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Thai Fresh Spring Rolls

These little spring rolls (cups) are healthy and nice looking food. They are good for a party like cocktail party or the mood that you want to make something special for yourself. The party season is coming so I had this idea came up making something nice and healthy. It basically is a bite salad.

This healthy dish can be served all seasons as all the ingredients are available at the market. If you are allergic to seafood you can simply change shrimp to be grilled breast chicken, and if you are vegetarian you can just use grilled firm tofu sticks instead.

In this recipe, I use Thai brown rice vermicelli but if it is not available in your area then you can just use ordinary one.




Ingredients
30               Shrimp, peeled and deveined (size 31 – 40)
1 tbsp         Soy sauce
2 tbsp         Water
1 tbsp         Vegetable oil
150 g.          Thai brown rice vermicelli or rice vermicelli
5 pieces       Rice paper (for size 22 x 22 cm) or 7 pieces (size 15 x 15 cm.)
1                  Green or red lettuce
1                  Small carrot, cut into long thin sticks or julienne, 1 ½ - 1 ¾ inch long
1                  Small cucumber, cut into less than ½ x 1 ½ - 1 ¾ inch long (60 sticks)
60 leaves      Mint
1 tsp             Salt

Peanut Dipping Sauce (recipe follows)

Instructions
  1. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over medium high heat. Add salt and noodles, and cook until noodles are tender. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Put aside.
  2. Combine shrimp, soy sauce and oil.
  3. Place a frying pan on medium high heat. Add shrimp and water, and cover the frying pan with a lid while the shrimp is cooking, cook shrimp 1 minute each side until it is cooked or turn pink.  Remove from heat and transfer to a plate.
  4. Dip rice papers in room temperature water and cut into 1 ¼ inch strips with scissors. And lay rice paper strips flat on wooded cutting board.
  5. Cut green lettuce leaf 1 ½ inch from the ruffly edge of lettuce leaf by 3 inches long. Place a small bundle of noodles on top of mint leaves, and top with 2 cucumber sticks, 7 - 8 carrot sticks and shrimp. Roll lettuce around it tightly and secure the roll by wrapping around with a rice paper strip. Repeat with remaining ingredients.  Serve with peanut dipping sauce.

Peanut dipping sauce 
1 cake            Palm sugar (see the picture on "Herbs" page)
2 tbsp            Water
½ cup            Roasted unsalted peanuts, crushed
½ - 1              Fresh Thai chili or Prik Kee Noo, finely chopped
1 ½ tbsp        Fresh coriander, finely chopped
1 ¾ tbsp        Fish sauce (or soy sauce, if seafood is an issue)
1 ¾ tbsp        Lime juice

 Instructions
  1. Place palm sugar and water in a small pot over medium heat. And cook until palm sugar dissolved, and remove from heat. Add fish sauce and lime juice, and mix well.
  2. Add crushed peanut, chopped chili and chopped coriander, and mix well.



Pad Cha Squid

Pad Cha (literally, stir-frying with cha cha sound or sizzling sound of burning food from the hot wok.) is a very popular stir-fried spicy dish and commonly is seafood. Pad Cha dish has many different versions from different kinds of seafood for example squid, fish, shrimp, crab and or clam. Each kind of seafood may have slightly different flavors from different herbs beside the kind of seafood itself.

This dish has a very nice and strong fragrance from herbs which is good as the herbs be able to cover the smell of seafood and at the same time the aroma and nice flavor delight the palate.

This dish is not complicated to make, and it doesn't consume a lot of time to make either, to create a nice real Thai meal at home.

*All the ingredients are available at Asian grocery stores.



For 2 servings
Ingredients

1                         Fresh squid (about 400 – 420g.)
3                         Fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo (adjustable)
3 cloves             Garlic
½ cup                 Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil
¼ cup                Fingerroot (about 3 - 4 roots), shredded or cut into stripes
2 tbsps               Young or green peppercorn
2 - 3 tbsps          Vegetable oil
1 tbsp                 Fish sauce (adjustable)
1 tbsp                 Oyster sauce
2 - 3 tbsps          Water

Garnish (optional)
¼ cup  Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil – for deep frying in oil until crisp.

You can also follow the instructions from the video.



Instructions

  1. Cut the squid tube in half lengthwise. Clean and remove the quills. Cut into rectangle or square pieces and cut each piece a criss-cross pattern on the inside of the squid.
  2. Pound fresh Thai chilli and garlic in mortar until break to be small pieces or you can use a knife to chop chillies and garlic.
  3. Place the wok on medium heat with vegetable oil and swirl the oil to cover the bottom of the wok.
  4. Add the mixture of chilli and garlic, stir-frying until its sends the fragrance and then add squid and stir to mix well.
  5. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, young pepper corn, fingerroot and stir to mix well and add the water on the wok beside the food and so that water will be hot before the water mix into food.
  6.  At last, add Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil and mix into the mixture and stir until Holy basil wilt and remove from heat.
  7. Garnish with crispy Bai Ga Prao. Serve hot with hot steamed Jasmine rice.

Nam Tok Neua or Waterfall Beef

Nam Tok (literally, waterfall) is the North Eastern Thai or Isan food. The name “Nam Tok Neua”, or “waterfall beef” refers to the juices that flow out of the meat when it is cut, due to its being lightly grilled and so slightly rare in the center.

It is a popular Thai dish in among North Eastern Thai people or beef lovers. Actually most of the ingredients for Nam Tok are the same as “Laab” accept the meat and the process of cooking the meat is different. We use chopped meat in Laab and cook with the small amount of water in a pot. For Nam Tok, we use a big piece of meat and use grilling as the process of cooking.


For 2 servings

Ingredients

280 - 300 g.                 Beef loin (sirloin, tenderloin) or rib eye steak
1 - 2 cloves                  Garlic, chopped fine
Pinch of salt
1 tsp                             Sugar
1 tsp                            Vegetable oil (optional, if the meat has not much fat)
1 tsp                            Oyster sauce
½ tsp                           Soy sauce
-------
15 leaves                     Mints
4 - 5 leaves                 Culantro ( Eryngium foetidum leaves ) cut into ¼ inch long
4 - 5 leaves                 Kaffir lime leaves, cut into thin stripes
1 tbsp                         Galangal, chopped fine
2                                  Shallots, slice thin
1 ½ tbsp                     Lemongrass, chopped fine
1 tbsp                         Ground roasted sticky rice
½ tsp                          Ground Thai chili pepper (adjustable)
1 – 1½ tbsp               Fish sauce (adjustable, different brand of fish sauce has different level of sodium)
1 – 1 ½ tbsp              Lime juice
2 – 3 tbsp                 Chicken broth or beef broth (optional, if the mixture is too dry)

Vegetable Side Dish
(These vegetables are not processed; they are just plain fresh vegetables. We use them for breaking the feeling of hot and spicy on the tongue from a spicy food and at the same time we can get more nutrition from the vegetables beside from the meat and herbs in the mixture.)
  
Cabbage or Chinese Napa
Snake beans
Or any salad vegetable (like lettuce or cucumber) 


                             You can also follow the instructions from this video!

Instructions

  1. Marinate beef with garlic, salt, sugar, (oil,) oyster sauce and soy sauce for at least ½ hour.
  2. Grill the meat on charcoal, on gas or (broil) in oven until brown on both sides and the meat medium rare to medium cooked.
  3. Slice the meat into ¼ inch thick and remove to the mixing bowl.
  4. Add fish sauce, lime juice, beef broth, ground chili, ground roasted sticky rice, mints, cilantro, galangal, shallot, and lemongrass. Mix all well.
  5. Add fresh vegetables on the side of the mixture and serve with hot sticky rice.

Pad Thai with Chicken

You can also follow the instructions from the video below!

 Pad Thai is a well known and popular dish in Thailand and the world, from street vendors to high end restaurants food. Pad Thai in Thailand uses shrimp the most, for street vendors they use dry shrimp, and for more expensive and high end restaurants use fresh shrimp. Here my recipe is from real and original Pad Thai so there are some ingredients you might not be familiar with for example, garlic chives (Chinese chives) and salty radish. There are available at Asian grocery stores. Thai restaurants in North America use green onion instead of garlic chives and they skip the salty radish but if you would like to try the original favor then here it is.

For 4 - 5 servings for a single dish meal.



Ingredients

1 pkg. (450 g)              dry Rice stick noodles
300 g                           or 2 small skinless boneless chicken breasts  
½ pkg (250 g)              pressed Tofu – cubed
3                                  eggs
½ - 1 cup                     chopped Salty Radish (optional)
3 – 4 cloves                 chopped Garlic
2- 2 ½ cups                 or half batch of Tamarind sauce from recipe (see recipe below)
9 -10 tbsp                    Vegetable oil (if it’s too dry you can add more)
2 - 3 tbsp                      Fish sauce  (you can replace fish sauce with soy  sauce if there is a seafood allergy issue)
1 tsp.                            Soy sauce
1⁄6 tsp                           Salt
½  tsp                           Fresh ground pepper       
1 lb                               Bean sprouts
1 bunch                        Garlic chives (Chinese chives) (cut into 1 inch long) or green onion cut into ½ inch
           Ground chili pepper
1 - 2                                                            Limes (optional)



  Instructions

  1. Place noodles in bowl and cover in room-temperature water.  Soak approx. 1 hr. and drain.
  2. Marinate chicken in soy sauce, salt and garlic at least 10 minutes.
  3. Stir-fry tofu cubes with 2 tbsp oil until golden at medium high heat, remove tofu from wok.
  4.  Fry eggs with 2 – 3 tbsp oil at medium high heat and cut the eggs in the wok with a turner of frying pan and remove from wok.
  5. Stir-fry chicken with 2 tbsp oil until nearly cooked and adds radish and mix well, and removes from the wok.
  6. Add noodles in the wok with 2 – 3 tbsp oil and stir-fry until noodles set and then add tofu, eggs and chicken, mix well. Pour tamarind sauce gradually until the noodles absorb all the sauce. In the same add fish sauce and stir-fry until noodles are soft and fully cooked.
  7. Add fresh ground pepper and mix well.
  8. Have a taste if the favor just what you want or need more fish sauce or tamarind sauce as your favor.
  9. Add some bean spouts and Chinese chives. Turn the heat off. Mix the bean spouts and Chinese chives into noodles well and serve.
** Because of this recipe is pretty big it will take a while before everything is cooked, some ingredients need less time and some need longer time so I cook them separately and mix them later but if you make a small batch just for 1 or 2 servings you can stir-fry tofu and then add an egg and then add chicken and then add noodles and mix well with the sauces.
       
Garnish with
  • Bean sprouts
  • Chopped Chinese chives ( cut 1 inch long or you can substitute with green onion)
  • Chopped peanuts
  • Ground Chili pepper
  • A piece of Lime (if you need more sour favor beside from Tamarind)
Sauce (makes 2 batches) you can make this sauce in advance, it can be kept in the fridge for 4 – 6 weeks.

200 g.            Tamarind (cake of dried fruit, see picture of Tamarind this blog)
4 ½  cakes     Palm Sugar ( 8 cakes in a pkg = 454 g) (see the picture of Palm Sugar this blog)
5 cups            Water

Instructions

  1. Soak tamarind in water until soft, about 30 minutes (break apart the cake of fruit as it becomes possible to speed up the softening).
  2. Discard the seeds and pods.
  3. Dissolve palm sugar into tamarind mixture of heat.   Heat to boiling.
  4. Set aside.

Gai Yang Ta Krai or Chicken Lemongrass Skewers

Gai Yang Ta Krai or Chicken Lemongrass Skewers is another outdoor summer food, but you can still have this dish on a rainy day by using oven grill or pan grill. You can have different kinds of meat for this dish – like pork, lamb or beef. The overall process of making this dish is pretty easy.

If you have the fat lemongrass then you can cut the lemongrass into half lengthwise, it is good in a way so you can get more favour and scent from lemongrass on your meat.





Ingredients

2              Large skinless boneless chicken breast (about 500 g) cut into chunks (3⁄4” x 2” x 2 ½“)
6              Lemongrass, cut into 6 -7 inches long
3 cloves  Garlic 
Lemongrass sticks
3              Coriander roots
1 tsp        Fresh ground pepper
1 tsp        Crashed coriander seeds
1⁄3 tsp      Salt
1 tbsp      Honey or palm sugar
2 tbsp      Thick cream of Coconut milk
2 tbsp      Soy sauce
1 tbsp      Oyster sauce
1 tbsp       Vegetable oil

Instruction


  1. Pound garlic, coriander roots with mortar and pestle or chop very fine.
  2. Marinate chicken with garlic, coriander roots, ground pepper, crashed coriander seeds, soy sauce, salt, honey or palm sugar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, oil and water  for 2 -3 hours.
  3. Cut lemongrass into 6 -7 inches, and cut the smaller end of each lemongrass into pointy shapes.
  4. Thread the meat into the lemongrass sticks – 3 pieces for each stick until finish all and ready to grill.
    Skewers on charcoal
  5. Serve with Cucumber pickles (see recipe) and steamed rice or sticky rice, and or just serve with cold beer.

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. Pur̩e the ingredients of first part Рherbs 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 Р15 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.
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