Chinese Chive Flowers with Shrimp

My mother used to make this dish with sliced liver instead of shrimp. But it is tough for me to find friends or family members who are willing to eat liver. So, shrimp it is. Chinese chive flowers with shrimp is an easy dish to make and reheats well in microwave.

4 Servings

1	teaspoon	sugar
1	lb	shrimp
1	clove	garlic, chopped
1 1/2	tablespoons	fish sauce

Chop garlic. Cut the Chinese chive flowers into 1 1/2 inch long. Peel and devain shrimp. For a presentation, you can use whole shrimp (with head) and peel.

Heat a wok or a pan on high heat. Add a tablespoon of oil and chopped garlic and stir. Add shrimp when the garlic starts to brown. Stir to get the shrimp somewhat cooked. The shrimp shoud start to get pinky but not all pink or cooked. Add the chive flowers and stir to cook them. Add fish sauce and sugar. The flowers shouldn't take long to cook. You want the flowers to just cook, but not overcook and still retain their crunchiness. When the color turns bright green, it indicates that they are cooked. Turn off the heat and pour on a plate immediately.

Serve with hot with rice.

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.

The Wonderful World of Thai Sweets

EATING IS ALWAYS an adventure in Thailand, but one part of the adventure that foreign visitors to the Land of Smiles may not venture very far into is the myriad variety of Thai sweets, called in Thai khanom. The main reason for this, perhaps, is the lack of recognition factor for all of those attractive little sweets in cups that look so appetizing on their bed of green banana leaf and all the rest. Thai cookbook writers have lamented about the eagerness with which the Thai people have abandoned aspects of their traditional customs and gone helter-skelter to take on the trappings of Western culture, but note with pride that the sometimes humble and sometimes elaborate Thai traditional sweets and desserts remain high on the preference list of indigenous Thais to the present day.

It would be a misconception to say that these multitudinous products of this aspect of Thai cuisine are only desserts. The usual dessert after a Thai meal is a plate of attractively arranged mixed, cut fruit. It has been said that eating is the Thais national sport, and Thais are likely to nibble at one of the finger-sized sweets as a between-meal shack or take a bowl of one of the mixed sweets prepared with chopped ice as a refreshing treat on a hot tropical day. Some Thai sweets are also especially prepared for festivals such as the lunar new year, or as special treats to be offered to monks on special occasions. Thai desserts are usually simple and most of the ingredients can be found in any Thai marketplace. Basic ingredients for starting from scratch often include plain rice flour, sticky rice flour, or legume flour of various sorts. Sweeteners include cane sugar, palm sugar, coconut sugar, and the ubiquitous coconut cream. There is a whole class of khanom made from egg yolks, such as foi thong which are golden threads of egg yolk cooked hard in a sugar syrup flavored with essence of jasmine. Delicious, but not for those watching their waistlines or cholesterol levels. Sometimes aspects of khanom cooking can be exotic, such as used of the lowly pandanus leaf, which can be plaited into mats and other household items but finds its way into Thai khanom as a pleasing flavoring agent in anything from the small agar jelly snacks to ice cream. Read more....

Cuisine of the Royal Household
Thailand's Original Recipes

nam phrik pla thu

In the past, the Royal Household served as the primary source for home economics, cooking, needlework, and Thai manners.

The royal ladies in the palaces rigorously trained their ladies-in-waiting; therefore, many upper-class families took their daughters there so that they would learn to cook and to do other household chores, and thus be prepared for marriage and family life. The royal palace's home economics expertise has since proliferated.

After the country's change in 1932 from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, during the reign of King Rama VII, the old and new generations of the Royal Household maids moved out of the palaces. Some modified and applied what they learned to earn money to support themselves or their families.

Some foreign dishes on the royal menu have been modified to please the Thai palate. Sometimes the cooks are inventive and modify dishes from the other regions, too. These days, the food that is made for the Royal Household is not much different from the common folks' dishes; in fact, some of the dishes are even prepared for sale to the general public in various outlets.

khao suai

Thai Dishes of the Central Region

Regular rice is the staple food in this region. There are varieties of dishes that the people here eat with their rice, and a meal often includes some form of spicy dip for vegetables, a hot and sour vegetable soup, a type of curry, and a plate of fried vegetables, or a soup and a spicy fried meat dish. They also have seasonal dishes, such as cold rice soup, or sticky rice topped with ripe mangoes in the hot season. Read More...

Chicken Stirfried with Chilli

This is a simple Thai dish that you can cook with either pork or chicken. In Thai, this one is called "gai pad prik sod". In the ingredients below, you can see chicken, spring onion, red and green spur chilli, onion and crushed garlic in the centre. The larger chillies seen here are not as hot and spicy as their smaller cousins, so don't be scared to use a lot.

As with most Thai dishes, the cooking process is very quick so you need to prepare all of the ingredients beforehand. Cut the chillies diagonally and then chop up the onions. Put some oil in your wok and then add the crushed garlic. Some people put the garlic into hot oil. But, I prefer to start it from cold so that it doesn't burn. As soon as it is brown and fragrant, add the chicken that has already been cut up into bite-sized pieces. Keep stirring all the time. When it is nearly done, add the chilli and onions. You can season with either fish sauce or soy sauce and some sugar. In Thailand they don't fry their onions for long, so turn off the heat before they become too limp.

Red Curry with Roasted Duck

I think my favourite red curry is this one which comes with roasted duck. In Thai it is called "gaeng phet pet yang". In Thai restaurants it can be quite expensive to order. So, it is useful to know how to cook. The ingredients will vary a bit from book to book. I like to add pineapple and I hear some people add rambutan. In the picture below, you can see: sweet basil, roasted duck, palm sugar, kaffir lime leaves, plum tomatoes, pea eggplants and red curry paste in the middle. The ingredients of the paste include: red chilli, galangal, lemon grass, red shallots, garlic, kaffir skin, cilantro seeds and shrimp paste.

Heat the oil in a wok and add the red curry paste. Gradually add coconut milk to form a runny paste. Continue this process until it is fragrant and a red oil surfaces. Next comes the roasted pork. In preference, de-bone the duck first. In many Thai restaurants there always seem to be more bone than meat. Cook for another minute or so. You can add more coconut milk if it dries out too much. Add the plum tomatoes, torn kaffir lime leaves and the pea eggplants. Turn off the heat and prepare the seasoning. For this you add a mixture of fish sauce and palm sugar. Our red curry paste bought ready made at the market was a bit too salty. They probably added too much shrimp paste. So, we didn't put in so much fish sauce. If it is too salty, try adding more sugar, coconut and/or stock. Finish with a handful of sweet basil which you should carefully stir in. However, not all recipes call for basil. We decorated the dish with thinly sliced red spur chilli and a sprig of sweet basil.

Stir Fried Vegetable with Chicken

One of the dishes that I often cook is stir-fried vegetables. You can adapt this in so many different ways depending on what vegetables you have in stock. If I have bought a curry from the roadside, then I usually supplement the stir-fry with some extra meat. Either pork or chicken. In the ingredients below you can see cabbage, chicken, carrots and garlic in the center.

As usual, heat up some oil in the wok and then add the crushed garlic. Try to use Thai garlic as it is believed to be healthier for you. Once it is fragrant and golden brown, add the chicken slices. Give it a good stir and fry for a few minutes. If it starts to dry out, add a little stock or water. Next comes the vegetables. Season with oyster sauce, soy sauce and sugar. Don't overcook, leaving it still a little crispy.

Stir Fried Pork with Sponge Gourd

Our Thai dish today is called "buap pat moo" or Stir-fried pork and angled sponge gourd. It is also commonly cooked with prawns or chicken. The sponge gourd can grow up to three feet in length. However, you need to choose one that is young and still soft to the touch. As it grows mature it will become bitter. You can eat it raw like a cucumber or stir-fry it like a zucchini. In the ingredients below, you can see the unpeeled sponge gourd at the top, the pork, garlic and the peeled sponge gourd. In the center is an egg.

Prepare the gourd by peeling it and then cutting diagonally into bite-sized pieces. Add the chopped garlic to the wok and fry until golden brown. Add the pork and stir fry a short while. Next comes the gourd. Add a little stock if it starts to dry out. Though not too much as there is a certain amount of moisture in the gourd. Give it a good stir for a few minutes. Season with oyster sauce and soy sauce. The last ingredient is an egg which you break into the wok. Stir this in well and it should cook itself. As with anything, do not overcook.

Stir Fried Prawns and Snow Peas

When it comes to Thai food, presentation always counts for a lot. I like experimenting with new recipes and even if I think the results might taste good, a Thai person would first comment on how it looks. Just take a look at this stir fried dish. It looks delicious even before you try it. A nice arrangement of complimentary colours. This one is stir fried prawns and snow peas. In the ingredients below, you can see crushed garlic and prawns on the left and snow peas and straw mushrooms on the right.

It is easy to cook for beginners. As stir frying is very quick, you need to prepare everything in advance. Wash, shell and devein the shrimps. Also prepare the snow peas by pulling the string from the pod. In a wok, fry the crushed garlic until brown and fragrant. Next comes the prawns. Don't overcook so follow these quickly with the mushrooms and finally the snow peas. Add some water or stock if it drys out. Season with oyster sauce, fish sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Very quick and easy to cook with good results. Also a nice change from the hot and spicy meals.

Stir Fried Kale and Carrots

This is another one of those simple stir fried dishes. This one is based around kale which is a green leafy vegetable. It is believed to have anti-cancer properties so a good idea to have it in your diet. In the ingredients photo below, you can see carrots, garlic, kale stalks, kale leaves and chicken in the middle. You can use mushrooms instead of carrots. You can also make this a vegetarian dish. The kale is separated like this because the stalks will need to be cooked for slightly longer. You might like to use baby kale if the stalks of this one is too tough.

Heat some oil in a wok and add the chopped garlic. Cook until golden brown. Next add the chicken that has already been cut into bite size pieces. A few minutes later add the kale stalks first and the carrots. Follow this with the leaves. Season with soy sauce, oyster sauce and sugar. Add stock if it starts to dry out. Don't fry for too long if you like crispy vegetables like me.

Chicken Stir Fried with Ginger

The dish we have for you today is chicken fried with ginger. You can also do it with pork. In the ingredients below, you can see spring onion, onion, straw mushroom, chicken, ear mushroom and ginger in the middle. The seasoning we used was oyster sauce, fish sauce and fermented soy bean sauce.

Prepare everything in advance as stir-frying is very quick. Cut the chicken and mushrooms to bite size. Fry the crushed garlic until it is golden brown. Add the chicken. Next comes the ginger followed closely by the two types of mushrooms. Season with sugar, oyster sauce and fermented soy bean sauce. If it doesn't taste saltier enough then you can add some fish sauce. Finish with the spring onion and the onion. Don't overcook as it is best to have it a little crunchy

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Cooking Tools

For starters, normal pots and pans will do. But as you learn more and cook more adventurously, you'll appreciate a few key additions to your tool set. The right tool for the right job, right? Please note that these are not all Thai cooking utensils and tools, but the ones that I have found work the best for me when I cook Thai food away from Thailand.

Wok and Spatula

One of the most important tools is the wok and a spatula. Finding the right wok here in the U.S. can be a challenging job. I have gone through so many woks.
Stainless Steel Wok - Teflon woks have never lived up to their promises for me. I have had ones with bumpy bottoms, smooth bottoms, even ones with a life time warranty. Sooner or later they all stick at one spot or another. I've even had Teflon coating peel, and I ended up eating it unknowingly. Yuk! Since then, I found my true love in Thailand, a light weight stainless steel wok. This wok is the best by far. I like a light weight wok because it is easy to move around on the burner and heats quickly. This wok is very easy to clean and has two good handles. Food rarely sticks, but if it does, I am not afraid to scrub it. For the handles, one is long and one short - just right for fancy maneuvers on the stove and in the sink.

For spatulas, I prefer a stainless steel spatula made for woks. They can be tough to find outside of a Chinatown, but are great because they make it easy to turn over the food. These spatulas have a long thin handle, a flat, rounded flipper with a small lip around the back and a rounded edge on the front that matches the rounded walls of the wok. Make sure that you don't get a spatula with a hole in the bottom of the handle where the metal from the handle wraps around -- otherwise, food and cooking residue gets stuck in the handle and can not be cleaned out. I also used to use, and be very happy with, wooden spatulas and still have several handy. I stick them in the dishwasher with no problem.

Rice Cooker

If you eat rice frequently, you'll love the ease and perfect success rate of a rice cooker. Like a bread maker, you pour in the rice, pour in the water, close the top and plug it in. 20 minutes later it's done. There are many models, and when you pick one out, look for:
- a non-stick pot,
- a solid feeling lid and handle that locks down when closed (otherwise the lid will rise up with the bubbles of the boiling rice)
- a lid that you can easily take apart to clean
- a painted outside that you would not mind keeping on your counter

Going to the Market

Every Monday and Thursday, small time merchants gather at an empty lot across the street from Bangkok Metropolitan Water Authority to sell anything from soup to nuts, literally. The western style supermarket are booming in Bangkok while the outskirt communities like this one enjoys an open air market. Fresh vegetables are less than 20% the price of big supermarkets. The price and the variety of fresh and cooked food draw people to this market. For me, it is an adventure being there.

Ingredients for popular Thai dishes in the US like red curry and pad Thai noodles are less prominent at this market. Instead, ingredients like fish, fresh vegetables and sauce for real day-to-day Thai meals, like nam prig, are abundant. Locals come here for their fish whether it be live, fried, grilled, dried or pickled.

You would be surprised at the different types of fresh vegetables that are available. While in the US, most leafy vegetable are either some lettuce or kale variant, here it seems like here you can almost eat any green leaves. They just don't taste like vegetables. Some are tart. Some are nutty. Some have wonderful scents. There must have been about 30 different varieties there. Some of these leaves can even be tough to find in the supermarket in Bangkok but are more common in the provinces. They come in bundles of about a pound and you can buy 4 bundles for 10 baht (US$0.25). You don't have to be rich to eat luxuriously here.

I saw this guy with a bamboo container full of live chickens, a pail of boiling water, some cleaned chickens and a bowl of blood. It didn't take much to guess that the guy was offering chickens freshly killed on demand. In Thailand, it is still a fact of life when you buy a chicken that someone has to kill it. In the US, your chicken comes in a clean white foam tray and you get no sense of the predation.

Younger customers were not neglected here. A guy with a table full of red, green and white caramel was busy making candy that was more artistic than I have ever seen. Using only a little gas stove, a small paddle, a knife and scissors, I watched him make fishing monkeys, dancing elephants, a parakeet and even wonder woman, each in about 30 seconds. How much for you to own one of these works of art? 5 baht (Jan 2000 - US$0.12).

Life gets a little more exotic as well. Silk worms, grasshoppers, water bugs and other bugs that I could not identify are deep fried and ready to be munched like potato chips. Water bugs are not new to me because its wonderful scent adds that extra zing to many nam prigs. The deep fried water bugs are crispy on the outside and nutty on the inside. (Umm um! "Behold, the power of fleas") Other fried bugs will have to wait for my next trip.

On my way out of the market, past the locals haggling with the knife salesman and the 99 baht shirts (US$2.50), I took a few last pictures of the kids who had been trailing me the whole time and grabbed a Thai tea for the trip home

The Truth About Peanut Sauce

At various supermarkets, in the ethnic food section, you can find American made or even Thai made peanut sauce. It is everywhere and seems to get more popular by the day. People pour it on salad, eat it with rice or noodles and cook meat in it.

I find this kind of funny because my friends and family in Thailand don't know what 'peanut sauce' is. We don't have the 'peanut sauce' in Thai cuisine as the Thais in Thailand know it. We put ground peanuts, as just another ingredient, in a variety of dishes. The three dishes that are well known to Americans that havea sauce with peanuts are satay sauce, cubed tofu sauce and tod mun sauce. When you find both these dishes in Thailand, the peanuts are coarsely ground so that they're like thick grains of sand, and not mud or peanut butter.

In Thai cuisine, you have 3 choices for peanut sauce:

- Satay is a marinated meat grilled on skewers, served with curry like sauce and cucumber salad. The satay peanut dipping sauce is most likely what people think of when they think of Thai Peanut Sauce. It is made from red curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, tamarind, sugar and ground peanuts.

- Fried Tofu Cubes has a more granular peanut dipping sauce that people love whenever we serve it at parties. This is most likely the greatest party dish we know - fast and easy and tasty.

- Tod mun is a spicy fish cake, served with cucumber sauce. The sauce consists of sliced cucumbers, vinegar, ground fresh chilies, sugar and is topped with ground peanuts for texture. Cucumber is the main ingredient of the sauce, not the peanuts.

It must be that peanut sauce is American Fusion cuisine and part of its popularity comes from the sauce manufacturers who try to bring foreign tastes to your local supermarket. Linking it with Thai cuisine must have seemed like a good marketing idea. As long as Thai food doesn't get 'LaChoy'ed', that's ok

Snacking on Deep Fried Bugs in Thailand

I was watching a lady from northeastern part of Thailand standing by the fence at the crowded Chatujak weekend market offering different fried creatures: water bugs, worms, grasshoppers and birds from a push cart.

I understand why many people shriek when it comes to eating bugs, even though I have no problem with water bugs. In Thai cuisine, water bugs are commonly part of certain chili sauces, and are not looked upon as a pest or bug. Besides, they are ground up and unrecognizable; just part of a dish I have eaten them all my life.

The worms and grasshoppers are different! I have seen people eat them on TV, but my mother never cooked them for us. Here was a chance to see if they taste like chicken. I realized that if I could eat water bugs, other insects are not too far from it. How arbitrary is it to discriminate against other types of insects!

As I was reasoning, a guy came by and bought some bugs. She sprayed a thin brown sauce on top and handed the bag to him. I thought, 'hey, people are really buying and eating this stuff.' So I approached her cart and asked her what she had. She explained:

Water bugs, I already knew that one. It was deep fried and sprayed with some sauce. It was probably crunchy and creamy with a distinct scent of water bug. I didn't mind this one and thought that I would certainly get some.






Next was called rod fai duan or express train. Hmm…doesn't sound bad. The express train is a worm that eats bamboo. OK. The worm sounded clean, only ate bamboo. OK, I'd try this.




This fat oval bug with visible sections looked too much like a bad bug, something out of a horror movie. What is it? She said that it was cocoon of a silkworm after they unraveled the silk. All right. Silk worms eat mulberry leaves. That's not too gross, just a silk worm. I can handle that.





The grasshopper looked like a brown grasshopper with all parts intact.

While I was explaining to my husband and deciding what we would get to experiment and broaden our knowledge of bugs, a guy came by and snatched all the water bugs that she had. Geez, my safety bugs were gone. What to do? So I quickly told the lady I wanted a little bit of every thing. She said 10 baht (~US$0.25) a ladle. OK, a ladle full of everything except the birds. Years ago, my brother ended up in a doctor's office after the birds because the bones were stuck in his throat. I decided that just bugs would be enough to fill my day.

She was so generous with her scoop that I had to tell her that we're new to the bugs and please go easy on us. She sprayed our bugs with the sauce. I asked her what is the sauce. She smiled and simply replied, 'secret sauce'.

Now it was time. My husband and I were arguing who should go first. We decided we should both munch at the same time. I chose the bamboo worm first because it was the least threatening. To my surprise, it tasted great. It was nutty and crunchy. There were no icky taste or unpleasant smell or feeling in your mouth. I had been afraid that it would be creamy (like I'd always imagined bugs in the past), but it was dry. Well, if the bamboo worm wasn't so bad, let's try another worm, the silk worm. It was crunchy and nuttier than the 'express train'. We saved the best for last, the grasshopper. I closed my eyes and dropped one in my mouth. If I didn't know what it was, it would have to say it was the fried tiny little fish that you get in Korean restaurants. It tasted like fish, not chicken