Thai Cooking at Home, 2007 – 2012

[infernooo]

I made Miang of Pomelo with Prawns from David Thompson's "Thai Food". I first tried this dish in his Sydney restaurant Sailors Thai, and that was the moment I really opened my eyes into the _real_ thai food culture and how amazing the combination of sweet, hot, sour and salty can be when balanced properly. It also showed me how many other thai foods there are than green/red/yellow curries and simple stir fries.

It is an An utterly outstanding appetizer with an amazing explosion of flavours and textures when you put it into you mouth. The fresh betel leaves make or break this dish, so don't try any substitutes.

Here is most of the recipe (the ingredients at least):

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Bm4WbF..._search_s&cad=0

Here for an abridged version of it :-): http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/mess...sageID=15016100

Or you can try a slight variation in restaurant sized portions: http://www.miettas.com.au/food_wine_recipe...thompson95.html

Martin Boetz, another Thai food god in Australia has a few different versions which are also nationally adored: Smoked trout with thai herbs: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=STbpRK..._search_s&cad=0

Grilled Scallops with crispy sweet pork and herbs: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=STbpRK..._search_s&cad=0

First and foremost, try David Thompson's version, he really knows how to balance flavours. Following though are some other versions for those interested:

http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/leaf-wrapped-snack/

http://gourmettraveller.com.au/hotsmoked_r...omelo_miang.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/txt/s1640662.htm

Edited March 20, 2009 by infernooo (log)

[JAZ]

I've never cooked any Thai food before, but last night I decided to try my hand at beef satay. It turned out well, I thought, but I've ended up with a lot of sauce left over, and I wonder if anyone can suggest the best way to keep it. The coconut milk in the sauce is what concerns me -- I'm not sure how long it will last in the fridge. Can I freeze the sauce?

[heidih]

I freeze coconut milk all the time. I would freeze your sauce.

[C. sapidus]

We put our dinner guest to work slicing pineapple, threading skewers, and manning the grill. The result was a mostly-Thai meal.

Mom Leaung’s beef satay (Thai Food): Probably my favorite satay. Strip steak sliced fairly thick, marinated for a few hours, and then skewered, grilled, and served with an incendiary dipping sauce.

Garlic-black bean pan-fried fish (Dancing Shrimp): This is one of my favorite ways to cook fish, and after making this a few times I have figured out how to keep the fillets from falling apart. Jasmine rice, Mrs. C’s Asian-style cabbage salad, and remarkably sweet grape tomatoes completed the meal.

For dessert, we dipped pineapple slices in coconut milk and cinnamon sugar, grilled the slices, and served the pineapple with vanilla ice cream. We enjoyed dessert by a crackling fire pit, with younger son tending the blaze. No leftovers, so unfortunately no pictures.

[dmreed]

A simple and satisfying weeknight dinner from Thailand the Beautiful Cookbook, served with jasmine rice.

Curried shrimp (goong pad pong garee): Slivered onions, red bell peppers, and green peppers (I used Poblano chiles) stir-fried with garlic, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, curry powder, and Thai basil.

Bean sprout pork (moo pad tua ngok): Bean sprouts, ground pork, and scallions stir-fried with garlic, white pepper, sugar, and fish sauce.

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wow! that looks so good, I have just ordered the cookbook!

[C. sapidus]

wow! that looks so good, I have just ordered the cookbook!

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Thank you, I hope you enjoy the book. I read through it on the train to NYC, marking every recipe that looked interesting. I still have quite a few to try.

[C. sapidus]

Jasmine rice and dinner from Thai Food:

Coconut chicken soup (tom kha gai) with galangal, lemongrass, shallots, cilantro stems, bird chiles, lime leaves, palm sugar, and fish sauce. Two parts chicken stock to one part coconut milk made the soup taste relatively (deceptively?) light. I added oyster mushrooms and sliced chicken thighs, cooked until done, and served the soup with a squeeze of lime and a dollop of roasted chile paste. This is one of my favorite versions of one of my favorite soups.

Fish cakes (tort man pla): I used the food processor to puree raw fish with egg, red curry paste, fish sauce, and a touch of sugar. I then repeatedly hurled the fishy puree into a bowl until the texture changed, mixed in slivered lime leaves and sliced green beans, and then deep-fried the fish cakes. Hotter oil might have crisped the outside a bit more, but the texture turned out light and spongy (not heavy like most restaurant versions). The boys unfortunately disapproved, but younger son made his palatable with tartar sauce.

[Pan]

That tom kha gai actually looks very rich to me! Much richer than what I get in Thai restaurants.

[C. sapidus]

That tom kha gai actually looks very rich to me! Much richer than what I get in Thai restaurants.

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Interesting. Which do you prefer -- richer or thinner?

[Pan]

I think it would really depend on the balance. I like rich, but there has to be a lot of other flavor to balance it out.

[heidih]

In terms of the richness of the tom kha gai, I would add that when I get the soup from a Thai place catering to Thai clientele, and based on what I have read on making coconut based soup and curries, it seems that a rapid boil is very common. This rapid boil separates the coconut fat out so the soup appears more like a thin broth with fat droplets on the surface. That may be why the look of Bruce's is richer- the fat is integrated.

[C. sapidus]

Neua nam toke (spicy grilled beef salad) from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet. Local ribeye steaks seared on the grill, sliced bloody, and then briefly simmered with beef stock, lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, and roasted rice powder. When the steak had barely changed texture I tossed it with mint, shallots, scallions, and bird chiles. Served with jasmine rice, cucumbers, lettuce, and (for me, anyway) a squirt of Sriracha.

For a special (but non-Thai) dessert, Mrs. C picked sweet, delicate strawberries from the back yard.

[djyee100]

Bruce, that's some great looking food. And thanks for the reminder about strawberries. It's that time of year for making one of my favorite non-Thai desserts, strawberry ice cream.

Today I tried a recipe from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp, Prawns and Bean Thread in Clay Pot (Gkoong Ohb Woon Sen). A dish of prawns and bean threads, braised with garlic, ginger, cilantro, black pepper, fish and soy sauces, and oyster sauce. No chiles in this recipe, and I read it through twice to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me. But plenty of black pepper. Kasma calls this dish "mild."

I reduced the garlic and black pepper by half, and ground it to a coarse paste with the cilantro stems. The dish still had quite a burn from the black pepper. It was also a tad salty for me. Next time I'll reduce the oyster sauce to 2-3 TB. An easy, tasty dish--I'd make it again.

[C. sapidus]

Donna, thanks for sharing that dish. It sounds like old-school (pre-New World chiles) Thai cooking.

Chicken gaprow / krapao / kaprow / grapao / kapow with Thai basil. Yard-long beans parboiled and stir-fried with garlic, fermented soybean paste, and fish sauce (Mrs. C did a great job stir-frying the beans). Jasmine rice, jazzed up with a smidge of brown sugar and salt.

[djyee100]

A refreshing dinner salad for a hot day, Grilled Eggplant Salad with Roasted Peppers and Shrimp (Yam Makeua Yao Pow). A recipe I learned recently in one of Kasma's classes. The peppers are supposed to be jalapenos or fresnos, but I had red bell peppers taking up room in an overcrowded fridge, so I tossed those in. The salad is hearty from the eggplant and peppers, hot and sour from the chile-lime dressing. I'll be adding this recipe to my repertoire of potluck foods--it's Thai, but not intimidating (especially with bell peppers), and I think people will like it.

The recipe is available on Kasma's website here:

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/reggsal.html

We also made the Prawns and Bean Thread in Clay Pot in class, and it was perfect. Why didn't mine come out that well when I made it earlier at home (Post # 797)? So I tried it again at home, and followed the recipe instructions exactly this time , and it came out great. The first time I substituted kecap manis for black soy sauce , because I had run out of black soy sauce, so don't do that. The kecap manis really threw the balance of flavors off. This claypot recipe is easy and delicious. In class Kasma had us line the claypot with bacon (she said pork fat is good too), and that made this dish even better. The bacon is flavored with all that black pepper and cilantro and soy sauce, so don't throw it out--eat it!

Edited July 27, 2009 by djyee100 (log)

[dmreed]

Bruce, that's some great looking food. And thanks for the reminder about strawberries. It's that time of year for making one of my favorite non-Thai desserts, strawberry ice cream.

Today I tried a recipe from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp, Prawns and Bean Thread in Clay Pot (Gkoong Ohb Woon Sen). A dish of prawns and bean threads, braised with garlic, ginger, cilantro, black pepper, fish and soy sauces, and oyster sauce. No chiles in this recipe, and I read it through twice to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me. But plenty of black pepper. Kasma calls this dish "mild." 

I reduced the garlic and black pepper by half, and ground it to a coarse paste with the cilantro stems. The dish still had quite a burn from the black pepper. It was also a tad salty for me. Next time I'll reduce the oyster sauce to 2-3 TB. An easy, tasty dish--I'd make it again.

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is there any where to find this recipe online? or can someone send it to me? Kasma's book is around $45 USD used!

[djyee100]

A couple dishes from Kasma's It Rains Fishes. One of my perennial favorites, String Beans in Roasted Chilli Sauce (Tua Kaek Pad Prik Pow), or string beans stir-fried with garlic, sweet-hot chile paste, and Thai basil, and a new favorite, Hot-and-Sour Dry Rice Noodles (Sen Lik Dtom Yam Haeng). I've turned the page on that noodle recipe for years, and I probably still would not have tried it, but I tasted it in one of Kasma's classes recently, and I loved it. People who like Chinese Hot and Sour Soup would probably like these noodles. They have that same hot and sour intensity.

Besides the hot and sour sauce, the rice noodles are garnished with BBQ pork, lightly poached ground pork, peanuts, green onions, and cilantro. No poached pork liver on top of the noodles, as in the recipe, because I forgot to buy it at my last trip to Chinatown. Actually, I forgot to buy a number of items on my shopping list on that trip, yet somehow many things that were not on my list made it home.

The recipe calls for fresh thin rice noodles, but I had none of that on hand. So I dug through my cabinets and came up with a 1 lb pkg of dried rice vermicelli I was happy to get rid of, and that went into the pot. It tasted fine. Only 3 limes in the house, when the recipe calls for 4, but I thought the lesser sourness was better. Those thin Chinese egg noodles would taste good with this hot and sour sauce, too.

[v. gautam]

Re: Claypot Bean thread with shrimp recipe, here is one

http://www.elook.org/recipes/asian/12331.html

quite similar to the one by Kasma, it would seem. The difference would be lining the pot with either caul fat, or bacon as a substitute.

http://www.elook.org/recipes/asian/12366.html

is another interesting variation on the same theme.

[kha]

Hi, I have a few thai recipes on my blog. My all time favorite is the Pu Phat Ping Curry, which is the famous sauteed crabs with curry powder.

It is best cooked with medium size Mangrove or Mud crabs, which you can find in the muslim area south of phuket.

I cook it in france using french tourteaux, and it is also very good.

Here is the recipe

Sauteed Crabs with curry powderSauteed Crabs with curry powder

Now the recipe is in french, so if you are interested, tell me and I'll translate it for you, and post it on my english blog :

Kha's kitchen - thai, vietnamese and Lao cuisine

It is difficult to make a nice photo of this dish. Besides, never order this dish on a date, it get's very dirty.

Kha

[JAZ]

A couple dishes from Kasma's It Rains Fishes. One of my perennial favorites, String Beans in Roasted Chilli Sauce (Tua Kaek Pad Prik Pow), or string beans stir-fried with garlic, sweet-hot chile paste, and Thai basil. . .

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What kind of chile paste do you use for this recipe? I have the book and decided to give that recipe a try. It was kind of a last minute decision, so I had to go with what I had in the fridge. I had a Chinese style hot chile paste with garlic, and a Thai sweet chile sauce, so I used a combination of the two.

I liked the dish as it was, but would love to make it with the "correct" product; could you post a photo or even just the name of the paste that you use?

[kha]

None of the one you mentionned are suitable for this recipe. Actually, you can easily cook this recipe with just curry powder.

However, when I use curry paste for this dish, I use the massaman curry.

There are three curry pastes in thailand like the colors of the rastas flag : Yellow (massaman), green (for chicken Keng Kia wan kay) and red (paneang Neua).

Here is a picture of this curry : Massaman curry

But believe me, the most important is the curry powder which image is below:

Keep me posted on your experiment.

Kha

A couple dishes from Kasma's It Rains Fishes. One of my perennial favorites, String Beans in Roasted Chilli Sauce (Tua Kaek Pad Prik Pow), or string beans stir-fried with garlic, sweet-hot chile paste, and Thai basil. . .

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What kind of chile paste do you use for this recipe? I have the book and decided to give that recipe a try. It was kind of a last minute decision, so I had to go with what I had in the fridge. I had a Chinese style hot chile paste with garlic, and a Thai sweet chile sauce, so I used a combination of the two.

I liked the dish as it was, but would love to make it with the "correct" product; could you post a photo or even just the name of the paste that you use?

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[djyee100]

Kha, that crab curry was one of my favorite dishes when I tried it in Thailand, so your post brought back some good memories for me.

A couple dishes from Kasma's It Rains Fishes. One of my perennial favorites, String Beans in Roasted Chilli Sauce (Tua Kaek Pad Prik Pow), or string beans stir-fried with garlic, sweet-hot chile paste, and Thai basil. . .

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What kind of chile paste do you use for this recipe? ...

Jaz, I made the string bean dish with a sweet-hot Roasted Chile Paste, nahm prik pow. The chile paste is available in commercial brands in Asian markets, though I made the recipe with some nahm prik pow I brought back from Thailand. Kasma took our group to a small coconut sugar refining factory in the Damnoen Saduak floating market outside Bangkok, and pointed to the nahm prik pow for sale on their counter. We got the hint. The samples of nahm prik pow at the store were served with fried pork rinds. We dipped the crispy pork rinds into the roasted chile paste, and was it good. While the other members of our group wandered around the factory, watching people make sugar, I hung out by the nam prik pow counter, munching chile paste and pork rinds. I wanted to make sure that the shopowners felt appreciated in their efforts.

A photo of the sugar factory from my friend Amber.

For commercial brands of Roasted Chile Paste, Kasma suggests the Mae Ploy and Butterfly brands on her website:

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/brands.html

Kasma also has a recipe for Roasted Chile Paste on her website:

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/nahmprikpow.pdf

We made it recently in one of her cooking classes, and I think it tastes better than any commercial brand I've tried. It's also straightforward to cook. I'm planning to make it myself someday. It's on My List. The Roasted Chile Paste I bought at the market in Thailand tastes very much like the Roasted Chile Paste we made in class.

Also, some of my class notes on the Roasted Chile Paste recipe:

- Slice the shallots about 1/8" thick. Not too thin.

- For this recipe you can use japonais chiles (from Asian markets) for flavor, and throw in some puya chiles (from Hispanic markets) for an attractive red color.

- You can skip the first step of dehydrating the shallots. They actually taste better if they are just fried. Cook them at low-medium heat for about 45 mins, until they are medium-brown. Keep in mind that you will cook them more later. (This was an update on the recipe from Kasma.)

- The yield is about 2 cups. It's good for a year in the fridge; use a clean spoon to dish it out.

[dmreed]

Re: Claypot Bean thread with shrimp recipe, here is one

http://www.elook.org/recipes/asian/12331.html

quite similar to the one by Kasma, it would seem. The difference would be lining the pot with either caul fat, or bacon as a substitute.

http://www.elook.org/recipes/asian/12366.html

is another interesting variation on the same theme.

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thanks, I look forward to trying these (maybe combining the recipes).

[djyee100]

Green Curry with Shrimp Dumplings (Gkaeng Kiow Wahn Loogchin Gkung) from Kasma's It Rains Fishes. Another recipe I turned the page on for years, until I made it in one of Kasma's classes. I was reminded how great ground meat dumplings are as comfort food (think meatballs and spaghetti). This dish is another new favorite.

The recipe is available here:

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/greencur2.html

[dmreed]

In addition to the excellent cookbook suggestions above, cooking videos are another medium that can be very useful.

Here are two dissimilar sets of videos that taken together might offer a lively introduction to Thai cooking. No special stuff, just something to please YOU. The first is expressly meant to teach a Western audience with no previous experience of Thai cookery. The second set records the activity of a busy street corner take-out stall in Thailand. If you absorb these two in conjunction with Austin Bush's fascinating blog, you will naturally find yourself picking up the rhythm and flavors  that make for success in Thai cooking. [ Of course, after reading the cookbooks mentioned or along with them].

http://www.thaifoodtonight.com/thaifoodtonight/home.htm

http://www.ifood.tv/user/recipe/2205

http://www.austinbushphotography.com/category/foodblog/

Here are  some more textual material that might be useful. Ms.Pim comes from the " high society'' of Thailand, so her perspective has its unique value. Ms. Yu has her roots in the Chinese settled in Thailand, and her perspective is also very interesting, e.g. her family story of the Massaman curry. Whereas Thompson often focuses on the cooking of the Imperial kitchens and the arisotcracy, Bush writes about the "boiled" "curries" of Southern Thailand, and Ms. Yu about other strands of life in Bangkok. [bTW, that word "curry" needs to be abolished from the international vocabulary: it conveys no meaning other than a spectrum of misrepresentation]

http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/thai_recipes/index.html

Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking

by Su-mei Yu

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thanks for the video link...most informative