Panang Gai (Thai Panang Chicken Curry)

INGREDIENTS

2 cups coconut milk
1/4 cup Panang curry paste (available at Indian Foods Company)
1,1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut crosswise into ??-thick slices
3 tbsp. fish sauce (available at Pacific Rim Gourmet)
2 tbsp. dark-brown sugar
2 cups chicken stock
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 kaffir lime leaves, sliced thin (available at Grocery Thai)
4 sprigs basil, to garnish
Cooked jasmine rice, to serve


INSTRUCTIONS

Bring coconut milk and curry paste to a steady simmer in a 4-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat; cook, stirring, until oil begins to separate, about 12 minutes. Add chicken; cook, stirring, until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add stock, fish sauce, and sugar; bring to a boil. Remove from heat; season with salt and pepper. Ladle chicken and sauce into bowls; garnish with lime leaves and basil, and serve with rice.

Yum Nam Tok (Thai Spicy Beef Salad)

INGREDIENTS

-  200g (7oz) topside beef
-  1/2 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
-  A handful of chopped coriander
-  A handful of chopped shallots
-  1 tbsp lemon juice
-  1/2 tbsp fish sauce
-  1/2 tspn sugar
-  Mint leaves
-  Fresh chilli




METHOD

Grill or barbecue beef to your liking and thinly slice. In a large bowl or pot, combine the cooked topside with the onion, shallots, coriander, lemon juice, fish sauce, sugar and chilli. Toss to mix well. Rip mint leaves, add to the bowl and mix well. Serve at room temperature.

Nam Prik Kapi (Thai Shrimp Paste Chile Sauce)

Ingredients

2 tablespoons shrimp paste
4 cloves garlic
5-6 dried shrimp
5-7 fresh Thai chile peppers
3 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2-3 tablespoons palm sugar
1 tablespoon tiny Thai eggplant

Method

In a mortar and pestle, pound dried shrimp into a coarse powder, remove from mortar and set aside. Place shrimp paste and garlic in mortar, mash and grind together then add the dried shrimp back into the mortar. Add Thai chile peppers and eggplant (leaving a few eggplant aside for later). Pound the mixture together, adding palm sugar, lime juice and fish sauce to suit your taste. Spoon it into a dish and add a few eggplants for visual appeal, it should look like this.

This can be served in a wide variety of ways. Spoon over fresh steamed jasmine rice, or use as a dipping sauce for fresh or boiled vegetables such as cucumber, string bean, cabbage or bamboo shoot. It's also a wonderful accompaniment to Lao style vegetable curry. In Thailand this is very popular to eat with fried mackerel fish (pla tu).

Nam Prik Ong (Thai Spicy Pork and Tomato Dip with Veggies)

Ingredients

-  450    g ground pork
-  490    g plum tomatoes
-  18    g minced garlic
-  55    g onion
-  1    tbls grapeseed oil
-  3    tbls fish sauce
-  1    tbls of sugar
-  4    tbsp lime juice (1 lime)
-  20    chili peppers (10g, or less if you don't care for mouth fire)
-  118    ml water


Directions

1. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. When pre heated, toss in your whole tomatoes to dry roast them (No oil is needed) Let cook turning occasionally until cooked through and browned/blackened all over  5 - 10 minutes. Remove and set aside

2.  Repeat the same dry roasting procedure with the shallots, chilis and onions. Again, remove and set aside.

3.  Add the pork to your skillet (if it is too blackened, get a new skillet fired up) and cook through.

4.  In a mortar and pestle, squish squash the chili, shallots and garlic very well (you may use a blender if you don?t have a mortar and pestle here). When well smashed up, add in the tomatoes and squish them up too.

5.  Throw another heavy skillet on the stove top, and heat it up to medium high. When hot, add in the Tbls of oil and the pork, the chili-tomato-garlic-shallot paste, and the remaining ingredients, the water, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice.

6.  Heat it all up to a vigorous boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer until it is well combined and uniform, and has the consistency of a thick Bolognese pasta sauce.

7. Taste for seasoning and serve with fresh cut slices of cucumber and wedges of crisp cabbage , pork rinds are also a traditional accompaniment.

Yam Nua Yang (Spicy Thai Grilled Beef Salad)

Ingredients

For the Beef and Marinade:
-  1 beef flank steak (1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds)
-  3 tablespoons soy sauce
-  2 tablespoons asain fish sauce
-  2 tablespoons sugar
-  3 cloves garlic , minced
-  1 tablespoon ginger , minced fresh

For the Dressing:
-  3 cloves garlic
-  1 to 6 Thai, bird, seranno, or japapeno chiles, thinly sliced (for a milder dressing, seed the chiles)
-  1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
-  3 tablespoons asain fish sauce
-  3 tablespoons lemon juice , fresh

To Finish The Salad:
-  1 head lettuce , Boston or Bibb, separated into leaves, rinsed and spun dry
-  1 cucumber , peeled and thinly sliced
-  1 sweet onion , small, such as Maui or Vidalla, very thinly sliced
-  12 cherry tomatoes , cut in half
-  12 mint leaves , fresh
-  1/4 cup cilantro leaves, fresh
-  1/4 cup peanut , dry-roasted, coarsely chopped

Directions:
1. Lightly score the flank steak in a crosshatch pattern, making the cuts 1/4 inch deep. Place the meat in a glass baking dish. Combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, garlic, and ginger in a mixing bowl and whisk until the sugar dissolves. Pour this mixture over the steak and let marinate, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or as long as 8, turning several times.

2. Preheat the grill to high.

3. Prepare the dressing. Grind the garlic, chiles, and sugar to a paste in a mortar with a pestle. Work in the fish sauce and lemon juice. Alternatively, the dressing ingredients can be pur้ed in a blender.

4. Prepare the salad. Line a platter with the lettuce leaves and arrange the cucumber slices, onion, cherry tomatoes, and mint leaves (if using) on top.

5. When ready to cook, drain the steak. Oil the grill grate, then place the steak on the hot grate and grill until cooked to taste (4 to 6 minutes per side for medium-rare), using tongs to turn. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let cool slightly or completely. The salad can be served warm or at room temperature. Thinly slice the steak across the grain on the diagonal. Spoon the dressing over the salad and arrange the beef slices on top. Sprinkle with the cilantro and roasted peanuts and serve.

Gai Pad Med Mamuang Himmapan (Stir-fried Chicken with Cashew Nuts)

Ingredients
1 cup Chicken
1/3-1/2 cup Cashew nuts
1/2 head of Yellow onion
1 tablespoon Minced garlic
2 stalks Green onion
5 Dried chili
1 tablespoon Potato flour
1 tablespoon Sugar
2 tablespoons Oyster sauce
1 tablespoon Thai light soy sauce
2 cups Vegetable oil

 
Preparation
-  Clean chicken and cut into small bite size pieces.
-  Peel off garlic skin. Clean, pat dry and mince garlic.
-  Peel off onion skin. Clean, pay dry and cut into 1/2" cubes.
-  Clean and cut green onions to 1" in length.
-  Cut dried chili to 1" in length.



 
Directions
-  In a bowl, mix patoto flour with chicken.
-  Heat oil in a small pan, fry dried chili until it turns dark red in color. Remove from oil. Set aside.
-  In the same pan, fry chicken until chicken is cooked. Take care not to burn and overcook. Remove from oil. Set aside.
-  In a small bowl, add sugar, oyster sauce and Thai light soy sauce. Mix well.
-  Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a pan. On medium-high heat, add minced garlic in the pan. Stir fry until fragrant.
-  Add onion and fried chili. Stir for about 1 minute.
-  Add prepared sauce. Stir well for about 1 minute.
-  Add fried chicken and cashew nuts. Stir until the sauce is almost dried up.
-  Turn off heat. Add green onions. Stir well. Remove from heat.
-  Serve on plate.

Tom Kha Gai (Thai Chicken Soup with Coconut Milk)

Ingredients
-  3 cups (24 fluid ounces) sodium-free chicken stock
- 1*1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces across the grain
- 3/4 lb (12 ounces) fresh or canned straw mushrooms (drained)
-  One stalk lemongrass
-  5-6 fresh bird’s eye chilies (more or less depending on your heat preference)
-  2-inch piece of fresh galangal, sliced thinly crosswise
-  4-5 fresh kaffir lime leaves
-  4-5 limes
-  1/4 cup fish sauce (but have more ready)
-  1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
-  1*1/2 cups (12 fluid ounces) full-fat coconut milk

 Instructions
-  First, concentrate the stock. Put the chicken stock in a wide and shallow saucepan (to ensure fast evaporation), bring it to a boil, and reduce it over medium-high heat until the liquid measures half its original volume. [If you have access to very, very good chicken bouillon granules which are not all about salt and very little flavor, by all means, dilute double the amount you normally use in 1*1/2cups of plain water and use that in place of the concentrated chicken stock.]

-  Halve (or quarter) the straw mushrooms into bite-sized pieces; set aside. [You can also use white button, cremini, and oyster mushrooms. Any meaty, mild-flavored mushrooms will do. Portobello mushrooms are fine flavor- and texture-wise, but even with the gills carefully scraped off they still turn the broth into an unappetizing shade of gray. Do not use shiitake; the flavor is way too strong for this. Also, I would never use any kind of dried mushrooms which will change the flavor profile of this dish quite drastically, and not in a good way.]

-  Cut the lemongrass stalk into 1-inch pieces and smash them with the side of a large Chinese cleaver, a pestle, or any heavy object lying around in the house; set aside.

-  Do to the chilies what you just did to the lemongrass; set aside.

-  Remove the stems and the tough veins that run through the middle from the kaffir lime leaves, and tear them up into small pieces. You can also bruise them a little. Set aside.

-  Juice 2 limes; set aside. (You may need more; you may not. It’s better to have more than you need than not enough.)

-  Put the coconut milk into a 4-quart pot, followed by concentrated chicken stock, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass pieces, and galangal slices.

-  Bring the mixture slowly to between 160'F and 180'F (slightly below a simmer), allowing the herbs to infuse the liquid.

-  Keeping the temperature steady, add the mushrooms and the chicken to the liquid; adjust the heat to maintain the temperature. The liquid should never at any point come to a rapid boil. Don’t worry; at 160'-180'F, your chicken will be thoroughly cooked.

-  Stir gently to ensure that the chicken is evenly cooked.

-  Once the chicken is cooked through, throw in the smashed chilies and remove the pot from heat immediately.

-  Add the juice of 2 limes and the fish sauce to the pot, stir, and taste. Add more lime juice and fish sauce, if necessary. The soup should be predominantly sour, followed by salty. The sweetness comes from natural sugar in the coconut milk.

-  Stir in the cilantro leaves and serve your tom kha gai with steamed jasmine rice as an entree.