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In the past few years I've become a big big fan of Thai Salads, aka "Yum".  In fact, I look forward to a good Yum even more than a good curry these days.  I find the unique combinations of sweet, spicy, tart, salty and vinigary ingedients in the best Yums to be absolutely unbeatable.

Does anyone else share this obsession, and if so have you tried to prepare them at home?  Or if not, what restaurants have you had the best Yum at?

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

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Sure, I love yums and laaps, and I often make them at home.  They're easy and, as you know, incredibly delicious.  My favorite part is the making and tasting of the dressing.  I probably taste far more often than is necessary, just because that combination of fish sauce, chiles, garlic, and lime juice is about my favorite taste ever.

I can't remember the name in Thai, but probably my favorite yum is "fluffy catfish" with flaked and fried catfish and green mango.  There's a recipe in Dancing Shrimp that came out very similar to what I ate in Bangkok.

Matthew Amster-Burton, aka "mamster"

Author, Hungry Monkey, coming in May

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my God, i thought i was the only freak.  i have *cravings* for yum at least once a week.  and once i get the thought, i have to have it.

i make something at home that resembles dishes at thai restaurants, and i generally have very good results:

Throw a couple of trimmed pork chops in the food processor to make ground pork.

Saute chopped ginger and garlic in a little canola oil (I use a spice grinder to quickly pulverize the ginger and garlic).  

Add the pork and some black pepper.

Cook til just about done.

Prepare the dressing:  lime juice, fish sauce, chopped chilis, sugar.

Add some dressing to the pork and finish cooking for another 20 seconds or so.

Mix the pork with rice noodle that has been soaking in hot water to soften.

Mix in sliced red pepper, sliced red onion, sliced green onion, cilantro, more dressing.

Serve over iceburg (the KING of crunchy lettuce) and dress with remaining dressing.

Pop open a bottle of something nice and acidic (new zealand SB or a riesling do the trick)

And you’ve got yourself a wonderful 20 minute summer meal that you can eat in the winter. :)

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Rachel makes a good "deconstructed summer roll" salad which is essentially thinly sliced rare sirloin or shrimp tossed up with cooked rice stick noodles, lettuce, mint, cilantro, shallot, thai basil, toasted peanuts, chopped up bird chilis, lettuce, and fish sauce, vinegar and sriracha and whatever other veggies we have from our garden that are lying around.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

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Quote: from tommy on 1:46 pm on Aug. 29, 2001

my God, i thought i was the only freak.  i have *cravings* for yum at least once a week.  and once i get the thought, i have to have it.

i make something at home that resembles dishes at thai restaurants, and i generally have very good results:

Throw a couple of trimmed pork chops in the food processor to make ground pork.

Saute chopped ginger and garlic in a little canola oil (I use a spice grinder to quickly pulverize the ginger and garlic).  

Add the pork and some black pepper.

Cook til just about done.

Prepare the dressing:  lime juice, fish sauce, chopped chilis, sugar.

Add some dressing to the pork and finish cooking for another 20 seconds or so.

Mix the pork with rice noodle that has been soaking in hot water to soften.

Mix in sliced red pepper, sliced red onion, sliced green onion, cilantro, more dressing.

Serve over iceburg (the KING of crunchy lettuce) and dress with remaining dressing.

Pop open a bottle of something nice and acidic (new zealand SB or a riesling do the trick)

And you’ve got yourself a wonderful 20 minute summer meal that you can eat in the winter. :)

Uh... all I can say after reading that is "Yum"--pun intended.

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

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Has anybody seen the current issue of Simple Cooking. Not specifically relevant to this topic, but there's a lot of information in there about satay and satay sauces, which seem to me similar to some Thai salad dressings.

That fluffy catfish salad is available in an excellent rendition at Sripriphai in Queens, although I must warn you that my last service experience there was pretty awful (and I don't make that claim lightly). Still, it's the best Thai in the city as far as I'm concerned. It's amazing, you can't even tell the stuff is catfish it's so completely denatured. But it sure is good.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Quote: from tommy on 1:46 pm on Aug. 29, 2001

Mix the pork with rice noodle that has been soaking in hot water to soften.

in fact, i think i use mueng bean noodle, which is made from ground bean sprouts, errr, or something.  it's my favorite noodle.

my favorite thai in NYC used to be on Doyers in chinatown.  cheap, delicious, and their wine list had someone other than chardonnay, which is more i can say for most similar places.  but, it went bye-bye. :(

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My old favorite, Thai Mint on Pell, also is no more. They used to call me "Mr. Spicy Noodle." One of the waitresses, Tik, was studying to convert to Judaism. It was a strange place. I miss it.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Quote: from Fat Guy on 4:27 pm on Aug. 29, 2001

My old favorite, Thai Mint on Pell, also is no more.

now that you say that, the place i'm thinking of was on Pell, not Doyers.  i don't recall it being called Thai Mint, however i do remember it changing names at one point.  perhaps that was the old name?  at the front of the restaurant was a lone table at the window.  secluded with a nice view.  

A-HA!!!  luckily, i have a library of old Zagat's, dating back to 1845, here at my disposal.  the place was called Mueng Thai, oddly enough, considering i just got done saying how mueng bean noodle is my favorite noodle.   i be a little slow today.

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Thai Mint also had such a table. I'll see if I can find the address -- it might have been the same place.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Quote: from Fat Guy on 4:53 pm on Aug. 29, 2001

Thai Mint also had such a table. I'll see if I can find the address -- it might have been the same place.

Mueng Thai - 23 pell.

and on another completely unrelated note (it seems our off-topic topic has gone off topic as well), i am very excited to see that i've made it to the illustrious "Stomach Pump Pending" level on egullet.  i guess that means i love talking about food and dining.  or perhaps i'm just a lonely guy with a lot of free time on his hands.

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I go to a thai restaurant with friends and the first words out of my mouth is "who wants to share some squid yum?"  Nobody's interested.  Now i feel vindicated.  Yum is >the< foodie pick of thai cuisine.  

I find thai angel on grand and...laffayette and center?... to be somewhat inconsistant but when they're on, they're wonderful.  Great squid yum, of the still warm extra chilli variety and very good beef and green papaya salad.  Beware the chicken curry though, go for beef.

My introduction to yum was thai restaurant (used to be a pongsri) on baxter and bayard.  They've fallen off of late but had great yum and choisam back in the day (fyi i'm 24).

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Quote: from Max Robbin on 7:50 pm on Aug. 29, 2001

I go to a thai restaurant with friends and the first words out of my mouth is "who wants to share some squid yum?"  Nobody's interested.  Now i feel vindicated.  Yum is >the< foodie pick of thai cuisine.  

I find thai angel on grand and...laffayette and center?... to be somewhat inconsistant but when they're on, they're wonderful.  Great squid yum, of the still warm extra chilli variety and very good beef and green papaya salad.  Beware the chicken curry though, go for beef.

My introduction to yum was thai restaurant (used to be a pongsri) on baxter and bayard.  They've fallen off of late but had great yum and choisam back in the day (fyi i'm 24).

Perhaps its a bit more pedestrian than Squid Yum, but my faves are Duck Yum and Beef Yum.  Relatively boring, I know, but some of the versions I've had have been really great.

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

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You probably knew this, but "meung thai" is Thai for "Thailand".

I definitely need to hit Sripraphai next time I'm in NYC.  Although I'm going to be in Thailand before that, so maybe it's a moot point.

The fluffy catfish was easier to make at home than I expected.

Matthew Amster-Burton, aka "mamster"

Author, Hungry Monkey, coming in May

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Quote: from Max Robbin on 3:08 pm on Aug. 30, 2001

I find that using the traditional palm suger as opposed to white or brown suger makes a flavor difference.  

have you found a way to keep your palm sugar from becoming rock hard, which makes it next to impossible to use?  i end up scraping the stuff with a spoon to break little bits loose.  this generally takes about 2 hours.

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Saw this website for a Thai restaurant (http://www.yumyum.co.uk/) and noticed that they call the dishes "Yam" instead of "Yum".  Is this just a case of the English being contrary again, or is this a legit alternate spelling? :)

I was also interested by the fact that these guys give the recipes to everything they serve.  Cool!  Of special note are a few things I haven't seen elsewhere, like the <a href="http://www.yumyum.co.uk/yamthavai.html">Jungle Salad (YAM THA VAI) </a>, the <a href="http://www.yumyum.co.uk/yamsomo.html">Pomelo Salad (YAM SOM O) </a> and the <a href="http://www.yumyum.co.uk/yamhuapee.html">Banana Flower Salad (YAM HUA PEE)</a>.

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

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There's a great recipe for pomelo salad in Hot Sour Salty Sweet.  "Yam" is an acceptable romanization;  there is no standard way of romanizing the Thai alphabet, so you'll see Thai words get anglicized to all sorts of things.  As you might expect, the Thai word is pronounced somewhere between "yahm" and "yum".

Tom yum, incidentally, means "salad soup".

Matthew Amster-Burton, aka "mamster"

Author, Hungry Monkey, coming in May

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