High Fidelity

Food from 3-day Bangkok trip

They are absolutely tasty, and cheap. Most street stalls don't have refrigeration, so they have to re-stock everyday - meaning you are eating possibly the freshest vegetables and meat.

One of my favourite is their crispy skin pork - similar to the Chinese - but the skin is much more crispier and with less five-spice taste. I also enjoyed those charcoal-toasted bread and satay-alike meat skewers. The use of charcoal for grilling is still very common there - that gives the food the taste and smell that you can't get from electric or gas grill.

Another observation: noodle dishes like pad thai or other stir-fry noodles are generally not strongly seasoned. Instead, you can add and adjust the final taste yourself by adding sugar, dry chilli flakes, fish sauce and some sour sauce with some pickled chillies in it. 

Thai crab fried rice

Thai Crab fried rice, originally uploaded by yongtze.

This is such a quick meal to put together when you have all the ingredients on hand. One of the best thing you can do to the left over rice in the fridge. "Crab-egg-spring onion" offers an interesting combination of textures, and their flavours blend very well.

Serves 2:
- 4 garlic cloves, chopped
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups of cooked jasmine rice
- Sugar to taste
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of white pepper
- Soy sauce
- Fish sauce
- Spring onion, finely sliced, about 2/3 cup
- 250g cooked crab meat
- Peanut oil

1. Heat about 1/2 cup of oil in a wok/a large frying pan, fry garlic until fragrant. Crack in the eggs, allowing the white to firm before scrambling.

2. Add rice and turn down the heat. Stir fry gently, mixing and tossing. Season with salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce. The rice should be well seasoned, with a slight aftertaste of sweetness. Note that soy sauce and fish sauce are both salty, try to use equal amount of soy sauce and fish sauce but go easy on them. Keep checking the seasoning. Keep stirring the rice all the time so that it won't stick to the pan.

3. Add spring onions and stir well, and add 90% of the crab meat to the rice and gently heat through to finish the dish.

4. Sprinkle the rest of the crab meat over the fried rice when it is served.

Thai chilli stir-fried vegetables

Thai chilli stir-fried vegetables, originally uploaded by yongtze.

Thanks to chez pim's recipe, i found this combination of Thai 'chilli paste with soy bean oil' and fish sauce works for almost everything! The chilli paste with soy bean oil is spicy and slightly sweet (you can find this in Asian grocery store). And this blends beautifully with the distinctive Thai savoury flavour from the fish sauce.

- a big handful of green bean, frenched
- a big handful of mushroom, sliced
- half onion, sliced
- 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 chillis, chopped
- 2 tablespoons 'chilli paste with soy bean oil'
- fish sauce to taste (until it's salty enough for you, about 2 tablespoons or more)
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1. Blanch the green beans in lightly salted boiling water until just cooked, Refresh in cold water until they are cold completely.

2. Over moderately high heat, add vegetable oil in a skillet. Add onion, garlic and chilli, toss them for about 2 minutes. Be careful not to burn them, get the skillet on and off the heat to control the temperature, keep tossing.

3. Add the mushroom, cook for a further 1-2 minutes. Add the chilli paste, fish sauce and the blanched green beans. Stir fry over high heat for another 1 minute or so and you're done.

Optional:  Adding Thai basil leave at the end of cooking. You have to try it to believe how good it will taste/smell.

Gai Pad Nam-prik Pao and Tom Yum Goong

Chilli Paste Stir Fries (chicken, shrimp or tofu)Gai Pad Nam-prik Pao, originally uploaded by yongtze.

Sunday dinner: Thai food

I really like the intensity of Thai food flavour. The cooking itself is not difficult. The hardest thing would probably be getting all the ingredients, e.g. Thai herbs and spices. This Gai Pad Nam-prik Pao is absolutely delicious, quick and easy to make. It is salty (from the fish sauce), slightly sweet, spicy, and the fragrance of Thai basil is just unbelievably wonderful.

Another favourite Thai food: Tom Yum Goong. To make a really nice Tom Yum Goong, you really need to get all the herbs and spices like kaffier lime leave, lemon grass and galangal. It taste so much better than the one that you make from instant Tom Yum paste that you might think they are completely different kind of soup.

Recipes: from chez pim

 

Pad thai!

pad thai, originally uploaded by yongtze.

This is a recipe from Pim's website so it it as authentic as you could get. I added some fried shallots, and some lemon juice before serving (no lime at home). This reminds me of those street food stalls in my hometown, Batu Pahat, in Malaysia. One of my favourites is "stir-fried rice noodle with clams and prawns". I sometimes wish I can go back tomorrow just to eat all the nice food there.