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.

Dressed up Tofu, Tao Hoo Song Kreung

I first had this dish more than ten years ago, back then I was not quite a big fan of tofu dishes, and I was hooked right away. My foodie friend ordered it for the table at our getting together party, the next thing I knew, it's become our usual-dish every times we sit and eat together.

It's called Tao Hoo Song Kreung, which is simply translated as a dressed up tofu in English. The word Song Kreung in Thai is used in many meaning involving dressing up in everything - foods, clothes, even hair styles. It means turning ordinaries into an extraordinaries - in anything - put more jewelries, more cloths, more ingredients. As it is in this dish, the plain tofu is dressed up with a varieties of vegetables and meats.



There are many different ways to cook this dish in term of the varieties of ingredients, depends on each kitchen, but the foundation of the dish is the same, which is skin crisped tofu topped with sauté assorted vegetables and meats.

This time I don't have much varieties of the ingredients. I just took what ever vegetable I had in a refrigerator that is good for sauté, as well as the meat, and of course, they made a delicious tofu dish as always.

Not a big fan of tofu? Give this one a chance.



You will need

1. Soft tofu ( look for those with the word "Silken" on the package.
2. Vegetables - broccoli, carrot, snow pea, mushroom you love, asparagus, Chinese cabbage. In a nutshell; what ever vegetables you like. Try choosing the kind that is not easily wilted.
3. Meat of your choices - chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, squid. You can even mix them all together, I am serious. Remember? it is Song-Kreung
4. two cloves of garlic, crushed

Seasoning

1. Soy sauce or Oyster sauce to marinate the meats.
2. 1 tbsp. fish sauce
3. A pinch of sugar
4. 1 tsp. white vinegar
5. ground pepper



I am hungryyyyyy

1. cut up all vegetables into small pieces, do the same with meats, except shrimp
2. Marinate the meats with Soy sauce or Oyster sauce for 10 min.
3. cut tofu into half (you can use all two pieces or use only one piece - how hungry you are)
4. blot tofu with paper towel, let paper towel sucks the water out of tofu, so that it will not splash when it hits the oiled, hot pan.
5. Heat up the pan with the amount of vegetable oil until the oil get very hot.
6. Carefully put tofu into the hot oil to be browned through all sides.




7. Take the tofu off the heat after all sides are browned, and let it sit in a serving plate.
8. Heat up a pan to sauté vegetables and meats.
9. Put in crushed garlic until scented, follow with marinated meats.
10. add two table spoons of water, keep sautéing the meats for three minutes until the pink meats are gone.
11. add in all vegetables, give a quick stir, season with fish sauce, sugar and white vinegar.
12. sauté for two minutes, sprinkle with ground pepper, turn off the heat.
13. Scoop up the sauté onto the resting tofu.
14. serve with fluffy, steamed rice.



15. Yum Yum Yum.

Hor Mok, steamed salmon curry cake

This is not a kind of cake with sweet icing on top though and it is not sweet, instead, it's spicy food made with curry paste, coconut milk and eggs. YUM

Curry cakes are usually made with fish meats and all kind of seafood. They are a solid form of curries, I would say, to eat with plain, steamed rice, but, for me, no rice is even better. There are many Thai foods I crave for, which is, again, not easy to find, especially when I live far from Thai community. The only way to satisfy my craving is to call mom for the recipe and directions.

I used to think that this kind of foods is complicated to cook because they look complicated, to me. Besides making water into ice, I had no idea how to make curry into solid form - inside a steamer not a freezer. That was out of my world. Now they are just a piece of cake...righttttttt...after going broke by numbers of long distance phone calls.


In Thailand a batch of curry cake is scooped up into banana leaves folded and secured to form tiny bowls covered with vegetables at the bottom of the bowls. In New York, finding banana leaves is more likely finding gold. So, forget about banana leaves, just good heat resistant ceramic bowls my curry cakes would be happy enough. Still, if finding banana leaves is not a burden, go for it. It is worthy - smell so good and look pretty too. This time I got creative using bell peppers as my tiny bowls and that I can eat the whole thing. I realized I didn't buy enough bell peppers and they were kind of small, so I had to put the rest of the batch into ceramic bowls as usual.


Try some if you love spicy food.

- start with 2 pieces fresh salmon cut into chunks or your choices of fish meats or any seafood.
- 2 tbsp Thai red curry paste.
- 2 eggs
- a can of coconut milk (save up 2-3 tbsp for topping at last)
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tbsp palm sugar
- about 5 bell peppers, seeds and ribs removed, or just heat resistant bowls.
- vegetable leaves for covering the bottom of the bowls - basil leaves are the ideal.

Let get your arms toned.

1. Mix salmon, coconut milk, curry paste and eggs together.
2. Stir them together to incorporate.
3. Season with fish sauce and palm sugar and keep stirring until creamy thick - thick enough to hold itself a little.
4. Prepare the steamer. I use a wok with a steamer plate and a lid since it is easy for me. You can use any kind of steamers that allow hot steam from boiling water go through tiny holes to steam the bowls. (I used wine corks to help balancing bell peppers since they don't have flat bottom)


5. Open the lid checking them after 15 minutes, add a tiny pinch of salt to preserved coconut milk and top it on the curry cakes follow with basil leaves.

Eat them with steamed rice, or just them. I eat them as an appetizer, or even a snack sometimes.

Num-Tao-Hoo, Soy Milk

When I was a little girl my aunt had to chase me around the house just to give me a glass of milk - I just don't like drinking it. One day we went to a restaurant, still trying to coax me to drink milk, she ordered a bottle of Vitamilk for me. As soon as I saw a white liquid in the bottle, my face turned into an Eeekkk face. She said, " It is not a kind of milk you don't like, this one you will like it." and yes I like it because it is soy milk.

Soy milk is a desert to me. I remember there is a lovely soy milk place in my home town, Chumporn province, where we go to have a bowl of warm soy milk. In Thailand, soy milk is served hot with tapioca, Thai barley seeds, fuzzy melon candy, red beans, plain jello, eggs in one bowl - or you just tell them what you want, what you don't want. Simple syrup is added to sweeten soy milk right when it's served, so that you can tell them what sweet level you want for your bowl. Somebody loves having a bowl of warm, plain soy milk to drink along with fried bread sticks called pa-tong-goh or Youtiao in Chinese.



A bowl of warm soy milk is easy to find in Chinatown, but, since my usual place closed down I started to make it myself. It is SOOOOOO easy to make and the best thing is you know exactly what it is in your soy milk.

Start with soy beans

note: I don't really measure the recipes. You can just test it as you go, nothing's complicated.

- 2 bags of 12oz soy beans
- warm water
- sugar
- a pinch of salt

Get set, Go ¡

- Rinse all soy beans a few times.
- bring soy beans to the heat, toast them till they are dry, but, not burn though. You will see the paper thin skin start to bubble up and a nutty smell touches your nose. Take them off the heat.
- Soak them in warm water up to two-four hour.



- Rub soy beans with your hands in water to loosen up the skins. Fetch the thin skins off. (don't have to beat yourself up to get rid off all skins, you will end up blend them eventually.)



- In a pot used for boiling soy milk - cover the pot with cheese cloth.
- In a blender put soy beans with some water just to cover the beans, and blend them well.



- Pour the blended bean into a preparing pot - repeat until you finish all soy beans.
- Close the cheese cloth, twist and squeeze to get the juice out off blended soy beans as much as you can.
- Add more water to the pot - be careful not to add too much otherwise you will thin out the milk.



- Bring it to the heat at 210F for 15-30 minutes. Heat through, but do not let them reach the boiling point - stir it constantly to prevent a cake-on at the bottom of the pot and keep skimming out the foam as the milk getting hot.

Panden leaves



- To cover up the natural soy smell, I put Panden leaves into it. Panden leaves have a sweet scent to give foods a yummy smell, just like vanilla.
- Add a pinch of salt and sugar (starts with a heap of table spoon and test it, now you can season the milk as you like - add more sugar if you like)

limes Talk.

If you ask me, one thing I would choose to always have it in my kitchen, that thing has to be limes. Since I have been cooking for myself, I've noticed that I never leave my kitchen to be without limes.

Lime is a common ingredient for Thai cooking, so that most Thai houses with a bit of land are more likely growing them in their own properties. As far as I remember there are two lime trees and many more of kaffir lime trees in my mom' s edible garden. I asked her once why she grew so many of them, she said, "for sharing with other people so they don't have to buy it." She doesn't believe in buying things that can be grown in one own backyard, and yes, we never have to buy these kind of things.



In the US, especially here in New York, kaffir limes and leaves are S*O* expensive. From the fact that they can't grow in the cold weather condition, they have to be shipped from the West, and are not always available which makes me sad sometimes. That is not the case for limes, limes are everywhere. I recently found that I can buy four limes for one dollar at a nearby Asian super market in my neighborhood. I am happy about it already, but if I converted the price to Thai Baht and told my mom about it, she would call me back home.



Smooth skin is juicer than pore skin.
Choosing right limes is the key for getting the most juice out of them. I think it would be wise sharing this in my blog since this is a Thai kitchen - we use a lot of limes in Thai food. Look for limes that have smooth skin - smooth skin tells you that these limes have very thin skin and when they have thin skin, more juice will come out, and you can leave the bad limes for those who doesn't read this blog...what?...too mean of ME?...alright you can share it with them later.



The "bad" limes, limes that I will leave them there in the basket forever are limes that have visible pores on the skin - dedicates the hard, thick skin - just by squeezing a little, thick skin limes produce less juice or, like my mom would say, they are not ripe enough to fully produce juice.

Now that you know, at least, how to get juicy limes, be prepare for an extreme taste of my foods.

Egg noodle (ba-mee-hang), Eating Noodle Like Thai

My favorite noodle dish, ever. I can eat it every days, and I am not exaggerated.Oh well, I am actually a noodle girl who is addicted to all kind of noodles, but this one is at the top of them all. When I was little, my aunt knew exactly that to have me eating lunch without a bit of whining, the only choice I would jump on was, and still is, these yummy Ba-Mee-Hang. (ba-mee = egg noodle, hang = dry) So, ba-mee-hang is referable as egg noodle without soup.

Even though ba-mee-hang can be found in every noodle places or noodle stalls in Thailand, my yummy ba-mee-hang is still from the noodle place in a small town I grew up, Chumporn province. Though I can't remember the name of the place, whenever I go back to Chumporn, still, I know exactly where to go for ba-mee-hang.

Since I am now living far away from my favorite ba-mee-hang place, I have to do it myself. OK, you might say, "Just go to Chinatown - tons of Chinese restaurants serving egg noodle." Did I mention I am a noodle girl?.....I have not yet found egg noodle that is prepared like my ba-mee-hang - well, not really mind , just the Thai way of preparing them.



But I do have a favorite noodle place in Chinatown, Manhattan, when I have a sudden urge of noodles and don't want to make it myself, I would go to the noodle place called New Chow Cho on Mott St between Canal St. and Hester St. where I can season the noodle myself right there at the table. In Thailand, a condiment set which is included fish-sauce and chili (num-pla-prick), granulated sugar, dry chili power and vinegar with chili is offered for noodle seasoning at the tables - we season our noodle ourselves to suite each one taste buds - it is a common way of eating noodle in Thailand. Here, New Chow Cho makes it very kind for Thai noodle eaters and even the very best is I can sometimes order them in a Thai way because some of the waiters can speak a bit of Thai , and they understand what it means to eat noodle like Thai.

Like their reputations yield, Thai foods are spicy and strong in flavors, this noodle dish is no exception. The end result of seasoning, before putting them into your mouth is more like preparing a bowl of salad - every things in the bowl are tossed together to mix well before eating.

I am hungry already, and here is my version of making ba-mee-hang the way I like. Some ingredients are left out just to make my life more easier finding them, I get the taste I familiar with, still .



- fresh egg noodle - can be found in all Asian groceries.
- 1 tbs Lime juice
- 1 tbs fish sauce
- 1/2 tbs granulated sugar
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp. black soy sauce (optional)
- Garlic oil

- 2 tbsp. chopped scallion
- 2 tbsp. chopped cilantro
- 1 tbsp. ground peanuts (optional)
- vegetable of choice

- fish balls, beef balls
- 1/4 cup grounded pork
- dried shrimps (optional)

The only thing called for cooking is boiling the water.

1. seasoning ground pork with a bit of soy sauce and let it sit.
2. prepare a noodle bowl, in go lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and dried shrimps (0ptional), mix well and let it sit.
3. In a pot, bring water to boil.
4. fast boil vegetable, fetch them out, let it sit
5. boil all fish balls, beef balls for two minutes, take them out, let it sit
6. boil grounded pork till it is thoroughly cooked and put them into the preparing noodle bowl( with mixing sauces in it)
7. goes in the last, fresh egg noodle, (if you know how to boil spaghetti, you're good to go) boil them about two minutes - these noodles are fresh, so they are already soft and don't need to be dancing in boiling water for very long, fetch them out and put into the preparing noodle bowl.
8. right away, toss the noodle with garlic oil for thoroughly coated.
9. in a noodle bowl, put all boiled ingredients and later chopped cilantro, scallion, and ground peanuts (optional).
10. drizzling with black soy sauce

Before eating



like fixing salad, every things in the bowl need to be tossed so that all taste will be blended together. Now you test for the taste you like, and that you can season them as you go - love more sour - squeeze a wedge of lime, more salty - add a little bit of fish sauce, prefer slightly sweet - add a tiny bit of sugar, can't leave without spicy taste....me me me - add a little of dried chili powder, and, again, toss them to mix before eating.

Now, you can make it your own personal ba-mee-hang.



For ingredients, you can choose all ingredients you like, besides fish balls, beef balls, ground pork - make it with whatever kind of meats you like (boil it if it's needed, don't do it if it's ready cooked) - roasted pork, chicken, turkey, beef etc.

The only foundation for these yummy noodle dish is the mixing of lime juice, fish sauce and sugar - the balance taste of sour, salty and sweet which is also the foundation of cooking Thai food.

Crispy garilc in oil, kra teem jeew. A secret that need to be told.

In my last post I was talking about what I call "A jewel for Thai soup." I put in my Jok. It's called Kra Teem Jeew which is simply Crispy garlic in oil. Kra Teem means Garlic. We use this nutty smell, golden crispy garlic in oil, yes I said nutty smell, to bring the food to another level of taste and delicious smell. It really makes a different when you put these in.



It's basically kind of garlic infused with oil, but the difference is it is infused with high temperature oil - high enough to make garlic get golden and crispy.
We put it into the dish that have "almost" plain smell or very light in taste, for example clear soup(Kang Jed type), Jok, noodle and many more to complete Umami, if I can say. My kitchen never be with out it. It's SOO easy to make, but a little trick need to be told since garlic get burn easily once the oil get very hot...don't you blink.



Garlic in your hand?
- 1 big head of garlic
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- tiny pinch of salt



1. With a garlic press, press all garlic cloves.
2. Put pressed garlic into a small sauce pan, in goes the vegetable oil and salt.
3. Bring the pan to low heat, let the garlic and oil heat up together, stir often as they start to heat up, so there will be no lump of garlic stick at the bottom of the pan.

NOW DO NOT BLINK

4. turn off the heat as soon as you see the color of the garlic starts to change to light golden then let them continue cooking in the hot oil with out the heat. If you let them bubbling in the pan with the heat still on till they turn golden right in the pan , it's too late - you will end up with burning garlic and a nasty, bitter garlic in oil.



let them cool down and pour them into clean little jar. I always clean and save up those little artichoke hearts jars after I finish them. These garlic in oil can be kept up to a month. Now you've got a jewel of Thai cooking - a little secret that need to be told.