A feast to beat breast cancer

ENJOY A four-course menu dedicated to International Breast Cancer Month at Blue Elephant Bangkok with dishes craftily created with immune-system-boosting Thai herbs and ingredients. 

Created by Chef Nooror Somany Steppe, the Pink Ribbon sumptuously spreads six courses of variety of flavours, colours and textures. Whet your appetite with a mouth-watering plate of spicy chicken consomme served in tiny little cup, accompanied by ba yia – golden and flaky mung-bean cakes flavoured with spices and toasted cumin seeds, which are believed to fight cancer. 

An explosion of flavours comes in the starter platter with three bite-sized savouries. Start with the crispy crab souffle, served with fragrant basil leave and lesser ginger that is loaded with anti-oxidant agent. 

Then move on to miang, which is a savoury snack of herbs wrapped in some kind of leaf. This one is a bite-sized miang with free-range chicken, mixed herb and ginger wrapped in betel leaf. Not only this little monster contains such variety of texture, the flavour is layering beautifully and harmoniously. Just one bite could make your mouth water like crazy! 

The last bit on the starter course is the even more flavourful scallop salad with Thai mimosa tips (kra tin) and gotu kola leaves (bai bua bok). The main ingredients are enhanced with typical Thai herbs such as garlic, bird’s-eye chilli, lime juice, coconut cream and roasted chilli paste to give well-rounded, mouthful flavours with outstanding sourness, saltiness and spiciness to it. 

Cool down your palate just a bit with probably the most soothing dish in the set, the chicken-stuffed rambutan soup with soursop leaves. The chicken is spiced and stuffed in sweet, juicy rambutan, cooked in fragrant herbal broth then sprinkled with shredded soursop leaves that are high in Vitamin A. The soup is served in whole roasted coconut shell, which adds the sweetness and the richness to the soup. You can eat the coconut flesh, too, and it’s just heavenly after being soaked in the soup for while. 

The main course is hearty and, again, very flavourful. There’s minced tiger prawn stir-fry with pungent yet addictive sator seeds and crispy cumin leaves. Sator seeds and cumin leaves seem like an overpowering combo, but the result comes out surprisingly well and both the herbs really enhance the dish, and bless it with nice texture. Another dish is crispy snakehead fish served with sweet and sour tamarind and lime sauce, with caramelised ginger. Most restaurant serves this dish either too sweet or too sour, but this one gets it right, with added fragrance of the ginger. 

Included in the main course is also southern-style red curry with anti-oxidant-laden Indian mulberry leaves. You could choose to have it with either rib-eye beef or Jinhua pork, which is a dry-cured ham. The three mini-dishes are served with steamed jasmine rice, accompanied with southern-style stir-fried pak miang, which has lots of Vitamin A in its nutty, dark green leaves. 

The meal ends with a sweet extravagance of mango pudding served with an insanely sour mamuang hao manao ho berry compote. These pinkish berries, which have no relation to mango whatsoever, are rare local Thai fruits that contains almost universal medicinal effects – from disinfectant, detoxification to curing diabetes, cancer, gout and heart disease. The plate is served with coconut milk-infused sticky rice and macadamia vanilla ice cream. 

Proceed from the meals will benefit Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer. 

 

TO YOUR HEALTH

>>> The Pink Ribbon set menu costs Bt1,980 at lunch (11.30 to 2.30) and dinner (6.30 to 10.30) daily throughout this month.

>>> Blue Elephant Bangkok is on South Sathorn Road next to the Surasak BTS. 

>>> Reservations are recommended at (02) 673 9353-8 or www.BlueElephant.com/Bangkok.