dulcis in fundo

We all have things we've liked eating since we were kids (pizza, French fries, souvlaki for me, in about that order of preference), and then there are some things we've never eaten in our lives and suddenly we discover and they become all-time favourites that we cook again and again. For me, these kind of things were mainly added to my diet when I left Greece and came to the hub of international cuisine called Britain (yes, I know most people would snigger at that, but seriously, it's way more advanced than my poor little homeland, and you CAN find pretty much everything you want either in specialised shops or online for any cuisine in the world!). One of the things I had never had in Greece was Thai food, which is now probably my top favourite cuisine, up there with Italian (find me 1 person in the world who doesn't like Italian, and I'll probably... spit on them, but trust me, that person doesn't exist!), and although you can find quite good restaurants in Britain, you can also now increasingly find Thai ingredients everywhere, from fish sauce to curry pastes, and from kaffir lime leaves to galangal.

I don't try to recreate Thai food at home much. We have a couple of good Thai favourites that we usually eat when we go out to Thai restaurants, and those are far too difficult to recreate (or rather look easy but fail miserably every time I've tried) but one of our latest favourites to make at home, especially when looking for something quick and light, and the fridge is empty, are these Thai crabcakes that I first spotted James Martin making in Saturday Kitchen (possibly one of my rare Saturday morning indulgences, if I manage to wake up early enough that is...).

If you've got some canned crabmeat, a potato or two and some stale bread and spices, that's about it, and they are amazingly lovely (I know potato is not very Thai in any way, but that's why I'm not calling them Thai!) and way way waaaaaaaaay better than any fishcakes or crabcakes or any other -cakes I've had in a Thai restaurant anywhere in the world (including Thailand!) So good, that we actually made them for our New Year Eve's dinner, while watching the fireworks falling over the London Eye on TV (chickenpox time, remember?)

Peel the potato and chop it into small cubes. Place in a pot of cold water, with a pinch of salt, and boil until the cubes are tender and a knife easily goes through them (around 15-20 minutes). While the potatoes are boiling, flake the crabmeat, making sure there is no pieces of shell.

Drain, return to the pan, and mash as well as you can with a potato masher. Add the butter, double cream, curry, chilli and garlic powder, and mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Mix in the crabmeat until fully incorporated, then shape into 4 balls, and flatten slightly. In a small plate spread the breadcrumbs and roll the crabcakes until covered on all sides.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the crabcakes, cooking them until they are golden on both sides (5 minutes each side). Serve with sweet chilli sauce and some salad leaves.

Ah, ah... Not only were my last two posts all full of whining (mostly about 2011 misfortunes), but the unluck continues until the end of the year... I'm so happy I'll be rid of it by tomorrow, and hopefully 2012 will be a little wee bit more easygoing... So, what happened now? Well, first Santa (I mistyped Satan, I'm wondering about THAT kind of Freudian slip...) brought my 35-year-old boyfriend chickenpox (YES, chickenpox of all things, for the "little" child!), which meant that all plans for New Year's Eve are cancelled, as he has to be in quarantine so he won't give it to the rest of the world. Luckily I had already had it when I was small, so I won't get it, but I'm not going to leave him in house isolation and go out to have fun on my own... A quiet night it is then. I had again many plans for this bank holiday weekend, and I had booked since months a restaurant I wanted to go to for my Birthday dinner (on Tue, which is also the first day back to work, and therefore a miserable day by definition), but all that will have to wait... I have to say I am now getting quite fed up of cancelling things, especially the ones with no refunds. But as I said, I have high hopes for 2012, and it's almost here!

To continue the misfortune story, since the little chickenpox-ridden one was looking like a sad (Dalmatian) puppy, I decided to make this tart that I had in a list of "cool new things to make during the holidays" since a while, and it was indeed really good and managed to lift both of our spirits a tiny bit. After I made it and we ate it, I went to the kitchen to put the plates in the dishwasher, and when I turned on the light it went "poof!", and the kitchen, bathroom and guestroom lights went out... Thinking it must be the fuse, I went with a flashlight (the joys of it being dark already after lunchtime...) and switched all the fuses between themselves, but no result. At the same time, the oven is also not working, but luckily the hob, the lights under the kitchen cupboards, the sockets and subsequently the fridge still have power, so at least we won't starve to death/have takeaway for New Year's Eve or lose all the nice food we have piled up in there. What a better way to start the year than peeing with a candle...

And when I thought, what more can happen, now it's almost 2012, I opened my nut drawer to get some cashew nuts and found that a mouse had taken affectionate bites off pretty much half the stuff in there, and it must have been quite stupid too, as it had taken bites of all the plastic wrappings, but not of the nuts themselves. Argggggggggh... All these nuts are now in the rubbish, fantastic. The ones that survived (the unopened ones and some that were not to its liking it seems) are now safely inside a tupperware, but I really hate the idea that there might be a mouse lurking around somewhere behind the cupboards...

Anyway, enough now, tomorrow is a new day, a new year and hopefully some new good karma! Happy New Year everyone!