Rice Soup with Minced Pork (khao tom moo sub)
ข้าวต้มหมูสับ

The Thai Rice Soup, or "khao tom moo sub" is not only a simple and quick dish to cook, but it is also a nice change to eat something plain and simple if you are not feeling too well with say a stomach ache or the flu. However, some people like to spice it up by adding extra condiments. Pictured in the ingredients below is steamed rice, minced pork mixture, garlic cloves, chicken stock and coriander. You could use shrimp instead of pork. The rice doesn't have to be fresh as you can use leftovers from the night before. This makes it a handy breakfast so that nothing is wasted.

You need to prepare the minced pork mixture first. Use a mortar and pestle and pound together the garlic, coriander roots and some black pepper. Remove this from the mortar. Now add the minced pork and pound it lightly, mixing in the garlic at the same time. You can add some fish sauce if you like at this stage. While you are doing this, bring some chicken stock to the boil. Take a generous pinch of minced pork mixture at a time and roll it roughly into a ball. Drop these into the boiling water. Cook for several minutes. You may need to skim off any froth. Season with some salt rather than the smellier fish sauce. Poor into a bowl and garnish with chopped coriander and fried garlic flakes.

The archives for my Thai food blogs can be found at our Thai Street Food and Enjoy Thai Food websites which are part of the Paknam Web Network of family friendly websites about Thailand. You can search these blogs and dozens of other blogs about Thailand at our own Thai Blog Search website. Please contact us if you wish to see your own blog added to the search engine.

Red Curry with Roasted Duck (gaeng phet ped yaang)
แกงเผ็ดเป็ดย่าง

I think my favourite red curry is this one which comes with roasted duck. In Thai it is called "gaeng phet ped yaang". 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.

The archives for my Thai food blogs can be found at our Thai Street Food and Enjoy Thai Food websites which are part of the Paknam Web Network of family friendly websites about Thailand. You can search these blogs and dozens of other blogs about Thailand at our own Thai Blog Search website. Please contact us if you wish to see your own blog added to the search engine.

Chicken Stirfried with Chilli (gai pad prik sod)
ไก่ผัดพริกสด

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. Next Friday on www.thai-blogs.com I will bring you another Thai cooking blog.

Penang curry is one of my favourite Thai dishes. It is simple to make as long as you can buy the ready-prepared chilli paste. In the ingredients below, you can see coriander, sliced beef (you can also use pork or chicken), sliced spur chilli, thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves, sweet basil, coconut milk and penang chili paste in the middle. If you don't have the chilli paste, you can use a carton like the one in the picture that already mixes coconut milk, chilli paste, fish sauce and palm sugar. The taste is good but not really authentic as it is for foreigners. The paste contains ingredients such as dried chillies, shallots, garlic, galangal, lemon grass, coriander root and shrimp paste.

Fry the chilli paste in a pan making sure it doesn't dry out or burn. Gradually keep adding more coconut to keep it moist. Keep going for about four minutes or so. Next, add the sliced beef. If you didn't use the pre-prepared sauce, season the curry with fish sauce and palm sugar. Make sure that you taste it to check the balance of flavours. If too sweet, add more salt. Adding more coconut milk can also help with the final taste but this shouldn't be a runny curry. Finish with the spur chilli, sliced kaffir lime leaves and coriander. Save the sweet basil and some kaffir lime leaves for decoration. Check out our websites at www.EnjoyThaiFood.com and www.ThaiStreetFood.com for more pictures of Thai food.

Hard-Boiled Egg in Tamarind Sauce (khai luk kery)
ไข่ลูกเขย

This is another one of those simple dishes that doesn't need much effot in making. In Thai, it is called "khai luk kery". Interestingly, this translates literally as "son-in-law eggs"! In the ingredients below, you can see tamarind juice at the top and soy sauce below that. You can use fish sauce instead if you don't mind the smell. At the bottom left we have dried hot chillies and garlic cloves. Or you could use red shallots instead. You also need two hard boiled eggs. On the right is the palm sugar - though obviously don't put it all in!

Heat some oil in a wok and when hot add your hardboiled eggs. When they are golden brown then set aside. Next you need to fry some crushed garlic or red shallots. Then set these aside. Stir fry the palm sugar next. Add the tamarind juice and soy sauce and continue to stir until it becomes like a syrup. The taste should be sour, salty and sweet. Adjust the balance if it is not right. Next, cut the eggs in half and place face up on a plate. Sprinkle the top with the fried garlic and fried dried chillies. Pour the sauce over the top. You will find it is a very delicious dish. I will share with you another dish to cook at www.thai-blogs.com next week.

Winged Bean Salad (yum thua pu)
ยำถั่วพู

Our Thai meal today didn't need, of course, any cooking as it is a salad. It is Winged Bean Salad or "yum thua pu" in Thai. We actually bought all the ingredients at the local market and all we had to do is mix everything together! In the ingredients below, you can see fresh shrimp, hard-boiled egg, boiled chicken slices, fried garlic, chilli, a mixture of peanut and dried coconut meat and winged bean that has been scalded and cut into horizontal slices. The sauce in themiddle does vary. This one looks like it has tamarind juice, chilli paste, fish sauce, palm sugar and coconut milk.

To make, all you have to do is mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and add the sauce. Very simple to do as long as someone else has prepared all the ingredients for you. You can view our archives of Thai Street Food which includes hundreds of pictures and many cooking videos which you can download for free.

Pad Thai (pad thai)
ผ้ดไทย

Today we are going to show you how to cook one of the most popular Thai dishes for foreigners. It is called "pad thai" or Thai Fried Noodles. It is not that difficult to cook but it involves a bit of an effort to prepare the ingredients. To be honest with you, we cheated a bit today. Our local pad thai food stall kindly gave us all the ingredients and also allowed us to make notes on her method of cooking. However, she wouldn't tell us the secret ingredients for the sauce. This is what makes her stall more popular than others around this area. She actually admitted that even she doesn't know the recipe as it is made by her mother in a back room. The ingredients you can see below are, from top and going clockwise, roasted peanuts, fresh rice noodles (sen jan), salted Chinese radish, fried tofu, red shallots, dried shrimp, fresh shrimp and two eggs in the middle. Normally it is one egg per dish. On the left, you can see Chinese chives, beansprouts and sliced lime. Some people use garlic instead of red shallots. I have also sometimes seen chicken instead of the more popular shrimp.

Heat the oil up in a wok. Add red shallots and cook until fragrant. Then add the fresh shrimp, salted radish, tofu and dried shrimp. Give a good stir all the time. Move the ingredients to one side and then break two eggs into the pan. Cook for about a minute and then mix in with the other ingredients. Move to one side again. Add the fresh rice noodles. If you are using dried noodles you must soak in water for about 10 minutes. Then add tamarind paste and the secret sauce. Adjust the taste to your liking by adding soy sauce or fish sauce and sugar. Stir slowly until the noodles become dry. Now mix all the ingredients together. Finally, add the Chinese chives and beansprouts. Stir this in but there is no need to cook it. Serve with fresh vegetables, ground roasted peanuts and a slice of lime. I think ours tasted just as good as the real thing! Looks good too.

You will find the archives for my Thai Street Food blogs over at our new site www.ThaiStreetFood.com. You will also find there cooking videos that I shot at our local food vendors. You can download these for free. Some of the more popular videos have already been download more than 25,000 times!