Thai Red Curry Chicken

When Steven said he didn't like curries, I suggested that he try a Thai curry. Unlike Indian curries that are spice based, Thai curries are made with a paste of aromatics and fresh ingredients and cooked in coconut milk. I made a chicken red curry and at first he was skeptical but after tasting it, he loved it! Hooray! He even told me he liked it more than his mom's curry. Score! +1 point for me. I'm usually not a competitive person, except with cooking, and it made me feel so special when he said that. :D

Thai curry paste contains a bunch of ingredients including: chilies, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, ginger, galangal, coriander root, etc. Red curries are made with red chilies, green curries are made with green chilies, and yellow curry are includes spices like turmeric and cumin. Although it seems counterintuitive, green curries are actually hotter than red curries. For convenience sake, I use a store-bought curry paste (Mae Ploy brand) because it's a lot of trouble making your own curry paste since some of the ingredients are difficult to find. Using a premade paste cuts down the ingredient list by half and makes things a whole lot easier. I like using dark meat so I can slowly simmer the curry without overcooking the chicken. The end result is delicious, flavorful, and reheats beautifully, in fact, it tastes even better the next day.

Thai Red Curry (Chicken)
3 pounds of chicken drumsticks
1 onion, chopped
1 14oz. can of coconut milk (my fav is Chaokoh)
1/4 C Thai red curry paste
Fish sauce (I like Three Crabs)
1 Tbsp palm sugar or brown sugar
Lime/Rice vinegar
Handful of Thai basil leaves

Optional step: Use a large cleaver and cut the chicken drumsticks in half, first cut through the flesh to the bone, then try your best to hit that spot with a strong whack. Sometimes you won't hit the first cut you made spot on, but it will be enough to break the bone. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, skip this step. Please don't hurt yourself doing this. After cutting the drumsticks in half, rinse the exposed bone area under some running water to loosen any bone shards. Do this over a sieve to catch the bone shards so they don't mess up your disposal. This step is completely optional, I just think it makes the curry more presentable and easier to eat.

Do not shake the can of coconut milk. Open the can and skim off the "cream" on top (roughly the top 1/3 of the can) and add it to a Dutch oven or large pan.

The first step is to "fry" the curry paste in the coconut cream. Add the paste to the coconut cream in the pan, stir and cook this over medium heat until the oils separate from the paste. First, the mixture will look soupy and very messy. Slowly, it will begin to cook down into a thick paste, then finally the aromatic oils will begin to separate from the paste. After you see the oil, add the chopped onion and cook the onion for about 1 minute.

Add the chicken and the remainder of the can of coconut milk. Bring this to a boil then lower to a bare simmer. Season with fish sauce to taste, a tablespoon at a time. Add a tablespoon of brown sugar. Cover the pot and simmer gently for about 40 min to an hour, or until the chicken is tender (the meat will start to retract from the bone). When the chicken has finished cooking, stir in the juice of half a lime to start with, taste, and if it needs more tang, add more lime juice. If you don't have a lime you can use rice vinegar. Add more brown sugar if it needs more sweetness (the sweetness should be subtle and not overwhelming). Stir in a big handful of Thai basil leaves that are torn in half. It's important to balance the salty, sour, sweet, and spicy with Thai food. Don't tear the leaves in advance or they will turn black.

Serve with rice.

Pim's Pad Thai

Pad thai is my favorite food ever and I almost always order it at Thai restaurants. I can never get enough the fresh-from-the-wok noodles coated in lightly caramelized sauce perfectly balanced with the classic Thai flavor combination of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy. I've tried various disappointing recipes at home resulting in one miserable attempt after another. One reason is because I used ketchup and that is my dirty shameful pad thai past. (I hope you don't read this Pim because I am so embarrassed.) Now that I've tried tamarind in my sauce, I know there is absolutely NO substitute for it because the flavor is irreplaceable and ketchup will never touch my rice noodles ever again.

Finding tamarind was a bit tricky. On my first try, I asked several employees of my local Asiam market where I could find this magical ingredient. Each led me to the different aisle (6, no 9, try 11?, maybe 4!) until finally one employee said the store didn't carry it. Though skeptical, I went home defeated. I bet it would have helped if I had known what it was called in Chinese. The next time, I returned absolutely determined on finding the ever elusive tamarind. I checked every aisle looking up and down the shelves until finally I saw a plastic container that had a picture of the brown knobbly fruit on it. Ah Hah! I found you! I scan the container for English and it says "Sour Fruit Soup Mix." "Hmm... maybe this is the wrong thing," I wondered. I checked the ingredients, which said "Sour Fruit" and water. I took a chance and crossed my fingers that it would be tamarind and not hot and sour soup mix when I opened it. Though I really wanted to find a brick of tamarind paste, this was the best I could do. Thankfully it was the right thing.

As for the recipe? Look no further than Pim's blog because this is the absolute best pad thai recipe ever!

Notes:
- You need the tamarind, no ketchup! Don't make the same mistake I did.
- For the sauce, like Pim says, the sourness of your tamarind, the saltiness of your fish sauce, and sweetness of your palm sugar will vary. Start with this base amount and adjust as you go. It should be salty, then sour, sweet, and spicy at the end. I find that Filipino and Thai fish sauces are saltier than Vietnamese fish sauce.
- If you have tamarind paste and need to reconstitute it, look at Pim's notes at the bottom of the recipe here
- You can replace the garlic chives with the green part of scallions/green onions if you can't find the chives.
- Use as much chives/green onions and bean sprouts as you like. I like a lot of both when I use chives and sprouts, I would use less green onions if I had to make the substitute. (pst veggies are good for you)
- If you can't find the preserved turnip and dried shrimp, it's okay since they're optional.
- It's best to make this portion by portion like Pim says. But I don't have a wok so I made the whole thing in a skillet and it turned out great but I bet it'll be even better in a wok made in a smaller portion.

Chez Pim's Pad Thai aka Best Pad Thai Ever (take that Cook's Illustrated)
Serves 2 - 3

Master Sauce
1/2 C tamarind concentrate
1/2 C fish sauce
1/3 C brown sugar (or 1/2 C palm sugar)
Thai chili powder/cayenne to taste

8 oz. rice noodles/sticks
Shrimp (peeled and deveined), chopped extra-firm or pressed tofu, or sliced chicken breast (I used about 8 oz. of shrimp and 4 oz. of tofu)
1 - 2 eggs depending on how much egg you like
2 C of chopped Chinese garlic chives (or green part of green onions but use less)
2 C bean sprouts (mung bean sprouts not soy bean sprouts)
4 Tbsp ground peanuts (minced or grind in a food processor)
Vegetable oil

Optional:
2 Tbsp minced pickled/preserved/salted turnip
2 Tbsp minced dried shrimp or pounded until fluffly with a mortar and pestle
A few cloves of minced or pressed garlic



Start by soaking your rice noodles in warm water if they're the dried kind. You'll only want to soak your noodles until they're pliable not completely soft. If you're using fresh noodles, give them a quick rinse and let them drain.

I also like to soak my dried shrimp in hot water for a few minutes then rinse them off.

Combine all the ingredients for the sauce and simmer until everything is dissolved. The fish sauce will smell sooooo bad (oh-my-goodness-feet-sauce-did-you-turn-on-the-vent bad) when it simmers but it tastes oh so good. Taste and adjust the seasoning of the sauce till you like it. I still haven't gotten it down quite right but the pad thai is still excellent. This will likely make enough sauce for plenty more portions of pad thai. You can keep it in your fridge or freezer (it doesn't freeze in the freezer).

Begin by heating 2 tablespoons of oil in your skillet or wok. Add your tofu and pan fry until golden brown. Then add your shrimp or chicken and cook and stir fry for a bit. Then add a few spoonfuls of your sauce and take out of the wok just before it is cooked through and set aside.

Drain your noodles before cooking. Add some more oil to your wok/skillet (2 tbsp to 1/4C) be generous since you don't want the noodles to stick. Add your noodles, turnip, shrimp, and garlic if using. Then add about 1/4 C (or 1/2 C of sauce if you're making the whole thing at once) and stir fry until the noodles are the edible. If the pan is getting too dry, add some water. Cook until the noodles are edible.

Add your eggs in the middle of the wok or skillet and let it set a bit before tossing it with the noodles.

Add your bean sprouts, garlic chives or green onions, and your protein. Keep on stir frying until the protein is fully cooked and warmed through.

Sprinkle with ground peanuts before serving. Serve with slices of lime and more chili powder.


(Yup I can pretty much eat this whole thing myself)

Thai-Style Chile Beef

I love stir fries with basil so when I saw this recipe on America's Test Kitchen I was almost sold. Almost because rather than using traditional Thai basil in Thai cooking (shocker isn't it?), Cook's Illustrated substituted mint and cilantro because the two were much easier to find in the supermarket. Steven hates cilantro with a passion (he picks out every tiny piece from his pho) and I wasn't terribly keen about the mint-cilantro combo myself but luckily I have some Thai basil conveniently growing on the back porch so I was able to substitute that in a jiffy. Traditional Asian ingredients may be hard to come by so with that in mind, CI used brown sugar instead of palm sugar and jalapenos or serranos instead of Thai bird eye chilies (now these I don't have growing on the porch so I'm okay with this substitution). Even with the many departures from traditional Thai cooking, I was nevertheless happy with the recipe because it was very tasty and could be made in under 30 minutes, which is definitely a plus for a weeknight dinner.

Thai-Style Chile Beef
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

Marinade
3/4 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp white pepper
2 tsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp fish sauce
2 lbs blade steak, trimmed and cut into 1/4 in strips (or substitute with 1 3/4 lb flank steak)

Sauce
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar (I used a combination of vinegar and lime juice)
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp Asian chili paste (or sub red pepper flakes)
3 - 4 cloves of garlic minced or pressed

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 - 4 jalapenos/serranos, ribs and seeds removed, cut crosswise into 1/8 in pieces
3 medium shallots, roughly quartered
1 C Thai basil leaves
1/3 C roughly chopped peanuts
Lime wedges for serving

Here's a good picture of what blade steak looks like: Click for Wikipedia entry

First trim the blade steak. There is a bit of silverskin along the outside of the blade steak that will need to be trimmed away. You'll also see in the picture that there is also a line of gristle that runs down the center of the steak. Cut the steak in half lengthwise to cut out the gristle. Then cut the meat against the grain into 1/4 in strips.

Sprinkle the coriander, white pepper, brown sugar, and fish sauce over the beef and toss to combine, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the ribs and seeds from the jalapenos and cut crosswise into 1/4 in pieces and roughly quarter the shallots.

Mix fish sauce, rice vinegar, water, brown sugar, and chili paste in a small bowl.

Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet or wok over high heat. Add a third of the beef and quickly distribute the strips in an even layer in the skillet. Cook until the beef is browned on the first side, about 2 minutes, without stirring then flip the pieces to the second side and cook until browned, about 30 seconds to a minute. Transfer the beef to a bowl. Add 2 more teaspoons of oil to the skillet and repeat the browning process twice more to cook the rest of the beef.

After the beef is cooked, reduce the heat to medium, and add 2 more teaspoons of oil to the skillet. Add the jalapenos and shallots and cook, stirring frequently until they begin to soften, about 3 - 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 10 - 15 seconds. Add the sauce to the skillet and increase the heat to medium high until the sauce is thickened. Add the beef and any juices back to the skillet and toss in the sauce. Take off the heat and stir in the Thai basil leaves.

Serve over rice with chopped peanuts on top and lime wedges on the side.