Egg Noodle dressing

When I don't have time to cook, and still want to have something that will make my day, I go with egg noodle salad. Just simple boiled egg noodle tossed with ginger noodle dressing, eat as a side-dish with BBQ pork or as a main dish itself, I'll be good for the day.

This dressing has an Asian flavor, which goes perfectly with the noodle. I always have it in the fridge, in a dressing bottle, so that it can be used right away whenever I needed it.

Noodle dressing (yield about a cup of dressing)
- 2 tbsp. minced garlic
- 1 tsp. minced fresh ginger
- 2 tbsp. chopped green onion
- 1 tbsp. Asian chilli oil
- 3/4 cup red wine venigar
- 2 tbsp. sugar
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- 2 tbsp. toasted white, black sesame seeds
- 3 tbsp. sesame oil
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil or olive oil

1. Except sesame oil, vegetable oil and sesame seeds, mix all ingredients together. Taste it, the taste should lead by sour taste.

2. Whisk all the ingredient together, and gently pour in the oils and later sesame seeds.

3. Collect the dressing in a clean bottle, it can be kept in the fridge up to two weeks.

4. Toss boiled egg noodle with the dressing, and fresh chopped cilantro.

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 Dressing Eggs

Yum Kai Tom

At my house, another yummy way, among many ways, to eat eggs is to dress hard boiled eggs with spicy Thai salad dressing. It's an easy dish for the table - easy to cook, easy to eat - nobody says No to it.

It makes a great side-dish eat with stir-fried vegetable dishes, curry dishes etc. It can even stand alone at the party as an appetizer.


The Thai spicy dressing give the tasteless eggs more flavorful. The freshness of shallots, garlic, cilantro leaves and chilies add more to the layers of taste.

Start with hard boiled eggs
- 3 small heads of shallot, chopped
- 1 clove of garlic, roughly chopped
- 2 Thai chilies, minced
- Cilantro leaves
- 2 tbsp. finely ground dried-shrimp

- 2 tbsp. fresh lime juice
- 1 1/2 tbsp. fish sauce
- 1 tbsp. sugar


Finish it within a blink
1. Put the eggs to the hard boiled. Peel them nicely after resting for cooling. Cut them up into four pieces for each egg - be ready on a serving plate.
2. In a small bowl, mix up all the dressing ingredients (except ground dried shrimp) together. Taste and adjust the taste as you like.
3. Pour the dressing on the eggs, top with dried-shrimp all over the eggs.
Serve.

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.

Long Eggplant Salad, Yum Ma Keu Yoaw

If you are an eggplant lover, you'll love this beautiful purple long eggplant dish.

In Thailand we call it Ma Keu Yoaw or Long Eggplant, when here, in the state, is known as Japanese eggplant.



Like other Thai salads, it is light yet full of flavors and textures. Once you think you've got all the flavors, you'll be surprised with another, and the next thing you know - you want more of it.

The taste is well balance of sweetness, tang and salty. Fresh shallot and pickled garlic give a dish very distinctive taste and flavors. The textures of soft eggplant, cooked shrimps and ground dried shrimp are just perfect together. A kick of chilies will wake up your taste buds at the end.

pickled garlic




Let's give the kitchen some purple

- 1 beautiful long purple eggplant.
- 4 cooked shrimps.
- 1/4 cup, ground, dried shrimp. (I ground them with a coffee grinder that never be used to grind coffee beans)
- 1 head, pickled garlic, (available in Asian grocery) thinly sliced.
- 2 heads, shallots, finely sliced.
- 4 small Thai chilies, crushed.

- 1 tbsp. pickle garlic water
- 1 tbsp. fish sauce
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tbsp. lime juice



1. Put eggplant on the grill until the skin gets dark and wilted.
2. Peel off the skin, let it cools down, put it on the serving plate then cut into one inch long.





Prepare the dressing.

- In a small bowl, mix together pickled water, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chilies and sliced pickled garlic.

Layering
- Put shallots on top of eggplant as a first layer, the second is cooked shrimps than pour the mixture dressing over the layers then top with the last layer of ground dried shrimp.
- Serve!!

Yum Ta Lae, Seafood Salad

This Yum is so yum. It' s light, tangy, spicy, and , one more time, yummy.

If you go around asking Thai women what their "Jenny Craig food" is when they are on diet, I bet, you would hear the word...Yum. Yum can be referable as salad in English just the way they are fixed, but, Yum in Thai kitchen can go further than just a simple toss of vegetables and the dressing. There are tons of food and ingredients using to fixing Yum. Please don't kill me by asking how many kinds of yum we have. Can I rather do your dishes? I promise I'll tell more about them- starts with these easy seafood yum.

The taste of Thai salad is a well balanced taste of sweet, salty, spicy, which is leaded by sour taste. The foundation of most Thai salad dressing is fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and chillies, and that you are ready to fix Yum.



Say hi to Seafood lovers.
What kind of Seafood you love, bring them on..or you can take some from my dish.

- Shrimps, Calamari, Surimi, Japanese crab meats (now this one is tricky because they are actually made from fish meat)
- French Horn Mushroom
- 10 kaffir lime leaves, minced
- 1 stalk Lemonglass, minced
- half of onion, cut.
- 2 ribs celery, cut.
- peanut (optional) or can be substituted by other kind of nut or seed.

Dressing

- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tbsp palm sugar or granulated sugar
- 3 tbsp lime juice
- minced chillies, depends on your spice level.
- 3 small heads Shallots, minced



Fixing

1. First, fixing the dressing and let it sit - mix all dressing ingredients together until incorporated.

2. Boil seafoods in boiling water for 2 minutes, except the crab meat, which is ready to eat.

3. Slice French Horn Mushroom into pieces, but not too thin, they will shrink when they are grilled, grill them until skin crisped.

4. put all ingredient into mixing bowl.

5. toss them up with dressing, top with peanut.

6. serves right away. Don't dress them if you are not ready to serve, lime juice will kill the good balance of the taste if it's dressed and has been sitting for to long.