Culinary jottings

I had an urge to cook a serious Thai meal last night, more so as it will probably be the last chance lemur_catta and I have to sit down to dinner together before her California trip. A trip to the Asian supermarket yielded assorted goodies and this is what I produced:

Deep fried crispy mullet with "three flavours" sauce. Mullet worked well for this.

A red curry of shrimp and eggplant (from the freezer).

Greens stirfried with chillis and yellow bean sauce.

Hot and sour soup with tofu and beansprouts. (A bit of a cheat as I used Tom Yam paste from a jar)

Pork stirfried with long beans and chilli paste. This was really good. There are lots of ways of cooking pork and long beans but I particularly liked the flavours and textures of this one. The pork was belly, steamed then cut into small slices. It was then stirfried with garlic and a fragrant chilli paste before the beans and slivered kaffir lime leaves were added. Hot, sweet, fragrant with a range of textures from crisp to chewy to soft.

Salad of pomelo and shredded shrimp.

Steamed rice.

All in all a pretty good selection of dishes which went nicely with a Lailey Vineyards Riesling.

Stalker!

I can't remember whether I have mentioned it before but I am being phone stalked by a crazy woman. I think she's harmless but extremely delusional. However, it's getting to be a bit of a drag as she calls many times a day, often one call right after another. Last night it got so bad that we disconnected the phones and let the calls go straight to VMX.

At one level one has to admire her persistence but I do get a bit fed up of 337ing through the n messages a day she leaves.

ETA: Just erased 26 messages.

Pietersen

Oh dear oh dear....

I think that's six in the series.

36/2

Vaughan gone for a duck. Dweeble dweeble.

I have to leave to play rugby in about 30 minutes. Eek!

Trent Bridge - day 4

Well at least the morning looked like test cricket rather than 20/20 and Katich can count himself the most unfortunate player in the series. Having played a truly gritty test innings (one of very few in the series) to be given out on a really bad lbw decision is most unlucky. Still, Vaughan could learn from Aleem Dar. Never give an Aussie an even break.

Between lunch and the close England, for the third consecutive game, did their level best to lose an unloseable game. Frankly, this is getting a bit a ridiculous. I really fear for the Oval. Perhaps the best bet, in the likely absence of Jones, would be to pick Collingwood to shore up the batting and pick a real wicket keeper (or maybe Pietersen could keep wicket since if you are going to pick someone with paddle hands you might as well pick one who can bat). However, the selectors will undoubtedly behave in their customary Panglossian manner and make as few changes as possible, if any.