One of the secrets of Thai cooking is the use of spices. Here you can find a list of some ingredients including spices used in most Thai recipes. Each we describe briefly, including its Thai name. It is hopeful that wanted ingredients are available at your local market.
Nothing captures the imagination or the taste buds quite like Thai chilies. Thai cooks capitalize on the chili’s power in a kind of culinary leveraged buy-out that borrows additional funds of heat from garlic, ginger, vinegar and peppercorns. That fire is actually found in the membrane of the chilies in a substance called capsaicin, which stimulates nerve endings and fools your brain into thinking you are in pain.
Many Thai dishes rely on the phrik kee noo, or mouse dropping chili. The name does not do justice to its explosive but sour flavor. It rates up to 80,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), a scale devised in 1912 to measure the intensity of chilies. That’s behind the 300,000-550,000 SHU’s of the habanero chili, but well ahead of the Jalapeno pepper that ranks around 4,000 SHU’s. Pure capsaicin is off the charts at an estimated 15,000,000-16,000,000 SHU’s.
Yet, the health benefits are many. Chilies have twice the Vitamin C by weight of oranges, with a single ounce enough for a daily allowance; they’re useful when it comes to weight loss; and - believe it or not - chilies are recommended for lowering blood pressure. Provided, of course, you can stand the heat.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Thai Seafood
If you like seafood, you’re in luck. Thai cooking is the most seafood intensive of any cuisine except perhaps Japanese. In general, Thai dishes and meals are built more around fish and shellfish than poultry and meat.
The roots of Thai culture, after all, are in water not land: the first to arrive in what is now Thailand settled along its rivers. Today, you could eat only seafood meals here and hard l get bored. Thai Squid curry and BBQ Prawns Seafood is the basis of Thai dishes, including curries, soups, sauces, rice, noodles, appetizers and salads.
Thai restaurateurs have turned seafood into a form of ready-made advertising. Restaurants along beaches and sidewalks have enormous stainless-steel trays Stainless Steel Fish Tray to display the catch fresh flounders, sea bass, grouper, tiger shrimp, lobsters, crabs, clams and oysters. A nice fish is pleasing to the eye, keeping cool on a glistening bed of ice.
The roots of Thai culture, after all, are in water not land: the first to arrive in what is now Thailand settled along its rivers. Today, you could eat only seafood meals here and hard l get bored. Thai Squid curry and BBQ Prawns Seafood is the basis of Thai dishes, including curries, soups, sauces, rice, noodles, appetizers and salads.
Thai restaurateurs have turned seafood into a form of ready-made advertising. Restaurants along beaches and sidewalks have enormous stainless-steel trays Stainless Steel Fish Tray to display the catch fresh flounders, sea bass, grouper, tiger shrimp, lobsters, crabs, clams and oysters. A nice fish is pleasing to the eye, keeping cool on a glistening bed of ice.
About Thai Cuisine
The true gourmet traveler in a new destination demands to know one thing above all: “Where can I eat like a local?” In Bangkok, the simplest answer is “everywhere”, because Thais crave good food, and seemingly every inch of the city, both indoors and out, is dedicated to the pleasures of the palate. Modern Bangkok offers more choice than ever, although, mysteriously, in the increasingly common proper” air-conditioned restaurants, much of the glorious intensity of Thai cuisine is missing. With a few notable exceptions mainly around the capital’s more posh areas, Thai food has yet to translate very well to up-market surroundings.
The soul of Thai cooking is found on the street, in wheeled metal carts, wicker baskets and traditional food shops, called raan aharn. This is great news for food explorers because to discover the authentic”, the culinary Holy GraiI. You have to venture into the alleys and market places of ordinary life, and get a taste of Bangkok’s unvarnished heritage, which is still intact behind the city’s malls and office blocks.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of these outlets in the capital, and thousands of them really will be good. So any attempt to quantify them in terms of “the best” is doomed to fail. There are, however, hot spots with a good choice of stalls and many outlets with reputations, often built over generations, for outstanding individual recipes.
The soul of Thai cooking is found on the street, in wheeled metal carts, wicker baskets and traditional food shops, called raan aharn. This is great news for food explorers because to discover the authentic”, the culinary Holy GraiI. You have to venture into the alleys and market places of ordinary life, and get a taste of Bangkok’s unvarnished heritage, which is still intact behind the city’s malls and office blocks.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of these outlets in the capital, and thousands of them really will be good. So any attempt to quantify them in terms of “the best” is doomed to fail. There are, however, hot spots with a good choice of stalls and many outlets with reputations, often built over generations, for outstanding individual recipes.
Spicy Squid salad
Yam Pla Meuk
Spicy Squid salad
500 grams medium sized squid or cuttlefish,
1/4 cup shredded young ginger,
1 cup mint leaves,
1 cup Chinese soup celery cut into 3cm (1 inch) lenghts
1 red spur chili sliced lenghtwise,
1 cup thinly sliced onion.
Preparation
1) Wash the squid or cutllefish, remove the eyes and other inedible parts, if using squid, skin them. Score the bodies in a crisscross pattern and then cut into 6cm (1,1/2 inch) pieces,
2) Scald the squid or cuttlefish in boiled water for just a short time. Overly long scalding will make them tough..
3) Toss together with the squid or cuttlefish the onion, ginger, celery, and dressing. Tast and adjust the seasonginh as required.
4) Transfer to a bed of mint arranged upon a plate and sprinkle with red chili,
5) Dressing: pound the 2-3 hot chilies and 2 table spoons sliced garlic until finely ground and then mix with 1/4 cup lime juice and 3-4 table spoons fish sauce.
Yam Pla Thu
Yam Pla Thu
Spicy Mackerel salad
5 large short bodied mackerels,
10-15 broken hot chilies,
7 finely sliced shallots,
1/2 cup shredded young ginger,
5 finely slice lemon grass stems,
2 table spoons finely sliced kaffir lime leaves,
1 cup horapha sweet basil leaves,
2 table spoons ground roasted peanuts,
2-3 table spoons lime juice,
2 table spoons fish sauce,
fresh Chinese cabbage, yard-long beans, cabbage, spring onions, corlander greens.
Preparation
1) Fry the mackerel golden brown and remove the meat.
2) Toss with the meat the lemon grass, ginger, shallot, chilies, kaffir lime leaf, sweet basil leaves, fish sauce, and lime juice.
3) Just before serving, sprinkle with the ground peanut, and serve with the fresh vegetable.
Phad Thai Sai Khai
Phad Thai Sai Khai
Fried Noodles traditional Thai style.
300 grams narrow rice noodle,
1/2 kilogram bean sprouts,
3 chicken eggs,
50 grams pork, cut into small slivers,
50 grams chopped pickled white radish,
1 cake soybean curd, cut into small slivers,
1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts,
1 tea spoon ground dried chilies,
1 table spoon chopped shallots.
Preparation
Heat 3 table spoons of oil in a frying pan and saute garlic and shallots. When yellowed, add noodles with just enough water to soften them and fry, turning constantly with spatula to prevent sticking (anti sticking pan is adviced). Then move the noodles to the side of the pan or remove them from the pan.
Put 3 table spoons of oil into the pan. When hot, fry the pork, pickled white radish, bean curd, and dried chilies and then return the noodles, mix thoroughly, and move to the side of the pan or remove it from the pan.
Put 2 table spoons oil into the pan. When heated, break the eggs into the pan and scramble with an spatula, spreading eg in a thin layer over the pan. Then set, return the noodles and mix together. Add half the bean sprouts and the Chinese leek leaves and turn to mix together. Spoon onto plates and sprinkle with ground peanut. Serve with bean sprouts, banana flower, Chinese leek, and Indian pennywort.
Phad Thai (Thai fried noodles) requires a lot of oil; however, it is possible to use less than indicated above by adding small amounts from time to time to keep the noodles from drying instead of adding all the oil at once.
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