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Khua Kling Moo

Khua Kling, literally dry frying (“Khua” means the kind of cooking process with little water or no water at all and cook until the food is very dry, for “Kling” means tossing or rolling, and for “Moo” means pork), is one of  well known southern Thai dishes.

Southern Thai food is significantly different than the food from the other parts of Thailand as Southern Thai food got a lot influence from Indian, Arab and Persian cuisine. Turmeric is an important ingredient and plays a big part in Southern Thai food.

In general Southern Thai food is very spicy it can be burning hot so when you go to a restaurant in Southern Thailand, they always give you a basket or big plate of fresh vegetables covering with ice. These vegetables help to reduce feeling burning hot your tongue.

For this recipe it is not that spicy compares with Khua Kling in Southern Thailand but the flavor is still real Southern Thai food. You can use other kinds of meat like chicken, beef or fish but if you use fish then you should reduce ½ cup of water to be 1 – 2 tbsp of water and the cooking time should be reduced too so that fish will not be over cooked.




**** Very spicy
Ingredients

500g.              Minced pork loin
3 tbsp             Thai southern style curry paste (see recipe below)
½ cup             Water
2 tbsp             Fish sauce (adjustable, each brand of fish sauce has different level of sodium)
2 tbsp             Vegetable Oil
1 ½ tsp           Palm sugar
5                     Kaffir Lime leaves, cut into very thin stripes

Instructions on video

Instructions
  1. Heat the wok over medium high heat, add vegetable oil and following with minced pork. Cook until pork turns prink and add curry paste, fish sauce, and palm sugar, and mix well.
  2. Lower the heat to medium, add water and cook until pork is tender and dry.
  3. Turn of the heat, add Kaffir lime leaves and mix well
  4. Serve with lots of fresh vegetables like cucumber, lettuce, snake beans etc, and steamed Jasmine rice.


Thai Southern Style Curry Paste
Instructions on video

Ingredients
12                Dried Thai chilies or dried Prik Kee Noo
6                Fresh Thai chilies or fresh Prik Kee Noo, chopped
3 cloves       Garlic, chopped
2                  Shallots, chopped
1 ½ tbsp      Chopped turmeric (about 2 inches long of turmeric)
2 tbsp          Galangal, finely chopped
2 tbsp           Lemongrass, finely chopped
1 tbsp          Fresh ground pepper
1 ½ - 2 tsp    Shrimp paste
¼ tsp Salt

Instructions

  1. Soak dried chilies in a bowl of boiling or hot water until soft 15 minutes to 30 minutes depends on the temperature of water – hotter water takes less time. Rinse and remove the seeds, and finely chop.
  2. Wrap shrimp paste with a piece of tin foil and roast on the cook top of a stove until smelling the air with an aroma.
  3. Put all the ingredients in the mortar, and pound and crush with the pestle until smooth. It can be done with a food processor also. (Store in the freezer if you don't use all at once). 

Asian Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Chicken

This noodle dish is considered a healthy food as more than half of the dish is fresh vegetables, basically it is a salad dish and we have a bundle of noodles and grilled chicken to complete a one dish meal food.
                                                                                                            
This dish can be lunch or supper and the process is pretty straight forward. You can find all the ingredients at Asian grocery stores.



For 3 servings

Ingredients

2                   Chicken breast
1                   Lemongrass, cut and crushed
2 tbsp           Vegetable oil
11⁄2 tbsp           Soy sauce
1 tbsp           Oyster sauce
1 tbsp           Honey or sugar
½ tsp            Ground pepper
 1⁄6 tsp           Salt
-------------
150 – 200 g.  Rice Vermicelli
1 cup             Bean sprouts
1 cup             Cucumber, shredded
¾ cup            Carrot, shredded
6 slices         Tomato
3 pieces        Lettuce
3 branches    Thai basil
¾ cup           Ground peanut
1 tsp             Salt
2 tbsp           Vegetable oil

Salad dressing
2 cakes       Palm sugar(see picture at Herbs page)
5 tbsp         Water
2                Fresh Thai chilies, chopped (adjustable)
2 ½ tbsp     Lime juice (adjustable)
2 ½ tbsp    Fish sauce (adjustable, each brand of fish sauce has different level of sodium)

You can also follow the instructions from the video.


 Instructions 
  1. Cut lemongrass into small pieces, and crush it with a mortar and pestle for 4-5 minutes or until soft and wet.
  2. Marinate Chicken with crushed lemongrass, veg. oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey or sugar, ground pepper and salt for a few hours or leave it in the fridge over night if you prepare it the night before.
  3. Making salad dressing, place a small pot on medium heat, and add palm sugar and water. Cook palm sugar until it is melted and let it sit for a minute after bubbling, and remove from heat. Let it cold. Add chopped chilli, lime juice and fish sauce, and stir to mix.
  4. Bring a medium saucepan of water or just enough to cover rice vermicelli to boil over medium heat. Add 1 tsp salt and rice vermicelli, and cook until noodles are tender, about 3 minutes. Drain in a colander or strainer and transfer to a bowl.

  1. Grill the chicken; remove lemongrass from chicken with a spoon or folk. You can use oven grill or charcoal grill, grill two sides of chicken until it is cooked. Cut into pieces the size you wish.
  2. For serving, place a bundle of noodles in an individual serving bowl and put a piece of lettuce beside or under the noodles, and add and arrange tomato slices, cucumber shredded, carrot shredded, bean sprouts and ground peanut nicely. Garnish with Thai basil. Pour in the salad dressing when you are ready to eat.  

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.
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