Chicken and Galangal Soup

The first part of the Thai name, tom ka, simply means “boiled galangal” while gai is the Thai word for chicken. Although the meat most commonly used in this soup is chicken, tom ka can also be made with fish, shellfish and other poultry, but the somewhat delicate flavour doesn’t hold up well against beef or pork.

As with several other Thai dishes, your main challenge here, aside from the herbs and spices, will be the straw mushrooms. Even in Bangkok, they seem to be disappearing from the markets in favor of sturdier ‘foreign’ varieties. For the photo, I had to resort to canned mushrooms, which better approximate the taste and texture that other types of fresh ones.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Combine coconut milk, Kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and galangal in a pot and bring to a boil.
• Add chicken pieces and mushrooms, and return the mixture to a boil.
• Add remaining ingredients: Chicken stock, fish sauce, lime juice, white pepper and roasted chili sauce.
• Pour into serving bowl and garnish with a few leaves of coriander.

Sweet and Sour Pork

I also like sweet and sour stir fry because you can use just about whatever is at hand, in truly typical Thai fashion. Some kind of meat and onions are about the only real requirements. You can add any other vegetables you may have, such as baby corn, long beans, bell peppers and of course pineapple makes an occasional appearance as well. If you like a bit more sauce, which goes well with rice, you can try adding some Thai style chili sauce or even ketchup with some ground chili. Even the sauce can be improvised using whatever is at hand, such as tomato sauce, vinegar, pineapple juice, etc.

This particular recipe, which I’ve translated from a Thai cookbook, is somewhat unusual in that it calls for shiitake mushrooms, as well as a lot of vegetables. Although I haven’t tried it, I believe that if you left out the meat entirely, this would make a good vegetarian dish. You can use soy sauce in place of fish sauce.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Heat some oil in a wok and stir-fry the garlic until it is fragrant. Add the pork and stir-fry until cooked through.
• Season with the fish sauce, sugar and vinegar. Then add the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and banana chillies.
• Check the seasoning and add more vinegar if the dish is not sour enough.
• Stir the tapioca flour into the three tablespoons of water, then add to the stir-fry along with the prawns, if desired. Remove from heat as soon as the prawns are cooked and the sauce thickens. Sprinkle the chopped coriander over the stir fry.

Custard Filled Pumpkin

The difficulty with this recipe is, of course, finding a pot large enough to fit your pumpkin, or a pumpkin small enough to fit in your pot! The size favored for this weighs in at around 500 grams, or one pound.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I didn’t make this dish for the photograph. I purchased the slice of ready-made dessert from a stall in the market where I live in Bangkok.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Thoroughly wash the outside of the pumpkin. Cut a circular hole around the stem of the pumpkin, about three to four inches in diameter. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy bits inside the pumpkin. Rinse out the inside of the pumpkin and dry with a clean cloth or paper towels.
• Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add in the coconut cream and palm sugar, and mix slowly until thoroughly blended to a smooth texture.
• Fill the pumpkin with the custard mixture. Now comes the tricky bit: the entire pumpkin needs to be steamed in a double boiler. You can improvise one with a large sturdy ceramic bowl placed in a soup pot. Thais use a woven basket wedged over a pot of boiling water.
• Keep the water boiling until the custard begins to set, then reduce the heat and continue to steam for about 20 to 25 minutes more. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
• The dish is usually served at room temperature, and is simply sliced like a cake, then served whole – skin and all.

Pork Stir-fried with Long Beans

This recipe also calls for red curry paste – krueng gaeng ped – to be used. You should be able to find this in an oriental grocery, or use the recipe linked to below. You can of course use fresh string beans if long beans aren’t available. If you can find real long beans, one thing some cooks like to do is tie the beans in a knot. Cut the beans in four to six-inch lengths and then just tie them in a knot. Long beans are flexible enough to do this. Regular string beans will snap if you try this.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Fry the curry paste in the oil over medium heat until the paste releases its fragrance, add the pork and stir-fry until cooked.
• Add chicken stock, sugar and fish sauce. Mix well. Add the yard-long beans and stir to mix.
• The dish is typically garnished with a sprinkling of finely sliced red spur chilli and shredded kaffir lime leaves.

Minced Pork Omelet

(4 Servings)

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Grind the garlic and black pepper together.
• Crack the eggs into a bowl. Add the garlic-pepper mixture and salt. Beat until thoroughly mixed.
• Heat a wok over medium heat. Add a generous amount of oil, and when hot toss in the ground pork and stir it until well browned.
• Reduce heat to medium and pour in the egg mixture directly into the center of the wok or frying pan.
• Fry until the underside of the omelet is golden brown, then turn and fry the other side until golden.
• Garnish with some chopped coriander and serve with a chili sauce.

Variation: I like a little chopped coriander mixed in with the eggs.
 

Korean Grilled Beef

I made this for the photo with just a small amount of beef. If I were using the full 500 grams, I would be tempted to double the marinade to make sure the beef was well coated.

The recipe calls for ‘Chinese’ cooking sherry, but strangely I could only find Japanese cooking wine in the supermarket. It also provides a recipe for a dipping sauce, but I found that it was totally unnecessary. With a good coating of the marinade, the beef is quite delicious without the sauce. If you can’t find pickled garlic to use the juice, then just plain vinegar will probably do.

The recipe calls for the white sesame seeds to be roasted. To do this, just spread the seeds out in a hot dry skillet. Shake the pan once or twice to turn the seeds. They will brown in a few seconds.

(4 Servings)

Ingredients

Dipping Sauce

Preparation Method

• Mix all of the main ingredients except the beef together in a bowl.
• Add the beef to the mix and make sure it gets coated well. Marinate the beef in the sauce for at least one hour in the refrigerator.
• If you want to use the dipping sauce, prepare it while the beef marinates. Put the garlic juice, sugar and salt in a bowl and stir together. Microwave the mixture until it comes to a boil. Remove it from the oven and stir in the rest of the ingredients.
• Remove the marinated beef from the refrigerator and cook it on a grill, or hot skillet. It will cook very quickly if sliced thin.
• The beef can be served with the dipping sauce and some steamed vegetables, such as asparagus, whole baby corn and carrot sticks.

This is one of the few Thai dishes that’s most often made with beef rather than pork. That, and the fiery spiciness points to southern origins. While beef is the most common meat, it can be made with pork or chicken.

Jungle Curry made with beef

Due to its ‘extreme’ nature, jungle curry is not as common as many other dishes on the Thai menu, but it’s still relatively easy to find. Recipes for jungle curry also vary widely. Some variations use coconut milk and can be quite thick, but most cooks use water or stock to make the soup. Traditional recipes use Thai aubergines and pea aubergines for the vegetable, but I think the corn and long beans ‘sweeten’ the dish slightly, making it more palpable to western tastes.

This particular recipe, translated from a Thai source, also calls for pumpkin. As I’ve noted in the article on pumpkin, Thais don’t follow any ‘rules’ that say a food is strictly for dessert, etc. You’ll find pumpkin used in all sorts of main courses. In this dish, it gives a nice cooling counterpoint to the spiciness of the curry.

You might also see in the photograph that I used regular green beans instead of long beans. This was mainly because I had some in the ‘fridge and they work just as well. The taste is almost the same.

(4 Servings)

Ingredients

Curry Paste

Preparation Method

• Grind together the curry paste ingredients in a mortar and pestle to form a smooth paste.
• Clean and peel the pumpkin, then cut into small cubes.
• Heat the vegetable oil in a wok, add the prepared curry paste and stir fry until fragrant.
• Toss in the sliced beef and stir fry until cooked through.
• Add water to cover the beef, then add the pumpkin. When the water comes to a boil, season to taste with fish sauce and sugar.
• Add the baby corn and long beans. When the liquid returns to the boil, add the holy basil leaves and shredded spur chili. Remove from heat.

There are those that would insist that som tam can only be made with green papaya, but in fact Thais have created an almost infinite number of variations on the dish, using a variety of fruits and vegetables. This one offers an interesting way to dress up a simple vegetable like fresh green beans.

String Bean Som Tam

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Blanch the green beans by boiling them for just a minute or two, and then drain them and let them cool.
• Stir together the lime juice and sugar. It’s usually better to set it aside for a few minutes or more to give the juice time to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the tamarind sauce, chilies and garlic.
• Pour the dressing over the beans and stir to mix lightly, then pour the mixture onto a serving dish.
• Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes, crushed peanuts and optional dried shrimp over the top.

Instant noodles – often called Ramen noodles in the US – are a very popular light meal or snack in Thailand. While they may be something you thought you left behind when you left college, chances are you never ate this well back in school.

This is not a very common dish, but I have seen it on the menu of some Thai restaurants, although not those that cater to westerners. The Thai-language version I translated this recipe from called for shrimp paste and fermented fish sauce (and by ‘fermented’ they mean rotten). Since I’m not a big fan of overly fishy-tasting foods and prefer lighter dishes that can be vegetarian, I’ve adjusted the recipe.

Traditionally, the garlic and chilies would be mashed together in a big mortar and then the other dressing ingredients would be stirred in. You can get quite satisfactory results by just mincing them. You can also use shallots instead of garlic. Tamarind paste (or sauce) is very sour, so you may need to use more sugar if you add it.

Instant Noodle Salad

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Stir together the sugar and lime juice. It’s best to leave this to set a little while to allow the lime juice to dissolve the sugar. Then stir in the chilies and garlic, as well as the tamarind paste if you decide to use it.
• Cook the noodles, then drain them and set aside until they’re warm enough to touch. Pour the dressing over the noodles and stir together.
• Transfer the noodles to a serving dish and then arrange the tomatoes on top.
• I like this dish when the noodles are still a little warm, but it’s good at room temperature.

Use whatever type of lettuce you prefer. I like red coral but regular iceberg works nicely as well.

Thai Tuna Salad

Ingredients

Dressing

Preparation Method

• Mix all fo the ingredients for the dressing together and set aside for a little while.
• Arrange the lettuce of a serving plate.
• Drain the tuna and spoon it onto the lettuce.
• Pour the dressing over the tuna and sprinkle the coriander on top just before serving.