Laab

Laab, also known as Larb and Laap, is a northeastern food. It usually eaten as a part of a set (laab, papaya salad and sticky rice.) The set is accompanied by string beans, sliver of cabbage, water spinach and Thai basil. It can be served as an appetizer. It can also be served as a main course along with other non-northeastern food.

There are variations of laab, duck laab, chicken laab. Some people like my brother love to include a few pieces of liver in laab.
1-2 Servings

1	tablespoon	toasted rice
1/4		shallot, thinly sliced
1-2		limes
1/2	lbs	ground pork
1/4	tablespoon	ground dried chili pepper
3	tablespoons	fish sauce
5	sprigs	cilantro, sliced

Squeeze juice from 1/3 of the lime on to the ground pork. Mix well and let it marinade for just a couple of minutes until you are ready to cook it.

For this dish, people normally use a small pot; I use my cast iron pans because they can be heated up really hot, they retain heat well and heat evenly.

Heat up a pan on high until it is very hot. Add two tablespoons of water and then immediately add your marinated pork and stir. The pork will stick to the pan at first, but then the juice will come out and the meat will loosen from the bottom. Keep stirring until the pork is well done. Traditionally, the pork is undercooked, but I do not recommend undercooking pork for health reasons.

Put the pork in a bowl a large mixing bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Add fish sauce, green onion, shallot, cilantro, the rest of the lime juice, ground chili pepper and almost all of toasted rice into the bowl. Save some toasted rice to sprinkle on top for garnish. Mix well and taste. It should be a little bit hot. You should be able to taste tartness from the lime juice and the fish sauce. If you need to add more fish sauce or lime juice, don't be afraid. Getting the flavor balance right is a trial and error process.

Put the mixed ingredients in a serving bowl, garnish with spearmint and sprinkle the rest of toasted rice on top. Serve with vegetables like cabbage, green beans, lettuce and Thai basil.

Mango on Sticky Rice(Kow Neuw Mamuang)

Mango on sticky rice is a traditional summer dessert because mangoes are in season during the summer months of April and May. When I think of mango on sticky rice, I think of the days when school is out--the carefree summer.

mango peeled
Make the coconut milk and sticky rice below.

Peel and slice ripe mango. Place sticky rice on a small plate and top with mango. Spoon the coconut milk on top of the mango and sticy rice

Coconut Milk Sticky Rice - Kow Neuw Moon

Sticky Rice is a core ingredient of thai desserts and northeastern thai food. Here's how you make it easily.

2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup sticky rice
2 pinches salt
1 cup coconut milk

The Traditional Method Using a Steamer:
Soak the sticky rice in enough water to cover the rice for at least an hour and even overnight. Take your steamer, put water in the bottom and cover the steam section with cheese cloth or muslin cloth. Pour the sticky rice on the cheesecloth, cover with the lid and put it on the stove on medium to high heat. The sticky rice should take about a 20 minutes of steaming to cook and will become translucent when done.

The Microwave Method:
I learned this method from my friend who has mastered microwave cooking to such a high level of proficiency that she has earned the title 'the microwave queen'.

Soak the sticky rice for 10 minutes in warm water in a bowl. Soaking the rice is very important. I have tried this method without soaking the rice first and it was disastrous. The rice was undercooked and inedible. The water level should be just above the rice, which comes out to be 1 cup of rice and a little over 1 cup of water (about 10% more). I recommend using a non-plastic container because you may melt the plastic in the microwave. Cover the bowl with a dish and cook in microwave for at full power 3 minutes. Stir the rice around to move the rice from the top to the bottom. You will notice that some of the rice is translucent or cooked and some still has white center or the uncooked portion.

Heat it up again for another 3 minutes. Check and see if it is done. When cooked, all the rice should be translucent. If it needs more cooking, I recommend heating up and checking every 3 minutes or so. How long it takes to cook really depends on your microwave.

Putting it together:
Heat the coconut milk in a pot over medium heat. Stir constantly and let the coconut milk simmer. Hard boiled coconut milk will curdle. Add sugar and salt. Remove from heat. Pour 3/4 of the hot coconut milk over the hot sticky rice. Let it sit for 5 minutes. The sticky rice will absorb all the coconut milk. The rice should be a little mushy. Spoon the rest of the coconut milk on top of the rice at serving time.

Thai Rice & Pulses

Sticky Rice (Kau Neow)

Sticky or glutinous rice is widely eaten in the north of Thailand. It gets its English name from its glutinous (sticky) property rather than the presence of gluten. You can see from the picture its a bright white rice easily distinguishable from the more translucent fragrant rice.

Preparation
The best way to cook sticky rice is to steam it in a Thai style steamer.
1. Soak the sticky rice for 4 hours or overnight to soften and make it easier to steam.
2. Drain off the excess water.
3. Put the wet rice into the steamer.
4. Steam for 5 minutes
5. Flip the rice ball over in the steamer.
6. Steam for 5 minutes longer.
The rice will lose some of its whiteness and become more translucent.

Uses
Used for informal snack food, it does not require a spoon or chopsticks to eat, the rice can be grabbed from the pot in chunks and dipped into the flavoring sauce directly.
It is perfect for picnics, served with cooked meat and chilli sauce for dipping.

Notes
Once cooked the rice can be kept and eaten cold or hot. It is normally removed from the steamer and stored in a 'ga-tip' (a round box made of reeds) making it easy to carry to the fields or on a picnic. It lasts for 3 days once cooked, and can be re-steamed to warm it up again if you wish to eat it warm.

Toasted Sticky Rice (Kow Kua)

This is pounded toasted sticky rice, used to add a toasted nut-like taste to dishes like Kapow Guy. It can be prepared ahead of time and if kept dry will keep for months. Use sticky (glutinous) rice, regular fragrant or long grain is not suitable. The photograph above is the browned sticky rice grains, surrounded by untoasted sticky rice for comparison. The photograph below is the finished crushed rice.

Preparation
Take a dry clean frying pan.
Put 2-3 tablespoons of sticky rice grains in it.
Dry fry, turning all the time until brown and toasted.
Place in a Thai mortar and pound to a course powder.
Store in an airtight container until needed.

Thai Fragrant Rice (Kow Jow or Kow Sui)

Thai fragrant rice is the main part of the Thai diet. Nearly every meal is served with rice, and it is very important to use only the best quality rice. Fragrant rice has a near perfume fragrance, and is also known as Jasmine Rice, but that is a brand-name rather than a rice type.

Guide For Cooking
The easiest way to cook Thai rice is in a rice cooker. They are not expensive and it is much easier. However you can cook it in a boiling pan.
1. For every 2 cups of rice, use 3 cups of water.
2. Good quality rice does not typically need to be rinsed, you can place the rice and water straight into the pan.
3. Place over a low heat and bring the water to a boil, then turn it down to a low simmer and cover. Do not stir.
4. Once the water has all been absorbed into the rice, turn the heat right down and warm for a further 3-5 minutes.
5. If you have a rice cooker it is trivial, put the rice and water into the rice cooker, flick the switch. Once the rice is cooked, leave warming for a further 3-5 minutes and you're done.

Yellow Beans (Met Tu Luang)

Yellow soya beans (often simply called 'Yellow Beans') are commonly used to make desserts and snacks. In Thailand we buy them in packets, but they can also be made from green soya beans by removing the green skin, as in the photograph above.

Preparation from Green Soya
1. Soak the green soya beans in warm water overnight to soften them.
2. Put your fingertips into the bowl of soaking soya beans and rub them between your fingers roughly. This will loosen the skin.
3. The skin is lighter than the beans and float more easily. If you stir them up in the water, the beans drop quickly to the bottom of the bowl and the green skins drop more slowly. You can use this to easily separate the skins from the beans.
4. Place the bowl of water & beans in the sink.
5. Run water into the bowl so that it overflows over the edges, it will stir up the beans and the skins will float and be carried over the edges of the bowl, but the beans will drop back into the bowl.
6. Adjust the flow of the tap to so that skins, go over the edge, but beans do not.
7. Now repeat step 2-7 until all the skins have been removed.

Green Rice Flakes ( Kao Mow )

These rice flakes are used to bulk up desserts, they have a pleasant almost floral smell. You can see a typical dish involving green rice flakes in todays other recipe.
Store in a cool dark, airtight container and they will easily last 6 months or more.

Black Glutinous (Sticky) Rice ( Kao Nieow Dum )

This black form of glutinous rice is used in sweet dishes, particularly black rice pudding. It has a slightly more nutty flavour and stronger texture than regular glutinous rice, but the main aspect of it is the black colour.
To prepare this rice, you need to soak it for at least 3 hours to soften the grains before cooking. When you soak the rice, it becomes more deep purple than black, it will also discolour the water and any food it is cooked with.
When you need a black contrast to a white sauce (as in Thai rice puddings) this form of glutinous rice is perfect. However you can achieve a very similar flavour with regular sticky rice.

Green Tapioca Beads (Saku Bi Tua)

Green tapioca beads are starch beads made from cassava roots mixed with the flavour and colour from bi tua leaves and sold in packets. In the photograph the beads are 1-2 mm in size each. Tapioca comes in many types and sizes, for example these white tapioca pearls are larger, but unflavoured. The main use for this green tapioca is to make translucent green desserts.

Tamarind Kernels (Met Macam Kuer)

Tamarind is a sour fruit, used to add a bitter/sour flavour to Thai curries. The pulp is used to make Tamarind water (also known as Tamarind juice). Some people also eat the flesh of raw tamarind, but it's an acquired taste, and personally I don't like it. My favorite part is the seed kernels. Each fruit contains 4 or 5 of these, but they need some preparation before they can be eaten.
The flavour is similar to a sour nut, but are far harder and crunchier.

Ingredients
Seeds from Tamarind Fruit

Preparation
1. Toast them in a frying pan until the blacken on the outside. You can see this in the photograph below.
2. Soak them in water overnight.
3. Take off the outer layer, and eat the inside kernels. In the photograph above, the kernels are on the right side.

Edible Berries ( Mark )

Older people in Thailand chew this berry when it's ripe and yellow (these are slightly under-ripe). It's a little addictive, and has the unfortunate effect of making the teeth rather black as can be seen from the photograph below. When you see old people chewing what looks like chewing tobacco, this is the berry that they're chewing.