Greetings from Bangkok! Another good day of cooking. I was just thinking today, as I was chopping some REAL small shallots, how much better my knife skills have become. This school is teaching me more than Thai recipes, but giving me the experience in the kitchen with items I normally wouldn’t use much, such as woks, steamers, coconut shredders, mortars, carving knives, etc. Even though I miss my family and friends back home, this has been a wonderful experience so far and hope I can do it again in the future in other countries, as well.

Some new ingredients I worked with today included soft tofu (it was real soft and gelatinous) and Chinese salted black olives (they had some HUGE pits in them, wow). I got to scrape coconut out of a fresh coconut today and learned how to prepare it. Fresh coconut doesn’t last long, about a day or two in the fridge…So you have to add a little salt to the shredded coconut, mix, and then steam it for about 15 or so minutes so it keeps fresh longer.

Also, I went to the bakery next door to get some of the items that I’ve used at school for home…so much less expensive then buying them online, sooo much…I checked. I just remembered a few more things I want…guess I will go back tomorrow after class!

My stations today were very colorful with all the veggies and sauces. I need to mention, when we cook if it looks like your dish is getting dry in the wok there is always chicken stock on the cooking station to put into your dish. It’s basically cook by site…if it looks like it’s dry or going to burn/stick to the wok, add more broth. Also, we do multiple tastings for each dish to make sure the sauce tastes as expected. If you like your flavors differently you can taste and adjust from there.

What I made today:

• Deep fried tofu & prawn sauce (Tao Hu Song Khuang)
• Deep fried Spicy Pork Salad (Larb Tord)
• Southern Thai style deep fried fish with turmeric (Pla Thod Khamin)
• Thai style salted black olive fried rice (Khao Pad Nahm Liap)
• Coconut pancakes (Ka Nom Ba-Bin)
• Stir fried beef with black Pepper (Neux Waw Pad Prik Thai Dam)
• Stir fried rice vermicelli with tamarind sauce and soy bean dip (Mee Krati)

Although I really enjoyed the coconut pancakes, I think my favorite dish today is between Southern Thai style deep fried fish with turmeric, Thai style salted black olive fried rice, and stir fried beef with black pepper. They all had a light and healthy taste to them, especially the fish…oh, so tender and succulent with wonderful flavors from the turmeric and garlic rub…but I will go with the Thai style salted black olive fried rice. When everything was mixed together the flavors just hit the spot today.

For the Thai style salted black olive fried rice, you will need:

• 2 Chinese salted black olives, pit removed and chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 small shallots, sliced thinly
• 30 grams ground pork
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1 teaspoon light soy sauce
• 2 small hot chilies
• 1/4 cup long bean, sliced thinly
• 1 lime, cut for garnish
• 1/4 cup toasted cashews

Steps:

1. Heat walk with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and fry garlic until fragrant.
2. Add pork and separate then add black olives. Cook until pork is done.
3. In the meantime, mix sugar, oyster and soy sauce and set aside.
4. Add rice to wok, then sauce mixture and mix well with other ingredients in wok and cook until heated through, about 3 minutes.
5. Dish the fried rice onto a serving plate and arrange small piles of hot chili’s, long beans, shallots and lime around the perimeter.

The other dishes I made today:

Whew, that is it for today. Tomorrow I have a double Saturday session. I will be making 9 dishes! I’m kind of scared to weigh myself…oh well, it’s all an experience! Catch you tomorrow.

Another amazing day today. Was one of those extended days…made a total of 9 dishes. Five with Chef Ratch and 4 with Chef Guitar, afterwards. Today ALL the dishes were excellent.

Some new ingredients I worked with were pickled cabbage and whole mung beans. Some new techniques I learned were how to debone a freaking chicken wing, seriously? It was time consuming but very rewarding :), then I stuffed it. I also fried morning glory leaves to dip in a wonderful chicken and shrimp dip.

My two stations today (morning and afternoon) looked like this. There is always more that comes to the station at different times but I just capture what is on there at the start.

The dishes I made today were:

• Khao soy curry paste (Nam Prik Gaeng Khao Soy)
• Khao soy with chicken (Khao Soy Gai)
• Deep fried fish in red curry (Pad Ped Pla Thod Krob)
• Stuffed chicken wings (Bpeek Gai Yut Sai)
• Pork belly stir fried with lemongrass and sweet basil (Moo Sam Chan Pad Horapa)
• Mung bean Thai custard dessert (Mor Kaeng Tua)
• Hot and sour soup with turmeric (Kai Tom Kamin)
• Braised spareribs in pineapple sauce (Si-Khrong Moo Op Sapporot)
• Crispy fried morning glories (Yam Pak Boong Grob)
• Cucumber salad with boiled egg and prawn (Yum Tang Gwa Goong Sod)

Wow, that was a lot and oh so yummy! I have to say, i’m getting a little tired of eating ALL that food, but i’m not getting tired of preparing it. So many fun and new techniques I am learning, it’s incredible! My arm muscles are getting really buff, all that pounding in the mortar. I need the additional exercise with everything I am eating!

So, my top three dishes from today were the egg noodles in chicken curry (Khao Soy Gai), was a yellow curry; the hot and sour soup with turmeric (Kai Tom Kamin), the flavor of the broth was similar to Tom Yum broth but a Southern Thai version; and the braised spareribs in pineapple sauce (Si-Khrong Moo Op Sapparot), oh my!

Well, the chicken curry was my favorite from the first 5 dishes I made today and the hot and sour soup and braised spareribs were two of my favorites from the second half. I really don’t know which one to choose so I will just flip for it…hold on…okay, the braised spareribs with pineapple is the winner!

For the braised spareribs with pineapple, you will need:

• 400 grams pork spareribs, cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 cup fresh pineapple, sliced into chunks
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 3/4 cup pineapple juice (or orange)
• 1 tablespoon seasoning sauce
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon white peppercorn
• 1 teaspoon coriander root, roughly chopped
• 1-2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 2 cups chicken stock

Steps:

1. In a mortar, combine peppercorn, garlic and coriander and pound to a paste.
2. Mix the peppercorn mixture with ketchup, soy sauce, seasoning sauce, palm sugar and stir well.
3. Add mixture to pork and combine well. You can let marinate in refrigerator for an hour or two if you have time.
4. Add pork mixture to pot and add chicken stock and juice and combine well.
5. Add pineapple to the pot and simmer over low heat until the spareribs are tender and sauce is thick, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Here are all the other dishes that I made today.

Well all, that is it for today…yes, that was enough…I only ate a couple of bites of each dish and am still soooo stuffed. The rest of the month I will be making around 9 or 10 dishes…so there will be A LOT more pictures coming :).

I’m not sure how but the food that I learned to make today was even tastier than yesterday. It’s going to be hard picking a favorite. I basically need to put the names of the dishes in a cup and then pick one out!

I also unmolded the Thai layer cake dessert from yesterday, since it needed time to cool. I thought it would be too sweet, but it wasn’t. The coconut milk and cream with sugar and varying flours was a lot better than I was expecting. I was blissfully surprised. There were two alternate layers, light green and white. Isn’t it pretty?

The dishes I made today included:

• Jungle curry paste (Nam Prik Gaeng Pah), made it from scratch!
• Jungle curry chicken (Gaeng Pah Gai)
• Crispy catfish green mango salad (Yam Pla Duke Foo)
• Stir fried clams with Thai chili paste (Hoi Laai Pad Nam Prik Phao)
• Thai-style chicken briyani with green sauce (Khao Mok Gai)
• Coconut milk custard (Kanom Tuay)

My station today. Lot’s of wonderful ingredients. Worked with smoked catfish too and minced it real fine after taking the bones out and skin off. I LOVE that I get to work with ingredients that I typically wouldn’t use…gives a whole different perspective on food and flavors. Things you may have thought as not too appealing to eat are wonderful!

Also, I have been waiting to be able to prepare my own curry paste from scratch and I got to today. It was a jungle curry paste, forgot to ask what makes it “jungle”, but it had the flavor of red curry paste, but better. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. The hardest part was my arms getting a great work out from using the mortar and pestle A LOT today for pounding spices, chili’s and herbs…no food processor in this place that I can see. All done old school, which is wonderful!

They also mince their own chicken here…at first I thought they just buy ground chicken but Chef’s sous chef was chopping it with a chef knife today and I was like what the? Doing it this way minces the meat, which is smaller pieces than ground.

Okay, now its time for me to choose my favorite dish of the day…decisions decisions….hum, I cant, its hard! Let me think about it for another 30 seconds [the game show timer]…Ok, I guess I will choose…its between the jungle curry chicken, the crispy catfish green mango salad (oh the dressing on this was amazing) and the stir fried clams with Thai chili paste…okay, I know, I got it down to 3 out of 4 savory dishes, but still not one…don’t worry, I have an internal process here…the winner is “jungle curry chicken“…had to pick this because the homemade curry paste was amazing! It had everything in it, dried red spur chilies, lemongrass, galangal ginger, shallots, kaffir lime rind, garlic, coriander root, roasted coriander and cumin seeds, shrimp paste, white pepper corn and salt…amazing. You put it all in a mortar and pound away until it’s a paste. A lot of ingredients but oh my gosh, what a great final product! Fresh curry paste lasts 2-3 days. If you want it to last longer you need to cook the curry paste in oil first.

For the jungle curry chicken, you will need:

• 2 tablespoons jungle curry paste
• 1.5 ounces chicken thigh, sliced
• 1 green tiger eggplant/Thai round eggplant, quartered
• 1/4 cup long beans, sliced diagonally in 1″ pieces
• 6 Enoki mushrooms
• 2-3 lesser ginger
• 1 stalk green peppercorn
• 1/8 cup baby corn, sliced diagonally in 1/2″ pieces
• 1/4 cup holy basil leaves
• 2-3 Kaffir lime leaves, pulled into 2 each
• 1-2 red birds eye chili’s
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce

Steps:

1. Put oil in wok and add red curry paste. Fry over low heat until fragrant, then add chicken stock. Stir constantly about 2 minutes
2. Add chicken, eggplant and baby corn, bring to a boil.
3. Add lesser ginger, kaffir lime leaves, long beans, Enoki mushrooms and simmer for a few minutes
4. Add holy basil and red chili peppers and serve.
5. Serve with rice, if you want.

Below are the before and final presentation pictures of the other WONDERFUL dishes I made today.

Hope you enjoy, until tomorrow!

Gaeng Pah Gai

Thai Jungle Curry Chicken

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Course Main Course

Cuisine thai

Ingredients

  

• 2 tablespoons jungle curry paste
• 1.5 ounces chicken thigh sliced
• 1 green tiger eggplant/Thai round eggplant quartered
• 1/4 cup long beans sliced diagonally in 1″ pieces
• 6 Enoki mushrooms
• 2-3 lesser ginger
• 1 stalk green peppercorn
• 1/8 cup baby corn sliced diagonally in 1/2″ pieces
• 1/4 cup holy basil leaves
• 2-3 Kaffir lime leaves pulled into 2 each
• 1-2 red birds eye chili’s
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce

Instructions

 

• Put oil in wok and add red curry paste. Fry over low heat until fragrant, then add chicken stock. Stir constantly about 2 minutes
• Add chicken, eggplant and baby corn, bring to a boil.
• Add lesser ginger, kaffir lime leaves, long beans, Enoki mushrooms and simmer for a few minutes
• Add holy basil and red chili peppers and serve.
• Serve with rice, if you want.