Great Thai food, and other ideas...

Cafe Society
1

I’m having some people over on Friday night for a Thai “banquet”. I love cooking, but I don’t have much experience cooking Thai food. I’ve had requests for pad thai noodles and mussaman curry, so they’re probably on the menu. Has anyone tried making either of these and found a good recipe?

I’m planning on having entree, mains and dessert, so I need ideas. Also, I’d like to have some sort of decorations, but I’m not sure what would be appropriate.

If anyone has any ideas, hints, great recipes or links to helpful websites, I would be very grateful.

2

Are you planning to buy the curry pastes or make them yourself? If you’re going to buy them and if you feel very wealthy the Neil Perry red curry sauce or green curry sauces are good but spendy. Very spendy. As in I only buy them when they are marked down.

Thai Choice green curry paste is good.

If you can, get to an Asian shop to do the buying of ingredients. It’s much cheaper than Coles or Woolies.

3

Pork and chicken satays are super easy to make and look fantatstic.

Make your own spring rolls is a good one, get the wrappers and fillings then let meople roll their own, makes for fun and they can leave out the tofu if they like :slight_smile:

a Beef Salad (Nom Tok) is so wonderful at this time of year. The mint and the grilled beef and the spiciness are just delicious in hot weather.

Re: the pad thai noodles, the biggest mistake I find people make when preparing them is to soak the noodles too long. Just a little soak and let them cook in the pan.

You definitely need to find an asian grocery store. Where are you located?

Regarding recipes, look for David Thompson’s Thai cookbooks at the bookstore. They are pretty much the Bible of Thai cooking. Don’t get intimidated by the recipes for curry paste, just substitute the canned stuff.

4

I’d rather avoid using store-bought curry pastes. That’s kind of cheating isn’t it? :wink: I’m doing this for fun, I’m not in it to save time (Uni holidays = actually having some time and a life!). That’s not to say I don’t use curry pastes when time is an issue!

You’re in Brisbane… are there any asian food shops you recommend? (BTW, I live on the west side.) I’ve been to one in Chinatown (the Valley), but I’m not sure if that one sells Thai stuff.

5

Great idea! Ideas for fillings?

Brisbane!

I’m getting all excited now! Last time I did a Chinese banquet, and it was so much fun. I feel like a kid at Christmas!

6

I recommend you visit the website, www.americastestkitchen.com. The premise of the show is that the cooks pick a favorite dish and try to recreate it, using supplies that the average cook would have at home. They remark on how many attempts were failures and why. You can bring up recipes on past seasons and get detailed instructions. I know there’s a pad thai recipe there and I’m sure you’ll be pleased. I myself am not a very good cook, but after reading through the recipe, I was able to make a chicken and sausage jambalaya that I was very pleased with. Good Luck.

7

Yeah, the curry pastes are cheating but some of them are such good quality that I don’t mind. Anyway my Thai friends use them ;).

David Thompson’s book is a treasure but very expensive to buy. Fortunately my dad bought one so I just pinch his when I need to. The library should have it or quite a few of Jill Dupleix’s books have good Thai recipes. The Australian Woman’s Weekly Thai book is good too.

I usually go to Sunnybank when I need to stock up or walk up to the local one which is excellent at Woodridge. The nice thing about Sunnybank is that the Sushi Train has dropped their prices so lunch is mandatory. Parking at Sunnybank will be insane as it’s school holidays.

We like Squid brand fish sauce. Make sure your coriander has roots.

Thai chicken wings

Crush peppercorns. Chop coriander finely (including roots). Add lemon juice and a slurp of oil. Marinate wings and bake.

Good with sweet chilli sauce as an appetiser.

8

I served up Thai crab cakes last Saturday, and they went down a treat. I would usually double this recipe, since they’re pretty popular.

The cakes:
250g crab meat (ie imitation crab - comes in red-coated white sticks)
1 bunch coriander (save some for the sauce)
100g SR flour
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 egg

Put it all in a food processor and blend well. If it’s too liquid, add some more flour - you want it to be pretty viscous, so it’s easy to cook. Add a little oil to a frypan or large flat-bottomed wok (the flatter it is, the easier to turn the things) and cook in batches, browning them on each side. Drain on some kitchen paper, leave for a few hours if you like, and give them 10 min in a low oven just before you serve.

The sauce:
I make this in a pretty random way, so this is a guide only. Just mix these ingredients in a bowl and serve.

Remaining coriander
A lot of sweet chilli sauce, perhaps a half-cup to a cup
A few tablespoons each of fish sauce, vinegar and soy sauce.

Re filling for spring rolls, a little minced pork goes well. Just cook a few hundred grams of minced pork, set aside and cook a lot of ginger, garlic and lemongrass in a wok for a minute or two. Add some shallots / spring onions for another couple of minutes, then add the cooked pork. Mix up about a cup of liquid to add at this point, including perhaps fish sauce, hoi sin sauce, brown sugar (dissolved), soy sauce. Serve it in a big bowl with some steamed rice paper wrappers and Vietnamese mint beside it, let people hlp themselves.

9

Gotta have some mango sticky-rice for dessert.

10

Curry pastes aren’t really cheating. Unless you have a mortar and pestle at home and you really, really want to go through the trouble of finding kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal, shrimp paste, etc …, then you really want to go with the paste.

Making the paste really isn’t that difficult, especially if you’re near a good Asian grocery, but if you’ve never made Thai food before, I suggest starting out with a high quality store-bought paste.

BUT, to kick it up the proverbial notch, add some fresh ingredients. What I usually do when I don’t feel like making green curry (or any other curry) from scratch is to use a mix of paste and fresh ingredients. For example, with green curry, I use paste, add fresh garlic, fresh galangal (or ginger), green Thai bird’s eye chiles, and lemongrass. Or any combination, depending on what I have on hand. It’s not really cheating.

A very simple and very lovely Thai dish is Basil Chicken. If you have more basil than you know what to do with growing in your garden (like I do), here’s one way to make quick use of it. You can also substitute beef or pork for the chicken.

1 lb chicken breast, thinly sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped (or 1 shallot, chopped)
2-5 Thai bird’s-eye chiles (serranos substitute well)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
3/4 - 1 cup basil (Thai holy basil, if you want to be authentic)

Stir fry the garlic or shallots and chiles in oil (peanut or vegetable) about 1-2 minutes. Add chicken. Fry until cooked through. Add basil and fish sauce. It may seem like you’re adding way too much basil, but don’t worry, the heat will shrink it. Serve over rice or noodles. You can squirt some fresh lime juice before serving if you wish.

11

Well, it turns out my SO’s mum has the David Thompson book, and she’s lent it to me. Looks great! She lent me the Women’s Weekly one as well.

Unfortunately I don’t like seafood, so the options are slightly limited.

For dessert, I like the idea of sticky rice - but mango is not in season here. Any suggestions for other fruit?

I’ve got some recipes I like:

  • Chicken wings for entrée
  • Pat/pad thai
  • Mussaman curry (chicken or beef?)
  • Grilled vegetables
  • Stir-fried minced beef with chillies and holy basil
  • Caramelised coconut rice –or- rice caramel with sesame seeds and peanuts –or- sticky rice

That does sound yummy, I think I’ll try that one for dinner one night!

Thanks everyone for your replies so far!

12

AMussaman curry is the most complex time consuming Thai curry you can make. The reason people use bought sauces (which you can add to at will to make your own tast) is this - I use David Thompson’s Thai Food his paste alone requires chillies, red shallots, garlic, galangal, lemongrass, coriander root, salt, peanuts, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cassis bark and Thai cardamon pods.

13

I’ll second the thought on using fresh ingredients. Thai food is all about the balance of flavours, rot chart. The ideal Thai meal has a nice balance of salty, hot, sour, and sweet in turns. Fresh herbs are crucial as well, dried spices are rarely used, mostly in “foreign” dishes like Massaman (Mussel-man–Muslim influenced from South Asia) curry, and satay ( an Indonesian import IIRC).

In my beef salad, what really makes the dish POP is the frsh mint and cilantro I shred and add to the dish right before serving. The extremely bright flavours along with the lightly charred meat, the sweet hot sauce, the red onion bite, and the lettuce’s coolness, all combine for a fantastic burst of flavour and textures.

Damn I’m hungry now!:slight_smile:

14

Hmmm… my main worry is that I’ll not be able to find an ingredient, such as cassis bark. Do you think it will matter if I miss that? I may have to use a paste.

15

I think he meant cassia bark. You could sub cinnamon bark if you had to or you could go to All India Foods in Balaclava St, Woollongabba where they will have it. Even if they call it something else. Woolworths usually have ground cassia though.

All India Foods rock although I can pretty much guarantee they will be rude to you. Don’t take it personally – they are rude to everybody.

My rule of thumb with pastes is that the better quality ones require you to add stuff like coconut milk. The ones where you just dump in the jar tend to be crap. Apart from Neil Perry and his fresh sauces.