Hor Mok Ta Lay or Seafood Curry Custard

Hor Mok (literally, wrap and hide and “Ta Lay” is from “Ah Han Ta Lay” means seafood) is a steamed curry custard in banana leaves. This dish is a common food in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, each country’s Hor Mok has some slightly different ingredients but Thai Hor Mok is always with seafood and some kinds of fresh water fish.

You can find this dish at Khoa Kheng Shop or and street food vendors to luxury Thai restaurants. The process is pretty straight forward even it has lots of different kinds of ingredients.

• It is better to use uncooked seafood for this dish so that it will mix and blend into fish and herb purée well. You can use any kind of seafood for examples (the popular ones in Thailand) are shrimp, mussel and squid. You can either have only one kind of seafood or mix seafood in this dish.
• In traditional way we use banana leaves for wrapping or making bowls for the size of one serving, but nowadays many chefs use nice little glass or ceramic dipping or sauce bowls for this dish.
• You can have your Hor Mok more texture by adding more chunks of seafood meat in purée besides indicating in the recipe. This is where the name of Hor Mok (wrap and hide) from – the chunks of meat are wrapped and hidden in the custard.
  
  

 12 servings

Ingredients

14                Shrimp (size 31 – 40) uncooked and thaw cut in half

14                Mussel uncooked and thaw cut in half

42 leaves     Sweet basil

Mussel, shrimp cuts

4-5 leaves   Coriander, garnishing

4-5 leaves   Kaffir lime leaves, slice very thin for garnishing

4 tbsp          Thick coconut milk

½ tsp           Potato or corn starch

Banana leaves enough for making 12 bowls.

*First part - herbs

1                  Large long chilli, slices for garnishing

10               Dried large long chillies, soft in warm water and remove seeds

5 roots         Fingerroot

2 roots         Coriander

Ingredients

2 tbsp          Lemongrass, slice

1 tbsp          Galangal, cut into small pieces

1–2               Fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo (optional, if you like spicy food)

3                  Shallots

3-4 cloves   Garlic

 1                 Kaffir lime, skin( 1 small one or ½ for a big one)

1 root          Turmeric, about 1” long

¹⁄₃ cup         Water or coconut water

**Second part

100 g           King Mackerel, remove bones and skin

2                  Eggs

1 tsp        Palm Sugar

1 tsp            Shrimp Paste, roasted (wrap in foil and roast on the element of stove)

½ tsp           Fresh ground pepper

1 ½ cup       Coconut milk, the thick one from a can

3 tbsp          Fish sauce

Instruction

1. Making banana bowls (if you use glass (pic. below) or ceramic bowls then skip this part), cut banana leaves into 5 x 5 inches. Fold each corner and secure with staples until finish for 4 corners.

   

   Bowls

2. Purée the ingredients of first part – herbs until smooth, and add the second part blend together until smooth. Pour into a mixing bowl and add shrimp and mussel and mix well. Store the mixture in the fridge for 10 – 15 minutes to set.
3. Heat a steamer on high heat.
4. Mix 4 tbsp of coconut milk with potato or corn starch well on medium heat until thicken or you can cook it in microwave. Set a side.
5. Place 3 basil leaves on the bottom of each bowl, scoop 2 tablespoon full of the mixture into the bowls (you can put more or less of the mixture, depending on the size of the bowls). The mixture of each bowl must have meat and sauce purée combined.

   

   For garnishing
   
   
   
   

6. Steam in boiling hot steamer for 8 minutes. Remove from the heat garnish with coconut milk sauce, long red chilli slices, kaffir lime leaf stripes and coriander leaves. And serve hot with steamed rice.

With glass bowl

Tod Man Pla or Thai Fish Cakes

Tod Man Pla or Thai Fish Cakes with red curry favour is a popular and well known dish. You can find this dish at street vendors to fancy restaurants in Bangkok. Original or in Thailand this dish is made from Clown featherback or Clown knifefish which is Southeast Asian fresh water fish. The textures of fish cakes from this kind of fish are tough, firm and resiling so this kind of fish is ideal for making fish cakes and fish balls. Fish balls in Thailand, are original from Chinese cuisine, and are made from king mackerel or mackerel family fish.

Some Thai people use mackerel fish the kind that we have in Thai sea for making fish cake as well but it’s not that popular, because people have fixed the idea to the original one. Here we can find fresh king mackerel easily at a market so I use king mackerel for my fish cake recipe. The results from these two kinds of fish - Clown featherback and king mackerel, are very similar.

For the curry paste, we use red curry paste for the favour but it is not as spicy as the red curry. We use the same curry paste as Chu Chee curry, you can see the recipe on page Chu Chee curry- here.

In Thailand most people will deep-fry their fish cakes but you can also pan-fry the fish cakes as well.

*** I found the information of king mackerel substitutes:  Spanish mackerel OR shad OR bluefish OR herring OR small trout, the fish that has similar texture. 

For 13 - 14 pieces of fish cakes / size 2 ¼ inches x ¹⁄₃ inch

Ingredients

300 g                Fillets of king mackerel

4 tbsp               Curry Paste (see recipe from Chu Chee curry)

1                       Egg

¹⁄₃ cup              Snake Beans, cut into ¼ inch

6 – 7 leaves     Kaffir Lime Leaves, cut into very thin stripes

½ tsp               Potato or tapioca starch

Snake bean and Kaffir lime leaves

4 – 5 tbsp        Cold water (or about ¹⁄₃ cup)

2 tbsp              Fish sauce

Oil for frying

Instruction

1. Remove fish’s skin and bones by scratching it with a spoon. Ground the fish in mortar with pestle or food processor until paste like.
2. Remove fish paste to a mixing bowl, and add egg, fish sauce and potato starch. Start kneading, in the same time add cold water gradually 3 - 4 times, and knead and grab the fish dough throw it back to the bowl, basically beating the fish repeatedly until the mixer tough and bouncing. (This process originally, the bowl with the fish mixer will be sitting on the ice. Beating the cold fish mixer will create a nice bouncing texture – bouncing fish cakes. The same process is for making fish balls as well) 

   

   The process of making fish cakes

    
3. Add snake beans and kaffir lime leaves, and mix well
4. Heat a frying pan or wok on medium heat, and add oil. Mould the mixer into 2 ¼ inches x ¹⁄₃ inch or shape like cookies. And fry both sides until nice brown colour or cooked. Remove and drain oil on paper towels.
5. Serve with cucumber pickles (see recipe below)

 Cucumber pickles 

1              Cucumber

2 tbsp      Coriander, chopped

¹⁄₃ cup     Peanuts, ground (optional)

1              Fresh Thai chilli, chopped (optional)

½ cup     White vinegar

½ cup     Sugar

1 tsp       salt

Instruction

1. Mix vinegar, sugar and salt in a pot on medium heat. Boil until bubbling for 1- 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set a side until it is cool.
2. Cut cucumber into quarter in lengthwise and slice into ¼ thick. Pour into vinegar mixer in a serving bowl. Add chilli and peanuts, and mix well.
3. Garnish with coriander.

Chu Chee Salmon

Chu Chee or Choo Chee is the sound of sizzling in Thai, and because of the amount of curry is small comparing to other kinds of curry so the sound is loud.  The curry paste for this dish has the same ingredients as red curry paste, except it is not as hot as red curry because there are no fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo in Chu Chee curry paste, but there are only dried big chillies which are mild. If you’d like your Chu Chee dish spicy, you can always add some Prik Kee Noo in your curry paste.

Chu Chee Curry is commonly with fish, but you may find some restaurants’ Chu Chee menu with shrimp as well. The curry sauce is supposed to be thicker, saltier and sweeter than ordinary curry as the fish is plain so you need the sauce to give some favours to the fish.

Chu Chee dish is pretty common and popular dish in Thailand as you can find this dish from street vendors to luxury restaurants.

For 2 - 3 servings  Spiciness: mild

Ingredients

1  lb.            Salmon Steak, slice into 2 pieces or 2 Salmon Fillets

3 tbsp          Curry paste (the recipe below)

2 tsp            Palm sugar or sugar

4 leaves       Kaffir Lime leaves, cut into very thin stripe

7                 Thai basil or sweet basil

¾ cup          Thick Coconut milk from a can

1-1  ½ tbsp   Fish sauce

1 tbsp          Vegetable oil

¹⁄₃ cup          Water

Curry Paste

Ingredients – for about ½ cup of curry paste

7                  Dried big chillies, remove seeds and soak in water until soft and chop into small pieces

1-2               Fresh Thai Red chillies, chopped (optional)

2 tbsp           Lemongrass, chopped fine

2                  Shallots, chopped

2 tbsp           Garlic, chopped

2 tsp             Galangal, chopped fine

1                   Kaffir Lime, skin only about 2tsp, chopped fine

½ tsp            Ground pepper

2 - 3 roots     Coriander, chopped

 ³⁄₄tsp            Shrimp paste, roasted

¼ tsp            Salt

Instruction

1. To make the curry paste, wrap shrimp paste in foil and roast two sides on the stove element until fragrant.
2. Paste dried chillies, lemongrass, shallots, garlic, galangal, kaffir lime peel, ground pepper, coriander roots, shrimp paste and salt in mortar and pestle, and pound until smooth.
3. Grill 2 sides of salmon on frying pan on medium heat until golden brown but not cooked. Remove salmon from the frying pan.
4. To make the curry sauce, the same frying pan on medium heat, add vegetable oil until hot and add curry paste, stir-frying until fragrant. Add coconut milk, palm sugar, fish sauce and water, mix well and cook until bubbling and becomes a thick curry sauce.
5. Add salmon into the curry sauce and let salmon sit for a few bubble each side until salmon absorbs the favour of the curry sauce. Remove from the pen to a plate and garnish with kaffir lime leaves and basil. Serve hot with Jasmine rice. 

Yam Makeua Yao

Yam Makua Yao or Eggplant Salad is one of healthy and yummy popular “YAM” Thai dishes. Some recipes may have hard boiled eggs in this dish. For people who can not eat pork or don’t like pork then you can just simply change it to be chicken.

3 - 4 Servings. Spiciness: Medium

Ingredients

2                         Large egg plants (Chinese Eggplants)

200 g.                  Pork mince

1 tsp                   Soy sauce

2 cloves              Garlic mince

Pinch of salt

12                       Shrimp (size 31 -40 or any size)

3                         Shallots, slice thin or ½ cup of red onion

3 tbsp                 Lemongrass, slice very thin

2 tbsp                Kaffir Lime leaves, cut into thin stripes (about 4-5 leaves)

10 – 15 leaves     Mint

3                        Fresh Thai chilli or Prik Kee Noo (spiciness is adjustable)

1 tbsp                 Nam Prik Pao or Chilli paste with soya bean oil

3 tbsp                Lime juice

2 tbsp                Fish sauce

2 tbsp                Water

Instruction

1. Marinate pork with soy sauce, garlic and salt.
2. Roast or grill the eggplants either on charcoal or in the oven until soft and cooked. Peel the skin and cut into 1 ½ inch long. Remove to a mixing bowl.
3. Heat a frying pan or a small pot over medium heat. Add the marinated pork and 2 tbsp water cook until changes colour and breaking up any lumps, before pork is cooked add shrimp and cook until pork and shrimp are cooked (you can cook  pork and shrimp separately also).
4. Making salad dressing, combine Nam Prik Pao, lime juice, chilli and fish sauce, and mix well or until Nam Prik Pao dissolved.
5. Combine eggplants, pork, shrimp, shallots, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and mints. Pour into salad dressing and mix well.
6. Serve with steamed rice.