For What to Cook this Week, my ideas for easy mid-week meals include five versatile recipes for year-round dishes that can be easily adapted for your season – whether you’re in the blazing-hot northern hemisphere, where many are suffering from a particularly sizzling early summer, or you’re in the chilly southern hemisphere, which is experiencing one of its coldest winters in decades.
We have been very lucky weather-wise here in Cambodia this year – so far! Our hottest months of the year, March and April, were nowhere near as scorching or sticky as they’ve been in the past, and up until now the wet season hasn’t been anywhere wet as it usually is – aside from a few wild storms.
The weather here has been so mild that I’ve barely used the air-conditioning (normally unheard of at this time of year) and we’ve had cool breezy evenings where I’ve almost needed a cardigan and could happily have slept with the windows open if we had screens.
I’ve even been cooking and eating hot bowls of soup. Today I had a bowl of creamy corn chowder for lunch (recipe going up later today) and tomorrow I’m testing Basque garlic soup recipes, which I’ll naturally end up eating. The perks of the work!
What I look for when planning easy mid-week meals when the weather is so fickle and unseasonable – or so extreme – are year-round dishes that can be adapted to suit the circumstances. Such as the Thai fried egg salad recipe for yam khai dao. Go heavy on the salad in summer and serve it with comforting steamed rice in winter.
But before I share my ideas for what to cook this week, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes or other content on the site, please consider supporting Grantourismo. You could buy us a coffee and we’ll use that donation to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing or donate to our epic original Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon.
Another option is to use our links to book accommodation, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, buy travel insurance, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Or purchase something on Amazon, such as these James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, or gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay extra.
You could also shop our Grantourismo store on Society6 for gifts for foodies, including fun reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let me share some suggestions for what to cook this week.
What to Cook this Week – Winter and Summer Mid-Week Meal Ideas from Carnitas to Curry
Monday – Thai Fried Egg Salad Recipe for Yam Khai Dao
This Thai fried egg salad recipe makes yam khai dao, a filling salad of crispy fried eggs with sweet tomatoes, purple shallots, crunchy peanuts, fragrant coriander, Chinese celery, and chillies, with a salad dressing that’s all at once sweet, sour, tangy, and funky.
A Thai ‘yam’ – also written as ‘yum’ – is a kind of salad comparable to a tossed salad. The Thai word ‘yam’ in fact doesn’t mean salad as such, but means to mix, toss or combine together. In contrast to a salad such as som tam, which is pounded, the salad ingredients are combined in a mixing bowl and plated.
‘Khai dao’ in Thai means ‘fried egg’, but quite literally ‘star egg’, and it’s a Thai style of fried egg, which means its deep-fried or fried in a lot of oil so that the egg is brown and crispy.
Sweet juicy tomatoes, aromatic coriander, crunchiness coming from the purple shallots, roasted peanuts and Chinese celery stems, a hit of heat from the chillies, crispy fried eggs that soak up a salad dressing that’s sour, sweet, tangy, and funky… yum! This Thai fried egg salad is so simple yet so delicious and it’s a fantastic winter or summer dish.
In winter, I’d serve it with steamed jasmine rice or sticky rice to make a more filling and comforting meal, while in summer I bump up the salad. Fish sauce is essential. We recommend Thailand’s Megachef for its balance and consistency.
Thai Fried Egg Salad Recipe for Yam Khai Dao, a Deliciously Addictive Crispy Fried Egg Salad
Tuesday – Pork Carnitas Recipe
We like to use Taco Tuesday as an excuse to make Mexican food so tomorrow we’re planning on making this traditional pork carnitas recipe for tacos de carnitas, which we fell in love with in Mexico City many years ago.
Carnitas means ‘little meats’ and tacos de carnitas are made with melt-in-your-mouth slow-cooked pulled pork, a green salsa made from tomatillos, a little fresh coriander, and lime quarters on the side. These minimalist tacos really exemplify that less is more approach.
The mouthwatering pork is slow-braised until it’s so juicy and tender it easily falls apart. The heat is then increased to get crispy bits of pork for delicious contrasts of texture and flavour.
We serve these much-loved tacos carnitas family-style with everything at the centre of the table so everyone can arrange their own proportions of carnitas to salsa and homemade guacamole. We use corn tortillas when we can get them (and wheat flour tortillas when we can’t) and green tomatillo salsa (not red tomato salsa), just as they do in Mexico.
If you have leftover carnitas, make some quesadillas with homemade pickled jalapeños, douse some hot sauce on top (we like Tapatio and Cholula), drizzle on some Mexican crema or drop a dollop of sour cream on there, and serve some refried beans on the side. Wash it also down with micheladas or margaritas.
Pork Carnitas Recipe for Mexican Slow Cooked Pulled Pork Tacos de Carnitas
Wednesday – Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs
I like the idea of this salmon potato salad recipe with soft-boiled eggs, capers, gherkins and dill for Wednesday night. It’s one of my family recipes and one of my favourite potato salad recipes.
It makes a filling salad that you can definitely eat year-round. In the cool season, you can serve it with warm potatoes and seared salmon straight from the pan, while in summer it can be refrigerated for warm weather meals, such as barbecues and picnics.
In summer and spring, I suggest dressing it with little else but extra virgin olive oil, quality sea salt and good ground black pepper, but in winter, I strongly recommend adding creamy mayonnaise and combining everything well.
In that case, the runnier the eggs the better, but otherwise, in warm weather, soft jammy eggs are what you want. Terence has an excellent guide to boiling perfect eggs every time.
Russian Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs, Gherkins, Capers and Dill
Thursday – Chicken Schnitzel Recipe with Coleslaw
I don’t know about you but I can tuck into a chicken schnitzel no matter what the season. When the weather is warm, I love it with a side of coleslaw and when it’s cold outside it’s fantastic with this Mediterranean-style warm potato salad recipe with capers, anchovies, chives, and celery leaves or this hot German potato salad.
Our chicken schnitzel recipe makes moist, tender chicken fillets with a super crunchy coating thanks to panko breadcrumbs, which are elevated with lemon zest and parmesan.
Terence and I usually make chicken schnitzel together. He pounds the chicken breasts into fillets and handles the shallow-frying, while I take on the role I did as a kid back in the 1970s, when I helped mum by dredging the fillets in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, while she made the potato salad and coleslaw.
You’ll need to give the chicken a light pounding with a meat mallet, but don’t pound too much, and you’ll need a good food thermometer to check the temperature of the chicken so it’s cooked through but not going dry.
If you like the idea of a more casual meal for a Thursday night, try our chicken schnitzel burger recipe.
Chicken Schnitzel Recipe with Crunchy Panko Breadcrumb Coating with Parmesan and Lemon Zest
Friday – Creamy Cambodian Coconut Pineapple Fish Curry Recipe
If Friday night is curry night for you, then try this Cambodian coconut pineapple fish curry recipe for samlor ktis Koh Kong. It’s a sweet-ish gently spiced curry made with coconut cream, pineapple and baby eggplants from Koh Kong, an island and coastal province in Cambodia’s southwest.
A samlor is a soup or stew, but with a spice paste base this very much tastes like a curry and it’s the kind of curry that you imagine tucking into on a beach holiday, sitting within splashing distance of the sea – with a bowl of fragrant jasmine rice, an icy cold beer to wash it down with, and your toes in squeaky white sand.
Samlor ktis Koh Kong is sweet from the coconut cream, fresh ripe pineapple and creamy palm sugar, and gently-spiced and fragrant from the herbaceous kroeung – a Cambodian herb and spice paste pounded from fresh lemongrass stalks, galangal, kaffir lime zest, turmeric, garlic, shallots, and red chillies.
We like to pound our spice pastes in a large granite mortar and pestle. It’s therapeutic and provides a great work-out for the arms, and we also believe spice pastes taste better made in a mortar. If you haven’t used one before, we have tips to using a mortar and pestle. But by all means, if you don’t have the time, use a blender.
Creamy Cambodian Coconut Pineapple Fish Curry Recipe for Samlor Ktis Koh Kong
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make any of our What to Cook this Week recipes as we always love to hear how our recipes turned out for you.
