Hi All, day 10 brought about a lot more food. I have to say my belly is getting a little puffy. I need to just try 1 bite of each dish instead of 2 or 3…but it’s so hard. Especially today when we made Asian fried bread stick…I ate like 7 of them. Oh boy, time to slow down on the eating :).

My station today had a lot of new things on it. Some new items included young ginger, Maggi sauce, salted soybean paste, pickled radish, Chinese celery, pickled Chinese cabbage, Chinese sausage, and fermented (soured) pork.

The dishes I made today included:

• Rice congee (Joke)
• Thai grilled pork and sticky rice (Khao Neaw Moo Ping)
• Stir fried morning glories (Phad Pak Bung Fai Daeng)
• Asian fried bread sticks (Pa Tong Koh)
• Rice porridge with fish (Khao Tom Pla)
• Boiled rice served with condiments (Khao Tom Gui)
• Crispy rice salad with soured pork (Yam Naem Khao Thot)
• Crispy egg noodles in gravy (Ba Mee Krob Rad Na)

I did some more “arts and crafts” today with banana leaves. Made little rice bundles with them. So fun and what a cute presentation of the rice.

My favorite dish today was the crispy rice salad with soured pork. Everything came together wonderfully. In making this dish I realized how to make the Italian arancini di riso (rice balls) too, it has to be a similar process.

For the crispy rice salad with soured pork, you will need:

• 1 tablespoon red curry paste
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 three inch piece of fermented pork, sliced
• 1-2 kaffir lime leaves, rolled up and julienned
• 3 slices fresh ginger, julienned
• 1-3 small shallots, sliced thinly
• 2 stalks coriander
• 1 tablespoon peanuts
• 2-3 dried hot chilies
• 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 cup tempura flour
• 1/4 cup water, approximately

Steps:

1. In a large bowl, mix well the rice, red curry paste, and egg yolk, then shape into 2 inch balls, set aside.
2. In another small mixing bowl, add tempura flour and enough water to make an medium consistency batter, mix well.
3. Heat vegetable oil in a wok or pot, over medium heat. When hot, dip rice balls into batter and fry them until golden brown and crispy on the outside. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. In a mixing bowl, add several rice balls, break them up into chunks with your hand, and the fermented pork and mix well.
5. Add the kaffir lime leaves, ginger, shallots, coriander, fish sauce, lime juice, chili flakes, and sugar to a bowl and mix well. Poor over rice ball mixture and combine well.
6. Place on serving plate and garnish with peanuts and dried hot chilies.

And pictures of the other dishes I made today:

The flavor on the below dish was good, but I think I would prefer it better with pork tenderloin, if using pork. The pork pieces they tend to use for this has a lot of fat on it, which I prefer not to eat. Don’t you love those little rice bundles?

I’m really enjoying all the sea bass that I’m getting to eat. I LOVE sea bass and anywhere I go (Italy, Greece, America) it seems like it’s one of the expensive fishes. But here it’s so inexpensive, what a treat that I get to eat some almost every day!

That is it for today. Another productive day of cooking and learning! Catch you tomorrow.

Well, the one day break is over. Time to get back to cooking. I have really enjoyed cooking on a daily basis. Of course, if I had to cook for a hundred people every day then I may not :).

Today Chef Guitar was our instructor. So far, all three of the Chef’s that have taught me have been excellent. It’s so nice to see the different teaching, cooking and preparation styles of each Chef, it teaches you a variety of ways that things can be done and keeps you on your toes!

Some new ingredients I worked with today included morning glory, (although I had eaten these last March I never had worked with them), Kaffir fruit (not just the leaves), jack fruit, and made my own rice powder, which was blended with lemon grass and kaffir leaves and gave it a great aroma.

The dishes we made today included:

• Tay pho curry paste (Nam Phrik Gaeng Tay-Pho)
• Tay pho curry with pork belly & morning glories (Gaeng Tay-Pho)
• Stir fried crab with curry powder (Poo Pad Phong Ka Ree)
• Slice grilled spicy pork salad (Nam Tok Moo)
• Baked prawns and mung bean noodles (Goong Oob Wunsen)
• Water chestnuts in coconut syrup (Tub Tim Grub)

My favorite dish today was the sliced grilled spicy pork salad. The dressing was so flavorful with a little tang from the lime, saltiness from the fish sauce and a touch of sweetness from the sugar. What a wonderful balance of flavors. It was the perfect bite, or two, or three…oh well, let’s just say there were some bites to be eaten :).

For the sliced grilled spicy pork salad, you will need:

• 70 grams pork (was like the pork steak that we see, no bone)
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon toasted sticky rice
• 2-3 shallots, finely sliced (remember, there shallots here are like an inch or less in diameter, not like the big ones in the US)
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried chili powder
• 2 stalks coriander, finely sliced
• 1 stalk spring onion, finely sliced
• 2 leaves of Thai coriander, finely sliced
• 5-8 mint leaves (for dish and for garnish)
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1/4 tsp sugar

Step:

1. Grill, or pan fry, the pork steak to medium (don’t use any oil), then remove and slice about 1/3″ pieces.
2. Add stock in a small pot and bring to a boil, add sliced pork and stir until cooked.
3. In the meantime, in a bowl, mix lime juice, fish sauce and sugar, set aside.
4. Once pork is fully cooked throw in the lime juice mixture and stir.
5. Add toasted sticky rice powder, dried chili’s and stir well.
6. Add shallots, garlic and other veggies and 1/2 the mint leaves. Stir well.
7. Serve with cabbage or long beans (optional).

Pictures of my other dishes. First time using the whole kaffir lime. Up to now we have only used the rind or the leaves. The juice is VERY tart, somewhat bitter.

It was a learning experience cleaning the crab and cutting it up. I had never done that before. Supposedly, by traditional stir fry standards, you fry the garlic first, then the protein, then liquid and lastly the veggies. If you have herbs that easily wilt they go at the end after the veggies for a several seconds only. My sauce needed a little more chicken stock…oh well, next time.

This next dish was an interesting one. Good concept but I needed to lower my heat, the bottom burned a little, but the flavor was good. I personally think after putting it all in the clay pot it should be put into a 400 degree oven to cook for 15-30 minutes. That way my bottom wouldn’t get all burned (no pun intended :)).

And lastly, dessert. So far it seems like every dessert utilizes coconut milk/cream. This one was another interesting one, but it worked! This would be good in a cup, instead of a bowl…very refreshing. A syrup was made and flavored with a pandanus leaf and then coconut milk and cream thrown in. Also, for those who wanted their coconut liquid smoked, the milk was put on the bottom of a dry steamer then the basket on top and the lit beeswax at the top and then the lid was put on…and the milk smoked away. You serve this in the cooled coconut milk with ice cubes and the chestnuts (we made two colors by dying them, one with a red strawberry syrup and the other with food coloring and water to make it light pink, then in tapioca flour and boiled), top it with jack fruit and eat it with a spoon! It was very unique, as all of the desserts have been thus far.

That is it for today. I hope you enjoyed it all! Catch you tomorrow.

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.