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]

Sweet Chicken on a Fried Ginger Bed ( Gai Wan Noon Rung )

The point of sitting this chicken on a bed of fried ginger is the sharpness of the ginger cuts through the sweetness of the chicken source. As ever, serve this dish with rice, and eat mainly the rice using the expensive meat as a flavoring rather than the bulk of the meal.

Ingredients
200 gms Chicken Breast
1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Ground Pepper
80 gms Sliced Ginger
Oil
Sesame Seeds

Preparation
1. Chop chicken to cubes, mix it with light soy sauce, sugar, and ground pepper and leave to marinade for 10 minutes.
2. Peel and thinly slice the ginger, fry until golden brown.
3. Coat the chicken in the sesame seeds, and fry (with it's marinade) until cooked, at the end, add the ginger and fry it in the pan to pick up any remaining juices from the pan, lay it on the place and the chicken on top.
4. Eat, as ever, with fragrant rice.


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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]

Crispy Chicken Mince Parcels ( Mang Gai Tod )

The crunchy mix you see in these leaves is fried chicken flavoured with fried baby shrimp. I've used lettuce in the photograph, but traditionally we'd use betel leaves. These leaves are an acquired taste but very popular in Asia. They are the same plant that betelnuts come from, the nuts they sell on the street in Taiwan. Unfortunately they are popular because they are a legal stimulant, and I avoid them because it makes my heart flutter as though I'm nervous.

Ingredients
100 gms Chicken Breast
Oil

Ingredients for Sauce
70 gms Sour Tamarind Pulp
250 ml Water
50 gms Sugar

Side Dish
Betel leaves
Dried Small Shrimps
Dried Chillies
Peanuts

Preparation
1. Slice the chicken breast thinly and grill or fry dry (without the oil!) until cooked. This is the first stage of cooking the chicken.
2. Blend the chicken in a food processor to small pieces.
3. Now fry the chicken fragments in the hot oil until browned. Because the chicken was pre-cooked, it will not stick together and you end up with separate grains of crunchy chicken.
4. Then fry the small shrimp, dried chillies and peanuts for 30 seconds and take it out.
5. To make the sauce, mix tamarind pulp and water, squeeze the tamarind to get the sour juice out, then sieve to remove the pulp leaving only the liquid.
6. Place this liquid in a pan and boil, add the sugar and stir till dissolved.
7. Serve it by, put all fried stuff on the leaves. When you eat, you roll it up and dip it in the sauce.


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[Source: Appon's Thai Food Recipes]