A friend and I made a couple of Thai dishes from a cookbook tonight and we had mixed feelings about the results. First of all the Thai fried rice with pork seemed a little bland to us. The recipe called for Thai fish sauce to be added at the end along with soy sauce and a little bit of superfine sugar. We used Vietnamese fish sauce because that was what we had. It tasted fine, but on the whole was a little bland. Does this just happen to be a more bland recipe in general or can anyone suggest ways to spice it up a little. In addition, we made chicken satay. This turned out great, but the peanut sauce was considerably different in look and taste from what I've seen in Thai restaurants. Ours called for processing the juice of a lime, 6Ts of crunchy peanut butter, a seeded and minced red chili, salt and cocoanut milk. The consistancy was a little grainy and it started to separate. The sauces I've seen in restaurants have always had an almost velvety caramel quality about them and a deeper peanut color. Is this just an Americanized version of the peanut sauce or is that more authentic. I got the recipies out of a book called "Thai Cooking" by Judy Bastyra. I'd appreciate any advice on this and Thai cooking in general. Thanks!
A friend and I made a couple of Thai dishes from a cookbook tonight and we had mixed feelings about the results. First of all the Thai fried rice with pork seemed a little bland to us. The recipe called for Thai fish sauce to be added at the end along with soy sauce and a little bit of superfine sugar. We used Vietnamese fish sauce because that was what we had. It tasted fine, but on the whole was a little bland. Does this just happen to be a more bland recipe in general or can anyone suggest ways to spice it up a little. In addition, we made chicken satay. This turned out great, but the peanut sauce was considerably different in look and taste from what I've seen in Thai restaurants. Ours called for processing the juice of a lime, 6Ts of crunchy peanut butter, a seeded and minced red chili, salt and cocoanut milk. The consistancy was a little grainy and it started to separate. The sauces I've seen in restaurants have always had an almost velvety caramel quality about them and a deeper peanut color. Is this just an Americanized version of the peanut sauce or is that more authentic. I got the recipies out of a book called "Thai Cooking" by Judy Bastyra. I'd appreciate any advice on this and Thai cooking in general. Thanks!