Thai Fish Cakes With Spicy Sauce ( Todman Bla )

Thai fish cakes are made from soft meat fish, green beans and starch and cooked by deep frying. They are served as a side dish with a spicy dipping or pouring sauce. Any soft meat fish will do and it's a great way to use often ignored smaller and cheaper fish.
To remove the meat of the fish: remove the head, slice it down the belly, and remove any entrails. Pull out the backbone, in soft fish this will also remove the bones. Then remove the top and bottom fins. Finally hold the fish by the skin and scrape off the meat from the skin with a flat bladed knife.

Ingredient for 2 People
150 gms Fish Meat
2-3 Tablespoons Thai Red Curry Paste
100 gms Long Green Bean
1 Tablespoon Cassava or Potato Starch
Oil for frying

Ingredient for Sauce
20 gms Cucumber
10 gms Peanut
2 Big Red Chillis
3 Tablespoons Sweet Chicken Sauce
(A sweet sauce normally used for chicken, it does not contain chicken!)



Preparation
Fish Cakes
1. Pre heat a deap fat fryer to 150 degrees celsius (Medium).
2. Add the fish meat, red curry paste, cassava starch, to a blender and blend it.
3. Cut the green beans into very short pieces and mix into the mixture.
4. Take a spoonful of mixture and form it into flat round 'cookie' shaped fish cakes.
5. Drop the fish cakes into the hot oil, when the fish cake is cooked it will float back to the surface.
6. Remove from the oil onto kitchen paper to dry out the excess oil.

Preparation
Dipping Sauce
1. Chop the cucumber and chilles, and mixed with sweet chicken sauce.
2. Pound the peanuts in a mortar into smaller pieces.
3. Top the sauce off with the peanuts.
4. Serve as a side dish, or you can pour it over the fish cakes as we've done in the top photograph.

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Northern Style Spicy Chicken Soup (Tom Yum Guy)

This version of Tom Yum soup (the popular Thai spicy soup) is eaten in the North of Thailand, it is made with chicken rather than the shrimp (tom yum gung) eaten in the south and coast. If you prefer chicken its a good spicy soup.

Ingredients for 2 People
150 gms Corn Fed Chicken
8 Bird Chillies
2 Garlic Cloves
20 gms Lemon Grass
20 gms Galanga
4 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
2 Teaspoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
3 Tablspoons Tamarind Water
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
50 gms Straw Mushrooms
300 ml Water

Preparation
1. Put water in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Chop the lemon grass and galanga into 3cm lengths and add to the pot to make a soup base.
3. Pound the garlic and bird chillies and add into the soup.
4. Chop the chicken into bite sized pieces, then add to the soup and cook for 3 minutes.
5. Cut the straw mushrooms into half and add to the soup.
6. Add the fish sauce, salt, tamarind water, lemon juice, and kaffir leaves into the soup and cook for an additional 30 seconds.

Serve With
Hot fragrant Rice

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Glass Noodle, Pork & Nut Spicy Salad ( Yum Woon Sain )

This is another 'gop-gam' style dish, a small spicy dish designed to be eaten with beer or whiskey to cut through the alcohol. Its bulk comes from glass noodle and nuts, with pork mince and spicy onion salad to add the strong flavours.

Ingredients for 2 People (Medium Hot)
100 gms Pork Mince
100 gms Glass Noodle
50 gms Peanut
20 gms Bird Chillies
1 Spring Onion
1 Sprig Coriander
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
200 ml Water
2 Garlic Cloves

Preparation
1. Boil water in the saucepan, add the salt and chop the garlic and add it into the pan.
2. When the water is boiling, add the pork mince and glass noodle and simmer for 4 minutes. Then pour out half of the water.
3. Chop the chillies, spring onion, and coriander into a pot with glass noodles.
4. Toast the peanuts in a dry frying pan to bring out the flavour.
5. Add the fish sauce, sugar, lemon juice, and peanuts and then mix.

Serve With
Lettuce
Tomato
Beer or Spirits!

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Pan Cooked Sweet Thai Ribs ( Sy Krong Mu Aop )

If you don't have an open barbeque grill, this is the perfect way to cook ribs on the stove top. It's cooked in a boiling pan, sort of part-boil part-fry. It has a suprising semi-sweet, creamy rib taste, and is perfect to serve with rice. For this recipe its better to have cross cut ribs, ribs cut into short lengths, so that the sauce coats more of the meat.

Ingredients for 2 People
600 gms Pork Rib
3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
3 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
100 ml Coconut Milk
50 ml Condensed Milk
100 ml Tamarind Water
3 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
3 Tablespoon Red Wine

Preparation
1. Pound the garlic in a mortar into a fine pulp.
2. Cut the pork ribs into short lengths.
3. Mix all the remaining ingredients together in a bowl to form a sauce.
4. Marinade the pork ribs in the sauce for at least 10 hours in the fridge.
5. Put all the mixture (including the sauce) into a boiling pan and simmer slowly for approximately 2 hours, until all the water has evaporated and only the oil remains.
6. The ribs are then ready to serve.

Serve With
Salads
Lettuce
Orange

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Pan Cooked Sweet Thai Ribs ( Sy Krong Mu Aop )

If you don't have an open barbeque grill, this is the perfect way to cook ribs on the stove top. It's cooked in a boiling pan, sort of part-boil part-fry. It has a suprising semi-sweet, creamy rib taste, and is perfect to serve with rice. For this recipe its better to have cross cut ribs, ribs cut into short lengths, so that the sauce coats more of the meat.

Ingredients for 2 People
600 gms Pork Rib
3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
3 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
100 ml Coconut Milk
50 ml Condensed Milk
100 ml Tamarind Water
3 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
3 Tablespoon Red Wine

Preparation
1. Pound the garlic in a mortar into a fine pulp.
2. Cut the pork ribs into short lengths.
3. Mix all the remaining ingredients together in a bowl to form a sauce.
4. Marinade the pork ribs in the sauce for at least 10 hours in the fridge.
5. Put all the mixture (including the sauce) into a boiling pan and simmer slowly for approximately 2 hours, until all the water has evaporated and only the oil remains.
6. The ribs are then ready to serve.

Serve With
Salads
Lettuce
Orange

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Chilli Cheese ( Experiment )

I always wanted to learn cheese making, and a friend of mine sent me a kit from cheesemaking.com, following on from my Tofu experiment, so I thought I'd have a go. I like cheese, even though it is not traditional Thai food, but it seems to miss one essential flavour. The spice of chilli, naturally!
As you can see the result is not as good as I'd hoped for. It's clear to me I should have left a little more moisture in the curd and then used more weight during the mould pressing stage. My fault, I cut that corner and the result is a crumbly cheese rather than a more homogeneous cheese. Never mind, Ricki's site has lots of tips for cheese making, and you can experiment yourself. She sells everything you'll need for your cheese making experiments.
I'm going to try cheese making again soon.

Ingredients
7.5 litres fresh or pasteurized milk (not UHT)
1 packet Mesophilic direct set culture (bacteria culture)
1/2 rennet tablet
1 tbls salt
1 very large pan
6-8 large red chillies

Preparation
1. Heat the milk to 90 degrees F, (32 degrees Celsius, room temperature in Thailand).
2. Add the bacteria culture, mix it well and leave for 45 minutes.
3. Dissolve the rennet in 1/4 cup water, and mix this well into the mixture.
4. Take a large ladle and push it down and up in the pan to ensure the rennet gets down to the bottom.
5. Cover for at least 45 minutes to let a curd form.



6. Take a long knife and make cuts diagonally down into the curd. Do not cut vertically down, as you will end up with long strands of curd, rather than cubes.
7. Next to warm it, it needs to be warmed very slowly to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (body temperature, 37.7 celsius). I just took it outside, covered into the sun and let that warm it up!
8. Stir occasionally, the curd will shrink and can be separated from the whey.
9. Pour through a cheesecloth. to separate the curds and leave them to drain further for an hour.
10. Break up the curds with your fingers, blend the chillies into fine pieces and mix them into the cheese evenly together with the salt.



11. Line a cheese mould with cheese cloth, press the curds into the mould.
12. Apply 5kg weight to the top of the mould, for 15 minutes, the 10kg for 12 hour and turn it over applying another 10kg for 12 hours. This is what I failed to do properly!
13. Remove the cheese from the mould, peel off the cheese cloth, leave under a net to air dry the cheese for 3-5 days, turning it to dry all sides.



14. Melt cheese wax in a pan, I found the easiest way is to turn the cheese in the pan rather than brush it on.
15. Mature in a coolish room for 3 months minimum.



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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Isan Chicken 'Spaghetti' ( Ka Noom Jean Nam Ya Gai )

This is a Isan style of 'spaghetti' made using a thin rice noodle and a hash sauce made from shredded chicken, fish sauce and other Isan flavours. Isan is the North East province of Thailand and makes heavy use of spicy fish sauce recipes like this one.
This dish uses Krachai, a root vegetable grown widely in Thailand that creates a mild spicy flavour. You can sometimes find bottled Krachai in Asian supermarkets, but if you cannot find this, omit it.

Ingredients for 4 People
800 gms Thin Rice Noodle
500 gms Chicken Leg or Breast with Skin
7 Dried Chillies
4 Garlic Cloves
2 Red Onions
10 gms Chopped Krachai
4 Kaffir Lime Leaves
4 Tablespoons Old Fish Sauce
4 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
1 Teaspoons Sugar
500 ml Water
500 ml Coconut Milk

Preparation of Sauce
1. Boil the water together with the old fish, whole garlic cloves, red onion cut into halves, krachai and whole dried chillies.
2. Once it's boiling add the chicken pieces and cook for 30 minutes.
3. Remove the chicken from the sauce and set aside.
4. Remove the garlic, red onion, chilli, krachai from the stock and pound them with the red curry paste.
5. Remove the meat of the chicken and shred it using two forks.
6. Add the pulped paste and shredded chicken back into the stock.
7. Add the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce, kaffir leaves and spring onion, and boil for 10 more minutes.

Preparation for Noodles
1. Boil a pan of water, add the rice noodle and cooking for 3 minutes.
2. Drain and rinse with cold water.
3. Take a fork and twist the noodles into small bundles of noodle and pile the bundles onto a plate.

Serving
Stack the plate with the noodles, and vegetables and spoon the sauce with the chicken meat over the top.

Serve With
Soya Beansprouts
Chopped Green Beans
Chopped Cucumber
Chopped Lettuce

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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]