungry!

So now I only have about 5 cookbooks plus my recipe books.  The cookbooks I couldn’t part with include:

Stephanie Alexander’s Cooks Companion

Edmonds Cook Book – a NZ classic

3 Thai cookbooks – 2 from Spirit House and one from David Thomson

I do have a couple of Jamie Oliver books left but may give them the tough love treatment next year.

On re-reading this, I realise that I missed an opportunity to make the covers of my own recipe books beautiful.  But although they aren’t pretty, they are so useful.

Cook Books – Spirit House

I don’t normally like buying too many cook books.  They are usually full of recipes in which I have no interest.  My only exceptions are Stephanie Alexander’s book which I have already blogged about on the 28th November and the cook books I recently got as a result of going to the Spirit House cooking school (also blogged about here).  I bought 2 books but having now looked at them in detail, just one of them would be fine.

The original one is called Spirit House Thai Cooking by Helen Brierty and Annette Fear(2004).  It looks like this.

The second one is called Essentially Thai – the only real difference is that they have simplified slightly some of the recipes. 

Either one would be a fine present to yourself or for someone interested in Thai food.  They are available online from Amazon and also in local bookshops.

Here is the recipe for green curry paste from the first one:

20 white peppercorns

2 tblsp coriander seeds, roasted

1 teasp cumin seeds, roasted

2 teasp salt

15 green chillies, seeded and chopped

2 small red onions (shallots), finely chopped

12 cloves garlic, chopped

4 tblsp lemon grass finely sliced,

2 teasp chopped galangal

4 teasp chopped coriander root

2 teasp chopped kaffir lime leaf

4 teasp shrimp paste, roasted

( for methods of “roasting” see my earlier blog re curry paste – here)

In a mortar, pound the pepper corns, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and salt together.  Add remaining ingredients one at a time, and pound to a smooth paste. 



Spirit House Thai Cooking School Yandina

If like me you have spent years trying to get the balance of Thai flavours right and failing, I recommend going to the Thai cooking school run by The Spirit House near Yandina in Queensland.  Not only is the restaurant which is co-located spectacularly sited, the food is to die for.

The cooking school runs half day sessions for up to 16 people at a time.  It cost A$125.  I have now finally made a red curry that tastes authentic.

Spirit House sign

In case you were wondering, I am not sponsored by anyone/thing I mention in this blog.  I am just doing it for fun.