Tom Kha Gai, Pad Kra-Pow Gai, and Art

 Nothing like a good visit from relatives to aid in the realignment efforts.  And it was a good excuse to make Tom Kha Gai – a recipe from my last Thai cooking class – a dish I always enjoy no matter where it be served.  So much better in my own home. 

Creativity in the kitchen complimented creativity with acrylics.  Color and art and good food -  I’m talking reds and blues and oranges and greens inspired from walls and from fridge.  My house guests this weekend also appreciated a good color wheel -- and art-fest 2011 P-ville style was inspired.  Paints were augmented.  Canvases and cheapo brushes made their way into the shopping cart.  The wine and rum was poured and the art flowed.   I won’t say we can go out and make millions on our artistic efforts, but it was a great time.  We each got a canvas and went to town.

 

My inspiration began as a sunflower, but ended more as a wacky sun.  Things just sort of evolved, but we all went abstract and so it didn’t really matter.   

Tonight I share both our art and our recipe for Tom Kha Gai.  Extra bonus recipe for Pad Kra-Pow Gai.   Both really great dishes – but you may have to work a little bit for the ingredients for the Pad Kra-Pow Gai.  It is worth the effort.

Tom Kha Gai (literally soup, galangal, chicken – we know it as coconut soup with chicken and lemon grass and galangal)

16 oz. chicken that is cut up into small bite-sized pieces.  Marinate this for 10-15 minutes with a Tbsp. of either corn starch or tapioca flour, ¼ tsp. salt, ¼ tsp. pepper, ½ tsp garlic powder (or 1 tsp. fresh chopped garlic).

1 can coconut milk

400 mL water (about 1 3/4 cups) vary depending on how thick you want it… the higher the coconut to water ratio, the thicker the soup

2 inch piece of Galangal (Thai ginger) peeled and sliced very thinly

1 stalk lemon grass cut into 2 inch long chunks and then bruised by banging with back of knife

1 medium onion chopped coarsely

1 can of mushrooms (if using canned mushrooms put in early, if using fresh mushrooms put in at end)

4 Kaffir lime leaves

½ Tbsp. sugar

4 Tbsp. fish sauce

1 Tbsp. lime juice

Optional additions include thai chili pepper (dried hot pepper) to taste or 1 Tbsp. chili paste in soybean oil.

Bring water and coconut milk to a boil and then add sliced galangal and lemon grass.  If you used canned mushrooms, add now, too.  If you are using fresh mushrooms, save until the very end and barely cook.  Tear lime leaves into little ½ cm2 bits and add with sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce.  Let this simmer for about 5 minutes and give it a taste.  Adjust with more lime, sugar, or fish sauce depending on what you feel it may need.   Add onions just before you add the chicken and then it will only take about 15 more minutes before being done.  Give it another taste before serving to see if it needs more sweet, sour, or salty to your liking.  Anywhere along the way add the optional chili peppers…..   The chili peppers add a great dimension and so I highly recommend them.

Garnish with cilantro and chives and more chili powder for those who want it.

Pad Kra-Pow Gai (Stir fried, basil, chicken quite literally – or more informally:  stir fry chicken with basil leaves in house spicy sauce)

16 oz. chicken ground or chopped into very small pieces

4 Tbsp. oil

3 garlic cloves minced

2 Tbsp. oyster sauce (I find oyster sauce in general optional, so do what you will with this one)

2 Tbsp. fish sauce  

1Tbsp. Thai Seasoning Sauce (Golden Mountain Brand ) – this adds a smoky quality – if you skip this one, you’ll really know it…..

1 Tbsp. Thai thick sweet sauce or thick black soy sauce – this adds both sweet and salty and so you’ll need to compensate with both if you skip this one

1 Tbsp. sugar

1 onion sliced or chunked – I  prefer slightly larger bite-sized chunks

 2 bell peppers of any color (I dig the red with any other, but definitely at least one red) chopped coarsely

1 large bunch of Thai basil coarsely chopped (grow it if you can… it is really hard to find in the grocery store and is different for sure from the ‘regular’ basil)

 Hot thai chili peppers to your liking…. This dish should be hot, so load it up – it can handle it, can you?

On medium high, cook garlic briefly before adding chicken and all the liquid ingredients.  This dish goes quickly, so basically add everything up to the onion and and pepper and basil.   Add the onions and peppers and saute to the point of still crunchy and then add the basil.    Serve over rice and ENJOY!   This is one of my Favorites…. It is worth the effort for the weird ingredients.

Hope you like it, too.  

Gai Pad Khing

Time to turn the clock forward tonight – springing into the future – whatever that future may hold.  Seems pretty ambiguous these days as folks swirl around me in their own chaotic worlds.  I’m finding this year to be challenging.  I sought stability today and always find it in the garden and the kitchen.  I spent time in both this spring-like day and am better for it.  The garden looks much less like a tornado hit it after this crazy winter, and now my kitchen is a wreck.  I’ll take that trade.

This is a Week 3 Thai Class recipe and it is a winner.  I just cooked it tonight with a few modifications, but I’ll give you the original because when we had that in class it was awesome…  some ingredients are hard to find, though, so I’ll give you my version from tonight, too, because that wasn’t bad either… not bad at all.

Gai Pad Khing:  Chicken stir fry ginger - quite literally.  In a slightly more eloquent translation:  Stir fry chicken, ginger, and onion in delicate sauce.   Yum.  If you like ginger and you like chicken, this is the dish for you.

Gai Pad Khing

4 T oil (again, any kind – I used canola tonight, but pick your poison)

2 lbs chicken breast sliced into 1-1½ inch bite-sized pieces (marinade for at least 15 minutes in ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, ½ tsp chopped or powdered garlic and 2 T tapioca or corn starch, and half the oyster sauce if you are using oyster sauce)

½ T soybean paste

2 T sugar

½ C julienned ginger

1 C black fungus (if dry soak in water for an hour or two and use hydrated)

4 garlic cloves minced

2 T oyster sauce

2 T Thai fish sauce

½ tsp ground pepper (white)

2 medium onions coarsely chunked

4 scallions roughly chopped

Marinade chicken.  Heat oil to super hot – add garlic and then quickly add chicken.  Cook until about half done and then add oyster sauce, fish sauce, soybean paste, sugar, pepper.    Add the ginger and mushrooms and toss for a few minutes until the mushrooms start looking cooked. Add onions closer to the end as you want them slightly crunchy and not mushy (translucent is good).  Add scallions at the end.  Toss to make sure it is all hot and delish.  Add a little water along the way if the sauce is too thick and viscous.  You want the sauce a little loose to serve with rice.

My version was a little different tonight and it was still good:

    I did not use Oyster sauce…. Or soybean paste.  I used baby sliced crimini mushrooms instead of the black fungus…   I added only 2 tsp fish sauce and then with the ginger, also added a lemon grass stalk cut into 3-inch chunks and pounded.  I also added 2 Kaffir lime leaves slightly crushed between my fingers.  I have green brined peppercorns and so tossed in a tablespoon or so of those, but if you don’t have those, I would suggest a bit more pepper to compliment the heat of the ginger.    In the end I garnished with cilantro.    You will want to add more salt to the marinade or to the dish itself as it cooks because the oyster sauce and the fish sauce both add salt and if you reduce those, you need to compensate.

 I think a wedge of lime would be delightful as a garnish for this one.  In general, I think this dish is pretty flexible and easy to modify.  It is only slightly hot due to the ginger.

Enjoy!

Thai Flux

Week 2 of Thai cooking class: 

I find I'm exploring the boundaries of myself as well as learning to cook some excellent Thai dishes.  I have some pretty serious vinegar aversions, as you may already know, and so wandering into a world where I am using and eating unknown ingredients found in liquids packaged in bottles that look suspiciously like condiments is very much anathema to me.  Sometimes fear rules when it shouldn't.   My healthy respect for Thai and Chinese and Japanese and Korean is based on US restaurant experiences where I have been burned, but I'm learning.  And so, with the help of lime juice and being able to explore all the ingredients in a delightfully simple recipe, I find I am actually able to cook a mean sweet and sour soup without vinegar even if in restaurants they may still be off limits.    

My boundaries are being stretched and what a good thing that is...  Fish sauce, chili paste in soy bean oil (Nam prik pao), Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, thick sweet sauce, galangal, tamarind, straw mushrooms.  I can now cook with these ingredients and not be scared of them.  Just a little knowledge can propel one so far away from their comfort zone so quickly.  How true that is in not just cooking.  Ruts are easy.  Way too easy and surprisingly unsatisfying.    

       

Tulips are up here on the east coast, as are daffodils, crocus, bulbs of all kinds, butterfly bushes sprouting new leaves, parsley perking up after being squashed by snow all winter.  Spring is on the doorstep even if it is early March.  Life seems to be in flux mode...   it may be muddy, but oddly, that's when it is easiest to get out of established ruts and form new paths even if they may be sometimes sideways.   It is good to be reminded that there is always more to life than what I may be expecting.

Pad Thai

I dabble in the kitchen, and I know what Kaffir limes are and actually have leaves in my fridge.  I know where the lemon grass hides in the grocery store, but fear the fish sauce.  In short, I’m ok, but not great when it comes to cooking Thai food, and when a class popped up, I jumped at the chance to learn a little something something and hopefully get better.  I signed up for my class at the local community adult education program and am looking forward to class number two.

Pad Thai was on the docket for Class #1, along with papaya salad with spicy lime sauce (Som Tam).  I have to say, I was mildly apprehensive sitting there looking at the menu for the evening and wondered what I had gotten myself into.  I’m not a huge fan of Pad Thai and I don’t like papayas.  As it turns out, the papaya salad was made with a shredded green papaya that was complemented with palm sugar, lime juice, and hot chili peppers.   It… was… delicious.  The Pad Thai was probably the best Pad Thai I have ever had.  We didn’t eat until the end, though, so all along the way, I paid very close attention, but had serious doubts.

   

As I absorbed it all, our teacher who is originally from Thailand and who is a retired restaurateur cooked in the massive gas-fired stand-alone wok on the floor in front of the classroom.  He chatted and answered questions and kept pouring from the dribbly spout of the fish sauce container…. he kept adding fish sauce and fish sauce and all the ingredients and then more fish sauce....    finally the peanuts came and it actually started smelling pretty good after all that direct fish sauce over heat smell.....      Anyway, end of class comes and we all get our plates and there is tons of food in this crazy wok that will feed over 20 of us, and so I get a little bit of the salad and they scoop me a scoop of the pad thai and I settle in wondering if there is some way to discretely get rid of it if I don't like it.    

Well, I shouldn’t have worried.  It was awesome.  I went back for seconds.  Couldn’t stop eating it.   Best Pad Thai ever.  Seriously.

   

  This recipe has been shared already on the internet and so I am happy to spread the wealth with a few of my own observations included….

Pad Thai

10 oz. dried rice noodles – the thin ones, not the thick ones…   soak in cool water for at least 3 hours or over night (not hot – don’t cook them!!) drained

1/3 C oil – any kind, but corn/veggie won’t smoke as much as say, Olive oil….

4 smashed and chopped garlic cloves

4 eggs

8 oz. fried tofu chopped into bite sized nuggets (buy it already fried and you’ll save some time and it will probably taste better if you’re like me with tofu)

4 Tbs fish sauce (Squid Brand fish sauce is apparently the BEST)

2 Tbs tomato paste

2 Tbs sugar

2 Tbs Tamarind juice – you can buy tamarind in block form and use about a fifth of the block.  Soak it in about a cup/cup and a half of water for a couple of hours and squeeze out the solids.   Use the extraction.  Will keep in fridge for quite some time….

2 C bean sprouts

6 scallions coarsely chopped

2 Tbs ground/chopped roasted peanuts

You can substitute meat for the tofu if you would like…   and add hot pepper….sprinkle with paprika if you want a little color….

Prepare noodles and Tamarind juice ahead of time.  Heat oil very hot in wok.  Add garlic and then eggs one at a time.  When eggs begin to look mostly cooked and scrambled, add the tofu (or meat here).  Add noodles and toss until hot.  Add tomato paste and fish sauce.  Mix well.  Add Tamarind juice.  Add Sugar all the while mixing, tossing, mixing.  Add scallions and continue to toss.   Bean sprouts are next until nice and hot and then peanuts at the very end.   Taste and make sure the salt of the fish sauce compliments the sweet of the sugar and the tang of the Tamarind and tomato paste….  Adjust where needed.   Garnish with lime wedges and more chopped peanuts.

   

Delish.

Looking forward to Lemon grass soup and Stir fried chicken and basil in house spicy sauce next week.