thai food

pastes are ok, the best ones I've found are the ones that are in big tubs from Chinatown for cheap yet are really expensive in sainsburys and selfridges, about a quid or two if you find the right shop, they've got a picture of a lovely old lady on them.

But.... it's a piece of piss to make your own, you just have to track down the ingredients.

and yes, it's fantastic.

Thai fragrant rice is quite easy once you have the knack (washing it for ten minutes before cooking it helps)

when making yr own getting galangal is pretty essential too, it's got that taste that ginger just doesn't get. It's good that a new asian supermarket just opened in Walthanmstow, and they have really good stuff like the shrimp and chilli paste that is almost hallucinogenic that I got the other day.
Can you make a good thai curry without using fish sauce
you can but it's missing a certain something, maybe use soy, or veggie oyster sace instead.

sticky rice = best thing ever when done with cocnut milk and served with very very fresh mango.

christ yes, had something v similar as dessert at nahm (it was with something like a lychee but with spikes?) and it was fantastic.

(haha cocnut milk)

i will have to track down some galangal, i just used ginger last night.

There is a really good thai mini market between shepherds bush and hammersmith.

Fish sauce has a certain something that soy sauce doesn't (fermented fish bits).

And Renu Nakorn in Norwalk still rules.

does anyone have a recipe for pad thai? (vegetarian) - it can't be too difficult.

The hot tip for all -- northern Thai cuisine. That's the speciality of Renu Nakorn and now I'll be pissed if I can't choose from those options at any other Thai place.

Weirdly, the best Italian meal I've ever eaten was fresh tagliatelle with crab sauce in an Italian restaurant on Ko Thao.

Phil if we're talking Thai hangovers, you've got to include Sang Thom and Sang Thip.

Sadly, I'm not a big thai food guy.. though when a place is REALLY good, I like it. Thankfully, one of those places is Tawon Thai in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.. another great, cheap, quick place is Mae Pham in the Pioneer Square area..

I heard about Mekong whisky, that scared me (and was another one with the formaldehyde rumour)

I are not.

And the "nuts" must surely be peanuts, right?

the dried shrimp are rehydrated and fried with the base ingredients, but I have seen it done without them being rehydrated. I never saw it with proper meat in it other than a bit of minced chicken.

my suggestion to anyone seriously wanting to learn more about Thai food and/or cook it is to check out David Thompson's exhaustive and really interesting book called, simply, Thai Food. some people have complained that there's not a nam pla (fish sauce) recipe in it, but with everything else it contains, that's really a small complaint. about the first 300 pages are all a history of Thai cooking which is really fascinating to read (if you're into that sort of thing). it also differentiates between the different styles of cooking which are representative of the different regions of Thailand. seriously, i cannot recommend this book enough. also, apparently the UK version has a cooler cover than the US one i linked above---pink Thai silk. check it out here.

Vatcharin Bhumitchitr's books are worth investigating as well. i'm particularly enamoured of the one he wrote about street vendors---particularly as it had a recipe that i grew up with my mom making, and i'd never seen it written down before. salad kaek is lovely, and i know it can't be found in restaurants around here! :) perhaps at the ones Vatch runs.

if you're having difficulty finding ingredients and are in the US, i'd also suggest trying someplace like Import Food.com or Temple of Thai.com. i've ordered from ImportFood before and had absolutely no problems doing so---although i haven't ordered their fresh produce, everything else has been top notch from them and i can't recommend them highly enough. their customer service people are also very friendly and helpful.

thai curries are great, but there's more to it than just curry, dammit! :)

Not sure about that, but I have used the analogy:

pad thai : Thai food :: bi bim bop : Korean food

pad thai, to my understanding, is more of a snack. of the sort one would purchase from street vendors. not unlike big soft pretzels or churros or something similar are here.

granted, it works okay as a meal. i'm all about adaptability. hell, popcorn (as someone mentioned on another thread) is also an acceptable meal at times. but it's hardly representative of the entire nation's food as a whole. :)

Haha! That's brilliant, Jaymc.

Is it possible that you don't have a good Thai place near you? I used to think Chinese food sucked until I went to a real Chinese place with real Chinese-Szechuan food (i.e. not deep fried meat covered in generic sweet sauce sitting under a heat lamp, like 99.99999% of Chinese restaurants in the US). It was fucking amazing and it's currently my favorite restaurant of all time.

I have eaten Thai across the globe including in Thailand with some resident gourmets/foodies. It's not a matter of access to Thai restaurants but just that my taste for it is pretty low.

I do like that you point out your preference to cook the spices down because I've found that a majority of Thai chefs would rather leave the spices in a raw or partially developed state which is probably the biggest turnoff. Either that or the abundance of sugar in everything. Bold, overt sweet flavors are probably my #1 biggest culinary turn-off (other than for dessert obviously and even then it remains a factor).

I think bold sweet flavors are my favorite thing =(

I am kinda full of shit...

I mean how many times have I asked you about HK milk tea? Or disclosed home many jars of nutella I consume on a monthly basis. :E

lol no worries. it's just that bold, sweet flavors are pretty present in a lot of chinese cooking

Thai food has a sweet/salty thing going on, which is why it's so delectable to me.

i dont think thai food in thailand is that sweet? i remember them liking sour things more

i guess i mean compared to anglicised thai food

I was in the southern part of thailand (just north of phuket, very local & not touristy) and I remember sugar being in EVERYTHING. there were these bottles of soy sauce on the table and they'd be almost as sweet as honey. my friend who was teaching english there confirmed that they put sugar in nearly everything. might have just been a regional thing tho

hmmmmmm yeah ive only been to bangkok

(and really really loved the food there)

don't know how authentic this is but the "lamb mince with broccoli" dish on this page is like one of my favourite simple dinners...so amazing. eating it right now :)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/19/recipe-foodanddrink

I remember sugar being a condiment at most restaurants and private homes we dined at (especially those in Bangkok JS), similar to salt and pepper. Actually instead of salt they had ajinomoto...

yeah they did that a lot in vietnam as well (the msg)

oh weird, i always think of thai food as having only minimal amounts of sugar and being more about the chillies and lime leaves and galanga and stuff. i've never been to thailand, all i know is from cooking at home and nearby restaurants (fwiw tho my neighborhood is home to a pretty mondo hmong population)

i looked up a thing:

Today many view Frogtown as a new enclave for Vietnamese and now Hmong immigrants, who, in Saint Paul, comprise the largest urban contingent in the United States

(also turns out i'm not technically in frogtown, just one neighborhood over, but anyway rah rah thai food etc)

What is the best way to fry curry paste when making a curry? I've tried numerous times to heat the coconut milk until the oils and solids separate and then to fry the paste in that, but it just gets really thick and starts browning/burning. What am I doing wrong?

I've never tried frying it in the coconut milk. I just put a little oil in a skillet, maybe some garlic, a bit of ginger, some onion, then when the onions are soft I stir in some curry paste until it becomes fragrant, then add the coconut milk.

xp are you frying the cream part of the tin of coconut milk? the top, thick parts of the can?

yeah, and I use Chaokoh so it's got a really nice thick cream w/ no emulsifiers.

I usu put it in the fridge overnight.

best thai food porn ever

i've lived there and am pretty sure you can safely label the people of thailand "foodies". they take this shit seriously, as amply demonstrated by the variety of dishes available from street food vendors in the above thread.

thread link

omg made a jungle curry that is destroying my insides as we speak

i'm not a spice wuss but had some sort of jungle curry at Jitlada (place had the biggest disparity between food quality and service ever) in LA that was really tasty but i could barely eat any of it cause of the heat, bummed me out cause i don't live in LA and had been looking forward to a meal there.

yeah, and I use Chaokoh so it's got a really nice thick cream w/ no emulsifiers.

― Yo! MTV La Tengo (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, 29 January 2013 05:27 (4 hours ago) Permalink

hmmm that sucks then, that was my one pro tip that helped me.

I've never tried frying it in the coconut milk. I just put a little oil in a skillet, maybe some garlic, a bit of ginger, some onion, then when the onions are soft I stir in some curry paste until it becomes fragrant, then add the coconut milk.

yeah isn't the paste always before the milk? this makes sense in terms of cooking generally, at least anything else like this you tend to let your aromatic stuff get going before you add the bulk of liquid.

you tend to let your aromatic stuff get going before you add the bulk of liquid.

yeah you do this, you fry it in the fat from the cream, then you tip in the rest of the milk... as per - http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/greencurp.html

ah okay... i must try that way.

wouldnt it be easier just to start frying the paste in oil (maybe coconut oil?) and then put the cream in tablespoon by tablespoon separating each time

Okay so now my general technique is:

Fry 2T red curry paste in some oil for a few min
Add 1 can coconut milk, mix together
Add 1 lb protein (I've only done chicken and beef), cook for a bit
Add veggies, cook until tender
Balance flavors w/ fish sauce, palm sugar, etc (usu 1T of each)

Tonight I'm going to make a red fish curry w/ broc, bell pep, shallot, mushroom. I am thinking of a) frying some kaffir lime leaves w/ the curry paste/simmering them in the coconut milk b) maybe frying the shallot w the paste too c) adding the veggies with or even before the fish time bcz the fish only takes a few minutes to cook.

Is this OK enough re: my proportions, technique, order of stuff? How can I improve my thai curry game?

I'm no Thai expert, just an amateur cook, but it sounds pretty good to me. I agree with shallot in the oil first, and def. the veggies before the fish. Depending on what the veggies are, you may even what to steam/blanche them a bit before adding them to the coconut milk.

Also jarred curry paste is usually not spicy enough for my taste, so I'd also chop up a few chili peppers and fry them with the oil & shallots, but that's just me.

I usually saute the protein and veg in the curry paste before adding the milk, so that they get some more of the flavor. But I've never really explored proper technique so I am probably breaking several curry laws lol

Probably would work fine with most proteins, but I think fish prob. too delicate for that.

mackerel

I got tilapia

I have never bought fresh fish before! Goodness gracious, that shit's expensive!

saute the fish in the curry paste but remove it when done. add it back in when everything else is done.

Btw, here's a recipe that's basically what you're proposing, except without the broccoli (which to include I'd blanche a bit before adding to the coconut milk between steps 2 and 3):

http://www.atasteofthai.com/index.php?page=recipe&id=328

Oh! also! how small do I cut the fish?

I don't think you need to cut it up for this recipe. In the picture it looks like whole fillets.

Well that recipe yeah but I was planning on doing a more traditional soupy curry w/ bite size pieces type jawn

I guess you could cut to any size you like.

an inch or so is good, as a general rule

living in sydney now and i'm eating so much REAL THAI FOOD. it is the best. quality of life improvement = 100%

thai spicy

REAL Thai food

cf thread of pictures of real chinese food

rticles are tl;dr but the worst thing is American hipsters who say "That's not real _________"

― liars - wkiw (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, June 7, 2012 7:09 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm just being stupid, forget it