Just logged in and seen I’ve hit 1000 followers overnight. Thank you so much to all of you guys who follow ‘I wish I was in Thailand food blog’. Be back next week with food whilst I’m travelling in Malaysia!
Before I begin, could I ask a big favour. On 1st June ‘I Wish I Was In Thailand’ blog will be a year old and I’m amazed to have *almost* reached 1000 followers. It would mean a lot for me if you like Thai food recipes and photography and enjoy my regular posts, you could follow my blog if you haven’t already.Okay, so this is the last post for a little while until I get to Kuala Lumpur next week. We’ve already got out first reservation at the Fat China Seafood restaurant which apparently has amazing crab, can’t wait to try that and we’re keen to sample Jalan Alor’s street food as an introduction to Malaysian cuisine.
This is the other duck dish which I mentioned in my post on Sunday and let me use up the rest of my roasted duck. I have done a few variations on pad grapao/ horapha before. One with chicken and a fried egg, one with squid but this one, with roasted duck and sweet basil could well be the best; the firm but juicy chunks of roasted duck with it’s stronger taste hold up really well to the punchy garlic/chilli/basil flavours.
For two people use:
1 large roasted duck breast + chunks of any other meat on the duck
3 red chillies, sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled
a big splash of oyster sauce
a big splash of light soy sauce
a big handful of sweet basil leaves (try fresh tarragon as a substitute)
a splash of vegetable oil for frying
Pound up the garlic and chillies in a pestle and mortar and leave for just a moment. Heat the oil in a wok until hot and throw in the garlic/chilli paste, stir frying for a few seconds before adding in the duck. As it’s already cooked, it doesn’t need long, perhaps 30 seconds before you add in the two sauces. Stir fry for a further minute or so before turning off the heat and tossing in the sweet basil until it’s just wilted. Serve over white rice.
I started doing IWIWIT as a way to pass some time when I was working and living away from home in a very rural/quiet area and was going mad. This blog started up as a way of passing the evenings; I never imagined I would have over 80 recipes and 1000 followers 1 year later. If you want to see the full web page with all it’s recipes head to www.iwishIwasinthailand.tumblr.com
Thanks, Naomi x
So, just one week to go until we head off to Malaysia for a few weeks. While I’m there I hope to bring you the food we encounter on our travels and what we cook while we’re over there (we’re staying with family and are lucky to have access to a Malaysian wet and dry kitchen). We’ve also been given an amazing present of a phototour for just me and my husband around Pudu wet market so I can’t wait to bring you those images.
Before we go, this week I’ll be posting two duck recipes; I bought a whole duck as it seemed much better value than messing around with duck breasts which are so expensive. A whole duck cost £8 and provided two full main meals over two days and huge lunch portions so was definitely worth it.
Duck is actually used quite a lot in Thailand, it’s common in dishes with a Chinese origin (such as this one) and the eggs are also commonly used.
This is a simple but very satisfying one plate dish with a great flavour profile-not too sweet (I personally dislike duck in syrupy sweet sauces), a little salty, savoury and smoky.
To make this dish use:
1 prepared duck (you’ll have over half the duck left for other recipes)
a few stems of choi sum/pak choi or similar vegetable, chopped
a big squirt of kecap manis or dark soy sauce
small splash of sesame oil
small splash of light soy
a dollop of honey (or palm sugar)
a clove of garlic, sliced
a small splash of oil
half a cup of white rice
Coat the outside of the duck in the kecap manis/ dark soy and massage into the skin. Roast in a deep oven tray at 180 degrees celsius for 90 minutes or until the fat has rendered and the skin is crispy and dark golden brown. Lift the duck out and rest, covered in foil. Leave the tray of duck juices to cool with the tray resting at an angle.
Boil a pan of water for the rice and start cooking.
After ten minutes or so with the tray of juices it should be possible to delicately scoop off the fat using a spoon, leaving behind the dark duck juices underneath- this forms the basis for the sauce.
When the pan juices are more or less free of fat, pour the juice into a small pan and add the light soy, honey and sesame oil. Slowly heat and reduce the liquid roughly by half.
Quickly heat a wok with a splash of oil and stir fry the garlic clove for a few seconds before throwing in the choi sum and stir a few times until it wilts.
Drain rice and plate up. Sprinkle with the choi sum. Slice off a duck breast and chop into bite size pieces, placing over the top of the rice. Pour a suitable amount of the sauce over everything.
I sometimes have the tendency of overlooking noodles in favour of rice as generally it’s easier to cook and less likely to end up a sticky mess (as sometimes happens with rice noodles) but in reality, noodles- particularly the wide rice noodles are eaten just as commonly in Thailand, particularly at lunch time and especially as street food.
You’ll notice there’s not a whole lot of ingredients or time involved with making this dish and that is because it’s a classic Thai street food dish. For a street food seller you need to be able to get your cart/pitch set up with the minimum of fuss and be able to fire out dishes to hungry customers as fast as they arrive. As ever in Thailand, you are expected to adapt the basic dish to your personal tastes and it would be rare for a Thai customer to eat a simple noodle dish like this without adding an assortment of flavourings from the condiment caddy (seen here in the background). To my plate I added a pinch of sugar, a generous sprinkling of chilli flakes and a ladle of naam pla prik gratiem (chillies and garlic in a fish sauce/vinegar mix) which together add that perfect Thai blend of hot, sweet, salty and sour.
For two portions use:
Half a pack (or just over) of the widest rice noodles you can get- fresh or dried
two small chicken breasts/ four thighs, sliced thinly
2 eggs
2/3 spring onions, finely sliced
a big splash of light soy sauce
another splash of light soy sauce
a small splash of Thai fish sauce
a big pinch of ground black pepper
a big splash of vegetable oil for frying
optional (but recommended) chilli flakes, chilli slices in vinegar/fish sauce, sugar- see my last post about Thai seasonings here
Start by marinating the sliced chicken in a bowl with the big splash of soy sauce and black pepper, it doesn’t need long- deal with the noodles while it marinades.
If using dried noodles as I did here (my local Asian supermarket was out of fresh noodles) start off by soaking them in cold water for 15-20 minutes or until you can wrap a noodle around your finger without it breaking. If using fresh, spend a bit of time loosening the bundle and gently pull the noodles into individual strands.
Heat a big splash of oil in a wok (rice noodles have a tendency to stick so use a little more oil than you would normally use when stir frying) until it’s nice and hot. Add in the chicken and stir fry for 2/3 minutes until fully cooked. Shove the chicken off to one side and crack in the eggs- let them sit and start to set before scrambling, then set, then scramble etc. When the eggs have fully cooked stir everything back together.
Next add the (drained) noodles and quickly after, the soy and fish sauces. Toss everything well and cook for a few minutes before throwing in the spring onion.
Season to your liking.
I don’t do many Thai desserts as I’m not a huge dessert eater but as this dish isn’t too sweet I thought I’d see what it was like and actually, it’s really good. Bua Loy means floating lotus as the rice balls, floating in syrup, resemble lotus, floating on a pond. A lot of versions for bua loy seem to be in coconut milk sauces where as this one is in a warm, spicy ginger ‘soup’.
The trickiest thing is getting the consistency of the dough right- too dry and it’ll crumble, too wet (even a tiny bit) and it turns too gloopy to handle.
To make 4 portions use:
150g of sticky rice flour
50g of palm sugar or brown sugar
50g of black sesame seeds
cold water
50g more of brown sugar
a chunk of ginger, cut into thin slices, no need to peel
200ml of water
Use a blender or food processor to turn the sesame seeds into powder. In a heavy pan heat the palm/brown sugar and mix the seeds in- and the sugar melts, it should create a sticky, not dry paste. Put to one side.
In a bowl put the rice flour and VERY slowly add dribbles of water, kneading the flour until you have a firm dough. Pinch off golf ball sized pieces of the dough and use your fingers to make a flat circle. Pinch off some of the sesame paste, place on the dough and roll up enclosing the paste into a smooth ball. Repeat to use up all the dough/paste.
Heat a pan of water until boiling and gently drop all the rice balls in. Let them simmer for 3-4 minutes until floating and fully cooked through- test one if you want to make sure the dough is fully cooked and no longer floury; it should be bouncy and chewy. Use a spatula to lift out the rice balls and immerse them in cold water to stop them cooking.
Empty the pan and refill with the 200ml of fresh water. Add in the extra brown sugar and ginger slices and heat slowly for at least ten minutes to create the ginger infused syrup.
To serve, place a few of the rice balls into the bottom of each bowl and pour over a generous amount of the hot syrup, sieving out the ginger slices.
Sorry, I’ve been quiet on the blog this week; I’ve not been very well following the typhoid vaccine for our up and coming Malaysia holiday and what with our house now on the market and people coming to view it, it’s been a difficult week to get in the kitchen and get some new recipes out. Following on from the staple Thai store cupboard ingredients post the other week, I thought I’d do a post about the Thai condiment caddy- the ubiquitous 4 pots of seasonings that can be found at every Thai table- whether a restaurant, casual street cafe or a Thai home. I hear that many Thai restaurants in the US will have these too although to date the only one I’ve come across in the UK to have a caddy is Siam Smiles in Manchester which I wrote about a month or two back here.
Often in the west, if we eat at a restaurant it can be seen as poor etiquette to receive a meal, only to start heaping salt/pepper on top of it. Not so in Thailand where it is expected that each diner will want to adapt the flavour of their dish to their personal tastes. The aim is to find your perfect balance of spicy, sour, salty and sweet (known as the 4 flavours). Noodle dishes in particular are most commonly ‘improved’ by additions from the condiment caddy. There are numerous options of sauces, flavourings and ingredients that might be found at a Thai table but here, I have settled here for the 4 that are commonly used (and eaten) by us at home.
In my caddy I have:
white sugar (naam tam sai)
chilli flakes (prik bon)
roasted chilli paste (naam prik pao)
sliced chillies & garlic in fish sauce and vinegar (naam pla prik gratiem)
Despite being in house selling mode and what I said in my last post about not wanting to cook strong smelling food, I couldn’t resist another Thai dish. This one is ‘more or less’ vegetarian and is easily adapted to be vegan too, just check the ingredients on any chilli paste you use. It took about ten minutes to prep and even less to cook, so it’s perfect for a quick meal. Aim to get the aubergines to be a little soft but not mushy; you still want some texture in the dish.
For 2 big portions use:
2 regular purple aubergines/ 4 thin purple ones/ 16 Thai egg aubergines or a combination of. I used the thin purple ones, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
3 small red chillies, roughly sliced
a handful of sweet Thai basil (or try using tarragon for an anise-like flavour as a substitute)
a big splash of light soy sauce
a splash of fish sauce (nam pla) or extra soy if vegetarian/vegan
a heaped teaspoon of roasted chilli paste (nam prik pao- be aware some contain shrimp)
vegetable oil for frying
This recipe it so easy; Make a rough paste by pounding the garlic and chilli in a pestle and mortar. Heat a big splash of oil in a wok until hot. Throw in the garlic/chilli paste and stir fry for a few seconds before throwing all the aubergine in. Depending on which aubergine you have used (green Thai need longer, large purple need less) stir fry for 3-5 minutes, making sure the garlic/chilli doesn’t burn. Add in the roasted chilli paste, soy sauce and (if using) fish sauce, mixing everything well for a further minute. Turn off the heat and stir through the sweet basil leaves until just wilted before serving.
