I might try fried bees, but not the cockroaches.
Have you been to Noodle Garden in Evanston? I was amazed to find out that Lard Nar is a bean based gravy - when I found actual beans in it! They have much the same menu as everyone else (plus some stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere), but their flavors are more complex and multilayered. Their prices are a little higher than, say, Siam Pasta, but they’re totally worth it!
Phad = fried
khee mao (various spellings) = drunken, literally “drunk shit”*
Rodgers01 - it’s probably more correctly spelled tom kha gai (gai = chicken, kai = egg), although the difference between gai and kai is not that great in Thai. The Thai character is sometimes transliterated as a g (like in Gandhi) and sometimes as a k (like in karma), and very similar to western ears.
Big Bad Voodoo Lou - there is a Thai dish made with red curry but no coconut milk, although I’m drawing a blank on the name right now.
*lots of descriptive Thai phrases use khee, or “shit”, as part of the phrase. I like to refer to Mrs Shibb as khee nuas, or stingy “sticky shit”.
Glad to see you in this thread, Shibb0leth. Since you’re here, you must have some of your wife’s/wife’s family’s recipes you can share.
Please…!?
Yes I have! I used to really dig that place. Sadly I do not spend as much time in Evanston as I used to. Been at least 3-4 yrs since I ate there last. I used to love their chive dumplings and tom yum. These days I usually go to the aforementioned Spoon Thai on Western or Thai Pastry on Broadway.
The problem is this - we don’t really have any recipes. We have all/most of the ingredients we need, and then I just kind of make it up as I go along. I could probably cobble together some recipes for most anything, but only by making it and then writing down what I throw in there. And almost all of it is by “feel” or trial and error. It helps that I have a pretty good sense of taste, so often Mrs Shibb will cook, then I get home and she tells me to fix it because it doesn’t taste right. Then I add some fish sauce (I can’t come up with a Thai dish that doesn’t contain some fish sauce, although surely one must exist), or sugar or sweet soy, or tamarind chili paste, or whatever, and there you are.
If you want to make Thai at home you should have at least these things:
Fish sauce (nam pla)
Oyster sauce
Medium sweet soy (nothing like Kikkomans)
Sugar, preferrably palm sugar which is really awful for your health, but regular sugar will suffice
Tamarind chili paste
Oil (peanut is best, vegetable is okay and probably healthier)
Garlic
You can find lots of cool recipes for making fresh curries, but you can get by fairly well with the stuff in plastic “tins”. This stuff will stink up your house to a fare-thee-well if done right, which means, frying it in a little oil to get the flavors going.
Many Thai dishes have Thai basil, sometimes called Thai Holy Basil. Cinnamon basil is very similar and can be subbed in a pinch.
Okay, have to get going but I’ll see if I can throw out some basic stuff over time, if this thread stays afloat. I’ll have to actually measure what I put in instead of playing it by ear or you’ll create some awful stuff.
PS I concur with Trunk on the Baltimore places, although I don’t remember a place in Federal Hill (we lived about five years in Otterbein).
Tom Kar Khoung is very similar to Tom Kar Kai. (I wasn’t sure if you were addressing me or not, so pardon me if you were not. 
)
I’m sure you Chicagoans know and enjoy Penny’s Noodles. Admittedly it’s got a bit of a canned, fast food feel to it but some of their dishes are outstanding. I particularly love their Spicy Basil with Beef. Don’t see it on other menus, I have no idea if it’s a specialty or not. Love that stuff.
And I have absolutely no trouble believing that there are more Thai places than Chinese in the city. If not for Chinatown I’d say it was certain, Thai food is so trendy that everywhere north of about Taylor street is littered with them. My apartment building accumulates Thai menus at a rate about triple that of Chinese. Wonder why the Asian places do that more than other style of food. Even pizza isn’t as focused on takeout.
Wow, that’s a long time. I wonder what recipes you’ve tried. I don’t find it that difficult to get right, but it takes a lot of prep time.
To OP: Have you tried yen ta fo? It’s not really thai, but you can probably get it in most thai restaurants. A little spicy, with lots of weird sea creatures inside.
And the catfish. Try the fried catfish.
You have good tastes! Spoon Thai is generally regarded as one of the best Thai places in Chicago. For homestyle Thai cooking, I also suggest you check out Elephant Thai on Devon, a bit west of the Indian neighborhood.
The place in Fed Hill is new within the last 3-4 years or so. I think that it took a cook from Thai Landing.
They do a shit load of take out.
My language teacher in Thailand’s favorite dish was fried catfish, but it was sort of “fluffed” meat catfish, then fried again so it was crispy and soft, and served with a sort of sweet and sour fish sauce. Absolutely delicious, I have no idea what it was called, and have never seen it in the USA. If you know where this is I will come to your city. Yes, that is a threat.
Is something like this what you’re thinking of? It doesn’t completely match your description, but the preparation sounds similar. At any rate, I’d be surprised if one of the Thai restaurants in Chicago didn’t have it, as they serve all manners of catfish here.
That’s the one, I’ll have to come up to Chicago within the year. Although, as with just about everything, that seems a bit westernized (a lot more salad and less on the catfish part than Thailand), although I am fine with that. Eating true Thai food is sometimes a bit more adventurous than even I like.
Spoon Thai, Elephant Thai (homestyle), and Sticky Rice (northern Thai) all tend to be fairly authentic in their presentation, as far as I understand it (I mean, they’ve got stuff like banana blossom salad, which you don’t see anywhere else around here.) They’re nothing like the typical Westernized Thai places that are a dime a dozen around here. My favorite place, Bahn Thai, unfortunately closed down. That place just reeked of nam pla and was one of the few places that took my “Thai spicy” requests seriously when it came to basil chicken. 
I would say if you’re ever in the area, you’ll love all three of these places, along with Siam’s House in Niles, Aroy Thai, Yum Thai, and AltThai. All good eats.
Well, as I’ve tasted it, it’s not sweet and sour (which would usually be Chinese?), but sweet and spicy–it’s normally cooked in a red curry sauce. You get most of the catfish as it appeared alive, only it’s dead, and in a delicious red curry sauce.
I appreciate the threat. East Hollywood was once the largest Thai community after Bangkok. But many East Hollywood Thais have moved to North Hollwood, on the other side of the Hollywood Hills. So you’ll have to go back and forth. But you’ll surely find the best Thai food outside of Thailand, if you persist.
Oooh, which ones would you recommend in L.A. guizot? I love showing my parents all the cool L.A. neighbourhoods and they love Thai food so I was thinking of showing them that on their next trip out here.
(The last trip was izakaya in Little Tokyo…we all had okonomoyaki(sp?) for the first time. It was okay but we agreed we all liked the izakaya dishes better)
I’ve looked through this thread rather quickly, but I didn’t see any mention of “phat kraphao.” Forgive me if I missed it. But it is absolutely one of my favorites. That’s minced chicken or pork served on plain rice. And when you through a fried egg on top of that, then it is truly heaven.
Oh, sorry, and that’s stir-fried with basil. A very important ingredient.
Insects are eaten mainly in the Northeast of Thailand. That’s always been the poorest part of the country, so that might have something to do with it. But the people up there really do love them. You CAN see bug carts in Bangkok, but usually only in areas with a high concentration of migrants from that region. Which is why you always see them in the bar areas; most of the bargirls come from the Northeast.
I guess it’s an acquired taste, because a fellow American who has lived up there for more than a decade actively seeks them out come munchie time. When he comes down to Bankok, we’ll be sitting in a place like, say, the Big Mango Bar in Nana Plaza, and he’ll trot down to the street and return with a big bag of fried grasshoppers. BIG suckers they are, too. I’ll pass. But I do admit that in China, I have eaten scorpions (very good actually; I can see kicking back with a bag of those and watching TV) and silkworms (BLECCHH! Never again).