THAI - Summer 2019 (Jul-Sept) Cuisine of the Quarter

Thanks @biondanonima! The spicy fish cakes were a special and had a nice kick to them. We have been looking for a nice Thai restaurant nearby and this one is only about 15 or 20 minutes away. The duck salad was excellent as well.

A couple of recent Thai Dishes.


Stir fried chicken thigh with holy basil , green beans ( I did see long beans at the Thai supermarket but they were pretty expensive) and flat rice noodles. Nam pla prik alongside.


Pad Krapow.

Now I may have substituted green beans green beans for long beans in the stir fried chicken and I’m pretty relaxed about ingredient substituting ingredients. Not for this, which is my favourite Thai dish. I actually first had it on the Indonesian island of Gili Air and fell in love with it straight away. It was spicy, fragrant with holy basil and the fried egg was cooked perfectly. Now I had it a lot in northern Thailand and it was similar but the fried eggs were always to well done, no runny yolk which I think is essential.
On returning to London I tried it in at least half a dozen Thai restaurants, always disappointing. Chunks of meat rather than mince, overdone fried egg or no fried egg & always normal Thai basil rather than holy basil. So I decided I would just have to make it myself.
I used the recipe below but used pork mince instead of chicken, added an extra chilli and of course a fired egg. Served with jasmine rice.

I served a som tum to go with. I made a slight error here by adding too much chilli. I lowered the chillis in the pad krapow from four to two as last time I made it the missus said it felt like her ears were bleeding. The chilli in the som tum seemed far hotter than in the pad krapow. I should have kept the heat level in the pad krapow and kept the som tom as a nice cooling side dish.

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This is pretty standard for pad krapow in restaurants here too - very disappointing. Yours looks delicious!

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All those dishes look delicious!

I’ve never seen basil chicken with anything other than sliced chicken, but it’s been pretty good when I’ve had it. The only ground chicken dish I’ve seen at my favorite thai place is Larb (which I love - and seeing your meal prods me to make, so thank you!)

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I made a Thai-inspired dinner tonight - pork burgers seasoned with ginger, garlic, fish sauce, lime, scallions, mint, fresh chile and Sriracha. I put everything in the food processor with half the ground pork and let it go until it turns to a paste, then work the rest of the ground meat in by hand. Pan fried and served with a cooling slaw with lime, coriander and more mint. The food processor made short work of both dishes.

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Thai market shopping tips.

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Nominations for the final quarter of 2019 are open!

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Better late than never. Some Thai dishes from David Thompson’s Thai food book for lunch today.

Yam hoi - Cockle salad
Cockles cooked in a lemongrass and galangal broth and finished with a splash of fish sauce, lime juice, bird eye chilies and shallots

Pla hoi shenn - Scallop salad
Scallops marinated briefly with salt and lime juice, until firm and opaque. Finishing touch included: fish sauce, sliced red shallots, lime zest (instead of kaffir lime leaves), finely sliced lemongrass, mint and coriander leaves.

Tomato salad Thai inspired.
Cherry tomatoes with fish sauce, lime juice, pinch of palm sugar, shallows and coriander.

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Your Pad Krapow looked delicious, I would like to have a try.

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Those dishes look beautiful, especially the cockle salad. I actually read through Thai Food at the beginning of the quarter but I simply got too busy managing construction projects at home to find the time to cook from it! I will be sure to report on this thread when I finally get around to trying some recipes, though!

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@naf those dishes look amazing.
We had a sensational 1st time dinner at Ammata Thai in River Vale, NJ. Details and pictures are in the link below in case anyone is interested.

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Gorgeous dishes, @naf!

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I had the chance to eat at David Thompson’s restaurant when in Hong Kong.

I was looking at my book again, actually nearly all the dishes we had at the restaurant, the recipes were in the book! (Except the beef onion in oyster sauce.)

I’ll like to make the amuse bouche Ma Hor, if possible. (pg 488 Thai Food)

For the other dishes:
Miang of pomelo with prawns (pg 484)

Green curry chicken, apple plant (a mix of 2 recipes pg 318 and 320)

Grilled eggplant salad (pg. 388)

Mango sticky rice (pg. 618)

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I don’t know about that. All the best renditions of som tum that we’ve had (in Thailand or here in the States) have been tongue-scorchingly hot. But in the best way.

Regardless, your dishes look fantastic.

We had another spectacular dinner at Ammata Thai. Below is a link to the details and pictures.

So now that the quarter is over, I got around to making some Thai food! I actually just needed something quick last night, and it doesn’t get much quicker than canned curry paste. I like the Maesri brand and keep their red, green and prik khing pastes in my pantry at all times. I had ground pork and a variety of vegetables to use up, so I browned the pork, removed it from the pan, sauteed a mixture of green beans, red peppers, mushrooms, broccoli stems, onions and garlic briefly in the fat, then added the curry paste to let it saute for a moment as well. Returned the meat and added a can of coconut milk and some chicken stock, gave it all a brief simmer, then stirred in a boatload of cilantro to finish. I did find that I needed to adjust the seasoning just a tad, with a little bit of fish sauce, sugar and a hit of lime.

Dh declared it one of the best curries I have ever made. I don’t think ground meat is typical in this type of curry (Thai restaurants near me frequently offer ground meat as an option in noodle dishes and things like basil chicken, but not in coconut curries that I have seen), but it was quite delicious! I served this over steamed broccoli instead of rice to keep it low carb.

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Thai Red Curry with Shrimp, Pineapple and Snow Peas.

P.S.
The rice turned out better with the 1:1 ratio thanks @Shellybean.

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Well, only 4 whole years later, but I finally tried my hand at my favorite Thai noodles: Pad See Ew.

Looked at a few recipes (linked below), found them pretty similar aside from slight flavor tweaks and amounts.

Lucked out in finding fresh ho fun / wide rice noodles at a Chinese grocery store yesterday (plus gai lan and other fun stuff). I didn’t want to add another bottle of soy sauce (at the moment anyway, who are we kidding) so I used what was on hand – regular and dark, enhanced with some sugar.

Like my first try at Beef Chow Fun, this was surprisingly easy and close to the restaurant version I love. I don’t think I’d make it without the fresh noodles, though, because they really do make the dish (as with chow fun).

Useful tip was to mix the noodles and sauce separately to get proper char on the noodles even in a home setup. I used my wok, but wondered later if a large non-stick pan might not be a better tool next time, because there’s some sticking that happens when the noodles and sauce are getting nicely charred together.

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Looks so good! A favorite of mine as well. Yum.

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Pam Real Thai Oxtail Soup. Pam Real Thai opened in 2001 and closed in 2020.