The black fried century eggs make this quite a stunning looking plate, but the eggs are not the main taste, the spicy chicken is. Eat this as a side dish to Thai rice, served with Thai sweet basil leaves.

Ingredients for 2 People

• 2 Century Eggs
• 70 gms Chicken Breast
• 5 Bird Chillies
• 2 Garlic Cloves
• 2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
• 1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Oil
• 10 gms Thai Basil

Preparation

1. Peel and chop the century eggs into quarters as in the photograph.
2. Put the oil into the pan over a medium heat and fry the eggs pieces, turning them so they are cooked on all sides. Then set them aside on a plate.
3. Mince the chicken into a fine mince.
4. Chop the garlic and chillies together and put into the pan with the hot oil, and fry until the garlic begins to smell.
5. Add the minced chicken, put into the frying pan it with garlic and chillies and fry until the chicken is completely cooked.
6. Add the fish suauce, light soy sauce, sugar, oyster sauce and basil and stir fry for 30 second.
7. Serve with the century egg garnish.

Serve With

• Chillies in Fish Sauce
• Thai Fragrant Rice
• Cucumber
• Tomatoes

This dish is a spicy meat side dish normally eaten with sticky rice. It is chunky, making it ideal to eat with your fingers. In Thailand as with many cultures, there are many dishes you eat with your hands. Ensure you clean your hand thoroughly, take a chunk of sticky rice, and, using the sticky rice to cover your fingers, grab a chunk of the minced pork, then eat.

Ingredients for Family

• 400 gms Pork Mince
• 20 gms Fresh Red Chill
• 2 Tablespoons Flaked Dried Chilli
• 5 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
• 10 gms. Coriander Leaves
• 10 gms. Spring Onion
• 4 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Toasted Rice
• 2 Tablespoon Lime Juice
• 2 Tablespoons Water
• 10 gms. Fresh Mint

Preparation

1. Put the pork mince into a frying pan.
2. Slice the citrus leaves into small pieces, add to the frying pan.
3. Chop spring onions, fresh chilles and coriander and add to the pan.
4. Add fish sauce, lime juice, flaked chillis, toasted sticky rice and water to the pan.
5. Turn the heat on high and fry it until the pork is cooked.
6. Serve garnished with the mint.

Serve With
Steamed Sticky Rice
Salad vegetables like Lettuce, Cucumber, Long bean or Cabbage.

The rich, unctuous texture and pronounced fruity flavor of a dry gewürztraminer from France’s Alsace region will provide a lovely contrast to these strong, spicy flavors.

Ingredients for 4 SERVINGS

• jalapeño peppers, seeds and ribs removed
• 4 cloves garlic, 2 smashed, 2 minced
• 1/2 cup lightly packed cilantro leaves and stems, plus 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
• 2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce (nam pla or nuoc mam)
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/3 pounds in all)
• 6 tablespoons rice-wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon dried red-pepper flakes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons water

Directions

1. Light the grill or heat the broiler. In a blender or food processor, puree the jalapeños, smashed garlic cloves, the 1/2 cup cilantro leaves and stems, the fish sauce, cooking oil, sesame oil, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt. Put the chicken in a shallow dish and coat it with the cilantro puree.
2. Grill the chicken over moderately high heat or broil it for 5 minutes. Turn and cook until just done, about 5 minutes longer.
3. Meanwhile, in a small stainless-steel saucepan, bring the vinegar, sugar, and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt to a simmer, stirring. Simmer for 2 minutes. Pour the liquid into a small glass or stainless-steel bowl and let cool. Add the minced garlic, the 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro, the red-pepper flakes, and water. Serve each chicken breast with a small bowl of the dipping sauce alongside.

Notes
Asian fish sauce is available at Asian markets and many supermarkets

A very unusual soup, slightly spicy with the taste of cinnamon. The eggs make it a very filling meal rather than a soup, often served with rice to pad it into a full meal. This is something of an aquired taste, if cinnamon flavored boiled eggs are not for you, you may prefer to try one of the more common Thai dishes first and work up to this.
Ingredients for 2 people

• 1 Tablespoon of Cinnamon
• 4 Boiled Eggs
• 4 Piece of Brown Dry Tofu
• 2 Cloves Garlic
• 1 Pepper Corn
• 1 Tablespoon Chopped Coriander Leaf
• 1 Teaspoon Dark Soya Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Light Soya Sauce
• 1 Level Teaspoon Salt
• 2 Level Tablespoon Sugar
• 1 Chicken Stock Cube (Or Vegetable Stock for Vegetarian)
• 200 ml. Water
• 1 Teaspoon Oil

Preparation

1. Pound the garlic, pepper corns, and coriander together in a pestle.
2. Remove the shell of the boiled eggs.
3. Put the water to boil and add the stock cube in a boiling pan.
4. Heat a frying pan, add the oil and the pounded garlic, pepper, cinnamon and coriander mix and fry.
5. Fry lightly until the garlic is softened.
6. Add the dark Soya sauce, light Soya sauce, salt, and sugar and stir it to mix it.
7. Add the whole boiled egg in fry them for a second to take on some of the flavours.
8. Put the fried ingredients into the boiling pan containing the chicken stock & water.
9. Cut the tofu into bite sized pieces and add to the boiling pan.
10. Boil for 10 minutes and turn heat on low for a gentle simmer for a further 30 minutes.
11. Leave it for cool then serve warm.

Suggestions
It is better to leave this to rest overnight for the cinnamon fragrance to infuse throughout the eggs.

Ahh, one of my favorite snacks, a crispy pancake with a sweet filling. The yellow one is sugared egg yolk strands. But for this recipe, I’m covering the shredded sweet shrimp topping.
In the photo below you can see them being fried on a flat plate, when they are hot and still slightly soft, a layer of cream is spread on them, followed by a topping, then they are folded in half and the pancake crisps up.
This recipe uses limestone water, but use plain water if you can’t find it. Limestone helps crisp the pancake.
Make all the parts first, the cream, the batter, the topping, (get your spoons ready, and the plate you want to put them onto!). Then assemble a few at a time, frying off the pancakes on a flat griddle, adding the topping while they’re hot then setting them aside to cool.

sweet-fried-biscuits

Ingredients for Pancake

• 100 gms Flour
• 200 gms Mung Bean Flour
• 350 gms Rice Flour
• 110 gms Palm Sugar
• 480 ml Limestone Water
• 2 Egg Yolks

Preparation
1. Mix all flours together then add all the other ingredients in, mix well and leave to stand.

Ingredients for Cream
3 Eggs Whites
110 gms Icing Sugar
1 Teaspoon Lime Juice

Preparation
1. Take the egg white, icing sugar and lime juice and whisk to a white cream.

Ingredients for Sweet Shrimp

• 100 gms Shrimps
• 2-3 Garlic Cloves
• 1 Teaspoon White Pepper
• 10 gms Coriander Root or Seeds
• 100 gms Desiccated (Ground) Coconut
• 150 gms Sugar
• 1 Teaspoons Salt
• 2 Tablespoons Oil
• 2-3 Drops of Orange Food Colouring
• 10 gms Sliced Kaffir Leaves for Garnish

Preparation

1. Clean the shrimp, remove the shell and cut down the back to remove the black thread ‘gut’.
2. Chop the shrimp into a fine mince.
3. Pound the garlic and coriander root/seeds and white pepper together until well ground up.
4. Fry the shrimp and pounded mixture in a frying pan with a little oil until part cooked, 30 seconds or so is fine.
5. Mix the ground coconut with the orange food colouring, add to the frying pan, add the sugar and salt and fry for a further 2 minutes. The sugar will slightly caramelize.

How to Assemble

1. Put the griddle plate or frying pan on a medium heat.
2. Take a spoonful of the batter and swirl it around to make a round small pancake about 8-10cms in diameter. The pancakes need to be very thin since they are cooked from one side only.
3. Remove with a spatula as soon as it is cooked.
4. Spread a spoonful of the cream mix onto the pancake.
5. Top with a dollop of the sweet shrimp, then fold up the two sides and stack them side by side on the plate.

These parcels are made from fried pork and herbs, wrapped in a pastry made from steamed rice flour and starch and served with a sweet and sour sauce. The pastry is cooked separately from the filling and it’s very different from the cooking methods you may be use to. The actual pastry mix is liquid when uncooked. In order to cook it, you need to tie a cheese cloth or clean handkerchief tightly stretched over the top of a pan of water.

The pan is then put on the heat, the water boils, and the steam rises through the cloth. The liquid pastry is poured onto the cheese cloth with a ladle and the ladle used to spread the mixture over the cloth. It cooks very quickly due to the steam and can be peeled off. The aluminum pan from a Thai Steamer is perfect for this.

Ingredients for Pastry (Makes 15)

• 75 gms Cassava Starch (or Corn Starch)
• 140 gms Rice Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Sugar
• 350 ml Water

Equipment for Making Pastry

• Steaming Pan
• Cheese Cloth
• String to Cloth With

Ingredients for Filling

• 100 gms Pork Mince
• 40 gms Coriander Leaves
• 40 gms Spring Onion
• 1 Tablespoon Chopped Garlic
• 2 Tablespoons Maggi Sauce (Savory seasoning sauce)
• 2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation

1. Oil a frying pan, add the garlic, pork, spring onion, chopped coriander leaves and Maggi sauce.
2. Fry until the pork is cooked, and set it aside.
3. Half fill a steaming pan with water, cover with a cheese-cloth and tie the cloth so that it is tight and flat over the top of the pan. Put the pan onto heat to boil.
4. Mix the rice flour with the cassava starch, water and sugar to form the liquid pastry.
5. When the pan is boiling, ladle some of the flour mix onto the cloth and spread it around quickly using the ladle. Place a lid over the pastry and let it cook for a minute.
6. Spoon some of the filling mixture onto the centre of the pastry and fold the edges over to form a parcel around the meat. A spatula is useful to fold the pastry over. Once you’ve done that you can move it to a plate.

Ingredients for Sweet Sour Dipping Sauce

• 4 Tablespoon Sugar
• 30 ml Water
• 70ml Tamarind Water or Lemon Juice
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 1 Teaspoon Spring Onion
• 2 Teaspoon Chopped Crushed Peanuts

Preparation

1. Mix the tamarind water with the sugar, salt, and water put it on a meduim heat until the salt and sugar are dissolved.
2. Add the spring onion and peanut in and leave it to cool. It should be served warm.

Serve With

• Lettuce
• Fried Garlic
• Chilli
• Coriander
• Mint

A sweet caramel tasting pork used as a side dish to rice, or where a sweetness is needed to counter a spicy chilli dish.

Ingredients

• 100 gms Fatty Pork (Thick Middle Bacon Cuts are Best)
• 2 Tablespoons Sugar
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 100 ml Water
• 2 Tablespoons Dark Soy Sauce

Preparation

1. Put the salt, sugar, dark soy sauce, and water in a pan.
2. Bring to the boil.
3. Chop the pork into small strips and add to the sweet sauce.
4. Cook until the sauce thickens and caramelises and the pork is cooked.

Serve as a side dish with rice.

Thai Rose Apples are a little sharp, a little sweet and have the texture of crisp celery. You won’t see them very often in the west, they’re not so popular, but they’re refreshing.

Above is the one you’ll see in market stalls about the size of an apple, below is a smaller variety.

Called the ‘King of Fruit’, durian are large (40cm long) hard spiky fruit with a pulply flesh inside. They are supposed to have a stink and you’ll sometimes see ‘No Durian’ signs in the hotels, but that’s something of an exaggeration. The smell is very mild when compared to old fish sauce for example and is reminiscent of, well flatulence.
You split the outer case with a large cleaver, break it open and inside in pockets you’ll find a soft pulpy flesh wrapped around large stones (shown below), this is the part you eat. The flavour is complex with some sweet and some bitter notes.

The native cuisine of Thailand, a country in South East Asia which is unique in that it has never been colonized, has recently become a world cuisine phenomenon in the West with restaurants and cookbooks cropping up seemingly everywhere in the last twenty years. The characteristically lush produce and enticing use of fragrant herbs and spices has produced a flavorful cuisine that is ultimately more palatable to many Western tongues than the potent spice blends of Indian food, another popular Asian world cuisine.

Food plays an important role in Thai culture, and is involved in everything from religion to agriculture. Largely a Buddhist nation, Thailand in unique in that the religion has not established a predominantly vegetarian national cuisine, though the vegetarian schools of cookery are quite skillful at creating meatless dishes so satisfying even Westerners generally would not notice an absence of meat. Small offerings are made daily to a household’s family spirit in Thailand, and food is given in the form of alms to Buddhist monks. Food and religion also manifest themselves in the interesting tradition of funeral food (food served to mourners and/or associated with funeral ceremonies). In Thailand the tradition presents itself in the form of small cookbooks authored by individuals before their deaths; sometimes ornately designed, the cooks are distributed to mourners at the funeral, who can then remember the deceased by their taste in foods or by their favorite recipes and food related anecdotes.

Grains

As in most Asian cuisine, rice is the staple starch in the Thai diet and the main agricultural crop. Long-grain jasmine rice is the most common variety as it is indigenous to the region. Jasmine rice is known for its fragrant aroma and has a nutty flavor which is preferable to that of the rather bland processed white rice available in the West. Sticky rice also appears frequently, particularly in the North. Sticky rice, or glutinous rice, is a short-grained Asian variety named for its slightly tacky consistency when cooked and not for a gluey texture, sticky rice actually is gluten-free, so it does not cook up as paste-like as some other varieties which can be classified as “sticky”. Noodles (rice noodles, glass noodles) are also used, but as part of main dishes rather than accompaniments. Both jasmine and sticky rice are served as side dishes along with main meals of meat or sauce, or as the base for curries and stir-frys.

Other Staples

The climate and geographic layouts in Thailand assist in the diversity of regional cuisines : some areas are very dry, some lie on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, others in the more mountainous terrain in the West, etc. Along with rice, the main agricultural crops are maize (corn), cassava, sugar, and pineapple. These crops are also staples of the local diet. Papaya, durian, banana, and mango also appear frequently. Meat, poultry, seafood, and tofu are the most common sources of protein, as are nuts like cashews and peanut (peanut sauce is a recognizable Thai item).

Thai Spices

Much like Indian food, Thai cuisine is defined by its spices, though Thai spicing generally is milder and more focused. The food is based around the concept of perfect balance between the five flavors (hot, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter). The dish mamuang khao niew, or green mango dipped in salt, sugar, and dried chilli, is an excellent example of this flavor representation. Spicing can vary depending on the region (southern food tends to be spiciest, while other regions utilize more lime or lemongrass than heat), but the basics remain fairly constant. Nam pla, or fish paste, contributes much of the salty flavors in food, as does shrimp paste. Sweet tends to come from palm sugar and fruits like pineapple, with sour qualities from kaffir lime/citrus juices or tart fruits. The heat characteristic of Southern and hot curries usually is delivered in the form of chillies. Other frequent flavors come from lemongrass, ginger and/or galangal (a root relative of ginger which is similar in flavor), fresh basil, garlic, tamarind, and coriander. Coconut milk is also a staple and the base liquid of Thai curry dishes.

Thai curries, or gaeng, can be equally as potent as Indian masala/curry dishes but tend to have more delicate flavors. Green curry (gaeng khieo wan, which is the spiciest) and Red curry (gaeng ped) dishes have the same spice blends (chillies, garlic, lemongrass, coriander seed, shrimp paste, galangal, cumin, coriander root, white pepper corns, kaffir lime) but green uses dried green chillies instead of fresh red. Mussaaman or Muslim curry is generally milder and has a thicker sauce than other gaeng dishes. All curries are served with rice.

Other Thai Dishes

Yam dishes refer most often to salads, which tend to be based on combinations of fruits, greens, noodles, edible flowers, and small portions of meat or fish. Larb are salads prepared from chopped or ground meats. Soups, or gaeng chud, are also staples of the diet; one basic variety made with rice and meat or seafood is common breakfast item. Tom yam kung, a hot and sour lemongrass soup with shrimp/prawns, and tom khaa gai, a coconut milk and chicken soup flavored with galangal, are the best known. Noodle dishes like pad thai (rice noodles with chicken, fried tofu, lime, peanuts, shrimp, egg, bean sprouts, onion, garlic, and chillies) and meek rob are also essential and signatures of the cuisine. Food is eaten with a fork and a spoon; knives are unneeded, as Thai cuisine, like most Asian cookery, prefers meat and other items cut small before serving.

Breakfast is often rice soup, rice, or noodles. Field workers take sticky rice as a lunch meal, while city dwellers utilize the vast array of mainstream restaurants and characteristic Thai street food (chicken or beef satay, grilled meat on a skewer) for an afternoon meal. Dinner is more formal, with families sharing cold salads, curries, soup, and vegetables dishes together. Dessert is usually fruit, or pairings of fruit like mango over sticky rice.