Thai-style comfort food

It seems as if Mountain View's Amarin Thai Cuisine has been around forever. Twenty-six years of staying power means repeat business from a cadre of loyal customers, both old acquaintances and those newer in town. Amarin has won the Voice's Best of Mountain View Thai restaurant category every year since 1999.

At first glance, Amarin is just one in the long line of restaurants that flank Castro Street. Look again and you will notice that this restaurant is busier than most. It seats nearly 200, counting front and back patios, a private party room, and the traditional Thai dining room -- shoes off, sit on cushions at a low table.

Owner Supawan Pimsakul hails from Thailand and learned to cook from her mother. She is the master chef, creating the dishes and the menu. In the U.S. since 1980, Pimsakul said it was her family that encouraged her to open her first restaurant, Bangkok, in San Jose, in 1990. Other restaurants followed in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, but it was the Mountain View location that thrived.

Amarin's huge menu caused my head to spin. The restaurant wisely has a separate vegetarian menu but all the vegetarian dishes are included in the main menu as well.

If I had to choose one stand-out dish it would be the pumpkin red curry with chicken ($10.99): red and green bell peppers, chunks of pumpkin, tender chicken chunks and sweet basil. I wasn't quite prepared for the first bite. The spiciness took my breath away. My taste buds quickly adjusted and the soup-size bowl was a delight to dig into. Served with a vegetable soup appetizer, salad and rice, I spooned all the rice into the curry bowl to soak up the delicious broth.

The crisped spring rolls ($9.99) were a good starter. Served with a light plum sauce, the flaky, hot spring rolls were stuffed with cabbage, taro, carrot, celery, onion and bean thread noodles.

Another good appetizer was the angel wings ($10.99) -- two crisp, deboned chicken wings stuffed with ground chicken and bean thread noodles. There was a tasty side dish of vegetables in plum sauce with cucumber, red onion and crushed peanuts.

A young woman seated next to us inquired why there were no chopsticks. Chopsticks were never part of Thai culture. Thais ate with their fingers until Europeans introduced Western-style utensils. She was happy with spoon and fork -- and in Thailand, the fork is used to push food onto the spoon, never to eat with.

Thinly sliced barbeque honey pork with plum sauce ($12.99) had a crispy crust yet the meat was juicy and tender. Served with a vegetable soup, white rice and a small carrot salad, the rice had been rolled up tightly and looked like a small pillow on the plate. It wasn't just for looks. The rice remained compacted when forked and was an easy way to skewer both rice and pork on the fork at the same time.

I'm a sucker for spicy eggplant ($11.99) and Amarin's version did not disappoint. The eggplant had been sauteed with tofu and red and green bell peppers. Soft and unctuous, spongy and absorbent, eggplant is more acidic than other nightshades such as potatoes and peppers.

The spicy basil clams ($18.99) were surprisingly good. The menu said "stir-fried" and I had a different idea of what that was -- sans shell. These Manilla clams were served in the shell. I was dubious but the dish exceeded expectations. The generous portion of clams was supplemented with garlic, chili, salted soy bean, roasted chilis, bell pepper and sweet basil. It was a dish of texture, color and subtle flavors.

Pad kee maow was spicy pan-fried wide rice noodles with sweet basil, tomato, chili and garlic. Order it spicy, otherwise it can be very bland. You can opt to add chicken, prawns or calamari. We chose calamari ($13.99). The squid camouflaged itself with the noodles, but there was plenty of calamari and oodles of noodles.

Because Amarin is perpetually busy, service was harried but efficient and servers took time to explain dishes when asked.

Amarin has offered Thai comfort food, warm and satisfying, at reasonable prices in a contemporary setting, for over a quarter century. They're doing something right.

How to cook quiche lorraine

Often copied, never bettered, this simple combination of eggs and bacon in a crisp, buttery base is what every fancy flan secretly wants to be when it grows up. Essentially a savoury custard tart, rich with eggs and wonderfully wobbly, a real quiche lorraine bears little resemblance to meanly filled commercial imitations – so, if you want it done well, do it yourself.

Prep 20 min
Chill 50 min
Cook 1 hr 10 min
Serves 4

For the rough puff pastry
225g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
Salt
225g very cold butter, plus extra for greasing

For the filling
200g dry cure smoked streaky bacon, chopped
300ml double cream
6 eggs

1 Rub the butter into the flour
Start with the pastry, which is best done by hand. Tip the flour on to a clean work surface and add a good pinch of salt. Cut the butter into roughly 1cm cubes, then gently squidge the two together with your fingertips: you’re aiming for a mixture of small pieces of butter coated with flour, rather than the usual fine crumbs.

2 Add water to make a dough
Measure out 100ml of ice-cold water, then sprinkle a little over the top of the flour mixture and stir in. Repeat until it all comes together into a smooth, but not sticky dough (you probably won’t need all the water, unless you live somewhere very dry). Shape the dough into a flat square, wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 20 minutes.

3 Prepare the tart tin and roll out the pastry
Meanwhile, grease a deep, loose-bottomed, 20-22cm tart tin. When you’re ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on a clean work surface and roll out the dough into a rectangle roughly three times its original length. Fold the top third back into the centre, then bring the bottom third up to meet it, so you have three layers, like a concertina.

4 Fold the pastry, and chill
Turn the dough 90 degrees, then roll again to three times its length and repeat the folding process, so you’re left with another three-layered square. Roll out again, then line the greased tin with the pastry, leaving a few centimetres overhanging to minimise any shrinkage while it rests. Chill the pastry again for at least 30 minutes.

5 Line the tart case and blind bake
Meanwhile, wrap any excess pastry in clingfilm, in case you need it for emergency repair work later, and heat the oven and a baking tray to 200C/390F/gas 6. Take the tart tin out of the fridge, prick the pastry all over with a fork and line it with foil, shiny-side down. Fill to the brim with baking beans or uncooked rice, and bake for 25 minutes.

6 Start on the filling
Meanwhile, cut the bacon into strips, fry these until they start to crisp up, then set aside. Remove the beans and foil from the pastry and patch up any holes, if necessary. Bake for another 10 minutes. Separate one of the eggs, brush the white all over the base of the pastry (the yolk will go into the filling), then put back in the oven for another five minutes.

7 Prepare the eggs
Carefully trim off any overhanging pastry and set the tart shell aside. Turn down the oven to 170C/335F/gas 3. Separate another egg and put the yolk and the reserved yolk into a large jug with the four whole eggs. Beat together, then pour in the cream and whisk with a pinch of salt, until just combined.

8 Fill the tart and bake
Scatter half the bacon over the base, then pull out the oven shelf with the tray on it, making sure it’s stable. Transfer the tart tin to the hot tray, quickly pour in the egg filling and top with the remaining bacon. Gently push the shelf back into the oven and bake for about 35 minutes, until the filling is just wobbly in the centre. Leave to cool before eating.

9 Variations on the theme
This recipe is easily tweaked: try replacing the bacon with 150g grated hard cheese and/or two large onions, finely sliced and gently fried until golden brown; or 200g baby spinach, blanched and thoroughly squeezed dry. (Vegetables often give off water during cooking, so the likes of sun-dried tomatoes in oil or roast peppers work better than the fresh versions.)

How to eat like a chef for less than £20 a week

Food sustainability isn’t just about protecting our environment, it’s about protecting us, the consumers, and supporting the farmers who make our food.

Affordability is a key element of what a sustainable diet looks like. I call my approach Root to Fruit eating. It is a philosophy that aims to make it easier for people to cook good food, blending a little chef’s knowhow with academic research, and making it applicable to home cooks and professionals alike. My shopping list comes in at just over £18 a week – cheaper than the average national weekly spend per person of £24. Over a year, that’s a saving of about £300 while still enjoying top-quality food (I buy everything from my local independent health-food shop or market, or organic items from the supermarket. Of course, if you need to bring the cost of your shopping down further, buy non-organic). I’m a vegetarian, so there is no meat on my shopping list, and eating less meat is certainly a good way of keeping costs down. However, if you are buying meat, opt for cheaper cuts of higher-welfare animals.

Every head chef works to a tight budget to make a profit. When we invent a dish, we cost and portion it gram for gram to calculate a gross profit of 70-75%. So a dish we sell for £5 must cost less than £1.25 to make, including any waste, which we are always looking to minimise.

That margin is there to cover the cost of rent, staff, utilities and, if you’re lucky, a profit. But chefs love good produce, so they devise other ways to keep their costs down, turning scraps that cost pennies into a fine meal for which patrons are happy to pay pounds. Noma, for example – one of the best restaurants in the world – serves cod’s head as a main course. Taking on board a chef’s thrift in the kitchen will help you save money while eating healthily and sustainably – as my guide and recipes show.

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