There's this wonderful Thai restaurant near the CC's old workplace which has a dish that the CC is obsessed with.
It ticks off all the right notes - funky, umami, complex with enough heat to set your mouth alight and yet, in that precise Thai way, it works!
The CC has had plenty of opportunities to "reverse engineer" this particular dish. It looks like a variation on the equally famous pad prik khing.
The CC is totally a sucker for the green peppercorns that come in the dish. They are not easy to find but you must get the ones pickled in brine not in vinegar.
There seemed to be a complex metallic note behind it, and the CC figured it the old fashioned way when he spilled some on his shirt. It was fresh turmeric. The CC was out a shirt but had gained a recipe. Cosmic balance and all that.
Ingredients
Paste
4 kaffir lime leaves (sliced very fine)
4 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
2 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
1" galangal
1 lemongrass stalk
1 small turmeric
2-3 Thai bird chilies
sugar (to balance the taste)
Stir-Fry
peanut oil
2 squid (read notes below)
6 Thai eggplants (quartered)
8-12 long beans (cut into 1" pieces)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots
3 tbsp green peppercorns
Thai basil
Recipe
Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle to pound it to a paste. A food processor is simply not the same.
Note 2: Traditionally, the paste may require more or less ingredients depending on the quality thereof. For example, the CC only used 1 chili pepper since it was super hot. You need to taste and adjust based on the ingredients you have.
Note 3: The squid are cut into 1.5" x 1" pieces and cross-hatched with a knife. They will curl up and quickly cook in the stir-fry.
Note 4: The stir-fry goes at a rapid pace. You will need to have everything ready.
First prepare the paste. In a mortar and pestle, pound all the ingredients together to a fine paste. You may need to add more fish paste to loosen the sauce, or a little more sugar if it feels too salty. The paste should be thick, pungent and definitely have a bite from the chilies.
Heat the peanut oil until it is shimmering. Add the paste and fry for a bit. Add the eggplants and continue frying for 2 mins. Add the bamboo shoots and the long beans and fry for 2-3 mins. You may need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to loosen the sauce at this point. Add the squid and the peppercorns. Take off the heat as soon as the squid curl.
Top with the basil leaves.
Serve at once with jasmine rice.
Showing posts with label long beans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label long beans. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Som Tam (Thai Green Papaya Salad)
This is a classic street recipe from North-East Thailand (Isaan) that has become so popular that it you can find it all over Thailand now.
It combines the classic Thai tastes — hot, sweet, salty, sour. It's a textural masterpiece and it has umami like no other. It's also visually impressive — something that is most important from the sales perspective of street food.
It is important to understand that the Thai conception of a "salad" is different from Western expectations. It's just a side dish. It might be topped by "pickled blue crab" or "fried pork". It just acts as a base register.
Note the seamless integration of the entirely New World tomato into the mixture. The reason is clear. It's umami as the CC has explained before.
Seasonings in the Thai conception are a little hard to give precise instructions for. The ingredients are precise enough but the quantities rely on "balance" — something that can only be learned via experience. You keep adding counterbalances until it all makes "sense". This sounds vague but it really is not. It's taking into account the variability in the ingredients that make up the mixture.
(Experienced eaters and makers of most South-Asian street food — Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino — will probably recognize what the CC is saying a lot easier.)
A very quick note about some of the techniques. You need a mortar and pestle which is easy enough. The long beans must be quite young because they are eaten raw. This is simply not possible where the CC lives so a quick blanching is in order. It's the only way to make them edible. Fidelity to the source can only go so far when practicality drives the truck crashing through the door.
Ingredients
1 small raw papaya
8 long beans (cut into 2" lengths)
16-24 cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup dried shimp
1/3 cup peanuts (roasted)
2-4 Thai green chillies (sliced really thin)
2 cloves garlic
2-3 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)
4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 limes
Recipe
If your beans are young, ignore this. Otherwise blanch them for no more than 60 seconds in boiling water and put them in an ice-cold bath. Drain and set aside.
Make the sauce. The garlic needs to be finely chopped. Add the garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste to make sure it has the right balance. You may need to add more of the palm sugar, fish sauce or lime juice.
Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves.
The papaya needs to be shredded into thin strips. Either a mandoline or a grater make quick work.
In a mortar and pestle, add the papaya, long beans, shrimp and roasted peanuts. Pound lightly to crush the ingredients just to release some juices and to break up the shrimp and peanuts a bit.
Toss everything together and serve at once.
It combines the classic Thai tastes — hot, sweet, salty, sour. It's a textural masterpiece and it has umami like no other. It's also visually impressive — something that is most important from the sales perspective of street food.
It is important to understand that the Thai conception of a "salad" is different from Western expectations. It's just a side dish. It might be topped by "pickled blue crab" or "fried pork". It just acts as a base register.
Note the seamless integration of the entirely New World tomato into the mixture. The reason is clear. It's umami as the CC has explained before.
Seasonings in the Thai conception are a little hard to give precise instructions for. The ingredients are precise enough but the quantities rely on "balance" — something that can only be learned via experience. You keep adding counterbalances until it all makes "sense". This sounds vague but it really is not. It's taking into account the variability in the ingredients that make up the mixture.
(Experienced eaters and makers of most South-Asian street food — Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino — will probably recognize what the CC is saying a lot easier.)
A very quick note about some of the techniques. You need a mortar and pestle which is easy enough. The long beans must be quite young because they are eaten raw. This is simply not possible where the CC lives so a quick blanching is in order. It's the only way to make them edible. Fidelity to the source can only go so far when practicality drives the truck crashing through the door.
Ingredients1 small raw papaya
8 long beans (cut into 2" lengths)
16-24 cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup dried shimp
1/3 cup peanuts (roasted)
2-4 Thai green chillies (sliced really thin)
2 cloves garlic
2-3 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)
4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 limes
Recipe
If your beans are young, ignore this. Otherwise blanch them for no more than 60 seconds in boiling water and put them in an ice-cold bath. Drain and set aside.
Make the sauce. The garlic needs to be finely chopped. Add the garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste to make sure it has the right balance. You may need to add more of the palm sugar, fish sauce or lime juice.
Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves.
The papaya needs to be shredded into thin strips. Either a mandoline or a grater make quick work.
In a mortar and pestle, add the papaya, long beans, shrimp and roasted peanuts. Pound lightly to crush the ingredients just to release some juices and to break up the shrimp and peanuts a bit.
Toss everything together and serve at once.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The Sufferings of Summer
The CC went to the farmers' market this weekend, and then his friend's mother gave him a "small" helping of the vegetables from her garden. Her version of "small" is enough to feed a small city!
The CC's kitchen overfloweth.
The CC's kitchen overfloweth.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Creating Novelty
Long before, the advent of "nouvelle cuisine", the grandmas of virtually every cuisine in the world were technically adept at creating novelty out of nowhere.
Faced with the seasonality of ingredients, how do you create "interesting" food day after day after day, in a world where the airplane and refrigeration had yet to be invented, and the audience (as always) craved novelty?
The answer is shockingly simple - vary the proportion of spices.
You can serve the meat with more black pepper than ginger, and vice versa, and bingo! they taste different.
And since this scales exponentially in the number of ingredients (Ed: math geek alert!), this is a game that the grandmas were good at, and doggone it, they were not playing for mere stakes, they were playing to win!
Which brings us to the present. Multiple recipes for the same idea. Whenever the CC posts a classic spice recipe, there is a hangover that follows ("my family does it differently.")
Well, DUH!!!! Of course, they do. Which doesn't make it more "authentic". It just makes it as the baseline against which you compare.
The CC once made string beans with a classic North-Indian twist. Stir-fried with ajwain and cumin. The audience just pushed it away.
"This is not how I conceptualize string beans."
Total abject failure. Not one would eat it.
"Where's the coconut milk?", said one, his Asian roots showing.
Anyway, to get back to the subject before yet another post about the dubiousness of "authenticity" surfaces, back in the day, they made these spices in industrial-strength sizes. We are a little more circumspect, and need to tone it down a bit as explained by this post.
So when the next need to complain about "authenticity" arises, why not just lie down until it goes away?
Faced with the seasonality of ingredients, how do you create "interesting" food day after day after day, in a world where the airplane and refrigeration had yet to be invented, and the audience (as always) craved novelty?
The answer is shockingly simple - vary the proportion of spices.
You can serve the meat with more black pepper than ginger, and vice versa, and bingo! they taste different.
And since this scales exponentially in the number of ingredients (Ed: math geek alert!), this is a game that the grandmas were good at, and doggone it, they were not playing for mere stakes, they were playing to win!
Which brings us to the present. Multiple recipes for the same idea. Whenever the CC posts a classic spice recipe, there is a hangover that follows ("my family does it differently.")
Well, DUH!!!! Of course, they do. Which doesn't make it more "authentic". It just makes it as the baseline against which you compare.
The CC once made string beans with a classic North-Indian twist. Stir-fried with ajwain and cumin. The audience just pushed it away.
"This is not how I conceptualize string beans."
Total abject failure. Not one would eat it.
"Where's the coconut milk?", said one, his Asian roots showing.
Anyway, to get back to the subject before yet another post about the dubiousness of "authenticity" surfaces, back in the day, they made these spices in industrial-strength sizes. We are a little more circumspect, and need to tone it down a bit as explained by this post.
So when the next need to complain about "authenticity" arises, why not just lie down until it goes away?
Sunday, August 17, 2008
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