Bangkok Thai Cooking Academy-Day 14

Hi All, today we moved on to green curry paste, as one of my teachings and dishes…I really enjoyed it. We always have the choice of how many chili peppers to put in our paste, in case we don’t want it to be overly spicy. Even though I like spicy I used 1…but it still seemed pretty spicy, and I only used 1/2 of the paste in the green curry dish I made…I must have gotten a good one!

We went for a tour of the market again, to show the incoming students what I saw the first day. It was nice to see again, I saw a lot of things I didn’t see the first time.

Today each of us prepped our own station ingredients. It was fun, but hectic! We also made our own tamarind sauce…pretty easy. You take a tamarind root and boil in water, let cool then smash all the meat off of it with your fingers, then you boil it again so it lasts a long time.

The dishes I learned to make today included:

• Green curry paste (Nam Prik Gaeng Kheao Wan)
• Green curry with chicken (Gaeng Kheao Wan Gai)
• Thai style fried rice noodles (Pad Thai)
• Sweet sticky rice with Longan and coconut cream topping (Khao Nieow Piak Lam-Yai)
• Stir fried seafood with spicy basil (Talay Pad Kra Pao)
• Crispy fried mussel pancakes (Hoy Tord)
• Tofu and soy milk (Tao Hoo)

The most fun dish to make today, because I didn’t think it would be so easy, was the Tofu. I won’t see how much it firms up, or how it tastes, until tomorrow but the process was easy. My two favorite dishes today were the pad Thai and the green curry with chicken. So yummy! But, i would have to choose the green curry with chicken since it had a wonderful balance of flavors.

For the green curry with chicken, you will need:

• 50 grams chicken, sliced
• 1-2 tablespoons green curry paste
• 1 Thai eggplant, cut in 6
• 5 pea eggplants
• 1-2 kaffir lime leaves
• 8 sweet basil leaves
• 1/4 red spur chili, sliced or julienned (reserve 1/2 for garnish)
• 1/2 cup coconut cream
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1-2 tablespoons cooking oil
• 1/2 tablespoon palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce

Steps:

1. Add oil to wok and 1-2 tablespoons of green curry paste, stir vigorously until fragrant.
2. Add coconut cream and and stir until oil rises to the top.
3. Add chicken and fry for about 2 minutes, until chicken turns white.
4. Add coconut milk, eggplants, palm sugar and fish sauce and simmer until eggplants cook.
5. Then add sweet basil and kaffir leaves, some of the red chili’s and cook for 10 seconds.
6. Serve with rice, if you desire.

Some of the other dishes I made today:

The pad Thai was wonderful. Chef taught us different ways to present it. See below for some additional presentations of this dish.

Well, that is it for today. I will be having class tomorrow too, Christmas day, so stay tuned for some more. Happy Holidays to All!!!