Green Papaya Salad Recipe Thai Style, Som Tum

Som Tum or Green Papaya Salad is popular all over South East Asia with as many variations as there are regions. Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and even the different regions of Thailand all make their own variations on Som Tum. Other than toasting peanuts you don't even need to turn on the stove. Great dish for the summer time, give it a try. 

total time :  30 minutes
total calories : 539
servings : 1 large servings or 4 as part of a banquet meal

Ingredients:
1/2 Green Papaya or Paw Paw (300 g)  102 calories
3 cloves of Garlic                                           12 calories
2 Red Chillies (small)                                      3 calories
4 Snake Beans                                               16 calories
1 Tbspn Palm Sugar                                     60 calories
1 Tbspn Fish Sauce                                       16 calories
1 Lime                                                             14 calories
40 g raw peanuts                                        227 calories
2 Tbspn dried shrimp                                   26 calories
125 g Cherry Tomatoes                                22 calories
160 g Cabbage                                                35 calories
1/2 Lebanese Cucumber                                6 calories
1 Thai Krok or mortar and pestle


Preparation : Firstly and most importantly shred the papaya. First, peel the skin with a good strong peeler and then shred with an Asian julienne peeler or by using a sharp knife to make lots of incisions into the flesh of the papaya. Then run the knife lengthwise away from your body to leave shredded slices of the papaya. Search "Shredding Papaya" on YouTube for plenty of videos on how to shred papaya the traditional way. The third method is to shred with a vegetable peeler. Toast the peanuts in a dry fry pan until fragrant and stained with toasty browned edges. Halve cherry tomatoes. Break or cut the snake beans into approx 6 cm lengths. Use half for som tum and half for garnish. Cut cabbage into wedges.  

Method :  
1. Put the fresh garlic and chillies into the krok and pound until well broken up, then add 4 snake beans and pound a little more before adding palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, peanuts and dried shrimp. Continue to break up the ingredients with your Pestle before adding the cherry tomatoes and cautiously breaking them also. When you have something similar to the picture below you are ready to proceed (left ). 

2. Now it's time to finish the som tum. Grab a good handful of the shredded papaya and place in the Krok. Using a kitchen spoon and your pestle alternate turning and pounding (not too aggressively) to thoroughly dress the papaya. When well coated but not broken up add the rest of your som tum and complete the dressing of the salad. (right above). Taste and add more lime or fish sauce for extra sourness or saltiness.

3. Time to plate. Scoop the salad onto a large dinner plate with your kitchen spoon making sure you get all those umami filled juices from the bottom of the krok. After that add the garnish. Top with a few more dried shrimp and peanuts. place a wedge of cabbage on the side with sliced cucumber and the rest of the snake beans.

Notes: If using a European mortar and pestle you will have to add the papaya in batches. Still pound all the flavour ingredients together, but then add and remove the completed papaya leaving the dressing for the next batch. Chillies are very much a personal preference. I would recommend using at least 1 chilli as it is definitely part of the flavour profile of the dish. Also, if making 2 batches you may not need as many chillies in the second batch because your krok will retain some of the heat from the initial som tum.

Cricket Umpiring

I have recently commenced my 5th season as a cricket umpire. What does getting ready for a new season entail you say? For me, and plenty of others still trying to get better at the craft, it involves re-doing the Laws Course, a visit to the annual convention, and the rules night about a week before the season begins. From there it is a process of keeping up with current laws and playing conditions.

For me, umpiring is just one part of my day to day activities. Working on all areas of life to try to get the most out it. I have recently changed my review and study processes slightly from rotating through my areas of study in half hour blocks to doing one large block of each area a week. That will need some explanation I am guessing.

Example :- say the areas of your life you are focussing on are your food study, umpiring, language learning, and of course my blog. So, I would study each of these ideally for 4 hours a week. Why 4 hours? Well, have you read any of Tim Ferriss' books? The four hour work week, the four hour body, the four hour chef. I am a fan and a listener to his podcast to help with my motivation on a daily basis. I figure if he can earn a living in 4 hours a week, then if I can work at studying for 4 hours a week and make significant inroads on my path to success.

Off track slightly. Let's get back. With the 4 study areas above I will attempt to complete one four hour study session a week plus I also have to add day to day things like tidying the house, home improvements, work/finance, renewal/ personal improvement, and recreational reading. I recently listened to one of Tim Ferriss' podcasts with Naval Ravikant, an investor and dot com start up guy with massive success. Tim asked him what change or piece of advice he would give to listeners to add value to their lives. He replied by saying to complete ten books a year. That incidently, isn't why I read. I just read for the pure enjoyment of it. Reading is also a great way to get new information and motivation and learning in a very leisurely way. Make time to read. It will improve your life.

So 4 hours on our core focus areas - Food Study (the blog address should give away that I'm a chef), umpiring, language learning (in my case Thai) and this blog. Add to these, day to day areas of wellbeing and improvement such as those mentioned above. Add to these half hour exercise sessions every other day and daily meditation for 30 minutes to make me a calmer member of the human race. Being married to a Thai, being calm is very important. Thai people have no respect for people who are Jai Rorn (ใจร้อน) or in English hot tempered. It is something I have had an issue with and meditation helps me to take a deep breath instead of blowing up (at least some of the time). I think it is also very helpful to umpiring. Incidently, I am currently studying each area for 2 hours a week. Gradually I am hoping to build up to 4 hours.

Within some areas I have specific things I do to study, in others it depends on priority or how I feel that day or week. In Cricket Umpiring, the study areas are playing conditions study, Laws of cricket study and examination and laws course review. I am also considering adding a fourth element being field craft and performance review. In fact, that sounds like such a good idea I might add it to the session I am scheduled to do tomorrow.

Explanation of what is the difference between playing conditions and laws: The laws of cricket are set by the governing body for cricket which is the London based MCC. When any cricket match is played around the world they will use those laws (or rules) to define how the match is played. Each match around the world will have variations to those laws and these variations are set down in the playing conditions handbook for the tournament or competition being held.

So I will do 30 minutes of each area and rotate through. If I get to doing 4 hours a week I will be doing 1 hour of each area. Playing conditions study involves me reading through the playing conditions for my next match and taking notes of the important points as I work my way through. I am umpiring in the Sydney Cricket Association Grade Cricket Competition.A new handbook comes out each season with changes made each and every year. Sometimes there are only a few changes, other years the changes are many and more significant. The handbook for the current season 2015/16 is 181 pages long. I guess you could compare it to a taxation account and how with every new year there are changes to laws which the tax accountant must stay up to date with in order to provide the best service to his or her clients. So too, in Umpiring we must stay current and provide for our clients (the cricketing elite of suburban Sydney). At the highest level of the game and what the general public see on their television screens over the summer is just another (albeit an elite level competition) example of a match or matches played under the laws of cricket with their own unique set of playing conditions. It is not uncommon for an umpire to have to explain to a player that something they see on the TV is in fact a playing condition of international cricket and is not applicable at the lower level of the game. An example of this is the playing condition at the highest level of the game which removes the use of a runner for an injured batsman. This is not a law change but just a change to playing conditions at the highest level. The laws of cricket at the MCC have not changed in this respect.

The next area of study is the study of the laws of cricket. In this case I just read for thirty minutes. As I read I constantly remind myself to read with and for comprehension and make sure I stop and organise the passages I have read in my mind before progressing. Currently we are using the 2000 code which is up to it's 5th edition which was printed in 2013. It is a small book ( 147mm x 116mm) but it too, contains 120 pages of information. There are 42 laws of cricket covering all areas pertaining to the conduct of a game of cricket. Some people, although I would never officially make this statement myself , have suggested that the laws are a wonderful inexpensive way of curing insomnia. Read for 20 minutes before bed and you will be out like a light. One of the most helpful things in cricket umpiring is the fact that most players have never read either the laws of cricket or the playing conditions that apply to their competition. I thought I knew the laws until I studied them. The fact that players don't generally know all the rules of play means that on occasion a confident umpire may be able to bluff his way through. From personal observation, that ability to bluff comes after your first decade as an umpire. When starting out and learning the laws for the first time it is more than useful to be guided by a good teacher. As an umpire in Sydney I am fortunate to have access to plenty of excellent teachers.

The course material that I received at the pre season laws course really simplify's the laws into more digestible chunks and is a great way to review and grow my knowledge of the game's rules of play. I was given close to 100 questions throughout the course and continually going through those is great for learning. The course notes themselves are also a good way of simplifying and explaining all I need to know when I take the field.

After studying all these theoretical areas of umpiring it is great to have now added a more practical area. That being field craft. For this there are study notes on many of the Umpiring association websites including at   nswcusa.nsw.cricket.com.au and sscua.com.au . I may also in time take a trip to one of my local teams training sessions and just practice watching the ball and making decisions during a net session. A great way to get match practice. Concentration is the key out there in the middle on match day and I will also be looking in my practice sessions at ways to get ahead in that area.

After completing everything above I can feel confident when I head out onto the field on a Saturday. Hopefully I have been able to illustrate what goes into getting an umpire to match day and over time I will continue  to enjoy the journey to being the best umpire I can be.

shop.lords.org/shop/gifts/books/laws-coaching/mcc-the-laws-of-cricket
http://nswcusa.nsw.cricket.com.au/
http://www.lords.org/mcc/laws-of-cricket/








 

A day on the Clean food diet

I have had a few requests for a follow up to my diet and weight loss post from the 4/9/15 Life - Looking for balance and Happiness. Most of those relate to recipes that we use and what we eat in a 500 calorie meal. So, here goes.
A sample day. Normally I try to start the day with a pot of tea. An example would be the Japanese loose leaf floral Green Tea that I picked up at the Sydney markets a few years back. It's pretty nice now, but I'm sure it would have been so much better when it was freshly purchased. Also at breakfast I have Yakult style drink. We have found a cheaper brand that is sold frozen at the local Asian Grocery shop. I think it is made in South Korea.
This week's breakfast is Kellogg's Just Right Breakfast cereal. Make sure you read your serving sizes on the side of the packet. I have 2 servings of Just Right with 200 ml of Light milk and a large banana.
Just Right - 590 Kj for 40grams. At this stage I go to the BUPA calorie converter. Simply type in 590 Kj and you discover that it translates to 141 calories. 141 calories is 40 grams so 80 grams is 282 calories. Light milk is 94 Calories for 200ml according to Calorieking.com.au. The final item is a banana.Again I look up on Calorieking.com.au and it shows that a large banana is 122 calories.
So breakfast is :
             80g Kellog's Just Right 282 calories
             200ml lite milk                94 calories
             large banana                 122 calories
          Breakfast total                  498 calories
That may seem a little bit of hard work just to count calories for breakfast, but that is the main reason I eat the same breakfast for 6 days straight. Another habit I am just starting to develop, is recording the ingredients and quantities of the meals I prepare on a Microsoft excel spreadsheet.That way I don't need to reinvent the wheel every time I eat.

Now for lunch.
When at work I eat a simple salad most days. It consists of mesclun or mixed lettuce topped with tomato, cucumber, onion, carrot, Jalapeno Chillies, sliced beetroot and a hard boiled egg. During the day my liquid intake consists of a morning coffee and a few cups of tea. The tea is usually Puerh tea which is known to burn fat. If I am at home for lunch and feeling lazy I usually have 2 sushi rolls.

As for dinner here is an example from a couple of nights ago: I found a recipe online for salad nicoise (pronounced as far as I am aware Sal - add niss- waa) on taste.com.au. I work my way through the ingredients converting them to calories via calorieking.com.au
500 g Potatoes -                                            335 calories
300 g Green Beans -                                        87 calories
250 g Cherry Tomatoes -                                 45 calories
1/2 cup black olives estimated weight 100 g -   75 calories
425 g canned tuna (read from the tin) -            300 calories
1 Tbspn olive oil -                                          159 calories
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar -                           3 calories
Total                                                              1004 calories
Pretty close to perfect. You may notice that the original recipe states that it is 4 servings. I guess as a starter or side salad you may get away with serving 4. As a meal I think just 2 works well. From there I wasn't perfectly happy. Salad Nicoise for me always has a couple of hard boiled eggs. So I added 2 eggs which tally 73 calories each. That put me over by 150 calories in total. So, I adjusted the recipe. I reduced potatoes to 350 g, (235 cal) saving 100 of the calories straight away. I then reduced the olives to 75 g and 56 calories but added 100 g of mesclun or mixed lettuce to the salad which cost another 29 calories.


The final ingredient list looked like this :
350 g Potatoes - 335 calories
300 g Green Beans - 87 calories
250 g Cherry Tomatoes - 45 calories
75 g Olives - 56 calories
425 g canned tuna - 300 calories
1 Tbspn Olive oil - 159 calories
1 Tbspn Sherry vinegar - 3 calories
100g mesclun lettuce - 29 calories
2 eggs - 146 calories
All this totals 1060 calories. Only 30 calories per person over the 500 calorie meal limit. As they say, near enough is good enough (at least in this case).
As for making the salad, sometimes I think the food prep is easier than the calculation for dinner. In this case definitely so. Boil potatoes and hard boil eggs, blanch green beans (i.e. boil until cooked but still crunchy) , drain tuna,  peel eggs, run all hot foods under cold water until cooled, toss all together, divide, serve , enjoy.

And as Julia Childs would have said "Bon appetite".

Links
www.bupa.com.au/health-and-wellness/tools-and-apps/tools-and-calculators/calorie-converter
calorieking.com.au  they also have an iphone app.
taste.com.au

I forgot to mention 2 other little cheats I have in my day. 200 ml of red wine 136 calories and 20 grams of dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) 122 calories. That is 2 squares of Lindt chocolate (they only have 10 squares per block). A little tip to eating chocolate is to break off the portion you are eating and then put the block back in the kitchen where you won't see it every time you walk by. Eating 2 squares is easy, not eating the other 8 is hard, at first.
               

Slow roasted pork with hoisin and Chinese five spice

Hoisin and Chinese five spice roasted pork neck served with steamed Jasmine rice and Chinese Broccoli 

what you will need

Ingredients:
1 Pork neck (approximately 900g)
Ginger  1 Tbspn
Garlic  3 cloves
Hoi sin sauce 4 Tbspn
Chinese 5 Spice 1 Tbspn
Soy Sauce (preferably Chinese) 2 Tbspn
Chinese Cooking Wine   1/4 cup
Jasmine Rice 3 cups 
Chinese Broccoli 3 bunches

Description : 
Finely chop Ginger and Garlic if using fresh. Whisk together the Ginger, Garlic, Hoisin, five spice, soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine. Time to get your freshly washed hands dirty or wear gloves. Place the pork into the marinade ingredients. Cover the pork in the saucy marinade so that it is completely covered. Marinate preferably overnight or at least 4 hours. If you don't have time to marinate, you can get away with just going straight to the oven. You may lose a little flavour. 

marinating pork

Preheat the oven to 130°C. Place the pork on a greased or lined baking dish. With a sweet marinade (from the hoisin) you will have a challenge at the wash up sink if you don't line the baking tray. Cook the pork for 2 hours or until a probe thermometer inserted in the centre reaches 65°C. During cooking turn the pork every 30 minutes for even cooking. Transfer the pork to a plate to rest for 30 minutes. Strain liquid left in bottom of the baking dish through a strainer to reserve for serving. There should only be a little.

cover rice up to 1st joint of index finger

Now is the time to put your rice on to cook by your preferred method. A rice cooker is a great way to make sure you never have to think about rice again. Rinse the rice under the tap to remove some of the starch. Then, add enough water so that the water comes up to the first joint on your index finger.

Prepare the Chinese broccoli by washing and slicing across the leaves and stems at approximately 2 cm lengths. Steam the stems for 3 minutes before adding the leaves and cooking for another 2 minutes or until wilted.
Slice the pork thinly across the grain. Serve alongside the Chinese broccoli and fluffy white rice. Drizzle a little of the strained sauce over the pork after buzzing in microwave for 1 minute, and enjoy.

Pictured rice contains red cargo rice mixed with white Jasmine.

Learning Thai

Sawatdee khrab สวัสดีครับ    Hello
Khun pood pasa Thai dai mai   คุณพูดภาษาไทยได้ไหม   Can you speak Thai?
Pom pood pasa Thai dai nit noi  ผมพูดภาษาไทยได้นิดหน่อย  I speak a little Thai

Learning a language for the first time has been slow progress. I met my wonderful wife in Sydney where she was on a student visa from her home in Chiangmai, Thailand. I had never been to Thailand prior to our visit to Chiangmai a year before our wedding. That's not entirely true. I had spent quite a few hours in the airport in Bangkok and on my way back from a cricket tour of England had been stopped over in the hotel across the road from what I believe was the old international airport. I even walked along the street for about an hour before the Jet-lag set in and I returned to my room to get some sleep. I also spent a few hours there a few years later on my way to Cambodia and on the return. Now, where were we? That's right, this is an article on Thai language learning.

I'm not really sure when I started properly learning the language. I can say with all honesty that I can't speak any language other than the one I am typing here. I have used youtube to try to learn some basic bits and pieces of the language and also books like Benjawan Poomsan Becker's book Thai for beginners. My favourite Thai teachers on youtube are Stuart Jay Raj and Kruu Wee of kruuweeteachthai.com . Stuart Jay Raj grew up in Australia and speaks 26 languages. He lives in Bangkok and is married to a Thai. He has made various appearances on Thai TV and his language learning is pretty awesome. Stuart runs Jcademy.com on which I have just commenced the Thai Fluency 1 - Glossika GSR and GMS course.
Stu comes at language learning from a different direction to most and that appeals to me. Stu looks at the root of the language and the history of the pronunciation to get to the heart of things. The Glossika course whilst hosted by his site is not actually his course but one of the other partners in the site Jcademy. Glossika drums sentences into you by repetitive learning which will over time increase your ability to communicate in the language. Kruu Wee (kruu means teacher in Thai) is from the same part of the world as my wife Runchana, i.e. Chiangmai. She has over 150 youtube clips teaching the basics of the Thai Language. She also runs skype lessons, face to face. It's like being in a one on one language class. As yet, I haven't tried the Skype classes but have seen a post she did of an actual class with a student. Looks pretty good.

My current cycle of learning is to learn reading and writing from a book called "reading and writing Thai" (imaginative name but effective) by Somsonge Burusphat. I am slowly chipping my way through it (30 minutes a session) and in the process slowly improving my Thai reading and writing skills. I can, at this stage, read a lot more words than I can understand. That is lesson 1.

Lesson 2 is to watch Kruu Wee's videos for 30 minutes. On average her videos take 4 to 5 minutes and can be very helpful with pronunciation http://kruuwee.blogspot.com.au/.

Lesson 3 is as I mentioned above Thai Fluency 1 - Glossika GSR and GMS course. GSR stands for Glossika Spaced Repetition and GMS Glossika Mass Sentences. Lessons take 15 minutes so I should be able to complete 2 per study session. Sentences start out basic at first and then progressively get more complex as you proceed through the course. First in English the Thai and Thai again. You go through the unit. The you listen to English and Thai. Thirdly Thai alone. In the centre of the screen the sentences are written in English, Thai, the Thai words separated, and in the International Phonetic script. For those of you not familiar with Thai language, there are no spaces between the words as in English, hence the need to separate the out for beginner understanding.

My 4th lesson is to read a comic book I picked up in Bangkok last time we were there. So with Thai - English dictionary in one hand and comic in the other I attempt to read and understand.

Each time I have gone to Thailand my language skills have been  a little better than the previous visit. Hopefully with some consistent effort, my next visit will have me fluent.

http://kruuwee.blogspot.com.au/.

Jcademy.com

Life - finding balance and happiness

What is the key to happiness? I have no idea. If you do, leave a comment below.
Over the years I have looked for greater happiness in my day to day life. I'll admit it, I've read my share of self help literature. Some are more helpful than others. On my first trip to Thailand with my, then girlfriend (now my wife), I bought a book with a catchy title, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. It was an easy read with plenty of tips on adding structure to your life to remove the daily stress and stop chasing the almighty dollar and start creating time to live. So, as a result I started to add little daily study sessions to my weekly schedule. One of my biggest problems is that I want to work on too many things, so make little progress in any direction. My current schedule includes 30 minute sessions on Blogging, food, Thai language, cricket umpiring, Spirituality, work/finance, and motivation or personal renewal. Added to this are my compulsory sessions on Meditation, exercise (4 different 30 minute sessions a week), and recreational reading (500 pages into Lord of the Rings).

Each morning my alarm goes off at 4.00. I try to do either push ups, sit ups, light dumbbell curls, weightless squats or a 5 minute exercise bike ride. The objective is to get the blood pumping without taking much time. The goal is to do 100 reps of the mornings activity. Currently up to 26 push-ups this morning.After that I get ready for work and then eat breakfast and begin my 30 minutes of recreational reading before saying goodbye to my beautiful wife and heading off to work.

Over the last couple of months my wife and I have begun a healthy eating plan. Inspired by the idea of clean food eating for health we have designed the plan based on 3 / 500 calorie meals a day. I like to to stick to a particular breakfast for about a week and then change for the next week to stop it getting boring. Examples have been 2 poached eggs on an English muffin topped with baby spinach and store bought Hollandaise sauce. I am about to switch to 3 Weetbix with a cup and a half of light white milk. For Lunch when at work I usually have a salad from the work sandwich bar made up of Mixed lettuce, tomato, cucumber, carrot, Jalapeno chilli, chickpeas, and balsamic dressing. If I ate that whilst hanging around the house of the weekend I think I would be hungry again but the distraction of being busy at work doesn't allow that to happen.

For dinner, the 500 calorie meal can be a bit of a challenge some days. Basically though, it is about increasing the vegetables and decreasing everything else. Usually 200 g or less of lean chicken breast, Pork loin, prawns, mussels or white fleshed fish fillet with 200 to 300 grams of vegetables and occasionally 50 grams of rice (that is the raw weight of the rice). I have lost just under 12 kg and my wife Pinkie 7 kg.

There are other things I do which I think make a difference. I eat 20 g of Dark Chocolate a day. It took some self control in the early days not to eat the whole bar in one sitting. I think it is important not to leave the chocolate bar in plain site. For example, don't break off the 20 g whilst sitting in front of the TV and then leave the rest sitting there calling out to you whilst you watch your favourite program. Unless you are stronger willed than me you will have some more if it sits there in your line of site. Most of us have heard that dark chocolate is good for your health. It contains antioxidants. Not all dark chocolates are created equal. If looking for the healthy option turn the packet over and read your ingredient list. The ingredients are listed in order of quantity. If the first item on your chocolate is sugar, then this is not the one for a healthier you. Usually, I have found that the 70% and higher list cocoa mass as the top ingredient. This is the bar of choice.

The other cheat I have is red wine. Again, there are whispers that red wine is good for you. I haven't read the literature but like most things, in moderation won't do much harm. What do I mean by moderation? I buy 1 bottle of red wine a week. I drink no more than 200 ml of wine in a day. I put the wine glass on my digital thermometer, press tare (to zero the scale) and pour until I get to 200. I usually use a small glass and fill it twice to 100 ml. Somehow, returning to refill the glass makes it seem like I am drinking more.

I have also become a big tea drinker of late. I think it makes a huge difference to my results on the scales. Not scientifically proven, just observed. I rotate through 6 different teas with differing claims as to there effects on the human body. I don't know that they work, but I have generally had bigger loses of weight after days where I have drunk 3 or more cups of tea.All the tea is drunk black, i.e. not with milk.The 6 teas at the moment are Oolong Tea which I picked up at the Choui Fong Tea Plantation in ChiangRai in Thailand, China Green Tea (loose leaf), Aged Puerh tea, diet tea (from an Asian grocery shop) and camomile tea. Green tea is linked to weight loss, Puerh tea is said to burn fat and Diet tea claims to burn off waste products. They seem to work in conjunction with the reduced calorie diet.

The other part of the diet that I am attached to is the record keeping element. There are plenty of apps on your phone and computer or even the ancient technique of pen and paper could get it done. I record my daily weight, take blood pressure readings and exercise sessions as well as which teas I drink each day. It was through this record keeping that I was able to see that my biggest weight loss days occurred usually after drinking at least 3 cups of tea in a day.

Below are some links to the resources mentioned throughout. Remember it is through failing that we learn our most important lessons.

  http://www.robinsharma.com/
http://fourhourworkweek.com/
http://www.bupa.com.au/health-and-wellness/tools-and-apps/tools-and-calculators/calorie-converter
http://www.calorieking.com.au/
http://www.chouifongtea.com/
http://www.highmountaintea.com.au/collections/buy-puer-pu-erh-chinese-tea-online-australia-weight-loss
https://internationalgroceries.com.au/image/cache/data/Tea/img_0053-600x600.jpg
https://www.strava.com (health app)
https://runkeeper.com/