Bangkok Thai Cooking Academy-Day 4

Hi my friends, it’s me again. Today, like the others so far, was another fun filled day of cooking and learning new ingredients and processes. Some new ingredients I worked with were Thai pumpkin (texture and taste is more like a sweet potato then our traditional Jack-o-lantern pumpkins), sponge gourd, mung bean noodles, and taro.

A usual, we used our mortar and pestle to grind our whole spices and herbs. I need to get mine out at home…I think that is why all the flavors are so good over just throwing them in your dish or food processing them.

Today’s dishes included:

• Herbal vegetable soup paste (Nam Prik Kaeng Leang)
• Herbal vegetable soup (Gaeng Leang) with shrimp
• Steamed seabass with lime sauce (Pla Kaphong Neung Manow)
• Spareribs garlic (Si-Khrong Moo Thod Kratium)
• Golden bag (Tung Thong)
• Tiny dumplings in sweet coconut milk (Kanom Bua Loy)

My station today and all the stations together, in case you are curious how the layout/setup looks. Yeah, I am, for the most part, the first student in there everyday and about 30 minutes early. I need to plan better timing :).

From the dishes we made today, again all pretty wonderful, if I had to pick one that I like the most it would be the golden bag. Yeah, I know, fried picks two days in a row. I think I enjoyed this the most because not only was it tasty but it seemed like it didn’t take much effort to make and it was fun putting together the little bags. I suppose you can roll them up too for a spring roll look, but they were much prettier like this :). OR you can use minced pork instead of the combination below. Also, it’s amazing how strong Chinese chives are when blanched. You can pull those little suckers tight around the bundles and they don’t break!

For the golden bag, you will need:

• 1/4 cup minced chicken
• 1/4 cup minced shrimp
• 1/4 cup vermicelli mung bean noodles, cut up
• 2-3 shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
• 2 slices carrot, finely chopped or shredded (when they say slices they mean Thai carrot slices, they are about 2″ in diameter)
• 50 grams Chinese chives, 1 strand finely chopped the others blanched whole
• 1/2 teaspoon white peppercorns
• 1″ piece of coriander root
• 1/2 garlic clove
• 1 teaspoon oyster sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon seasoning sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon rice flour
• Pinch of sugar
• Sprinkle of pepper powder (ground pepper)
• 4-6 Spring roll wrappers, depending on size of your circle cutout
• 1/4 cup chili or plum dipping sauce

Steps:

1. Combine peppercorns, coriander root and garlic clove in mortar and pound until a thick paste and add to medium bowl.
2. Add chicken, shrimp, vermicelli, mushrooms, carrots and chopped chives to same bowl as peppercorn mixture and stir good.
3. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and seasoning sauce and rice flour and combine well. Set aside.
4. Cut approximately 6″ circles, using a bowl and sharp paring or carving knife, out of the spring roll wrappers.
5. Take wrapper, smooth side down, and add about 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture to the center. Pull sides up to form a bag and tie with a piece of blanched Chinese chive. Cut off excess chive, leave about 1/2 inch long.
6. Deep fry until golden brown on medium heat. You want the filling to be done before you brown the exterior.
7. Serve with chili or plum sauce.

Making this dish was like an art project, cutting and making pretty little packages :). Also, in case you are wondering why you want the smooth side down on the spring roll wrapper it’s so the wrap doesn’t create bubbles on the outside when it’s fried…kind of like you see when you fry an egg roll.

And the pretty pictures of the process:

Some of the other wonderful dishes today. The first picture below shows what a sponge gourd looks like, the long green cucumber looking thing. Also, we made our own spicy vegetable soup base. Chef said we can use as much as we wanted (little blue bowl below, 3rd picture) depending on how spicy I want it, of course I put it all in…it only had one Thai chili pepper in it…that is nothing. One of the other dishes I made today had 5 in it…and that wasn’t too bad…I think by the end of the month I will be able to do Thai hot, ha, ha.

This next dish was also very good. It’s amazing how you can steam fish with no seasoning and it is so tasty…as I mentioned yesterday, it’s in the sauce. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that the fish is fresh and not from frozen. Amazing. This was the dish that had the 5 chili pepper’s in it…they were all in the dipping sauce, along with garlic and shallots, some fish sauce, lime juice and sugar and a little bit of chicken broth to loosen it up. After it set for an hour I didn’t think it was that spicy at all.

And the pork spare ribs with garlic. We used tiny garlic cloves in this, just crushed them because if we actually peeled them it would take an hour…or maybe two!

The most creative of all these dishes, I would have to say, is the tiny dumplings in sweet coconut milk…it was also the most time consuming to make, but pretty different than other desserts that I have had. The desserts, overall, have been better than I expected, I really have enjoyed all of them thus far and the techniques they utilize to make them are pretty unique. Also, I love how we use natural ingredients to die the custards or the dough’s, such as blended pandanus leaves with some water for green, and cooked pumpkin for an orange color, like today, we incorporated cooked Thai pumpkin into the sticky rice flour dough with a little coconut milk…we are using A LOT of coconut milk. It’s good that I love the flavor!

For the white dumplings today, we incorporated taro (a root vegetable with a sweet and nutty flavor) so it could impart some flavor to the plain white colored dumpling. And when I say the desserts have been unique, well this one was real unique…it had a poached egg on top! Now, that is unique for a dessert. Chef also said you are supposed to stick the whole egg in your mouth and eat it…believe me, I could have done that, but I thought about getting gooey egg yolk all over my face if an accident occurred…so I thought I’d cut it in half first…lol. The dumplings we made were pea sized…so that is where most of the time went, rolling those. We cooked them in boiling water first, so all the starch stays in the water, then transfered them to the coconut milk, which was infused with a pandanus leaf.

Well, that is all for today folks. Catch you again tomorrow!

Tung Thong

Thai Golden Bag

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Course Appetizer

Cuisine thai

Ingredients

  

• 1/4 cup minced chicken
• 1/4 cup minced shrimp
• 1/4 cup vermicelli mung bean noodles cut up
• 2-3 shiitake mushrooms finely chopped
• 2 slices carrot finely chopped or shredded (when they say slices they mean Thai carrot slices, they are about 2″ in diameter)
• 50 grams Chinese chives 1 strand finely chopped the others blanched whole
• 1/2 teaspoon white peppercorns
• 1 ″ piece of coriander root
• 1/2 garlic clove
• 1 teaspoon oyster sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon seasoning sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon rice flour
• Pinch of sugar
• Sprinkle of pepper powder ground pepper
• 4-6 Spring roll wrappers depending on size of your circle cutout
• 1/4 cup chili or plum dipping sauce

Instructions

 

• Combine peppercorns, coriander root and garlic clove in mortar and pound until a thick paste and add to medium bowl.
• Add chicken, shrimp, vermicelli, mushrooms, carrots and chopped chives to same bowl as peppercorn mixture and stir good.
• Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and seasoning sauce and rice flour and combine well. Set aside.
• Cut approximately 6″ circles, using a bowl and sharp paring or carving knife, out of the spring roll wrappers.
• Take wrapper, smooth side down, and add about 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture to the center. Pull sides up to form a bag and tie with a piece of blanched Chinese chive. Cut off excess chive, leave about 1/2 inch long.
• Deep fry until golden brown on medium heat. You want the filling to be done before you brown the exterior.
• Serve with chili or plum sauce.