Fishinnards

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After a long day at work I made some simple and easy Thai food. Tom Kha Gai ต้มข่าไà¸à¹ˆ (chicken boiled with galanga), Kai Jiew ไข่เจียว (Thai omelet) with ศรีราชา (Siracha) sauce, fresh vegetables and brown jasmine rice mixed with Thai red rice. I got two very fresh chicken leg and thigh pieces from Mom's organic market (I love it when the packing date is the day you are buying it, meat freshness makes a huge difference). I cut them into chucks through the bone and simmered them in water with a little salt for 45 minutes. Added many slices of young galanga, chunks of one stalk of lemongrass, some torn fresh kaffir lime leaves and some crushed Thai chillies (prik ee nu, the small hot ones), simmered a little longer and added some coconut milk, lime juice and fish sauce and cilantro. Easy! Pranqster went nicely with the food.

The Thai word for vegetarian is เจ, pronounced "jay", as in the letter J.

Here's some more info from earlier this month in the post, as well as the menu:

"Owners To Offer The True Flavors Of Thailand At Soi 38" by Tim Carman on washingtonpost.com

à¹à¸à¸‡à¹€à¸œà¹‡à¸”เนื้อà¸à¸±à¸šà¸Ÿà¸±à¸à¹€à¸‚ียว (red curry with beef and zucchini) à¹à¸à¸‡à¸ˆà¸·à¸”ผัà¸à¸à¸²à¸”ดองà¸à¸±à¸šà¹€à¸«à¹‡à¸” (mild soup with pickled mustard greens and mushrooms) ไข่เจียว (Thai omelet w/ Shark Siracha sauce) ส้มตำไทย (green papaya salad "tum Thai"), vegetables (sorrel from the yard, cucumber, yellow carrot, orange carrot, cabbage, daikon radish) and rice (brown jasmine and Thai red rice mix).

I would bet $10,000 at 10-to-1 odds that the Pad Gra Prow Eggplant I had for dinner tonight was loaded with MSG.

I would bet your Pad Gra Prow Eggplant was completely devoid of Gra Prow.

Managed to re-stock the larder with coriander and white poppy seed and fresh curry leaves and basmati rice, but ended up riffing on the recipes, so a not-quite-traditional Indian meal:

paneer in sambal masala and coconut (the recipe was for ivy gourd, I think, but I made paneer with a mix of cow and goat milk; I've never seen a recipe for paneer that uses goat milk, but it sure tastes good)

broccolini with cumin, ginger, sambal masala, coconut (the recipe was for broccoli, which isn't traditional to begin with, but I had broccolini on hand; decided to add more cumin and ginger than called for along with a handful of tiny hot chillies, just to change the flavor profile a little from the paneer dish)

steamed basmati rice

Feeling comfortable enough with Indian techniques and ingredients that I can improvise and end up with something that doesn't taste like generic "curry".

Sambar Masala? (Sambal is Indonesian)

Any opinions on Cheesetique's eat-in options?  I just looked at the menu, and it was more diverse than I was expecting.

Cheestique has good food and a nice, but small, beer selection. It's one of my favorite ethnic restaurants.

Eric, where can I find one in NoVa specifically? Any ideas? 

Duangrat's Grocery 5888 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia 22041. Also the grocery in Eden Center has them. Bangkok 54 Grocery on Columbia Pike is still closed from the fire, but should re-open sometime in April. They will have them as well.

I find myself switching back and forth between Thai and Sri Lankan food for convenience and economy. I have a large collection of spices for South Asian cooking and Sri Lankan food uses lemongrass and coconut milk as does (central) Thai. Since the lemongrass and coconut milk are perishable (UHT coconut milk comes in big cartons) it's easy to use them up making Sri Lankan food. Any vegetables I have for Thai food can easily be made in a Sri Lankan dish as well.

Sunday and Monday we had Thai food. Sunday I made red curry with pumpkin and eggplant (à¹à¸à¸‡à¹€à¸œà¹‡à¸”), fish cakes (ทอดมันปลา) with cucumber "pickle"(อาจาด), cucumber salad (ตำà¹à¸•à¸‡), raw vegetables and rice (brown jasmine rice and Thai red rice mixture). Monday, we had more red curry, an omelet (ไข่เจียว) with Sriracha, ground chicken salad (ลาบไà¸à¹ˆ) and more vegetables and rice.

Yesterday I made more Sri Lankan roasted curry powder (Mom's organic market had fresh curry leaves!)

Lamb curry (Elu Mas), cabbage and carrots (Karat Gova Curry), radish and tomato sambal (Raabu Thakkali Sambola) and rice.

Fishinnards uses one all the time for his Thai recipes. Perhaps he will chime in here with good reasons to get one.

I highly recommend a granite mortar and pestle. It's cheaper than marble and indestructible. I do own many electric appliances (Mixie, mini-chop, Cuisinart etc.) and use them frequently, but nothing can compete with the mortar and pestle for breaking down fibrous ingredients. It's also great for small amounts, plus it doesn't care if your ingredients are wet or dry. With the marble one you can do the roll grind, but it's probably not as good at bashing things to a pulp. Granite is great for smashing. The only drawback is the loud steady banging noise (along with the "how much longer are you going to be doing that?"). The weight of the pestle does most most of the work, so you don't need to be strong. Unless you cook a lot of South and Southeast Asian food, you could probably live without one, but I also use it for Mexican, Italian, and Korean cooking. You can find these at Thai and Vietnamese groceries around here and save on S & H, but here's some mail order links:

Temple of Thai

Import Food

The barmaid and former manager said it was turning into a Sushi-Asian Fusion place. They weren't excited about it. A few of the staff are staying on. Stay tuned...

S

Don't we already have one of those. Maybe this one will allow children.

Fishinnards - thank you for these great posts! I make a lot of asian noodle dishes but have generally focused more on Indonesian, since that is what I was first taught. Question about your homemade chinese chicken stock - what do you add to the stock to get the chinese flavors? I am always looking for something that veers away from the carrot/onion/celery additions.

I learned to make Chinese chicken stock from Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks. The idea is to capture the meaty umami taste and the seasoning are just there to neutralize the gamey flavors. The two main seasonings are fresh ginger and Chinese rice wine (you could use sherry). You only use a small amount ginger and rice wine, not enough that you would notice them, just enough to change the smell a little (does that make sense?). With a stock like this you have more versatility and don't need to use in just Chinese food. If you were to use it for European food you could add the appropriate seasonings (onions, celery, carrots, bouquet garni etc.) and simmer for little while. I find this way I'm not locked into using it in only one kind of cuisine. To make it more Thai I sometimes add a smashed clove of garlic, a couple of coriander roots, and some white peppercorns.

I use chicken bones and feet if I can get them. Also, some pork bones are always a good idea. Sometimes I blanch the bones from a cold water start. I just bring them to a boil till the scum starts to rise and them drain and rinse the bones and then make stock. I use a pressure cooker as well.

Snow Day! Between bouts of snow shoveling I decided to make Lad Na (Rad Na) à¸à¹‹à¸§à¸¢à¹€à¸•à¸µà¹‹à¸¢à¸§à¸£à¸²à¸”หน้า. This is the Thai version of a Chinese dish and has many ingredients and techniques not common to other Thai dishes. There are many ways to cook Rad Na. I hadn't made it in a while but watched this Thai TV show on Rad Na and got a bit of inspiration. A good recipe (with a video in English!) can be found at Hot Thai Kitchen. I took many photos as I cooked and now I will share them with you!

Today we used chicken ไà¸à¹ˆ

Skinned, de-boned and sliced

Chicken is marinaded in a bit of dark sesame oil, Chinese rice wine, white pepper, soy sauce, and tapioca starch (you could use corn starch).

The marinade will give the meat a slippery coating resulting in nice tender bite.

Lots of garlic

well chopped

Fried in peanut oil. When using a smaller amount of oil I like to add the garlic to cold oil and gradually heat it. It gives more control over the browning.

We are going for crispy fried garlic

We want it to brown

And then drain and save that garlic oil

Chinese broccoli (pak ka na ผัà¸à¸„ะน้า) stems sliced and leaves roughly chopped

We have some local fresh rice noodles

Sliced and separated (see Pad See Ew above)

Homemade Chinese chicken stock

We will fry the noodles in garlic oil with some dark soy sauce for color.

We want the noodles to clump and char a little

Fried noodles and set aside with the remaining ingredients at the ready, chicken stock, tapioca starch slurry, marinaded chicken slices, white pepper, Chinese broccoli, soy sauce, golden mountain sauce, palm sugar (regular sugar would be fine in this dish), and fried garlic

And Tao Jiew เต้าเจี้ยว, fermented soy bean paste, Chinese miso or doen jang

Boil the stock and add fermented soy bean paste, soy sauce, golden mountain sauce, a bit of palm sugar, and white pepper

Add the chicken

Boil till the chicken is tender

Add the greens and most of the fried garlic

Taste and adjust and then thicken with the tapioca starch slurry

pour over the fried noodles

sprinkle the remaining fried garlic on top

Serve with chillies in vinegar (a must!) and dried chilli flakes

Yum อร่อยมาà¸

The name of the company is "double golden fish". They make a number of different products.

you could always make your own, Don.

this version uses garlic CLOVES and dark brown sugar, but if you don't like sweetness, you can reduce the amount or ditch it altogether.

or this version with even more sugar! If you ditch the sugar your not really making Sriracha sauce anymore. It's just hot sauce, but it would be good.

Every brand that is not from Thailand is technically a "knockoff" brand. Shark (strong) is the best of the brands easily available around here. I go through a large bottle every two months or so, mostly for eggs. Rooster is unbalanced and made with garlic powder instead of fresh garlic and contains preservatives. I probably posted this before: http://foodists.ca/2013/03/15/the-truth-about-sriracha.html  Also, AFAIK they don't use Siracha sauce with Pho in Vietnam.

Goat's milk, palm sugar, sugar, vanilla bean, cinnamon stick for Cajeta

The pho is definitely more Americanized in that while there are various protein options, there is only 2 beef options (spicy and not and both are thin sliced flank? steak) - that being said it is still very good.

I forgot to mention you can only get the sliced flank steak. That's another drawback for me, as I like to get "bible" tripe, soft tendon, bouncy rubbery meatballs and whatever other exciting textures are offered when I get phở . But they do have good broth.

This is for nam Viet. This place is alright, but they dont seem to have any idea what Nyuk Mam is (the clear kind not the sweet kind) is when I ask for it,

I'm assuming you mean nước mắm, which is fish sauce. I haven't eaten here in awhile (Arlington location), but when I used to go often there was always an oil/vinegar type dispenser full of nước mắm floating around the restaurant. There is no "sweet kind", unless your referring to nước chấm which is a condiment made with fish sauce, sugar, lime juice or vinegar, and sometimes garlic and chillies. Also, in the past, some of the servers were not Vietnamese so they may not have understood what you were asking.

This restaurant seems to have always catered to a non-Vietnamese clientele. For instance, when they serve phở, they don't serve basil on the side, but chop it up and put it in the soup. On the up side, they include chopped sawtooth herb (culantro) as well as basil in their phở, which most places don't serve (and the broth is good). Many dishes that would normally be served with fresh herbs and some raw vegetables are usually not, except for lettuce and watercress (and bean sprouts for phở) . Like Thai restaurants not serving raw vegetables with dishes, they probably learned long ago that Americans will leave all that stuff on plate and they would end up throwing most of it away.

(maybe there is a Three Stooges Brand Fish Sauce, Nyuk Mam)

I can't actually imagine wanting to peel away from oneself. You'd have a tiny fraction of the control you have peeling towards yourself.

Thai women I cooked with often joked about how silly it was that westerners peeled towards themselves. It was considered foolish and dangerous to pull a knife towards ones body. They were very adept at peeling with sharp knives. It takes some practice, but if you learn the peel away method you can do just as well. I use a peeler and go either direction depending on what I'm doing. When using a knife, though, I always cut away. They kind of ingrained that into me.

Tod mun has always been among my favorite dishes at Thai restaurants. I've never had any idea how to make it at home. I've just been googling, trying to learn what "pla krai" is, but I haven't been able to figure it out. What is it? And do you have or can you point me to a full-blown recipe for this wonderful dish?

Pla Krai (or Pla Grai) ปลาà¸à¸£à¸²à¸¢, is clown knifefish or featherback, Chitala ornata. Thai markets sell it frozen and already ground to a paste. As to the method, Chef Ti can show you how to do it, it's in Thai though. Also, Shesimmers has a good recipe using the easier to find fish paste. I've been working on this for years. The method I learned years ago involves picking the paste up with your hands and repeatedly slapping it into a large bowl. I've tried the stand mixer method, but the traditional way seems to work best.

ทอดมันปลา [tod mun pla] fish cakes (pla krai fish, dried red chillies, lemongrass, kaffir lime peel, galanga, coriander root, shallots, garlic, green beans, kaffir lime leaves, egg, fish sauce, salt, peanut oil) อาจาด [achat] cucumber pickle (vinegar, sugar, coriander root, shallots, green chilli, roasted peanuts, coriander greens)  ยำไà¸à¹ˆà¸¢à¹ˆà¸²à¸‡ [yum gai yang] grilled chicken salad (onion, tomatoes, roasted chili powder, vinegar, lime juice, palm sugar, roasted peanuts, fish sauce, salt)

Yesterday I was going to roast a chicken, but decided it was nice enough out to grill it. Marinade of white pepper, garlic, cilantro roots/stems, palm sugar and soy sauce grilled over coals with hickory chips ไà¸à¹ˆà¸¢à¹ˆà¸²à¸‡

Eaten with chicken sauce น้ำจิ้มไà¸à¹ˆ, green papaya salad ส้มตำ, vegetables and rice.

Now it's cold, snowing and going down to 8 degrees F tonight. I don't think I'll see my grill again for awhile.

Have you got a US source for this brand, which I don't think I ever heard of before?

I think I got it at Dehli Bazaar on Van Dorn street in Alexandria. It may have been on sale. It was good, but I don't think it's worth a special trip to find this brand. Sanjeev Kapoor is a super famous Indian celebrity chef and has monetized his fame with many products.