Need Some Inspiration? Try Thai Food!

Homemade Thai Iced Tea by MoreStomach

Food on Friday:  Thai Food was not a huge collection but was inspiring all the same.  I have chosen a few dishes to show you today.

The first pic at the top of the post is of Homemade Thai Iced Tea by MoreStomach

Peanut Noodles by Lydia's Flexitarian Kitchen

Thai Grilled Chicken by Cooking on a Budget

Coconut Soup with Kelp Noodles & Shrimp by Cooking Weekends

Thai Style Prawn Soup by eat like you love yourself

Thai Turkey Cold Busting Hot and Sour Egg Drop Soup by Farm Fresh Feasts

Food on Friday: Thai Food

 ON

Today's Food on Friday is looking for Thai inspired dishes.  Don't worry about complete authenticity – common Thai ingredients include coconut milk,  chili, fish sauce, shrimp paste, coriander, lemongrass, limes, shallots, garlic, red/green/yellow curry pastes, vinegars and rice, of course.

To add your dishes, just put the name of the dish together with your blog name/name into the first Mr Linky box you will find below.  Then paste the url for your post about it into the second box.

I'll be pinning the dishes to this Pinboard which will make it easy for you to check them out at a glance.

Enjoy the tastes of Thailand!

Pork Larb

 

This version of a Pork Larb is reasonably quick and simple to make but it does involve some pre work in terms of chopping etc.  If you are wondering why I haven't included quantities of the spices/seasonings, it's not just because I don't measure them out, it is because everyone's palate is a little different.  What I am looking for in this dish is a balance between sour, sweet, salty and heat (chili).  Just add a little of each at a time until it feels right when you taste it.

Here are the ingredients:

Pork mince (ground pork)

Vegetable oil plus a few drops of sesame oil

Red onion (chopped)

Garlic (finely chopped or grated)

Fresh ginger (you can use frozen straight from the freezer and grate it)

Fresh red chili pepper (hot) or dried red chillies that have been soaked in hot water

Lemon juice

Kecap Manis (a sweet soy sauce)

Fish sauce (essential to get the proper flavour as well as saltiness)

Brown sugar or palm sugar

Homemade pork broth

Chopped basil

Brazil nuts (chopped and added as a garnish) along with some sesame seeds

Lemon wedges to serve

A cup of lettuce to serve the larb in - I mean a whole lettuce leaf from the outside of a head of lettuce that curls round to form a neat little container for the larb. 

To cook it just fry the pork mince in the oil until a bit brown.  Then add your onion and seasonings.  Continue to fry until cooked (no more than 10 minutes)  Add your broth and remaining ingredients, heat through and serve with your nut garnish and lemon wedge in a lettuce cup.  You could serve rice on the side but I often don't.

Veggie green curry – Thai Style

 

I used a bought Thai curry paste for this Veggie green curry and it worked out just fine. 

Ingredients:

Zucchini – sprinkle lemon juice over it to stop it browning

Red capsicum (bell pepper)

½ a diced red onion

½ sliced carrot

1 clove of garlic, finely sliced 

Green curry paste

Fish sauce (you will need to find a substitute for this if you are vegetarian)

Golden syrup (or palm sugar)

Lemon juice

Vegetable oil

Tiny can of coconut milk 

For garnish – a small amount of sliced chilli and chopped herbs

How to do it:

Just fry off your sliced garlic until it is a bit golden and remove the garlic and set aside to add back in at the end.

Then add your green curry paste and a small amount of coconut milk and fry off so that it gets all fragrant.  Add your onion and cook for a few minutes, then add all the rest of the vegetables including the rest of the coconut milk and cook until just tender.

Taste your curry and add amounts of the fish sauce, golden syrup and lemon juice so that your curry has that essential Thai balance between hot, sour, sweet and salty.

Spicy mince lettuce cups

I loved the way this spicy mince looked against the green of the lettuce. I made up the recipe but I think it is a bit similar to a larb. It is in the Thai style tradition.

And you know I love my Thai food.

What I used:

Beef mince (ground beef) – I used about a pound and a half or 750g – which meant there was enough for leftovers

Vegetable oil for frying

Garlic cloves – finely chopped

Thumb of ginger – finely chopped or grated

½ red onion finely chopped

Tomato paste

1 tblsp yellow or other curry paste


Seasonings:

Lemon zest

1 tsp sichuan pepper (ground)

1 tsp ground white pepper

1-2 tblsp soy sauce

1 tblsp fish sauce

1 tblsp of golden syrup, pam sugar or brown sugar

Good splash of Worcestershire sauce

A few drops of sesame oil (watch out, it's potent)

1 tblsp of hot chilli relish

And to add in the last 2-3 minutes of cooking

1 long red chilli – deseeded and sliced across ways

1 spring onion or scallion, sliced

1/8 approx of a red capsicum (bell pepper)

½ cup of finely shredded lettuce


I would suggest you get all ingredients ready before you start. The quantities I used were based on our love for spicy food. Adjust to your own taste.

Basically you just fry up the first lot of ingredients until the mince is browned, and then add the seasonings. Turn down to a simmer and just before serving add in the last lot of ingredients to keep them a bit crunchy.

Serve in 1 or 2 lettuce cups. For a quick meal just have bread rolls on the side – or you could do rice or noodles.

Enjoy.

For another recipe, click here

Yellow curry of pork with vegetables

I have already posted on a red curry paste and a green curry paste. Now I’ve done a yellow one…. Not that I’m obsessed with Thai curry or anything.

I made up the paste based on the Spirit House cookbooks – and as part of it I had to make my own curry powder – well that was a first. It didn’t come out too bad. It is a milder paste than either the green or red variety. As you can tell from some of the ingredients it is an Indian influenced curry.




Curry powder ingredients

2 teaspoons each of chilli powder, ground turmeric, roasted cumin seeds, powdered ginger, black peppercorns and cardamom pods. (To roast the cumin you just dry fry it for a little while until the aroma wafts out)

1 teaspoon each of roasted coriander seeds, roasted mace and fennel seeds. (If you can’t get whole or ground mace you could substitute a little more nutmeg)

5 roasted cloves

1 nutmeg

1 inch piece of roasted cassia bark (this comes dried in quills) It looks like this.






You just grind all this up together. I did it by hand in a mortar and pestle but a spice grinder would be fantastic for doing this. But not as good exercise.

The only thing I didn’t have for inclusion in the curry powder was powdered ginger – so I compensated for that by putting some fresh ginger into the rest of the paste.

For the yellow curry paste

Cover 10 dried red chillies with hot water and soak them for 30 minutes. This is what the ones I got from an Asian store looked like. I cut off the tops and tapped the seeds out first but you could leave them in for a hotter result.




Then drain the chillies and chop them as finely as you can.

Grind up 3 teaspoons of roasted coriander seeds, 1 ½ teaspoons whole roasted cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon of white peppercorns (not black), ½ teaspoon of roasted cardamom seeds.


Then add:

1 Tablespoon of roasted shrimp paste – now this smells awful even after you have heated it in a tinfoil parcel. But it is essential for the balance of the end result.

3 stalks of lemon grass – bash it with your pestle and then finely slice just the lower (whiter) parts of the stalk

12 cloves of chopped garlic – yes 12, that isn’t a typo

1 cup of chopped Asian shallots – they look like this





1 tablespoon galangal, chopped (you could substitute fresh ginger but it won’t be quite the same)

2 tablespoons of coriander (cilantro) root and stem, chopped

2 tablespoons of the curry powder you made

This is what the paste looked like when it was finished. Not totally smooth but then my arms were getting tired from all the pounding.

I made up a double dose so I have a whole lot stored in the freezer. So you can whip up a curry in very little time once you have the paste.

As you can see I did a pork curry with cauliflower, courgette (zucchini), tomatoes and capsicum (bell pepper). I fried up the paste (about 2 dessertspoonful’s) for a few minutes together with a spoonful of palm sugar (brown sugar or golden syrup would be fine) until I could smell the flavour changing. Then I fried off some onions and garlic. If you preferred to have a less spicy result you could use half the curry paste.

Then I added the pork fillet (reasonably thinly sliced) and after a few minutes just dumped in the rest of the vegetables. After a minute or so I added a small amount of chicken stock – you could use any liquid even water. For a rich curry you could add coconut cream or coconut milk instead. I seasoned the curry with a little soy sauce and fish sauce and a squeeze of lime (lemon would do).

At the end I sprinkled crispy fried onions and roughly chopped coriander (cilantro) on top.

                                          Other posts you might be interested in:

Red curry paste

Green curry paste

Fish sauce

Fish sauce

Keep your fish sauce in the fridge – this is controversial since many sites say that it will keep fine in the cupboard for up to 2 years.  A Thai chef however advised me to keep it in the fridge for superior flavour so that is what I do.  I suspect those that don’t keep it in the fridge probably cook with it often enough that the bottles are used up quickly enough.  I do think the small bottles are a better bet than the big ones if you aren’t cooking South East Asian dishes all the time.

I do suggest you try to buy one that is made in Thailand as opposed to Vietnam.

Don’t worry that the end product will smell “fishy” – it won’t.  Fish Sauce is a wonderful ingredient without which Thai food just will not taste authentic. You can also use it instead of salt in dipping sauces for meat or salads.  I will mix a splosh of it with tomato and/or chilli sauce, sometimes also with a splash of soy sauce and lemon juice.  If you don’t include the tomato sauce you will need a soupcon of palm sugar or ordinary sugar for balance.  Yum and not full of empty calories either.


You might also be interested in this post on  Thai curry.  If so, click here

Cook Books – Spirit House

I don’t normally like buying too many cook books.  They are usually full of recipes in which I have no interest.  My only exceptions are Stephanie Alexander’s book which I have already blogged about on the 28th November and the cook books I recently got as a result of going to the Spirit House cooking school (also blogged about here).  I bought 2 books but having now looked at them in detail, just one of them would be fine.

The original one is called Spirit House Thai Cooking by Helen Brierty and Annette Fear(2004).  It looks like this.

The second one is called Essentially Thai – the only real difference is that they have simplified slightly some of the recipes. 

Either one would be a fine present to yourself or for someone interested in Thai food.  They are available online from Amazon and also in local bookshops.

Here is the recipe for green curry paste from the first one:

20 white peppercorns

2 tblsp coriander seeds, roasted

1 teasp cumin seeds, roasted

2 teasp salt

15 green chillies, seeded and chopped

2 small red onions (shallots), finely chopped

12 cloves garlic, chopped

4 tblsp lemon grass finely sliced,

2 teasp chopped galangal

4 teasp chopped coriander root

2 teasp chopped kaffir lime leaf

4 teasp shrimp paste, roasted

( for methods of “roasting” see my earlier blog re curry paste – here)

In a mortar, pound the pepper corns, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and salt together.  Add remaining ingredients one at a time, and pound to a smooth paste. 



How to make a proper red curry paste

If you want to make your own Thai curries, a good place to start is with a red curry paste.  Once you have made a batch you can freeze any excess in ice cube trays or mini muffin tins and you will always have an easy start to a great stir fry or curry.

The first thing you have to do is find the right ingredients.  You won’t find them in your local supermarket – or at least I couldn’t find everything there.  So head to your nearest Asian supermarket and Asian grocery store and you should find what you need.  One essential is a largish mortar and pestle – I think granite ones are best.  Don’t buy one at a kitchen speciality shop – that will cost double what you will pay at an Asian supermarket where I bought my latest one for about $35.  It is about 6 to 7 inches high and about 20cm in diameter.

Mortar and Pestle

The ingredients for the paste are (credit to Spirit House for this).  This will make approximately 2 cups of paste which is a lot considering you only use 1 or 2 tablespoons of it at a time.  But as I mentioned before it does keep well:

15                dried red chillies soaked in a little hot water for 10 minutes and then chopped– the best chillies are long dried ones.  I have made my own in the oven but it takes a long time and you can find good ones at the Asian supermarket.  If you can't find long ones use a greater quantity of the smaller ones.

2                  small red shallots – chopped.  These are little brown onion type things which have an outer reddish layer under the brown skin.  You could substitute red onions but I did find the proper thing at the Chinese greengrocers.

12                cloves of garlic - chopped

2                  stalks of lemongrass – finely sliced.  Use the bottom half of the lemongrass.  Before you slice it, it is a good idea to give it a bash with your pestle to bruise it and bring out the aromatics.  You can get fresh frozen lemongrass both in stems and chopped form at the Asian greengrocer.  I haven’t tried the bottled sort for this.

1 tablsp        galangal – chopped.  I could only get this frozen.  You could substitute ginger

2 tablsp         coriander root – chopped.  Please note this is the root – so you need to get this from the Asian greengrocer because they leave the root on.  Don’t use the living herbs because their roots are hopeless.

1 tablsp         lime zest

2 tablsp         white peppercorns.  Important to use white rather than black.  I could only find whole ones in the Asian supermarket

2 teasp         coriander seeds, roasted – what they mean by roasted is dry fried in a non stick pan until aromatic – say 2 minutes

1 teasp          cumin seeds, roasted

½ teasp         mace, roasted – now I couldn’t find mace anywhere – even in ground form so I substituted with nutmeg – because nutmeg is stronger in flavour I used a little less

2 teasp          salt

2 teasp         shrimp paste, roasted.  It smells awful but is an essential ingredient. You get it in little cans.  This is roasted differently.  You put it into foil and fold it over a few times so it is a little packet.  Then just put it directly onto the gas flame or other heat source for a minute or so until you can smell the change in the aroma.

To make the paste

Do have everything pretty finely chopped first before you pound it in the mortar and pestle you will get a much smoother paste.

In mortar and pestle, grind the coriander, cumin and white peppercorns.  Remember to roast the coriander and cumin first.  Don’t roast the peppercorns – they would go bitter.

Add the remaining ingredients – from dry to wet and pound away until you have got a smooth paste.  Let the pestle do the work for you.

With some luck you will end up with a paste like this

Red curry paste

You might also be interested in my post on my take on Sichuan chicken - click here to go to it.

Spirit House Thai Cooking School Yandina

If like me you have spent years trying to get the balance of Thai flavours right and failing, I recommend going to the Thai cooking school run by The Spirit House near Yandina in Queensland.  Not only is the restaurant which is co-located spectacularly sited, the food is to die for.

The cooking school runs half day sessions for up to 16 people at a time.  It cost A$125.  I have now finally made a red curry that tastes authentic.

Spirit House sign

In case you were wondering, I am not sponsored by anyone/thing I mention in this blog.  I am just doing it for fun.