Pot Noodle Thai Green Curry (Send Me A Sample - Alexa) By @SpectreUK

Alexa sent me this Pot Noodle Thai Green Curry from her Send Me A Sample Application (or 'App' as the cool kids call it). I may have mentioned before that I get on very well with Alexa. She resides in our kitchen. I do like her voice, as I don't find it particularly robotic and she plays me classical music whilst I eat my lunch every day. Cinabar doesn't seem to like her so much, mainly because with that voice I reckon Alexa would be a 'Looker' in real life! ;-D

Anyway, I do like a good Thai Green Curry. I generally have them once or twice a month with some rice and prawn crackers. I'll have this calorie heavy Pot Noodle Thai Green Curry with some fried mushrooms, two boiled eggs and a piece of buttered toast. I'm not at the gym today so I'll have to miss off the crisps to compensate for the massive 447 calories in the Pot Noodle.

On opening the pot there was some seasoning on top of the block of noodles and a sachet of soy and ginger sauce. I added the freshly boiled water and left it to stand for a while. There was quite a strong smell of lime leaves on mixing the noodles and sauce together. There was a few pieces of diced red chilli pepper amongst the noodles. On taste the lime leaves were the dominant flavour, even after adding in the soy and ginger sauce. Unfortunately this Pot Noodle Thai Green Curry didn't taste like the Thai Green Curries I have with rice and crackers on the evenings. The lime leaves give it a slight washing up liquid flavour. It wasn't too bad and the diced red chilli pepper pieces gave it a bit of a kick, but I wouldn't have it again… especially for the high calorie content and the fact that there are far more appealing flavours of noodle pots out there!

Information on the Pot;
The 90g pot contains 447 calories, with 19g of fat, 4.5g of sugar, and 1.9g salt - nope I'm not sure at any stretch someone could say this pot noodle is particularly good for you! Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Noodle Mix (96%): Dried Noodles (67%) [Wheat Flour (contains Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Palm Oil, Salt, Firming Agents (Sodium Carbonate, Potassium Carbonate)], Wheat Flour, Maltodextrin, Potato Starch, Flavour Enhancers (Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate), Coconut Milk Powder (2%), Flavourings, Sugar, Palm Fat, Onion Powder (0.9%), Red Bell Pepper (0.5%), Spices (Turmeric, Galangal Root, Chilli Pepper, Garlic Powder) (0.5%), Herbs (Kaffir Lime Leaves, Coriander Leaves), Milk Protein, Salt, Acid (Citric Acid), Sauce Sachet (4%): Soy and Ginger Sauce [Water, Sugar, Spirit Vinegar, Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Maltodextrin, Spices, Garlic Powder, Soy Sauce (Soybeans, Wheat), Acid (Acetic Acid), Colour (Anthocyanins)]

The Coconut Kitchen - Pad Thai Meal Kit (Asda) @NLi10

Thai food is amazing, in fact I’m going out for some tonight!

At home it’s fairly simple but getting the specific tastes is sometimes a bit awkward.  So here we have a kit to take care of all that.

It promises restaurant quality pad Thai 

And all you need is the sauce sachet, the noodles and the recipe card!

The noodles are of fine quality, and perfectly pan-sized.

And it looks pleasing enough when made with quorum (Quorn - gah Auto-correct) and a few veggies. The taste was a little spicier than I’d expect for Pad Thai but I really enjoyed it and it was very quick and easy.  And most importantly being in full control made this a veggie meal (not vegan due to egg).

Tom Yum Noodle Pot (Marks and Spencer’s) By @SpectreUK

I first found out I love Tom Yum noodle soup from a Thai restaurant in town. They made the best Tom Yum soup I've ever eaten, and it's sadly never been surpassed. As far as I could tell it was made with coconut milk. It had small pieces of chicken, diced Spanish Onion, a chopped tomato, button mushrooms, baby sweetcorn, a few noodles and a couple of pieces of hot red chilli. I tried to emulate this with these ingredients myself. I used to make Tom Yum soup from paste I found at a Chinese market, but without the coconut milk. I used to use all the paste and a huge amount of ingredients filling a large saucepan with Tom Yum soup, which would take ages to eat and appealed to my Scooby Snack greediness. The pot noodles flavoured with Tom Yum paste since have been a welcome gap, but non-the-less, not to the restaurant's standard and no coconut milk in sight.

This Tom Yum Noodle Pot was produced for Marks and Spencer's. I opened the cardboard pot and peeled back the plastic lid to find a solid block of egg noodles and a sachet full of dark brown goop, which I presumed was the Tum Yum paste. The instructions on the label stated to add the dark brown goop (paste) and then freshly boiled water. It stated for a more 'intense flavour' to add the water to the 'lower fill line', but I couldn't see that for the solid egg noodles. I did, however, add the water to the top of the noodles instead of the line at the top of the cardboard pot. I poured the freshly boiled water over the brown goop (paste) to make sure it dissolved into the noodles instead of sitting on top of them. I replaced the plastic lid for a few minutes, a little longer than the suggested two minutes, but I had to make a sandwich…

The noodles had softened and soaked up much of the brown liquid soup. The egg noodles and added sweetcorn had mixed well with the Tom Yum paste and hot water. It certainly was tasty and had a Tom Yum ring to it, but I couldn't help wishing I'd added more water for a wetter soup, rather than liquid that had all been soaked up by the noodles. Having said that, there was more liquid at the bottom when I ate most of the noodles. I also found that much of the brown goop (paste) had accumulated there with all the diced cabbage. This made for a very 'intense' end to this Tom Yum noodle soup!

I may have to go back to that restaurant some time, either that or find some Tom Yum paste from a Chinese market, and this time some coconut milk, and have a bash again myself…

Information on the pot;
The 99g pot had 322 calories, with 8.2g of sugar, 5.6g of fat and 3.43g of salt. Please see photographs for the ingredients.

Rhythm - 100% Virgin Coconut Milk [by @NLi10]

When PR samples arrive for basic ingredients it's always fun. No one is going to send out something simple that they believe isn't pretty much the best out there. In this case we have Rhythm Coconut Milk - 100% coconut milk with nothing else added.

As I love making vegetarian Thai food (the sauce jars contain fish so can't be used) this was something I accepted immediately and cooked on the day it arrived.  I used Tesco Thai curry paste and some lovely thin rice noodles to go with it.

Here is the nutritional info for those that request such things. It's important to note that my usual brand is canned and certainly not fresh. This means refrigeration is required and I have to use the second pack within the next week.

Adding the milk to the already curry paste coated fried Quorn (for maximum veggie credentials and only one day late for National Vegetarian day) was fun as it came out like a textured paste. It got me thinking as to what puddings I could do with this. There are bound to be recipes online that I can find later, but typing this on the iPad on the bus makes that hard!

The heat breaks the coconut milk down and blends it nicely into the curry.  It didn't completely loose it's texture though, and there was a lovely creamy version of the curry smell filling the kitchen by this point.

I went a bit overboard with the curry paste to balance out the large packet and ended up making it a little stronger than usual but it was still incredibly flavourful. This way of making it was much closer to the richness of a restaurant meal.  I think with a few more tweaks and additions this could become quite a dish.  I forgot to keep a little of the milk separate to make a white swirl in the finished sauce for effect too.

If I see this in the shops I'd certainty pick one up as I do make Thai curry often enough to justify it. It's probably still keep a tin of the other stuff in the cupboard for emergencies.

Now to try the other pack with red Thai curry!

Tesco Thai Green Curry 20 Min Meal Kit [by @NLi10] (@UKTesco)

I shall keep this one shorter than last week's Thai/Japanese kit review.

This is the turn of the green box, which requires no egg, but is still 100% vegetarian until you add the chicken.  We added Quorn cubes.

You get similar to the last one, only with coconut milk in the silver bag, and some herbs in the little bag.  This is good, as with hindsight you can fine tune the strength of the curry.

First up - wack it in the pan and hit it a bit. Then put the curry sauce on and do the same again!

This coats things nicely and gets the tastebuds awake.  Then add all the coconut milk and finally herbs, not forgetting to use your third hand to put the rice in while doing this!

And after a rough 20 mins you get something that looks like the box picture.  Success!  This was another very successful meal, although the flavour was accurate I could have easily had it hotter.  I know that jungle curry is basically the Thai slang for not using the coconut milk and making it more powerful.  What I would do in future is either use less coconut milk, or add more curry paste out of the jar in Pic 1.  That said, I have rice, curry paste and coconut milk (although not usually all at the same time) and could figure out some spices to add.  I think I could do this one alone without the kit.  That said these things are actually reasonably similar in price to buying the separates and the Best Before date is over a year in the future so there really is no harm in just picking them up for a posh lunch or a quick dinner.

Another win for instant Thai food!

Tesco Katsu Curry - 20 Min Meal Kit [by @NLi10] (@UKTesco)

Tesco asked whether I wanted to review their Thai food.  I said yes.  This is what I got.

While all the PR guff talks about Thai food (which I love) the red box is clearly Japanese.  They do mention this fact so are not confused about their Asian foods, but this is all actually made in Thailand!  While reading the boxes I noticed a curious fact - all of this is Vegetarian!  A lot of instant Thai/Japanese things are not suitable for my Veggie partner so sit in the cupboard for weeks.  This was used almost instantly.

First up you should note - you need chicken (or Tofu/Quorn) and an egg.  One quick pop to the shop on our road later and I'm ready to start.

It all looks quite impressive laid out.  The big bag is rice, the medium bag that looks like rice is long breadcrumbs (Panko Breadcrumbs), the silver is the sauce.  We used Quorn fillets as they are designed to look a little like chicken breasts.

Poof! I added the flour, mixed the egg up a bit and got the breadcrumbs ready.  Messy fingers time!  It was very hard to use a touch screen phone to take a picture of the fillets covered in egg being dipped into the crumbs, but Ms NLi10 was around to do the honours for them hitting the pan.

They look a little odd and anaemic here, I think that usually the chicken makes them stick a bit better.  Heat was vigourously applied as per instructions while simultaneously doing the rice.

Naturally I tipped the left over egg into the left over breadcrumbs and added it to the top of the cooking Quorn. Yummy smells were produced.  The topping tended to fall off a bit.  The sauce went in, the rice went into the serving bowls and we ended up with this! 

It looks a bit brown and fall-appart compared to Tesco's picture AND it took around half an hour instead of 20 mins (as I wanted it crispy and I'm out of practice) but it certainly tasted amazing.  It had all the authentic flavours and all the right textures.  It was nothing like a package meal, I think the added steps are well worth it and I can't wait to try the other one we got sent.

Well recommended and I'd actually make a special effort to pop into the Tesco by our cinema to get more of these - afterall I have 5 eggs left!