While dog-sitting on Monday (actually, dog walking in this instance) I stopped by the local Thai restaurant. Really; a Thai restaurant in Birch Bay! (It’s pretty good, though not as good as I could get in L.A. – and it’s about 50% more expensive.) So I ordered some take-out, which I would collect on the return trip.
Monday I ate chicken satay, plus a veggie roll they gave me gratis because they thought the dog was cute.
Tuesday I ate all of the pad-see-ew with chicken.
Wednesday I ate half of the deadcow pa-naeng (curry).
I ordered some once while I was out with my friend (a chef) and when he took a bite all he could say was “…Oh…My…GOD…”
Another dish I really like is Laab (sometimes written Larb). Not every place can do it right, but when it works, it works oh, so well. It’s a thai meat salad with an interesting mix of flavors including lime juice, fish-sauce, mint, shallots and others. Eat with sticky rice, and if you are a purist, by hand. I get beef, medium spicy.
I usually go for Gheng Keow Wan for a curry. The place I go to makes it a green curry with coconut milk as the base. But I have had it other places that focus more on the rich aspect than the sweet of this particular dish.
I love those big fat flat noodles. Pad Kee Mao . . . Mmm, my mouth is watering!
Our favorite Thai place is a little inconsistent about their heat levels, despite using a highly scientific five-level rating system. Sometimes you ask for a four and you get, “Ha, ha, you silly white person, I will give you a two and a half, tops.” and sometimes a four is, “You weren’t really fond of those nose hairs, were you?”
Ah, and mango sticky rice for desert. I hope that stuff isn’t quite the artery-clogger it tastes like. How bad for you could coconut milk be, really?
Johnny, I once ate only Thai food for a week just to see if my stomach could take it. That meant spicy stuff noon and night (I’m not much for breakfast). By the end of the week I had some pretty serious heartburn going. A few years later I lived in Thailand for most of a year. I could never convince my Thai cook that I really wanted to eat “regular” Thai food and she was always making stuff that she thought was European (it was somewhere between Thai/French/Swiss/American, and just generally okay). So I never really got to relive the burn except for the occasionally very busy work weeks where I ate most of my meals at our mfg plant. That stuff was a bit dangerous because you never knew what was going to be in it. Most I ever spent was about $1.75 on one meal including several entrees, rice, dessert (mango with stick rice :D) and a soda.
MSmith, if you were Thai you might call it aharn or khao. Thai for “have you eaten?” is gin khao mai with a hard “g” in the front and a rising tone on the last word, which indicates a question and means literally “Eaten rice?” It’s also how polite Thais say hello if you visit their home.
Podakyne: phad kee mao means, literally, “fried drunken shit”, but is generally the short form for “drunken noodles”. It’s not necessarily made with wide noodles. Lard na is anothe noodle dish usually (always?) made with large, soft fresh noodles.
NPC, gaeng kieuw wan literally translates as “curry green sweet”. It’s normally eaten with vermicelli instead of rice (although rice is okay). I don’t eat larb too much anymore because it was extremely hot and often made with chopped up whole small fishes at my work, which somehow put me off of it. I should go back to it, it can be wonderful. Plus the mint, of all things, gives me heartburn. A little heartburn is not to large a price to pay.
I love thai food although I’ve only recently been exposed to it. Growing up in Tennessee, we don’t have many Thai immigrants so for most of my life, I’ve been ignorant but when I moved to Oregon four months ago, I was treated to my boss’ favorite restaraunt, a Thai place in Salem. I’ve been back about four times since and except for one incident where I foolishly thought that their hot dish wouldn’t be that hot (I now know to only eat their mild or lightly seasoned dishes… those guys don’t hold back for weak American palates like most other ethnic restaurants seem to) that literally had me running to the bathroom, I’ve loved every dish I’ve had.
Hell, I even loved the hot dish… it was delicious if you could get past the mind numbing heat.
I agree! I love Thai food but have never had Mango Sticky Rice.
My fave is Thom Kah Kai and Green Curry. One place in the south loop (Chicago) whose name escapes me had a Green Curry soup. It was divine! I’ve never seen another Thai restaurant offer that.
Anybody know how to make good Thai Iced Tea at home? I got the tea leaves, but it just isn’t strong enough.
I love tom yum soup. It has replaced Chinese hot and sour soup as my food of choice when I’m sick. I’m also quite fond of larb beef, although most of the restaraunts around here use hamburger instead of proper shredded beef. And satay- I don’t have that anywhere near often enough. Love the stuff.
And Thai iced tea is wonderful, but I wish the waitresses would stop instructing me to stir the milk into it. It looks pretty sitting there on top and I like to look at it between sips.
Never had the mango sticky rice. How much asbestos is in that?
Well, it’s probably not that hard, although making sticky rice is a fairly drawn out process. You need to buy a special kind of rice (it’s a variant that’s only grown in NE Thailand, AFAIK), then soak it and rinse it a couple of times, then let it sit over night, then cook it in a special steamer. (This is all from memory of watching Mrs. Shibb make it… I could be off on a step or two here).
If you seriously want to know how to make anything Thai I can generally find out/figure it out. Some stuffs not worth the effort to make on your own.
That reminds me, there is one very tasty Thai dish that we’ve never successfully made at home. It is sun-dried pork, sort of like pork jerky, except it has some spice flavorings and is evenutally fried after it is dried. It’s really good, particularly with a cold beer. If anyone knows exactly how to make this I’d love to know.
I am jealous. Living in the Alabama our Thai restaurants are negligible in number. If I want Thai, I have to cook it. That makes it less than authentic. I have trouble finding ingredients – sweet basil for squid yum and Kaffir leaves for soups. sigh. maybe one day.
The best Thai food I’ve ever had was at a restaurant called The Chili Club in Calgary, Alberta. Kao mun - which I have never, ever seen on a menu here - is coconut rice, which really cools down the heat of the food. Their pad thai is heavenly, and there is a dish that I haven’t been able to find anywhere but there, which they called ‘Swimming Rama’. It was chicken on a bed of spinach, with a spicy cream sauce. Oh yeah. Anyone know what this is?
Come on down to Corvallis, and I’ll take you out to this amazing thai restaurant we have here. They make a salad with a peanut dressing that actually caused me to moan.
For some blessed reason, there are Thai restaurants almost every other block here in Houston. I’m gonna go to Thai Pepper for the most delectable soft spring rolls, followed with some basil shrimp. Then I’m going to go to Paddy Thai and get me some mango sticky rice. If I’m still hungry, I’ll drive out to Kanomwan and order some red curry from the most delightfully snarly restauranteur in town. “Too much happy!”, he’ll say to raucous groups.
(It’s pretty good, though not as good as I could get in L.A. – and it’s about 50% more expensive.) So I ordered some take-out, which I would collect on the return trip.