For our latest What to Cook this Week edition I’m sharing recipes for easy weeknight meals – kicking off with a Cambodian chicken curry and some Cambodian sides (I’ve had cravings), savoury and sweet pancake recipes for Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday, and three different chilli recipes for International Chilli Day on Thursday.
I’ve just had some friends visiting for the first time since the start of the pandemic and I sent them to dinner at every one of Siem Reap’s best Cambodian restaurants. I was messaging them suggestions as to what to eat, just as I’m sharing tips with you to what to cook this week to eat.
As a result, I’m craving Cambodian food and in particular a Cambodian chicken curry. Of course Cambodians never just eat one dish. They eat an array of dishes sharing-style. There are only two of us, however, so we stick to a few dishes, perhaps adding a plate of stir-fried leafy greens and a side, and steamed rice. More on that below.
If you’re visiting us here at Grantourismo for the first time – welcome! – What to Cook this Week is a random-ish weekly-ish recipe series, where on most Mondays I dig around in the Grantourismo recipe archives, which are bursting with countless recipes from around the globe for five delicious midweek dinner ideas for you.
For What to Cook this Week we try to suggest a real mix of recipes – ideas for dishes to cook when you don’t feel like cooking, recipes that might require a little bit of an effort but will be worth it, and dishes to make on a Friday night when you’re looking forward to spending some time in the kitchen with loved-ones, a bottle of wine, and good music in the background.
Now, before you scroll down to my suggestions for what to cook this week, I have a favour to ask of you. Grantourismo is partly funded by its readers. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting our work by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee.
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What to Cook This Week – Pancakes, Pork Belly, Spicy Bean Chilli and Ribs Recipes
Our ideas for What to Cook this Week include everything from a Cambodian chicken curry to pancakes, pork belly and chilli recipes.
Monday – Cambodian Chicken Curry Recipe
As I’ve had cravings for Cambodian food, my top suggestion for what to cook this week is a local dish that I’m making tonight, a Cambodian chicken curry. It’s one of my favourite Cambodian recipes.
This Khmer chicken curry recipe makes one of Southeast Asia’s most comforting chicken curries. While it has a depth of flavour that comes from dried spices and fresh aromatic ingredients, it has a richness thanks to a liberal use of coconut cream and milk, and a gentleness due to the mild red chillies.
Unless they were eating alone, Cambodians would never eat only a curry and rice, rather they’d a handful of dishes to share. The spread would typically include a soup, such as this sour beef soup with morning glory, a stir-fry, perhaps of leafy green vegetables, maybe a braise, and loads of steamed rice.
As there are only two of us, I’m also going to make this Cambodian grilled eggplant with minced pork recipe for chha trob for short in Khmer, which its one of our best eggplant recipes. The eggplant is char-grilled so it has a wonderful smoky flavour, while the minced pork, stir-fried with fermented soybeans, is a little funky, a little salty, and a little sweet.
I might also make this pomelo and prawn salad or maybe this pork and yam bean salad, or perhaps some stir-fried morning glory, and we’ll eat all that with loads of jasmine rice. As our 10-year-old rice cooker finally died, I’ve actually been making rice on the stovetop so I’ll be sharing tips on that soon.
Cambodian Chicken Curry Recipe for a Gentle Comforting Southeast Asian Curry
Tuesday – Pancake Recipes for Pancake Day
Tuesday is Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, Pancake Tuesday or Mardi Gras, which in French means ‘Fat Tuesday’. For many Christians, it’s a day of indulging in food (among other things), particularly sweets and traditionally pancakes, before Lent, a period of sacrifice begins.
In the Orthodox Slavic countries of Russian, Belarus and Ukraine today actually kicks off Maslenitsa or Pancake Week, also known as Butter Week and Cheese Week, and a whole week of eating pancakes and celebrations and rituals dating back to ancient times.
So naturally, one of suggestions for what to cook this week is pancakes and I have two round-ups for you: a collection of pancake recipes from around the world, including everything from Vietnamese turmeric tinted crepes and Japanese okonomiyaki, and a compilation of my best pancake recipes, which are Russian-Ukrainian family recipes from my baboushka’s kitchen.
They include traditional blini (pancakes) such as potato pancakes, buckwheat pancakes and ricotta pancakes, both sweet and savoury. I’ll let you decide to what to make, but I’m going to make sweet pancakes during the day and savoury in the evening.
Best Pancake Recipes for Blini, Buckwheat, Potato and Ricotta Pancakes
Wednesday – Five Spice Crispy Pork Belly Recipe
This five-spice crispy pork belly recipe is one of our favourite ways to cook pork belly and is another of my top suggestions for what to cook this week. Terence refined his take on the dish over a few years and it’s heavenly. While this refined version is perfect for a weekend dinner party main course, we can eat it any night of the week.
This five-spice crispy pork belly recipe isn’t a labor intensive dish at all, but the pork requires a couple of days of fridge time before final serving, so if you’re reading this on Monday and you’re planning to make it this week, better stick it in the fridge today or tomorrow.
After the pork belly is cooked through, the cooled-off pork goes back in the refrigerator for at least another 12 hours, weighed down to make the pork perfectly even in height. The pork then goes back into the oven to get the skin perfectly crispy.
The final result looks like it came from a Michelin-starred restaurant. You can learn more about this technique in this Gordon Ramsay video. For this five-spice crispy pork belly recipe we use this handy meat tenderiser tool that Terence found on Amazon.
Five-Spice Crispy Pork Belly Recipe – A Refined Rendition for a Dinner Party
Thursday – Chilli for Chilli Day
A big pot of chilli for International Chilli Day on Thursday is another of my top ideas for what to cook this week and we have three chilli recipes for you. Terence’s chili con carne recipe makes a good old bowl of chilli for those who like their chilli hot and smoky.
It’s a hearty chilli that takes a few hours – but not a lot of work – to make. We eat this the first night with salad, red salsa, Mexican cotija or sour cream, and jalapenos. The next day we’ll make nachos with guacamole and then the day after that, some quesadillas.
My easy vegetarian chilli recipe makes a chilli con carne sin carne (without meat). It’s one of our best canned beans recipes and it’s vegan if you eat it without dairy accompaniments such as sour cream and cheese. While this bean chilli is a cinch to make and comes together quickly, it’s full of so much flavour thanks to the spices that even meat-lovers won’t miss the beef mince.
Lastly, this white bean chilli recipe makes a chilli con carne with ground pork rather than beef (you could also use ground chicken) and white beans instead of kidney beans. We use butter beans and cannellini beans, as well as corn kernels to add a little sweetness and crunch. Gently spiced, it’s a crowd-pleasing bean chilli, but you could always turn up the heat with more chilli
White Bean Chilli Recipe for a Gently Spiced Crowd-Pleasing White Bean Chilli
Friday – Sticky Asian Pork Ribs
This sticky Asian pork ribs recipe is my final suggestion for what to cook this week. It makes deliciously addictive Chinese style baked ribs. Plates of pork ribs are fantastic for feeding a crowd – whether it’s a casual get-together, game day gathering or backyard barbecue.
Brining the pork helps tenderise the meat and keeps the pork succulent, while also making the cooking time over a grill quite short. Our sticky Asian pork ribs recipe will make you finger-licking ribs of moist pork meat that cook on a grill in no time.
Here in Southeast Asia we often eat the pork ribs simply with stir-fried morning glory and steamed rice but typically they’d form one of an array of dishes as part of a shared family-style meal. You could serve the ribs with fried spring rolls, some dumplings, fried rice, Chinese leafy greens, and a stir-fry or braise, such as Cambodian cashew chicken or Vietnamese braised pork belly.
Sticky Asian Pork Ribs Recipe for Chinese Style Baked Ribs with Sesame
Please do let us know if you make any of our recipes from our What to Cook this Week recipe series this week as we’d love to hear how they turned out for you.
