Fried Big Noodle with Pork

As I've mentioned before, I took a Thai cooking class while on vacation last year in Chiang Mai. As part of the class, we made several different dishes, but we were also provided with a booklet to take home with us including some additional recipes. A few weeks ago, I elected to make two of these dishes for a Sunday dinner party. The chicken satay dish was simply amazing. You can get the recipe here. The other dish was similar to a drunken noodle dish, dubbed "Fried Big Noodle with Sweet Soy Sauce" in the book. I managed to find fresh, big noodles at H-Mart. Score.  And this was quite tasty.

The recipe in the book is for two servings, but you can easily multiple for more people, which is what I did. Here's my best multiplication skills to make this for four people.

Fried Big Noodle with Pork (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 12 oz. fresh big noodle
• 8 oz. pork, thinly sliced
• 4 TB oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 6 oz. kale, roughly chopped about 2-inches long
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp. soy sauce
• 2 TB oyster sauce

Meat marinade:

• 2 TB fish sauce
• 2 TB soy sauce
• 2 TB oyster sauce
• 4 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp pepper

Directions:

Combine marinade ingredients and set sliced pork into dish with marinade. Chill for 30 minutes.

Cook noodles according to package instructions. Once just cooked, drain and set aside.

Heat 2 TB oil in wok on medium to low heat until oil is hot. Add garlic, stir for 2 minutes, then add pork. Cook until pork is no longer pink, 3-4 minutes, stirring on occasion. Add kale and stir for a minute until they are soft and start to wilt. Add noodle, soy sauce and oyster sauce. Stir to combine.

Move all of the mixture to one side of the wok, add 1 TB oil and beaten eggs, frying for 30 seconds. then combine with rest of noodle mixture.

Stir well and combine and serve.

Kitchen Nightmare: Homemade Red Curry Paste

I know you all find this hard to believe, but I occasionally screw things up in the kitchen. And I'm not afraid to blog about it. Usually there is a very good reason for my failure. Perhaps because I was missing a few ingredients that were much more critical to the success of the dish than I realized. Or more than likely, I was attempting to bake, where you can't just guesstimate measurements.

In the case of the red curry...I wish I knew what happened. I obtained this red curry paste recipe during my cooking class in Thailand. Sure, the translation may be a bit off. My personal favorite instruction in the notes section: "Put less small chili and add more big chili in case of eating chili problem."

Let's just put it this way. What I made following this recipe was a BIG chili problem.

What you see on the right here is what was my finished product after following this recipe. I even ventured out to H-Mart in Virginia to get some of these awesome ingredients (though I still had the small dried red chilis that I brought back with me from Thailand...even 10 months later those babies are POTENT).


It should not look like this at all, and I know this because I've bought red curry paste before when making various Thai dishes. Before I got ambitious. But what it all boils down to is that I learned that sometimes, it is just easier and less painful (don't handle chilis and touch anywhere on your face. Ever.)

So perhaps you're feeling ambitious and want to try this out. If you do, and you get it to come out the right consistency, please let me know how you did it!

Ingredients:

Dried Spices

• 1 tsp coriander seeds, roasted until fragrant
• 2 cardamom pods, roasted until fragrant
• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• pinch of salt
• 3-5 dry big red chilies (seeds removed and soaked in water for at least 10 minutes)
• 1-8 small dried chilies for extra spicy

Fresh

• 1 tsp galangal, skin removed, chopped
• 1 TB lemongrass, chopped
• 1 piece kaffir lime peel, chopped
• 1 tsp coriander root, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 shallots, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 tsp shrimp paste.

Please note: Can use coriander stem, instead of root. Can use fresh ginger root, instead of galangal or Thai ginger.

Directions:

Put the small chilies, coriander seeds, cardamom pods, black peppercorns into a stone mortar and pound them into a powder. You can use a food processer instead, per the instructions.

I never got a powder. that was problem #1.

Then add the rest of the ingredients and pound for 15 minutes until paste is smooth.

You've seen the photos. There ain't nothin' smooth about it.

Anyone up to the challenge?

Urban Families and Dinner Parties

We pardon the interruption from my regularly scheduled blog entry to bring you this special bulletin.

While this may not be much of a "news flash," and it's something that I could have written about months ago, this past week presented itself with the perfect opportunity for me to talk about some very special people: my urban family.

While I may not be blessed with a family of my own in DC resulting from marriage or kids, I am very blessed to have made some amazing friends over the past 9 years that I consider to be my urban family. Nearly all of us come from somewhere else, some are happily paired up with the loves of their lives, some are begrudgingly single, and some are just along for the ride. And the great thing about this urban family is that it has no limits. It can grow to great lengths and evolve over time to something just as precious. It can be dysfunctional (in a fun way) and full of great adventures and I now know that in recent years, this urban family will be here for me when I need them most. Sometimes the need is obvious, other times it's simply in the form of  a good meal and conversation, to distract from a stressful week. In whatever form this family arrives, it's always right on time (except for Aniello, he's always late...but he makes up for it in charm and large amounts of wine).

And this brings me to the point of this post-I'm fortunate to have a regular seat at the dinner table with some friends and neighbors. On occasion, we venture out of the neighborhood to try someplace new. Several weeks ago the idea came about to finally try Thai X-ing, a family-style Thai dining experience that I'd been told would be the closest thing I'd get to authentic Thai food here in DC. They were mostly right in that department, but regardless of authenticity, I can't debate the authenticity of this amazing group of urban family dinner patrons this week.

We joked that the group of us really did represent the microcosm of DC professionals in their 30s. We were four gay men deep (that's what he said?), five single women, and one very lucky straight guy. As is dinner party tradition, we shared stories around a particular theme, this one was travel, and best of all, we shared a ton of food. From pumpkin curry to marinated chicken legs and entire fish, we gorged on these Thai delights in a restaurant that very much resembled a family dining room.

They say that food is love, and I'm all for showing the people I care about how I feel through food. I hope to continue to share my life and my meals with friends throughout this year. We truly are a "Modern Family." And I wouldn't trade mine for the world.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai is one dish that I've never gravitated toward when ordering Thai food. It can tend to be overly oily depending on where you get it, and I'm not the biggest fan of tofu. But you can easily substitute a meat into the recipe should you desire.  I never ordered it while in Thailand, but it was an option to cook during my class. This version was not oily and had a lot of great flavor. So for all you vegetarians out there, enjoy!

Pad Thai (serves 2)

Ingredients

• 7 oz. fresh noodles (or dried noodles, soaked in water for about 10-15 minutes)
• 2 TB cooking oil
• 1.5 oz tofu, sliced into small pieces
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 oz chives, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 3.5 oz bean sprouts
• 2 TB ground roasted peanuts
• 1 small shallot, chopped
• 1 TB fish sauce
• 1 TB soy sauce
• 2 TB oyster sauce
• 2 TB tamarind paste (or lime juice)
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp chili powder

Directions

Heat cooking oil in wok over low heat. Add tofu and fry until turned golden brown.

Add shallow and the eggs and scramble well until egg cooked.  Then add rice noodles and water, stirring well until noodles get softened.

Add fish sauce, soy sauce, oyster sauce, tamarind paste, sugar and chili powder, mix well until the noodles turn brown.

Add chives, bean sprouts and roasted peanuts. Stir fry quickly (5-10 seconds) ensuring everything is well combined. Can keep on high heat for half a minute to dry all the water and sauce.

Turn off the heat and serve with extra sugar, peanut, chili powder and piece of lime.

Chicken Satay

For the first of my blog arch on Thai cooking, I'll be sharing the recipe I learned during my Thai cooking class. Before I get to the recipe, let me tell you about this class.

The class was held in a home which had a separate demonstration kitchen area as well as a covered patio to cook. The two instructors were fantastic and in addition to teaching us how to make several different dishes, they also educated us on the flavors of Thailand. We got to pick what we wanted to make out of several choice options, but walked away with a recipe book of all the options!

There were six people in the class and we all represented different countries. The first couple from the UK, included a man from Glasgow who was quite the personality and his sweet wife. They lived outside of London.  The next couple was from Poland, and the wife/girlfriend (I'm not quire sure what the nature of their relationship was) had won some local cooking competitions in her native Poland. Rounding out the group was me and a man from Australia.

The instructors would joke throughout the class as to who would put more chili peppers in their food. The man from Glasgow usually won out, and me and the Aussie were a close second. What can I say, I like my food hot!

So first up is the chicken satay. This sauce is boss. :)

Chicken Satay (serves 2-4 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

• 4-6 pieces of chicken tender fillets (approximately 3/4 pound)
• Bamboo skewers

Marinade

• 2 tsp curry powder
• 2 tsp sweet condensed milk
• 1/2 cup coconut cream (important to note that this is not coconut milk, but cream. Coconut milk in the U.S. is mixed with water, so this is thicker, straight from the coconut. Hope to find this in an Asian supermarket)
• 2 TB cooking oil
• pinch of pepper
• pinch of salt

Peanut sauce

• 1 TB cooking oil
• 1/2- 1 TB red curry paste (depends on how spicy you want to make it)
• 1/2 cup ground peanuts
• 2 tsp palm sugar (regular sugar will work)
• 1/2 TB fish sauce
• 1/2 cup coconut cream
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 TB tamarind paste or lime juice

Directions

Mix all the marinade ingredients together with the chicken. Allow the chicken to marinade 30 minutes.

While the chicken is marinading, make the peanut sauce. To do this, put the oil in a saucepan with curry paste and cook over low heat and fry until fragrant. Then add coconut cream and ground peanuts and continue stirring for few seconds. Add coconut milk, fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind paste and stir well for 3 minutes until the sauce is thick.

Once the chicken is done marinading, skewer each slice of chicken onto a bamboo skewer (soak skewer in water to prevent sticking). Grill the skewered chicken and brush with remaining marinade until done and still moist. Probably 3-4 minutes a side.

Serve chicken with sauce as an awesome appetizer.

Coconut Curry Chicken Soup

I have been blessed (and cursed) to live a block away from a Thai food restaurant. I have them plugged into my phone and I've been known to call on my way home from a late night at the office so that the order is ready to pick up by the time I reach my condo. I have visions of me being like Cynthia Nixon's character on Sex in the City who orders Asian food and is on a first name basis with the person answering the phone.

Thai food is a cuisine I really enjoy and haven't really explored cooking until recently. Fortunately I had all the spices readily available in my pantry for this recipe and since it involved a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, this was a pretty simple dish to make. And my condo smelled like I was moonlighting for the Thai restaurant for a good day or two afterward. This makes a lot of soup but unlike a lot of recipes, not one that is easily cut in half. I opted to freeze a bunch of it, something I'm hoping was a good idea.

Coconut Curry Chicken Soup (serves 7)

Ingredients

• 4 cups water
• 3 cups fresh spinach leaves 
• 1/2 pound snow peas, trimmed and cut in half crosswise
• 1 (5 3/4-ounce) package pad thai noodles (wide rice stick noodles)
• 1 TB canola oil 
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
• 2 tsp red curry paste
• 1 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth 
• 1 (13.5-ounce) can light coconut milk
• 2 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (about 1 pound) 
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 2 TB sugar
• 2 TB fish sauce
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro 
• 4 small hot red chiles, seeded and chopped, or 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions

Bring 4 cups water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add spinach and peas to pan; cook for 30 seconds. Remove vegetables from pan with a slotted spoon; place in a large bowl. Add noodles to pan; cook 3 minutes. Drain; add noodles to spinach mixture in bowl.

Heat canola oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add shallots and the next 5 ingredients (through garlic) to pan; sauté 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add chicken broth to pan, and bring to a boil. Add coconut milk to pan; reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Add chicken, onions, sugar, and fish sauce to pan; cook for 2 minutes. Pour chicken mixture over noodle mixture in bowl. Stir in cilantro and chiles.

My only improvement to this would be a little more spice, perhaps more red pepper flake towards the end. Otherwise, extremely flavorful and pretty healthy to boot!