Bhutan - home cooking

I cook once a week. That sounds pretty lame really as it suggests Elle cooks all of the rest of the time. Which is true. But when I cook, I cook from scratch. It's an evening long, sometimes day long, event. I take a recipe, I follow it to the letter. It usually works out perfect. I feel like a good cook. But actually, I'm just good at reading instructions.

Still, you learn your strengths and weaknesses. I learned my culinary weakness long ago. Flour. I can't work with flour. Anything that has to be a certain conisistancy to be able to work with its a big no no. Always ends up in disaster.

Why the hell I thought I'd be able to make Bhutanese momo (dumplings) I haven't got a clue. This Bhutanese meal was 50% of a disaster.

It was to be a two parter. The main I chose to cook was pork fing. A kind of spicy pork stew/curry with noodles. I was a little concerned that the portion wouldn't be enough, so I decided to make a side dish of momo. The filling in the momo can be any meat really, but I think more often than not the Bhutanese use minced beef.

The timing of the two parts looked quite handy. The pork fing was to cook for quite a while, during which I'd make the momo.

For the pork fing I bought 1 onion, 1 tomato, 1/5 a block of butter, 700g pork shoulder and 3 green chillis. I was also supposed to buy a small amount of cellophane noodles (about 60g). But I couldn't find them anywhere. I dare say I would've found them in London's Chinatown but that would've been too much effort. Instead I went for the thinnest rice noodles I could find.

I chopped the onion and tomato and added this with the chopped pork and 120ml of water into a pan of the melted butter. I waited for it to simmer, then covered it and cooked this for 90 minutes. At this point I made a bit of an error - I added a touch more water, and I covered the pan. The contents of the pot was quite shallow so I was concerned about it not cooking evenly. In the end the meal was a bit too watery, when it should be drier, but it wasn't too problematic.

Speaking of problematic, it was time to prepare the dumplings. First the easy bit. The filling. 500g of minced beef, one finely chopped onion, 70g oil, some salt and a bit of chilli powder, all mixed together as much as possible. Then set aside.

The dough. Flour and water. Simple as? Was it buggery. Into 600g of plain flour, I added 4 cups of water. I hate cups. Give me millilitres anyday. I worked that out to be about 800ml of water. You can see my problem. Rather than add water a bit at a time, I dumped it all in and mixed. And mixed. And mixed. And I had thin white paste. I added more flour. And more flour. Then all the rest of the flour I had in the flat. I had a slightly thicker thin white paste. So thin it poured through my fingers. There was no way in hell I was rolling this into anything. Except the bin.

Elle said I was surpsingly calm. I think I was. But it's because I already knew this was going to happen. The only problem I had now was the big bowl of raw mince and onion. I ended up frying this, adding some more noodles to it, and serving *that* as a side dish along with some chilli, soy and BBQ sauce.

Anyway, at least I still had the pork fing, and this seemed to be going well. Except the excess sauce. I tried to boil as much of it away as I could without impairing the meal but eventually I had to serve it.

I was right to be initially concerned about the portion size, as it made barely a bowl each (I was certain the amount of noodles suggested was too small but other recipes suggested a similar amount). While the portion may have been on the small side, it was extremely filling. Mostly because of the butter. It was really rich in that respect, but it was no bad thing. It had a really nice subtle spice, the pork was of melt in the mouth consistency and the noodles added a little bit of substance but didn't get in the way. It turns out this would probably have been a nice satisfying meal on it's own, although the dumplings would've been perfect with it.

I think travelling to the nearest Bhutanese restaurant, probably in Bhutan, would've been easier than those dumplings. Never again.