THAI ONE ON Bring a taste of the Orient into your life

Recreating the Thai Culinary experience can often become a somewhat flavouiless pursuit. And while the Siamese cooking

One of . Thailand, .. I ~ g mentality is often one of outdoor "‘ . 2"?“ = abandonment. fear not firestauran ' 1’ . people: help is at hand in I " the form of user-friendly

website importforxl.com. This isn't so much a gem as a veritable gemstore of a site. There's recipes. ingredients. ceramics. sauces and cookbooks aplenty. Also. here you can conveniently purchase authentic. quality ingredients

imported from Thailand. Truly Buddha-ful stuff. Here's our favourite recipe . . .

LYCI-IEE ICE-CREAM Ingredients

960ml (or a bit more) plain ice-cream

4 teaspoons sugar

1 12g butter

7:3g crushed cornflakes

7:3g drained lychees

Method

Leave the ice-cream in the refrigerator for one or two hours as it should be quite soft. Mix the sugar. melted butter and crushed cornflakes in a large bowl. DiVide into three portions. Use one portion to line the inside of a 200m cake pan for leaf pan). Mix the soft ice-cream With coarsely chopped lychees. Spread half of the ice—cream mixture over the crumb mix. followed by the second portion of crumb mix. Top With the remaining ice—cream and crumbs. Cover with a piece of baking foil and freeze until firm.

I Log onto importfood. com

CELEBRl TY CHEFS TONY & GIORGIO BBC 2, Thu, 8.30pm 00

Allan and r \

Locatelli: evenly i v,

matched a,

The ‘buddy genre' is a well established and evergreen part of TV programming with most recent incarnations covering everything from archaeology to the loveable ugh -- Homefronf antics of Laurence and Diarmiud. Tony Allan and Giorgio Locatelli are more evenly matched than that intentionally odd couple.

Allan is the founder of the Fish! restaurant chain. which recently went belly up. He was great pals with chef Marco Pierre White before being forced to apologise and pay a significant settlement to the taciturn Frenchman (after alleging White once used pen ink in a sguid dish as a Jokei.

Locatelli is the chef proprietor of the hottest Italian restaurant in London. Locanda Locatelli. It recently made headlines when a customer. bainl')oo/led when an off—the-menu special turned out to be a 57.30 starter. was held hostage until ransom that is, full payment was made.

Beyond this penchant for publicity of dubious deSign, they share the same floppy but \.vell—t(,-ii(le(l dark manes, designer shades. black leather Jackets and a relentless blokey repartee. While some Will no doubt be charmed by these boyish tliirtysoinethings. others might hold ()ut hope that the dandy duo sound a death knell for any more slick food shows like this.

Admittedly. the cuisine they cook looks mouth watering and the pair promote the shibboleths of enlightened 21st centuiy cookery: seasonal produce. local suppliers. trace-ability of meat and neighbourhood shops.

But do they really uphold them? Two minutes after Allan means that we Britons don't sufficiently appreciate the fish from the seas all around us. he's drooling over some tuna flown in from Sri l.anka.

lhere's a good share of chummy back-slapping and piss taking. When I ocatelli shouts out orders in Italian. Allan Jokes that he Just named the Italian football team. Ha ha.

lhese two laugh frequently. But it feels about as conVincing as New Labour's defence of an ethical foreign policy. lBarry Shelby)

Food 8. Drink

' lentttilieiifiiiiii (unfamiliar llitl tooling, along ionisziiiiiitiitlitlifitiiiil dishes. l e dttlli is iiifoiiiiiil, illitSllllllSllllllllttlS fioiii students of iii in langkok.

Dusit Thai Restaurant 49a Thistle Street Edinburgh EH2 1DY t: 0131 220 6846 www.dusit.co.uk e: info@dusit.co.uk

Thaiso‘nul’t

Premium South-East Asian Cuisine on-derncsnd delivered in Edinburgh

0131 221 1231 www.thaisanuk.com

25% off for List readers with this ad

5pm The best dining deals in town

See

for this week's unmissable offers

'n‘ THE LIST 101