LTHForum.com

Hi,

David Thompson was long planned to visit this week to promote his book. When he cancelled or deferred, it was due to issues related to opening this restaurant. I see there are issues of national pride in addition to the usual sorts of obsticles one has to deal with opening a restaurant.

Let's hope he sorts through it and comes to visit us!

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

Thaiobsessed made chili jam has been hanging in the fridge talking trash to the other ingredients. Just the other day I heard it call Philly cream cheese "industrial made processed poop" I've dunked slices of under ripe mango, apple and pear for a snack and last night a stir fry of mixed seafood, onion, pepper and peanut. Heaping tablespoon of chili jam turned a simple stir fry layered, complex and delicious. Thanks again Thaiobsssed.

Chili Jam, scallion, red onion, peanuts, red pepper, garlic, shrimp/bay scallop/squid



Raw peanuts wok fried in scant oil w/salt, cayenne, black pepper.



Red pepper, serrano pepper, red onion, garlic, hot pan stir fry



After veg develop wok hay, or at least as much wok hay as my ageing stove can muster, I added seafood then chili jam



Served with jasmine rice our Sunday meal came together quickly, after all Thaiobsessed had already done all the hard work.

Plated with basmati rice



I'm just about out, and chili jam is an incredibly handy diverse big bang for your buck pantry item. Looks like I have to actually break down and make a batch.

Kudos to ThaiObsessed and her chili jam.

Enjoy,
Gary

_________________
Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

Glad you enjoyed it.
That stir-fry looks terrific! And I just got a new wok... I'm going to have to try that--love the idea of adding peanuts.

I made the sea bass curry from the Thai Street Food cookbook recently. It tasted delicious, though there's a part of me that hates to overcook a piece of sea bass. The recipe specifically states to overcook the fish--similar to the Vietnamese Ca Kho to (fish in caramel sauce), delicious result with a method I would normally never use to cook fish. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the final dish.

Curry paste (yep, I'm too lazy to use a mortar)



Fish simmering in coconut milk with lemongrass (hard to go wrong with a start like this)

Thaiobsessed,

Despite overcooking, would you make it again? I have a feeling you would.

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

I'd definitely make it again (but probably with a less expensive fish--maybe cod?) It tasted great, I just object to overcooking fish in principle

I've been living up to my moniker lately. Since I went to Next, I've been cooking a lot out of David Thompson's cookbook. I was a little disappointed in Next's Thai menu (more on that in the other thread at some point) but the beef cheek curry reminded my how good Thompson's curries can be and sent me off to cook more from his books.

Grilled Prawn Curry-- ngob gung

Thompson notes that this is usually made with coconut cream but he uses grated coconut for a different texture. I was all for this since it gave me the chance to use my drill apparatus. The coconut is mixed with fish sauce, palm sugar, oil, kaffir lime leaves and heated, then wrapped in banana leaves with the prawns and Thai basil, then grilled. I had a hard time getting neat banana leaf packages but the dish was delicious. His recipe calls for 6 prawns--I'm not sure who goes to all this trouble for 6 prawns, but I used a whole pound and made multiple packets.

Edited to add: I left out some ingredients--shallots, garlic, lemongrass. The recipe also calls for makrut (kaffir lime) zest. I asked at Golden Pacific but he said they haven't been able to get it. I added a little lime zest, recognizing that it's not even close, but hey, can't hurt.














Stir-fried (wild--not in my case) pork with beans and green peppercorns--Pad prik king muu bpaa

Unfortunately, I couldn't find fresh peppercorns (I have seen them at Tai Nam in the past but they didn't have them when I was there recently) so I had to use jars. There are lots of versions of this dish around town. I like Aroy's, with crispy pork, quite a bit. I know others are fond of the version at Sticky Rice. This version was a little more aromatic and less rich. The stir-fry features long beans, wild ginger/krachai (I used frozen), kaffir lime leaves, green peppercorns and holy basil. I really liked it and would definitely make it again.







I tried a recipe from Thompson's Street Food cookbook this morning for breakfast:
Kanom Krok (Thai "cupcakes").

The batter is made the night before and features rice flour, grated coconut and coconut cream. It also calls for an ingredient I had never used before--lime water made from lime paste/calcium hydroxide--which adds a crispness to the little cakes. I bought a kanom krok pan at Tai Nam (about $11, IIRC). While cooking, you top the cakes with a mixture of coconut cream, sugar and salt, then add some corn and/or scallions and/or taro.











These are delicious (and not that hard to make, though they do require advanced planning). Interestingly, the proprietor at Golden Pacific showed me that they had a special bag of Kanom Krok flour with "the directions on the back". I bought some but couldn't make heads or tails of the instructions (the contents of the bag were listed in English but not the instructions).





I think there's a way I can put this into Google translate. If anyone on LTH reads Thai...

I broke down and got a Thai granite mortar. The molcajete just wasn't cutting it. This one is deeper with a smooth surface. Making curry paste with it takes less time and less muscle.

Prep for a recent batch of red curry paste for a chou chee curry:

I've been using homemade coconut milk a lot more recently.
With Bill/SFNM's drill trick, I can make quick work of a coconut.
My only complaint is that it's hard to get really thick cream. I grate the coconut, put it in the blender with 3/4- 1 cup water, then strain/squeeze in cheese cloth before doing a second 'press' with more water. I get thick coconut milk but not really cream. For some recipes, that's fine (I end up cooking curries down a little more), but for some, I need a thicker coconut cream. Anyone have any experience/ideas about this?

The homemade stuff works great for khao soi, though (since it's more of a soupy dish)

I've been thinking about grabbing one as well after frustrations with my mocajete. Did you get yours at Golden Pacific or somewhere else?

I got my ceramic one (for som tam) at Golden Pacific. They didn't have med-large granite ones so I got my granite mortar at Tai Nam on Broadway. I believe it was around $25

All the discussion of Next's tour of Thailand prompted me to make pa nang curry with beef cheeks. I was following David Thompson's recipe pretty faithfully, but then decided to modify the paste a little by adding ingredients in McDang's recipe. Thompson recommends brisket or beef cheeks for this. In the past, I've used brisket. After seeing Mike Sula's article about Chef McDang being in Chicago, I decided I should experiment with his cookbook a little more. For the Thai cookbook addicts out there, Principles of Thai Cookery is a gorgeous book and I love the background he provides on Thai culinary history and food culture. I actually find the organization of the book and the fundamentals of Thai cooking as he explains them to be much more intuitive than Thompson's (don't get me wrong, I love Thompson's books).

As I noted above, I've been using homemade coconut milk/cream a lot more. With a drill, it's pretty easy to make. And I feel like I can't really 'crack' the coconut cream (separate it into oil and solids) with the canned stuff. The homemade cream is thinner than canned but it reduces/thickens and 'cracks' beautifully resulting in the nice oily sheen that Thai curries are supposed to have.

I picked up a couple pounds of Dietzler Farm beef cheeks from Butcher and Larder and got to work.

Coconut cream: This is from the flesh of two coconuts with about 2 cups of boiling water for a 'first press' which I let sit for 10 minutes, then 'liquify' in the blender and strain (I subsequently did a second press with about 4 cups of water).
The coconut cream floats to the top nicely after about 10 minutes.



Paste ingredients (after I took this picture, I decided to McDang-ify this and added roasted shrimp paste, lime zest, as I didn't have kaffir lime zest, white pepper, ground toasted coriander and cumin seed). Shown here: peanuts boiled for 30 minutes, red chiles, galanga, cilantro stem (my roots aren't big enough to harvest yet), roasted nutmeg, lemongrass, garlic and shallots (the fresh chiles and kaffir lime leaves went into the curry later).



Curry paste:


Frying the coconut cream:
Thickening cream:



'Cracked' coconut cream (you can see the oil adjacent to the coconut solids)





With sauteed curry paste:



After additional coconut milk/braising liquid, palm sugar, fish sauce have been added, with nice pools of oil on the surface




After adding beef cheeks braised in coconut milk



I forgot to get a nice picture of it plated.
I really liked the beef cheeks but I'm not sure I liked it any more than the brisket I've used in the past.

I forgot to take a picture of the panang beef cheeks plated but here's some leftovers from the next day (not much sauce--we lapped that up the night before).

Wow! What delicious looking food you are making---I am always drawn to
your cooking--the only Thai cookbook I really use is Mai Pham's book--if
I got a Thompson book, which would you recommend? I love street food--and
I guess am looking for a book I can really use for faster preps (2 kids in tow).
Will find you at the picnic for an in-person chat.
I have recently made a delicious shrimp satay (I made it once on the grill but
at the last minute once sauteed in the skillet and preferred that prep)--it is
from Saveur--it is: satay udang (has ground macadamia nuts--nice addition)--I
think you would like the flavors of this easy fix.

Thanks for all of your great sharing. NZ

David Thompson has also written a book about street food, aptly named "Thai Street Food". It is a wonderful resource and can do double duty as a coffee-table-sized coffee-table book! Great photography...

http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Street-Food- ... 158008284X

_________________
"Barbecue sauce is like a beautiful woman. If it’s too sweet, it’s bound to be hiding something."
— Lyle Lovett

"How do you say 'Yum-o' in Swedish? Or is it Swiss? What do they speak in Switzerland?"- Rachel Ray

Somewhat off-topic question. Many thai recipes that call for canned coconut milk also call for the solidified part at the top of the can to be cooked first with the curry paste and then the liquid at the bottom to be added later. What is being accomplished with this method?

I like the David Thompson Thai Food book more than the Street Food book. The Street Food has beautiful pictures but fewer recipes. Actually, many of the recipes in Street Food are in Thai Food as well. Most of the Thompson recipes are pretty involved (either book) though there are some that aren't and I use the book as a reference for generating a particular flavor profile. Plus, I'm getting a lot faster with things like coconut milk and curry pastes. I like the Nancy McDermott book a lot for quicker, 'weeknight' recipes.



That recipe sounds great--I'll have to check it out...



Coconut milk is made from mature coconut and water which is then squeezed/pressed/strained. The cream is the thick, oily first press/squeeze (the especially creamy part will rise to the top). The milk is from the second press. For canned milk, the companies combine milk and cream (and sometimes other ingredients--water, thickeners, preservatives, etc). The cream rises to the top and can be skimmed off. It is generally used for desserts and to fry/saute curry pastes. If you use milk to fry curry paste/meat, you are essentially braising them given the high liquid content.

I've been obsessing about the khanom jin nam prik REB posted about ever since I tried it. Last week, we ordered in from Aroy and I wasn't clear enough that I wanted the 'new' khanom jin dish (rather than the khanom jin nam ya on the specials menu which is fine but nowhere near as enchanting as the new one in my book); my disappointment led me to start working on a home version. David Thompson has a recipe for this dish in his Street Food cookbook.

The recipe starts with a paste of toasted shrimp paste, cilantro root, charred galanga, charred shallots, charred garlic, mung beans that have been soaked, partially dried, toasted and ground, and nam prik pao (Thai chile jam--probably my favorite Thai ingredient). I've been getting very nice cilantro root from the plants on my patio (they've bolted but it doesn't seem to affect the roots).

Paste ingredients:


Paste in progress:


Paste before final mixing:


The recipe then calls for simmering the paste in coconut cream and shrimp poaching liquid. Once the mixture has an oily sheen, you add tamarind liquid, palm sugar, a kaffir lime (I used a Persian lime, kaffir lime leaf and a few pieces of kaffir lime zest), followed by chopped poached shrimp a few minutes later. I added ground pork, a la Aroy, to mine, too.

"coiled" rice noodles


Finished dish


Verdict: I loved the complexity of the flavors but my version lacked a little heat. I will definitely be adding some soaked toasted dried chiles to the paste for the next batch.
You can see the difference in color (partly due to lighting) between my version and Aroy's (below).

I decided to make Nam Prik Pao today (see related post in my Bachelor Chow Honors Class thread). Since I was out running errands, I did a web search and found SheSimmers version, and realized I have everything I need at home.

It's a little different from the Thompson version: the chiles are only dry-toasted (34g is a heck of a lot of seeded chiles, more than a cup and a half), as are the dried shrimp (which I actually forgot to do), the shrimp paste isn't toasted at all, and there's no galangal. Because the chiles aren't fried, the fried shallots and garlic, and toasted shrimp and chiles, shrimp paste, palm sugar are combined in a pan with water and oil and simmered until thick.

A couple issues:
1) Palm sugar is hard, but a little gummy: it's very difficult to break into small pieces. My food processor eventually broke it up, but created a (fragrant) paste which stuck to the edges of the work bowl. I think I was a few pulses away from a palm taffy.

2) I may have overcooked the paste after the water boiled out: when it cooled off, I didn't have chile jam, I had chile asphalt. It was cemented into my good stainless clad pan, and I thought I'd roont [sic] it. Reheating and adding a little more water cured the problem.

The result is something an awful lot like Rick Bayless' Essential Chipotle Seasoning Paste: chiles, garlic and ethnic-specific sugar (piloncillo in this case) fried to a paste. The shrimp flavor isn't that pronounced, I can probably use the nam prik as I would the chipotle paste (makes a great guacamole with a little lime juice and salt).


Nam_Prik_Pao.jpg by joelfinkle, on Flickr

(note: red and blue artifacts are reflections in the oil, I think -- they're certainly not in the sauce)

_________________
What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang

After lots of experimenting with palm sugar, I have come up with a couple ways to 'handle it'. I refuse to buy palm sugar in plastic tubs b/c the flimsy plastic melts if you try to nuke it and because it's a pain in the a@#$$ to dig out of the container with a spoon or fork. My preference is to buy it in pre-formed disks but I'll also buy it in one large disk that can be easily broken up with a mallet. When fresh, the chunks/disks can often be easily broken down with a mallet. Otherwise, prior to using it, I place a chunk in a ramekin, add a little sprinkle of water, and microwave for about 20 seconds to soften. If I'm only using a small amount, I'll grate it with a microplane/Mouli grater.



Can't comment about the second issue (I use Thompson's recipe and, as you mention, his recipe doesn't include that step).

The jam looks great--it's become an essential pantry ingredient for me--it makes just about anything taste better. I love mixing it with labneh to make a spread for bagels, dip for chips, etc.

I had been wanting to make a Thai style sausage for a long time and finally got around to it. I bought a 4 lb piece of pork shoulder from Paulina and trimmed only the most sinewy pieces. It was cut into 1-2" cubes and heavily coated in a pretty typical red curry paste made from red chiles, tons of lemongrass, galangal, shallots, garlic, shrimp paste, etc and left in the fridge for 24 hours.

The final product turned out great, the flavor profile was spot on for a spicy northern Thai style sausage and the pork was fatty and moist.

Wow - they look and sound amazing . . . very impressive!