The Great Chinese Recipe Thread! (1 Viewer)

[Angelo.M]

Oh to be one of only two Thai people on this board.

Thai cuisine is, unfortunately, something that I have probably waited too long to get acquainted with. Also unfortunately, it seems like no other cuisine that I have tried has varied so much in quality from restaurant to restaurant, even in large cities. Either my choices, or my luck, have been poor, but likely both. I've had green curry (is that right?) to die for, and green curry that I thought I'd die from. My wife usually sticks to pad thai noodles with much better success.

Anyway, any recommendations for Thai dishes that are good introductions to the cuisine?

 

[Mike SJ]

"A whole world of flavors out there, and I still have friends who insist their diet is fine with burgers and fries. Such a sad, sad sight."


I still make fun of my old roomate for only cooking with his microwave. he buys PRECOOKED frozen meals, ugh!

 

[Lew Crippen]

Oh to be one of only two Thai people on this board.

Thai is a big favorite of ours. As to Angelo’s comment, I can only lament that far too many Thai restaurants abroad are pale imitations of the real things. A good deal of this of course is due to the heat of the food. A proper Tom Yum soup for example should just take your breath away.

But there are plenty of dishes that are not that hot: green mango and green papaya salad to name but two. They are both favorites of mine and I’ll post a recipe later.

As an aside, green mango slices dipped in sugar are often a bar snack in Thailand.

But back to the alteration of Thai food for the uninitiated: I place the cuisine right after South Indian in terms of hotness (and it is a close second). In some Thai restaurants, you might get the chef to prepare the dishes as he would back home. But you will no doubt need to make assurances as to your ability to withstand the heat.

 

[Angelo.M]

I say, bring the heat, baby!

I will continue my search for excellent Thai food.

May I recommend that those of you HTF gourmands that haven't already should read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. If you've seen his TV show, you've only seen a glimpse of his down-to-earth, stripped-of-pretense, brass-knuckles approach to the world of haute cuisine. The book gives you the inside take on what it's like to run a restaurant after making your way through the industry. And it's a great look at the NYC restaurant scene. Plus, there are some excellent cooking tips, including a run through of the basics for meal preparation at home (a preview: you can do better than expensive German knives for much less money). Wish I had read it before we bought our Henckles.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Or head for southern Louisiana, where no breakfast table is complete without a bottle of hot sauce (preferably Tabasco) on the table—after all how can you eat fried eggs without a few drops?

Tobasco is too bland. I have to go for garlic-flavored tobasco.

Shopping with me is fun. I refuse to give in to low-fat, low carb, low-salt nonsense.

When I cook, I'm using butters and all sorts of oil, and I keep the skin on the chicken. You don't like it, stay out of my kitchen.

The funny thing about Thai food is that its so derivative of the foods in the region and Indian and Chinese cuisine. I find that there are probably only one or two dishes I can think of that are uniquely Thai.

For some Thai food, here are some primers.

Pad Thai
- the most basic thing possible. Rice noodles, bean sprouts, egg, nuts, and your choice of meat. Usually, it's shrimp. In most cases, a lime is used to get that unique flavor amongst the various soy sauces and fish sauces used. My mother's recipe uses palm sugar (shit is hard to cook with). I usually cook my shrimp with olive oil, tobasco, and the essence of emeril (I make it myself)

Nua Nam Dtoge
- I can't spell it in English, but it's basically Thai beef salad. Normally, it's hot as hell, but you can get the chef to go down on the ground chili peppers. It's on the limey/salty side. One of my favorites and great with sticky rice. Usually, it's got onions, green onions, roasted rice pellets (not sure what grain though, although my mom knows). Like any beef dish, cut type is very important. The beef is supposed to be soft.

Kao Man Gai
- I've never seen this offered in America. It translates to "rice greasy chicken". The greasy part is far from the truth. Chicken is boiled in a soup stock that consists simply of ginger and garlic (amongst other things, depending on what you want). The chicken is cut into slices while the soup stock is the "water" you use to boil and make the sticky rice. It's served with cucumbers, that leafy thing that's not parsely (the name escapes me at the moment and that's going to kill me for the rest of the day). It's served with a soy sauce that has ginger, garlic, soy beans, fish sauce (?), and some sort of specific chili paste. Great Thai dish that's really overlooked quite a bit. I'm going to try and make this next Friday. And if you see a news item about a dead Thai guy in Lexington, you'll know why.

Green Papaya salad
- if it's what I think it is, it's Som Tam. Good stuff, and it's really spicy.

Northern Thai food is what's mostly spicy. I think it's called the Isarn region, though I'm not sure. That's the thai beef salad and Som Tam stuff. There's also grilled chicken and what not.

I'm not sure what green curry Angelo is alluding too. Was it green or more of a whitish color?

And there's several dishes that are highly derivative, like the Pho's and the ramen dishes.

My favorite ramen noodle dish is probably Bame Moo Dang, which translates to red pork and noodles. The funny thing is, I like the instant ramen noodles better. I find authentic ramen noodles to be a little on the sweet side. I normally use Mama brand instant nooldes (pork flavor). I kid you not, I can eat that stuff plain.

Tom Yum Goong
- Tom Yum with shrimp. I have no clue how to make it. It's one of those cocunut milk-based dishes I'm still trying to get the balls to make.

Tom Ka Gai
- another cocunut milk-based dish. My parents say they're easy to make. I think they're lying.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Green Mango or Papaya Salad (this is Thai, not Chinese): This is not too hot, but it is far from bland. Upon review it may be a bit hot for those who don't like hot food. Reduce the number of chillis, if you are concerned.

Peel and shred a green papaya or a couple of green mangos—these must be green, ripe or partially ripe will not work. You wind up with long thin strips of papaya or mango. The course side of a four sided grater works well, but try to get some length in your shredding.

Peel and shred a carrot (same way).

Toss the shredded carrot and papaya (or mango) together in a bowl and put in the refrigerator until ready to assemble and serve (try to chill for at least an hour or so).

Put 2 oz dried shrimp in boiling water (to soften up). You can get dried shrimp in an Asian grocery store and some upscale specialty stores—one place will be cheap the other not so much so.

Peel a couple of cloves of garlic and add 3 1/2 oz of the very tiny green & red chilies to a bowl. (These are called ‘pirk kee noo’ in Thailand—the larger versions are called birdseye or Thai chilies here and they will work if you can’t find the really small ones (the really small ones always are a mixture of both green and red). Note that these chilies are pretty hot, so you may want to be cautious—I would be in just a bit more than I suggest here. YMMV.). Pound these two ingredients into a paste (I use a food processor for this). Set aside.

Roughly crush 3 or 4 oz of roasted peanuts (unsalted)—the result should have some texture—not a paste—sort of course, small pieces. Set aside

In a separate bowl mix 1 Tablespoon tamarind juice (you can get in Asian, especially Indian) store), 2 /1/2 Tablespoons lime juice and 2 ½ Tablespoons fish sauce (nam pla in Thai), but any fish sauce from SE Asia or China will work. Set aside in refrigerator until ready to serve.

When ready to serve place all the ingredients in a serving bowl (a large pasta dish works well) and mix very well.

I have seen this served with a couple of halved plum tomatoes—but I don’t normally add.

Would your Mom approve Dome?

 

[Angelo.M]

I'm not sure what green curry Angelo is alluding too. Was it green or more of a whitish color?

Whitish-green, with coconut milk, green chilies, lime peel, ginger, coriander, cumin, garlic, shallots, basil and fish sauce (nam pla? is that right?). These are the ingredients I recall and could identify. The sauce was served over a choice of beef or chicken. I've tried both. On the menu, the restaurant (a mom and pop type place, nothing fancy; always smells great in there) calls it "green curry." At this place, it's always great. I've seen and tried it in two other places and didn't care for it at all. Maybe I'm way off here, but the times I didn't like it were times when it seemed to have the taste of licorice (star anise, perhaps?).

Speaking of pad thai, a cool place to get a large portion at a reasonable price (something you almost never find in NYC) around these parts is Republic in Union Square. The service is fast, the portions are huge and not expensive, but the place is as loud as a high school cafeteria (well, in a way, it's sort of an NYU cafeteria). They have pad thai and some other trendy-faux-Asian-fusion noodle dishes and rice bowls, the best of which is the pork chop rice bowl.

Avoid the lychee martini.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Green Papaya salad
- if it's what I think it is, it's Som Tam. Good stuff, and it's really spicy.

Som Tam is the name I remember too. I guess that my recipe is pretty hot, but I would make it even hotter—the timid can always cut down on the number of chillies.

I’ve never attempted Tom Yum at home. I’ll be interested in your results.

I am a big, big fan of the Thai beef salad—I could not remember the Thai name.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Whitish-green, with coconut milk, green chilies, lime peel, ginger, coriander, cumin, garlic, shallots, basil and fish sauce

Sounds a lot like Tom Ka Gai.

 

[Ted Lee]

okay guys...i need some recipe's for juk. my girlfriend has agreed to tackle the project. seeing that i'm coming down with a serious tryptophan (sp?) coma right about now....anything that uses turkey will work.

or ham...i remember my mom using ham....yummy!

 

[Citizen87645]

I submitted a recipe a couple pages back but I called it congee or rice porridge.

 

[Yee-Ming]

i need some recipe's for juk

I submitted a recipe a couple pages back but I called it congee or rice porridge

Reminds me of a joke:

A man needs a laundry, sees one called "Sven Eriksson's Laundry", and goes in. It is manned by a small Chinese man. He hands over his laundry, and asks, "Who's Sven Eriksson?" Chinese man replies, "Dat me." Man asks, "How did you wind up with a name like Sven Eriksson, which is so Swedish?" Chinese man says, "At immigration, man ahead of me tall blond guy. Immigration ask him name, he say "Sven Eriksson". When my turn, immigration ask name, I say "Sam Ding".

Sorry. Bad pun.

Ted, I'd spell "juk" as "chok" or "zhou" though. Just different ways of Anglicising Chinese terms.

 

[Danny Tse]

Here's a thread over at hkvpradio.com similar in topic to this one.

I know Yee-Ming will get a kick out of Apple's comment. Well, I sure did. :b

 

[Ted Lee]

whoa...i'd like to take a bite out of that apple....

 

[Peter Kim]

Food and sex...inextricably intertwined, and I knew it would arise in this discussion.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman & Tampopo are my favorite food movies of all time, and infuse torrents of sensuality throughout the main course of food.

BTW...the actress who plays the middle daughter in EDMW - Yowza!

 

[Jay H]

My father would always make "Juk" or Congee with turkey after thanksgiving. Simply put all the bones and turkey parts into a huge-ass pot and use it as a broth. Use rice and lots of water, add chinese peanuts, "Chong Choy", put that boiling for a bunch of hours and add anything else that would go well and eventually cut some scallion and serve it on the side.

I dunno, I don't think he has a recipe. He never has a recipe for anything, he just cooks. But it's really good! Sorry, I guess this isn't that good of instructions...

Jay

 

[Danny Tse]

Food and sex...inextricably intertwined, and I knew it would arise in this discussion.

Sorry to thread-crap, but I just can't resist....read the following comments by Apple (see above reference) regarding KFC. I can never eat there again without thinking about....well, you know.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Danny, Ted, forgive a somewhat geographically clueless git for suggesting this, but in the greater scheme of things Vancouver's not that far away from CA, so IMHO you two should head there and duke it out for Apple...

(Sorry for going further off-tangent) From what little I've read, she sounds like a very interesting and spunky girl. Would certainly intrigue me, if I weren't already spoken for.

And I suppose you could ask Rain (or any number of other HTFers) nicely if you could crash on his sofa...

 

[Citizen87645]

I'm only about six hours drive time from Vancouver. I would have about an 11 hour head start on Danny and Ted.

 

[Ted Lee]

who said anything about driving! i've already booked my flight...