Buying food from Asian Groceries

Cooking Thai and other Asian dishes, you might have to find some specific ingredients from Asian stores or Asian groceries. You won't have a problem if you have China Town not so far away from you, or you could find some online Asian stores from the internet.

In case that you have difficulties in finding ingredients from Asia (or Thailand for specific), you just have to adapt from whatever you can find. As you already know that the main ingredient of Thai Food is Thai chilli. Although not all dishes contain chilli, but if you can't find Thai chilli, you can simply replace it with other chilli, depending on where you are. For other herbs like lemon grass, Bai Kra Prao, Bai Ma Grood and others you might be able to find dry ones. Unless, you can't find, perhaps the local herbs with spicy scent will do. Or coconut milk, instead of fresh coconut milk, you may use powdered coconut milk that you dissolve in water. It's always possible to modify.. although your dish may be totally different from original Thai.. but it's alright! You're free to design the ingredients and be proud of it!

Goong Phad Pong Kari - Fried Shrimp with Curry Powder and Egg

Phad Pong Kari is another delicious dish which needs some technics to cook. This Thai dish is mild and my Japanese friends really like this dish, either Poo Pad Pong Kari (Fried Crab with Curry Powder) or Goong Pad Pong Kari (Fried Shrimp with Curry Powder). The tip is that you have to beat the egg, curry powder and chilli paste (Nam-Prik-Pao) together and pour into the pan after the shrimp is cooked. Let's start!


Ingredients:
300 g Shrimps (8-10)
1 Onion
6 Celeries (Bai Kuen-chai)
2 Onion leaves (Ton Hom)
1 Big Red Chilli (Prik-Chi-Fah)
1 tb.sp. Garlic chopped
2 Large eggs
1 tb.sp. Curry powder
2 tb.sp. Chilli paste (Nam-prik-pao)
2 tb.sp. Oyster sauce
1/2 tb.sp. Soy sauce
1/2 cup cream
1 tb.sp. Sugar
3 tb.sp. Soya Oil

Cooking:
- Prepare the shrimp by pealing off the shell, take off the heads and clean
- Chop celeries and onion leaves in 1" size, chop onion vertically into 8 sections, and slice red chilli
- Beat the egg, curry powder, sugar, oyster sauce, soy sauce and chilli paste together
- Heat the pan (use high), add the oil, and throw in the garlic, stir
- Add the shrimp, stir until the tails turn red
- Add onion
- Add HALF of the egg preparation, stir until cooked
- Add celeries, onion leaves and chilli
- Add the other HALF of egg preparation, quickly stir for another 20-30 seconds
- Serve on the dish

Dulce de leche Tart

It's not Thai menu this time! Last night I tried a new recipe using 'Dulce de leche' that I brought from Argentina several months ago. In Argentina, I had Dulce de leche with toast and also some cookies or biscuits also contain this. I really love the taste and smell of this which is more like caramel. I knew that Dulce de leche is made from boiling condensed milk until brown.. so.. I will look into that recipe when this jar is finished.

As a Thai, I don't think there are many Thais who know Dulce de leche, but it's something that my wife really loves! It was pretty tough for me to think which recipe I should use to make something nice for our dessert last night. It took me the whole day planning for this menu and until I started baking the bottom part, I still had no idea what I should finish on the top!! After 10 mins in the oven, I decided to use crumb on top of Dulce de leche layer. Let's try this.. it's really really yummy!!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup salted butter (most recipes use unsalted butter but I had only salted one..)

1 cup white sugar

1 egg large

1 cup Graham cracker (coarse ground)

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 t.sp. baking powder

3/4 cup Dolce de leche (or caramel)

Ingredients for crumb topping:

1/2 cup salted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

Cooking:

- Preheat the oven at 175 C

- Beat butter and sugar with mixer until pale cream

- Add the egg, mix another 2 minutes

- Add cracker, flour and baking powder, gently fold to mix with the butter. Do not mix too much.. softly fold is good enough.

- In a 9"x13", pour the mixture into it and bake in the oven for 15 minutes

- While baking, you need to prepare the crumb. Put all crumb ingredients into a bowl and I use fork to break the butter (the butter should be hard, I left it in room temperature for 30 minutes but not melt)

- Keep breaking until all the butter, sugar and flour looks like sand

- Bring out the tray from the oven. Spread Dulce de leche on it. Then top with crumb.

- Bake for another 15 minutes.

- Leave for 15 minutes and cut into 8-10 pieces

This tart is good when it's colder. But my wife likes it more when it's hot because the caramel smells much better when it's melt! This is very easy and really really delicious!! I guarantee!

Pad Bai Kra Prao Tofu and Shrimp with Crispy Basil

This is a healthy menu because we use Phad Kra Prao recipe and serve it on pan-fried tofu.

This is a spicy menu but delicious. You can use less chilli if you want it milder.

Ingredients:

3 tb.sp. vegetable oil (I use soya oil)

1 tb.sp. garlic

2 1/2 tb.sp. chilli (mixed of red and green)

100 g minced pork

8 shrimps

2 egg tofu (can be any kinds of tofu but egg tofu is nice and soft, you can use 2 tubes of tofu)

3 mushrooms

4 baby corns

2 tb.sp. fish sauce

2 tb.sp. oyster sauce

1/2 cup chicken soup

1 tb.sp. Chilli paste (Nam-Prik-Pao)

1 t.sp. white sugar

1 cup fresh basil leaves (Bai-Kra-Prao : half is used fresh and the other half for deep fried as topping)

Cooking:

- Deep fry 1/2 cup of basil leaves until crisp, rest on towl to reduce some oil

- Heat vegetable oil in the pan

- Cut tofu in 1" size, fry on the pan until light brown, place on the dish

- Add more vetable oil in the pan

- Add chilli and garlic, stir until light brown

- Add shrimps and minced pork, stir until cooked

- Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and chicken soup

- Once boiled, add mushrooms and baby corns then the rest of fresh basil leaves

- Serve on the tofu and top with crisp basil leaves

Crispy Omelette

Eggs are the basic ingredients that everyone has at home. Usually when I cook eggs, I make into omelette with various of vegatables like tomato, onion, carrots and some minced pork.

But in Thailand, when we go to Thai food restaurant they usually have an egg menu called Khai Foo or fluffy omelette. The idea to make omelette fluffy is not difficult.. but how to make it fluff and crispy for at least 15-20 minutes is difficult! So, I want to share my experience how how to make omelette crispy for long time.

Ingredients:

- 3 large eggs, room temperature

- 1 tb.sp. Fish sauce

- 2 t.sp. Crispy flour (any deep-fry flour)

- 1 t.sp. lime juice

(you may add vegetables or meat in your omelette although it will soften the omelette a bit but it's better nutrition)

- 3 tb.sp. palm oil

Cooking:

- Beat the egg until it becomes bubble

- Add fish sauce, crispy flour and lime juice, mix well in the bowl

- Heat up your pan until a little smoke

- Pour the egg slowly from high position into the pan. Usually 60-70 cm would do. But be careful since the oil may spill out of the pan and you won't like to get burnt!!

- Turn upside down after seeing the bottem side slightly golden brown

- Serve on the flat dish

Cooking Jasmine Rice in Microwave

Last week I wrote a blog about how to cook sticky rice using microwave. But I've realized that some people are also interested to know how to cook plain rice like Jasmine Rice with Microwave. Most of Asian families have rice cooker.. but this is not common if you're not an Asian. But if you like the taste of Asian food, especially they are nice with steamed rice, you don't need a rice cooker. Just your microwave can do.

This is a very simple way to cook Jasmine Rice with microwave.


1. Measure 1.5 cup of Jasmine Rice and rinse with water, put in the microwavable bowl








2. Add 2 cup of water into the bowl








3. Put in the microwave on High for 10 minutes

4. Bring the bowl out of the microwave and use a spoon or a spatula to stir the rice in the bowl. At this point, the rice is not yet cooked.

5. Put back in the microwave for another 5 minutes on High.

6. After this the rice should be well cooked and ready to eat.

Green Curry Spaghetti

We can easily mix and match Thai and western food. One of my wife's favourite combination is Green Curry with Spaghetti. In Thailand, we have a type of rice noodles called Khanom Jeen. This type of noodles is freshly made and cannot store longer than a day. We usually have Khanom Jeen with different curries or sauces. However, the combination of Khanom Jeen and Green Curry is one of the most delicious.

Due to the difficulty of Khanom Jeen storage, and not so easy to buy if you're not in Thailand, we apply to use Spaghetti instead of these rice noodles.


Ingredients:

200 g Spaghetti
400 g sliced chicken breast
200 ml coconut milk and 100 ml of coconut cream
2 t.sp. Green Curry paste (or Thai green curry powder which you can buy from local supermarket)
2 bell peppers, red and green
2 eggplants
1 cup fresh basil, chopped roughly

Cooking:

Prepare spaghetti by boiling in the water for 8-10 minutes.

Cut the chicken into small pieces and pre-cook it gently in a pan with drops of oil.

Mix the coconut milk, the coconut cream and the green curry paste in a bowl

Add the peppers and baby eggplants to the chicken and cook for few minutes

Add the sauce to the chicken and cook gently for 10-15 min

Add the basil 5 min before the end

Serve on top of spaghetti and decorate with fresh basil and chilli.