Tom Kha Gai - Lemongrass Coconut Soup with Chicken and Oyster Mushrooms

Something is wrong with my camera. It gave my pictures a red tint and a red strip on the top. I guess it's time I get a new one although this camera wasn't that old. It was a refurbished camera which I got to replaced another broken Cannon in the Spring of 2005. Almost 4 years old. I guess that's old for electronics.

Back to the food - Tom Kha Gai. This was the first Thai dish I learned to make when I first moved to New York. It's extremely easy to prepare once you have all the ingredients. In some Thai restaurants, they call this dish white curry. But I don't think this is qualified as a curry. It doesn't have all the spices normally used in curry and it's not as thick. The soup is actually a little light and refreshing because of all the lime in it.



Ingredients

• 4 stalks of lemongrass


• 3-inch knob of galangal (called Kha in Thai - it's a root that looks like ginger but smells lemony.)


• 10 lime leaves or a tablespoon of lime zest


• 4 limes


• 3 pounds chicken breast


• 1/2 pound oyster mushrooms


• 3 cans coconut milk


• 2 cups water


• 15 fresh Thai chilies - cut in half lengthwise


• Fish sauce


• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Directions

1. Clean the lemongrass, discard a few outer barks. Trim about 2 inches of its green tip and chop of its root. Cut diagonally into 1 inch stalks.


2. Peel galangal and slice to make thin discs.


3. In a large stock pot, heat coconut milk with lemongrass and galangal on a medium heat. Take care not to let the coconut milk boil.


4. Clean the chicken and cut into small cubes. Add to the soup. Roughly tear lime leaves over the pot and add to the soup. Add water as needed.


5. When the chicken is cooked. Tear mushrooms out of its stalks and add. Season with lime juice, fish sauce and chilies. The soup should be dominantly sour followed by salty and a little spicy from fresh chilies. The coconut milk will give the soup a little sweetness.


6. Right before serving, sprinkle chopped cilantro. Served with steam rice or rice noodle. This recipe was enough to serve 9 people after 2 appetizers.

Beef Curry with Thai Eggplants and Chinese String Beans

What the heck are Thai eggplants and Chinese string beans, you ask. I got pictures for you.


Thai eggplants

We use these eggplants a lot in curry. In Thailand, we call them striped tomatoes. We call all eggplants some kind of tomatoes. For example, purple tomatoes for the purple Chinese eggplants. What do we call tomatoes? Red tomatoes... Duh.. I didn't like eating them so much for they were a little bitter. But now whenever I see them in Chinatown, I get extremely excited. Not that I like eating them any better, I just get excited.


Chinese string beans

Actually, these are the only kind of string beans I had until I came to the U.S. Don't they make much more sense than American string beans? They take less time to trim and clean. They taste much more like string beans to me. And because they are so long, I can tie them up into pretty knots. Also, nuts and beans are the same word in Thai. I guess we don't have too many words to call things. We just keep reusing them and add adjective to identify what we actually mean.



When you say curry, Thai people will assume you mean red curry. Therefore, when I was asked to make beef curry, I made this.

Ingredients (Make 10 to 15 servings)

• 4 pounds beef - any flavorful cut - I used London Broil - cut into strips


• 2 pounds Thai eggplants - quartered - or any firm eggplants


• 1 pound Chinese string beans or normal string beans - cut - and if you are like me, tie them into knots


• 3 cans coconut milk


• 1 tablespoon cooking oil


• 1 cup red curry paste


• 1 head garlic


• About 2 inches knob of ginger


• 6 shallots


• 3 stalks of lemongrass


• 1 tablespoon dry red pepper flakes


• 1 tablespoon brown sugar


• Fish sauce


• 1 cup Thai basil

Directions

1. Peel garlic, ginger and shallots. Discard a few outer layers of lemongrass. Trim away its head and about 2/3 from its tail. Keep the middle 1/3. Chop all the spices together (I used food processor.)


2. Heat oil in a large stock pot. Stir in chopped spices and curry paste. When fragrant, add the first can of coconut milk and beef. Let cook. Stir occasionally until the meat is almost cooked.


3. Add the rest of coconut milk. Season to taste with red pepper, sugar and fish sauce. Let simmer. Add water if necessary.


4. When the meat is tender, add eggplants and string beans. Let cook for 5 more minutes or until the vegetables have desired texture. I like mine soft but still a little crunchy.


5. Before serving, tear Thai basil and sprinkle on the curry. Serve with rice.

Beef Green Curry with Chinese Eggplants

After a few weekends of eating out in fancy restaurants, I felt a need for home cooked food. I enjoy eating out. But the bill and the commute home with extremely full stomach are not quite ideal. So I plot to invite a few of my friends over for dinner at my apartment on Sunday night instead of eating out. This way there's no bill and no commute home (for me). And my food is as good as any restaurant food. Perfect!

I made Miang-Kum. It was perfect for the hot weather and my chilli loving friends. With stems leftover from collard green I used for Miang-Kum, I made collard green stem spicy salad. The recipe is kind of experimental but I'll post it here soon.

And for the main dish, I made beef green curry with Chinese eggplants served with rice - which was very well received by my guests.



Ingredients

• 2 pounds of beef (I used top sirloin) - sliced


• 2 Chinese eggplants, cleaned, trimmed and cut into chunks


• 1 head of garlic - peeled


• About 3 inches of ginger - peeled


• 5 shallots


• 5 kafir lime leaves (or substitute with lime zest)


• 2 cans coconut milk


• 1/2 cup green curry paste


• 1 tablespoon cooking oil


• 1 teaspoon raw sugar


• Fish sauce to taste


• About a cup of picked Thai basil

Directions

1. Chop garlic, ginger, shallots and lime leaves really finely. I put everything in a food processor and let it run for about 1 minute.


2. Coat the bottom of a large pot with oil and place on a stove top at medium high heat. Stir curry paste and chopped spice in the heated pot for about 30 seconds. Be careful not to burn.


3. Pour two cans of coconut milk into the pot. Add beef. Reduce the heat to medium and let the beef cooked. Stir occasionally so that pieces of beef cooked evenly.


4. When the beef is cooked, reduce the heat to low and add eggplants. Add sugar and fish sauce to taste. Take care not to let the curry bubble or boil.


5. When the eggplants are cooked and soft but not too soft, turn off the heat. Sprinkle Thai basil over the curry. Serve with cooked rice.

I wish eggplants keep their color when cooked. The dish would have been much prettier.

Massaman Curry

Or the best spicy beef stew recipe ever ever. My friends love love love this curry. I got a special request for it for our biggest potluck party of the year. I pointed somebody to this blog and realized that the recipe is actually on my old blog. So I'm re-publishing it with slightly different scale.

The secret to this is very simple - simmering for a loooooonnnggggggg time. There's nothing else to it. I used pre-packaged massaman curry paste, added a lot of other chopped spices and peanuts and then cooked it for about 6 hours. Massaman curry is a little different from all other Thai curries. It requires some dry spices (cinnamon and bay leaves) as opposed to just fresh spices. Massaman is not exactly a Thai word either. I think it came from Muslim-man telling the origin of the recipe.

Regardless, it's a wonderful and hearty dish to serve in a cold weather.



Ingredients

• 5 pounds of any flavorful cut of beef - cubed (I used sirloin tips because they were on sale - but chucks would be fine too.)


• 3 pounds of potatoes - peeled and quartered and then soaked in cold water so that they don't turn brown


• 1/2 cup of ginger - peeled - chopped


• 1 head garlic - peeled and chopped *


• 15 shallots - peeled - chop 5 and leave the rest whole *


• 3 stalks of lemongrass - discard outer layers and both tips and chopped *


• 2 tablespoons of galangal - chopped *


• 2 cinnamon sticks


• 5 bay leaves


• 1 cup of massaman curry paste


• 2 cans coconut milk


• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts


• 2 tablespoon red pepper flakes


• 1 cup tamarind juice (I soaked about half a cup of packaged tamarind in a cup of water. This makes the curry a little tangy.)


• 1 tablespoon cooking oil


• 2 tablespoon brown sugar


• Fish sauce - to taste

Directions

1. Marinate the beef in a can of coconut milk, 1/4 cup of chopped ginger and about 2 tablespoons of fish sauce for 30 minutes.


2. Cook the marinated meat on medium heat for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally.


3. In a different pot - preferably the larger one, fry massaman curry paste with the rest of chopped spices in oil for 1 minute. Stir vigorously and try not to burn the curry. Add a can of coconut milk. Reduce the heat to medium.


4. Combine meat into the curry pot. Once the content is a little bubble, reduce heat to very low. Add potatoes, whole shallots, peanuts, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Season to taste with sugar, red pepper flakes, tamarind juice and fish sauce.


5. Let simmer for a few hours or until the meat is tender.

* I processed all the spices other than ginger together in my food processor. It saved me a lot of time and tears.

Chicken Panang Curry (Panag Gai)

Panang Curry looks and tastes very similar to red curry except that it's a little sweeter, milder and not as liquid-ie. I have seen restaurants in New York made this curry with peanuts. But from what I remember eating in Thailand, there's no peanuts in it.

The main spice (at least the visible one) in Panang Curry is kaffir lime leaves. The leaves give this sharp lime-y, refreshing scent to the curry. I bought bags of these leaves whenever I saw them in Chinatown. They freeze well.



Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cooking oil


• 1 can coconut milk


• 1/2 cup panang curry paste


• 4 cloves garlic


• 6 shallots


• 2 inches fresh ginger


• 2 inches galangal


• 1 stalk lemongrass


• 2 pounds chicken breast - cubed


• 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar


• 20 kaffir lime leaves - thinly sliced width-wise


• Water


• Fish sauce

Directions

1. Chop garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and lemongrass really finely. (I use my food processor fitted with a mini cup and mini blade to chop everything up. This step used to be the longest and hardest process to make curry for me. Now it takes 10 seconds!)


2. In a large saucepan, fry curry paste in oil over medium heat. Add the chopped spice. Stir vigorously. Be careful not to burn. Add half the can of coconut milk. Let cook until fragrant and coconut milk is bubbly.


3. Add chicken and the rest of coconut milk. Stir frequently until the chicken is cooked. Add water if the curry becomes too dry (but not too much water.)


4. Season with sugar and fish sauce. The curry should be mild, and just a tiny bit sweet.


5. Simmer until the chopped spices become tender (about an hour) or until ready to serve.


6. Right before serving, sprinkle chopped kaffir lime leaves over the curry.


7. Serve over steamed rice. I served mine over blanched asparagus and collard green.

Chickpea Curry

This isn't my usual Thai curry. It doesn't have coconut milk and it's vegetarian. In an attempt to imitate chickpea curry from Minar - my favourite Indian lunch spot (with lamb and goat curries under Vegetable Curries category...), I found this recipe from AllRecipes.com.

I have all the required spices, although in different forms e.g. ground cinnamon instead of crushed cinnamon stick and ground cloves instead of whole cloves. The recipe calls for canned chickpeas but I'm using dry ones.

It took forever to prepare but it was really simple to make once I have all the ingredients (had to buy ginger and cilantro - the rest came from my wonderful "pantry".) The dish came out delicious - mildly spiced and flavorful.



Ingredients

• 1 pound bag of dry chickpeas - soaked in cold water overnight



• 1 tablespoon olive oil


• 2 onions - chopped


• 1 head garlic - chopped


• 2 inches of fresh ginger - peeled and chopped



• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


• 1/2 teaspoon ground clove


• 2 teaspoon ground cumin


• 2 teaspoon cayenne pepper


• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric


• 1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds


• 2 teaspoon salt



• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro - chopped

Directions

1. In a big stock pot, heat oil over medium heat. Sitr in onion. Cook for a few minutes until tender. Add garlic and ginger. Stir.


2. Add chickpeas and about 3 cups of water.


3. Add all the dry spices.


4. Simmer until chickpeas become soft - about an hour or more.


5. Turn off the heat and stir in fresh cilantro just before serving.


6. Make 4-8 servings depending on how much you eat. (I ate this for 3 meals altready and still have about half left.)

Choo Chee Pla Salmon

This is one variation of Choo Chee Curry. I guess you can make any seafood a Choo Chee by cooking the seafood appropriately and then dress with this thick curry. Seared scallops can be nice or baked snapper.... Maybe I'll try that next time.



For this I pan fried salmon fillets on a non-stick pan with a little bit of olive oil. The smell and smoke are vicious. I still live in a salmon smoked studio a day after....

Green Curry Fried Rice with Ground Turkey and Spinach

.... or how I used all things leftover in my refrigerator. Well, the ground turkey wasn't exactly a leftover. I picked it up on the way home from a supermarket. I was actually thinking about cooking red curry fried rice instead because it's more would have been prettier. You know - green spinach on red background. But I made that a bunch of times. I wanted to try something new.



Ingredients

• 5 cloves garlic - minced


• 2 inches fresh ginger - minced


• 1 onion - chopped


• 1/2 pound ground turkey


• 1/2 cup green curry paste


• 3 cups staled cooked rice


• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetable


• 1/2 pound spinach - very roughly chopped


• 2 tablespoon cooking oil


• Fish sauce

Directions

1. Heat a huge non-stock pan on medium high heat. Add oil. Stir in garlic. Add turkey. Stir vigorously for a few minutes. Add ginger and onion. Add green curry paste. Stir and stir and stir until turkey looks cooked.


2. Stir in rice. Stir some more. Let cook for a few minutes. Add frozen vegetable. When the vegetable becomes un-frozen, add spinach. Turn off the heat. Mix everything together one last time. Season with fish sauce if needed.

So - there - I used up my old ginger + onion + stale rice + all leftover spinach from the weekend + frozen vegetable. And I got yummy spicy fried rice for dinner and lunch!

Mission accomplished.

Choo Chee Gung (Shrimp)

What's Choo Chee? It's basically red curry - only cooked in higher heat until the curry gets bubbly hot - so hot that it makes "chooooo cheeeee" noises.

The thing with coconut milk is that when it's boiling hot - fat gets separated from the rest of the liquid (that's was left after water evaporated.) This makes the curry so thick that it can be use as a sauce or dressing over meat (usually seafood) or vegetables cooked separately.



Ingredients
2 pounds large shrimp (cleaned and butterfly)

3 tablespoon red curry paste
1 1/2 cans coconut milk
5 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
5 shallots (finely chopped)
2 stalks lemongrass (finely chopped - use only bottom half)
1 inch galangal (finely chopped)
1 inch ginger (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar
fish sauce to taste
15 lime leaves (chopped)

1 pound string bean (blanched)
1 pound collard green (blanched - I used leaves for the Miang Kum and saved the top part for this dish)


Chopped spices for the curry

Directions
1. Heat up coconut milk in a thick bottom pan on medium high heat. Add curry paste and all the chopped spices except lime leaves. Stir until fragrant and the curry is bubbly hot and thick. Add sugar, red pepper and fish sauce to taste. The curry should be thick and spicy with a bit of sweet hint.
2. Throw in shrimp. Cook for a few minutes. Turn of the heat. Sprinkle chopped lime leaves on top. Don't over cook the shrimp.
3. Serve over steamed rice and blanched vegetables.

I made this and 3 cups of rice to serve 6 people (after we had Miang Kum as appetizer. We had a bit of leftover but I finished it the same night after everybody left.... (ummm... would what I ate be called leftover? since I finished it the same night?) The curry over rice was still really good even when it's cold...