Monthly Archives: May 2011

Bye, Bye Thai! As this is the last day of May – it is also my last day of Thai cooking. I had one more recipe I really wanted to make, called Thai-style Crab Fried Rice.  It’s from a probably not-so-authentic but tasty book of recipes called “From Bangkok to Bali in 30 minutes”. This is a great use for leftover rice, and would probably be just as good (and cheaper!) with canned tuna, or even as a vegetarian dish (just use soy sauce instead of fish sauce, and probably use more shallots for deeper flavor).

Thai-style Crab Fried Rice
3 Tbsp. canola oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, chopped finely
2 Tbsp. minced cilantro stems
1/4 c. chopped cilantro leaves
3 c. cold cooked rice
1/2 lb. lump crabmeat, picked clean of shells
2 Tbsp. fish sauce
1/2 tsp. brown sugar
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
fresh pineapple pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a non-stick skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add canola oil and then garlic, shallots and cilantro stems. Stir-fry for a minute until fragrant. Then add cold rice, breaking up large clumps as you go, and continue to stir-fry for another 1-2 minutes. Add crabmeat, fish sauce, brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp. black pepper. Stir fry for another 1 minute, then transfer to a bowl and top with cilantro leaves. Serve immediately, along with tomatoes (sprinkle them with salt and pepper to flavor) and pineapple chunks on the side.

My friend Janelle’s favorite Thai curry is Mussman, so I waited to cook this dish until she could join me for a meal. This time, I actually made my own curry paste from scratch. What a lot of work – worth it in the end, but I can see why the canned curry pastes are popular! The basic recipe for Mussaman curry paste is;

4 dried red chiles
3 Tbsp. shallots, minced
1/4 c. garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. galangal, finely sliced
1 Tbsp. lemongrass, finely sliced
2 cloves
2 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1/4 tsp. peppercorn
1 tsp. salt

Note: I omitted the shrimp paste, since that’s an ingredient I probably wouldn’t use again. Also, if the word “galangal” stopped you in your tracks, here’s what it looks like.  Similar to ginger root (though it seems a bit more perishable in my experience so far) galangal is used in many Thai soups and curry pastes and considered to have nutritional and digestive properties.

Steps to make the curry paste: remove and discard seeds from dried red chiles, chop the flesh into small pieces and soak in warm tap water until they’re soft. Meanwhile, in a small skillet, dry roast the coriander, cumin, cloves and peppercorn until aromatic and starting to brown. Grind these in a mortar and pestle with salt into a powder. In the same skillet, dry roast the garlic, lemongrass, shallots, and galangal until starting to brown. In the mortar and pestle, grind together all of these ingredients, adding the softened red pepper too. It takes kind of a pounding and grinding motion, and I don’t have a very large mortar and pestle – so it didn’t work perfectly, but I ended up with a fairly smooth paste in the end. I actually just made half this recipe of curry paste for the curry dish described below, but if you make a double batch you’ll have some for another meal too!

The recipe for this Mussaman curry comes from a cookbook I previously mentioned, that came to me direct from Bangkok. My friend Harold was teaching English in Thailand for a couple of years, so I asked if he had seen any authentic cookbooks written in English. Not only did Harold find me this cookbook, but he also came up with the brilliant idea to have his students read through it and write me little post-it notes in English for the recipes. So now many of the recipes have little comments, like “You can use coconut milk and fresh milk (low sugar)” and “This is a menu very common food in Thailand”. What a great idea, and great gift – and the students got to practice their English at the same time!  Thanks again Harold!

Because the cookbook came from Thailand, I know these must be fairly authentic recipes. And I know from the post-it on the Mussaman curry recipe that “Mussaman” means Moslem.  Ideally, that means I would have NOT used pork in the curry recipe, typically beef or chicken is used. But pork is what I had on hand, so that’s what I used. Musssaman curry usually contains cubed potatoes and peanuts, and I also added green beans. The dish has a nice spice to it without being overly hot, and treated this way the pork also gets really tender. It didn’t turn out as red-colored as the dish when you order it from a Thai restaurant, or even as the picture in the cookbook shows, but it tastes very similar anyway.

Mussaman Curry
1 lb. pork, chicken, or beef, cubed
1 can coconut milk
1/2 recipe (or about 3 Tbsp.) Mussaman paste
1 potato, peeled and diced
1/2 lb. green beans
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp. fish sauce
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. tamarind cooking concentrate
1/2 c. unsalted roasted peanuts

In a large skillet, stir-fry the curry paste in a Tbsp. of oil until aromatic. Then add the meat and continue to stir fry for a few minutes to partially cook the meat. Pour in the coconut milk and scrape all the good bits off the bottom of the pan. Add potatoes, green beans, cinnamon stick and bay leaves. Let simmer covered for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with fish sauce, brown sugar and tamarind, and taste to adjust seasonings accordingly. These ingredients round out the dish with flavors of salty, sweet and sour, respectively. Cook for a little longer until all vegetables and meat are cooked through. Serve over rice.

Adapted/Mixed from: Healthy and Easy Thai Cooking by Nuengnuj Chaixanien, AND Thai Cooking by Judy Bastyra and Becky Johnson

Up till now in this month of Thai cooking, I’ve been trying to cook some unusual dishes that you might not find in a typical Thai restaurant in the U.S.  But I have to admit that the common noodle dishes are often my favorite, particularly Pad Thai and Pad Kee Mao (“drunken noodles”).  So tonight, I made a big dish of Pad Thai and it was delicious, if I DO say so myself :)

This whole project is becoming a problem, though — it used to be that I didn’t really like eating out at the typical “American food” places, because they serve items I could make at home, and make better.  Now that I’m learning how to make these international dishes too, eating out even at those restaurants is starting to seem less desirable. Why go out when you can make it yourself much cheaper, and to your particular tastes/allergies/preferences?

I followed the recipe on this website, http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Pad_Thai.htm  The page includes a lot of good tips, ways to make it vegetarian, substitutions you can use, etc.  You can use any type of rice noodle, but I think typically Pad Thai is made with a narrow flat noodle, kind of like the shape of linguine.

Tamarind is an ingredient you might not have on hand, but shown to the right is a concentrated tamarind sauce that I recently found at an Asian market. Prior to finding this, I would take tamarind pulp – which has seeds and everything, soak it in water, then mush it around to make my own paste. But then you have to sift out the seeds and remaining hard parts, and it’s just kind of a pain. With this concentrated solution, you just stir to mix and pour out what you need – much easier! Tamarind adds a sour taste to the dish, which is also accentuated by squeezing a lime wedge over the hot noodles just before eating.  This recipe did make about 3 servings, as mentioned with the recipe.