Spicy Thai Ground Pork Salad

Larbb Moo

Just to mention this dish is enough to make my mouth salivary. Led by tangy, a touch of salty, sweetness of ground pork, and then complements with fresh herbs.

Eat with warm sticky rice and a bunch of fresh green leaves, this dish makes my lunch simply delicious.


- 1 1/2 cup of ground pork
- 1/3 cup of pork liver, cut to small bite and boil for 2 minutes, fetch them out.

- 6 small heads of shallot, chopped.
- 2 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro.
- 2 tbsp. chopped green onion.
- hand full of mint leaves.
- 1 tbsp. toasted finely ground rice. (toast raw rice in a hot pan until fragrant, grind with coffee grinder)
- bunch of fresh green leaves for eating raw such as Romaine lettuce, Boston lettuce, green bean or string bean.

- 2 tbsp. fresh lime juice
- 1 1/2 tbsp, fish sauce
- 1 tsp, sugar (optional)
- 1 tsp. chili powder.


Five minutes cooking time.

1. Marinate ground pork with lime juice for 10 minutes.
2. In a small sauce pan on high heat, stir ground pork with boiled pork lever until the pink is almost gone. (keep stirring to separate the pork so they don't stick together.)
3. Start seasoning with fish sauce, chili powder and sugar(optional).
4. Give a quick stir until the pork cook through, taste and adjust the taste. If you feel it's a bit dry, add 1 tbsp. of water. Turn off the heat.
5. Add cilantro, mint leaves, shallots, green onion and toasted finely ground rice. Stir to incorporate. Serve.


Serve with green leaves - break the leaf into small bite sized, and wrap the pork salad with it.

When I wanted to have a full version of Thai Eastern food, this Lardd Moo will be serving along Papaya salad, salty fried chicken or grilled chicken, or BBQ pork, sticky rice and a big bunch of fresh raw vegetable.


They make a great finger food party.

Thai Green Papaya Salad

Som-Tum

Papaya Salad is everybody's favorite salad, almost. It's chock-full of flavors and textures yet very light and energized. This dish is usually pared up with grill or fried meats and also going great with sticky rice.


Papaya salad is an Eastern food, but, because of its huge savories taste, it becomes food that people in every part of Thailand loves to eat, no matter where they are living in, this salad will make its ways through.

You can find and easily enjoy them at every corners of Thailand from tiny street stalls to exclusive restaurants .

Mom's papaya tree

In the US you can find these green papayas at most Asian market. Besides making salad, we love to put them in water base curry with prawns. It's DE...li....cious!!

Choose fresh and firm green papaya
- green papaya, grated into a handful of long string.
- grape tomatoes
- long string bean
- 4 cloves of garlic
- Thai chilies
- unsalted roasted peanut (optional)
- dried shrimp (optional)

- 2 tbsp. lime juice
- 1 tbsp. tamarind water
- 2 tbsp. fish sauce
- 2 tbsp. palm sugar


Mixed with carrot for extra crunch and colors

Normally, in Thailand, they mix this salad with wooden pestle and mortar, the idea of making this salad is to crushing and mixing all ingredients at the same time, but I don't have those.

So I just bruise the ingredients that need to be bruised- like string beans, garlic and chilies with my granite pestle and mortar then put everything in a salad preparing bowl and mix them together in salad bowl instead.



1. Grate papaya and carrot into long thin string. Set aside in preparing bowl.
2. Cut string bean into 1 inch long and slightly pound them with mortar and pestle, just that they are bruised. Do the same with garlic and chilies.
3. Put all ingredients in a bowl ready to dressing.
4. Add fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind water, lime juice in a bowl and start mixing all together until everything's combined.


Serve! ....with sticky rice, BBQ pork, grilled or fried chicken. Really a great dish.

Sago Sai Moo, Stuffed Pearl Sago

I would only make these appetizer when I desperately crave for them, which I try not to let it happens often. It takes too much times to make and too little to put in my mouth, and that is just torturing me because it happens to be my favorite one.

In Thailand these delicious appetizer can be founded easily everywhere - if you see food stalls, chances are you'll find one that sells these stuffed pearl sago.


Before making them, let's make sure that you are not confused between pearl sago and pearl tapioca (tapioca pearl)

Pearl sago is made from starch extracted from Sago palm tree. Tapioca pearl is starch from Cassava roots (Yucca roots). In general, they looks the same, and that how people be often mistaken, the different can be felt in texture. How would you know which is what?....read the label.

Tapioca pearl, size 1 mm.

The original of making Sago Sai Moo is to use pearl sago, but more and more pearl tapioca is used since cassava roots are more easier to grow when Sago palms start to disappear.

At my parents' house, we have a small swamp filled with sago palm trees. We always get a really good use out of them - every parts of the tree can be used. My younger sister and I used to have a play-house our big brother and his friends built for us using sago palm stems to build walls and the leaves to make thatch roof. We even spent a few nights in there.

Later when we needed a new pathway to get to the land, and the only way to get that is to fill the swamp, we decided to fill some small part of swamp just wide enough for cars to pass through, and try to keep sago trees alive as much as we can.

Some small sago trees at my house are growing back after some were cut down to make a pathway.

As expected, I couldn't find pearl sago here in New York, so pearl tapioca went home with me.

Prepare Stuffing
- 1/2 cup ground pork
- 1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
- 1/4 preserved radish (found in Asian grocery)
- 1/2 ground roasted peanut
- 1 table spoon herbal paste

- 1 1/2 table spoons fish sauce
- 2 table granulated sugar
- 1 table spoon saute oil

preserved radish

1. Pan on medium heat, add in oil, saute herbal paste until fragrant then add chopped onion, and saute until translucent.

2. Crank up the heat to high, add ground pork, saute until all the pink disappear. Season with fish sauce, sugar.

3. Add ground peanut and preserved radish. Saute all ingredients to incorporate - no liquid left. The stuffing should be a bit sticky together, so it'll hold its shape when forming a ball.

4. Taste it, the stuffing should lead with a bit sweet taste follow with salty, and it should taste a bit stronger than what you think it is because it will be a perfect taste when it is warped with tasteless pearl tapioca.

Set aside and let it cool down completely.


Preparing tapioca pearl

- 1 1/2 cups tapioca pearl (size = 1mm.)
- 1/3 cup or more warm water

Rinse tapioca pearl for a few times. Put them in a medium bowl and gradually add warm water then start to massage them until they're soft and sticking together - add a bit more water if they feel dry.

Cover them with wet paper towel or cheese cloth. Let them sit for 1 hour.
Rinsed pearl tapioca


Shaping, stuffing the balls

Scoop small amount of soaked pearl tapioca with your fingers, flat it out to from a disk shape - about 2 inches wide. Put generous amount of stuffing on and wrap it close forming a small ball - about 1 inch....continue making them.


Lay them on a steamer plate covered with lightly oiled parchment paper - leave some hole open to make sure the steam can come up. (if you can get some banana leave, use it instead of parchment paper. That is what we use in Thailand. It works fantastic for steaming.)

Steam them until they look almost translucent - take about 5 minutes - don't leave them to be completely translucent on the steamer, you will end up with over cooked pearl tapioca.


Tip : Pearl tapioca is sticky while it's still hot. They will stick to everything that comes to contact, so make sure that all tools using to handle it are lightly oiled including the resting plate.

Lightly coating the plate with garlic oil is the best way in this case. It gives Sago Sai Moo a very delicious smell.



It usually serves with fresh green leaves, cilantro and fresh Thai chillies - take a tiny bite for a good kick in a mouth.....
de-li-ci-o-so

Chinese Fried Bread, Pa Tong Go

As far as I remember eating this bread, I've never known before that it is Chinese's. We, Thai, also growing up with them, call them Pa-tong-go or Ja Qwai in some part of the South. I now know more that Chinese call them You Tiao and some others different names......You will never learn enough about food you eat every day.

As a Thai, every day waking up in the morning, it is quite common to see a plate of Pa-tong-go on the table along with everyday breakfast. Every morning, either my mom or aunty will get up early and go to the market or to a nearby stall that sells these yummy bread and buy them for the house.

Pa-tong-go with Jok


We eat them with Jok or Soy milk or other warm drinks as a breakfast . Since I've moved to New York, I long for them. I now know that they are Chinese breads, I went to Chinatown hoping to find them, but it is too difficult to communicate. Chinese are so diversity in their own language, different region speak different Chinese, as well, these fried bread has so many names in Chinese. I gave up!....

Pa-tong-go with Clam Chowder

I started to search for the recipes, and there are tons of them out there. The original recipes of making these bread mostly call for Ammonia powder, and I have a hard time finding it. I searched for more and got lucky with this recipe, posted on Thai community website by Thai woman living in another country, my bad that I don't remember exactly what the site was.

Her recipe is simple and doesn't call for Ammonia powder. I am dancing with this recipe. Even though this recipe is not exactly as the original Pa-tong-go has, the taste is as good as its original, and I like it already.

Making the dough Serve for three people

- 1 1/4 cups of Self-Rising flour
- 1 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
- 1/2 cup of warm water
- 1 tbsp. vegetable oil


1. Mix the yeast with warm water until it becomes foamy.

2. Mix flour and oil together, and in goes the yeast mixture.

3. Mix them well to from a dough.

4. Flour the surface of your kitchen top, put the dough and kneel them with hands for 3 min.

5. Leave it in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap for the rising for 1 hour.

6. After the dough get a good rise, take it out on the floured surface and kneel it a bit more then start to shape it into a long strip dough.

7. Cut the long strip dough into small strips about 1 x 2 inches.

8. On one strip, use your finger tip touch a bit of water and apply on one side of the strip, stick two strips together, water will act as a glue to hold them together.


Fry the Dough

1. Heat oil to the high, then reduce the heat to medium high, in goes the doughs.
2. Fry them until golden, take them out, and rest on the rack.
3. Enjoy.


They are good with
Milk, soup, porridge, dip with sweet condensed milk.

Chive Cake, Kanom Guui Chy

I just got a good looking bunch of chives from the market. My mind flew back to a street where my university is located. There was a smoke filled stall on the side walk in front of the university gate selling these filling appetite called Kanom Guui Chy or Chive cake in English.
Fresh Chives

As an art student, I normally spend long period of times in each classes-painting, sculpturing, printing, and more often had little times to eat before running to another class. To tame my hunger before a next meal, I would run out to grab these chive cakes, sizzling in a flat, wide, hot pan, bathed with dark, sweet spicy sauce. They are tasty and filling kind of appetizer made with very simple ingredients-flours and chives.


You need three kind of flours
The cake part
- 1 1/2 cups rice flour
- 1/2 cup tapioca flour
- 1/2 cup glutenous rice flour
- 2 cup water
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil

The chive part
- 200 gram chives, cut into one inch long
- 1/4 baking soda
- 1 tbsp. black soy sauce
- 2 tbsp. soy sauce
- 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp. mince garlic
- 2 tsp. sugar


Saute the chives
1. In a small bowl, combine backing soda, black soy sauce, soy sauce, sugar together.
2. In a frying pan, put in vegetable oil, heat it up to medium heat.
3. Put in mince garlic saute until fragrant.
4. In goes chives and sauce mixture.
5. Saute until chives are wilted and incorporated with sauce, turn the heat off.
6. let them cool down.

- Prepare a steamer, bring it to boil, get ready for steaming.
- lightly oil a small brownie pan, set aside.

Mix the flours
1. Mix all flours together.
2. Mix in vegetable oil, and gradually add water, stir until incorporated.
3. Mix in saute chive, stir.
4. Pour the mixture into a oiled pan.
5. Bring it into a steamer. With the lid close, steam for 20 minutes, until the mixture looks almost translucence.
6. Bring it out, let it sit and cool down before cutting.


Now they are ready to eat, or sear them in a hot oil pan to make skin crispy like I love.

Black Sweet Dipping Sauce
- 1-2 crushed small chilies.
- 2 cup sweet black soy sauce.
- 1/4 soy sauce
- 2 tbsp. white vineger.
- 2 tbsp. sugar.

1. Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan, bring it to medium heat to incorporate.
2. Turn off the heat, serve.