Eating Around the World (From Home....And Gluten Free...): Thailand

Welcome to Thailand! We took a detour on our way to Monaco because we had Delightful Dad here, who loves the national dish of Thailand. Thailand has always interested me and a place I would love to visit and take some cooking classes - I do love Thai food! "Thai" means "free man" - Thailand has never developed a national army. Thailand loves animals, and has an annual monkey buffet, where they set up a buffet for monkeys! According to Google, the population of Thailand is 70.03 million people and the capital is Bangkok. Their national dish is...

Pad Thai!

I love Pad Thai. I have a really good recipe for it that I have been making for years, and was hesitant to make a different type. However, we agreed that we wanted to try an authentic (or as authentic as we could find) recipe, so below is what we found. To go with the Pad Thai, we made Thai iced tea and Thai sticky mango rice. It didn't seem complicated to get all of these things made, but coordinating the timing of it all was a bit tricky. Here's what we did:

PAD THAI

Sauce

5 tbsp palm sugar, chopped

3 tbsp water

4 tbsp Thai cooking tamarind

2 tbsp fish sauce

Pad Thai

4 oz dry rice noodles, medium size, soak in room temp water for 1 hour

2 tbsp dried shrimp, medium size, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 C roughly chopped shallots

Dried chili flakes, to taste

3 tbsp vegetable oil

10 medium sized shrimp

2 eggs

2 1/2 C bean sprouts

7-10 stalks garlic chives, cut into 2” pieces

1 lime

1. To make the sauce, add palm sugar to a small pot and melt over medium heat.
2. Once the sugar is melting, keep stirring until it darkens in color.
3. Immediately add water, fish sauce, and tamarind paste. The sugar will harden immediately and this is okay.
4. Bring sauce to a simmer, then turn off heat.
5. The hardened sugar will not have dissolved at this point, but let it sit while you prep other ingredients and it should be dissolved by the time you need it.
6. In a bowl, combine garlic, shallots, dried shrimp, and chili flakes.
7. Heat a large skillet over high heat and add just enough oil to coat the bottom.
8. Sear shrimp until done and remove them from pan.
9. In the same skillet over medium heat, add a little more oil if needed, then add everything in the bowl and sauté for a few minutes until garlic starts to turn golden and shallots are wilted.
10. Add more oil if the skillet looks dry.
11. Turn heat up to high then add noodles and sauce.
12. Keep tossing until all the sauce is absorbed.
13. Once sauce is absorbed, you can turn off the heat and taste the noodles for doneness. If they're still undercooked, add a little more water and continue cooking.
14. Once noodles are done, push them to one side of the pan.
15. Add a little extra oil to the empty space and add eggs.
16. Break the yolks, then put noodles on top of eggs and cook for about 30 seconds.
17. Flip and toss to mix eggs into noodles.
18. Toss the cooked protein back in, plus any collected juices.
19. Then add bean sprouts and garlic chives.
20. Turn off the heat and toss until well mixed.
21. Serve immediately with a lime wedge.
22. Enjoy!

(Source: Pad Thai)

THAI ICED TEA

2 black tea bags

1 pod star anise

2 pods cardamom

1/2 cinnamon stick

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp almond extract

1 C boiling water

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp sweetened condensed milk

2 tsp evaporated milk

1. Steep tea, star anise, cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla, and almond extract in boiling water for five minutes.
2. Strain the mixture with a fine-mesh strainer.
3. Stir in sugar and sweetened condensed milk until both are completely dissolved.
4. Fill 2 tall glasses with ice.
5. Pour the tea over the ice, leaving an inch or so of space at the top for the evaporated milk.
6. Top up with more ice if needed, and then drizzle with evaporated milk on each glass of tea.
7. Enjoy!

(Source: Thai Iced Tea)

THAI MANGO STICKY RICE

1 C glutinous rice

1 C coconut milk

3 tbsp sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cornstarch

1 ripe yellow mango, peeled and sliced

1. Soak the rice in room-temperature water for one hour.
2. Strain and rinse rice to remove extra starch.
3. Bring 2 C water to a boil, and add the rice.
4. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook for 20 minutes.
5. While the rice is cooking, put coconut milk, sugar, and salt into a small pan and warm over medium heat.
6. Once the rice is cooked through with no hard, raw bits in the middle of the grains, transfer to a mixing bowl.
7. Slowly pour the warm coconut milk mixture over the cooked rice, stirring frequently to coat the rice in the coconut milk mixture, but watching so that you are not oversaturating the rice to the point that there are puddles of coconut milk.
8. Continue stirring and stop adding the sweetened coconut milk once it looks like the rice is saturated.
9. Set the rice aside for 20 minutes to finish absorbing the coconut milk.
10. Keep the remaining coconut mixture for later.
11. When the rice has absorbed the coconut mixture, spoon a helping on a small plate.
12. Add mango slices to the side, and top with extra coconut mixture.
13. Serve room temperature, and enjoy!

(Source: Thai Mango Sticky Rice)

The verdict? We liked my other Pad Thai recipe better. This one was good, but not as good. I didn't like the dried shrimp in this recipe - it was very chewy and very fishy. Handsome Husband didn't mind it so much, but I picked mine out. The sauce was more of a sour sauce, but with the noodles, it mellowed it out quite a bit. I missed the lime taste that is in my recipe. The recipe also called for peanuts, but we chose to skip them due to allergies around the table. The sticky rice was not my favorite either. The texture was gummy or mushy - I'm not really sure what to call it. The coconut topping helped, but still not my favorite. The mangos, however, were delicious! The tea wasn't what I expected either. I typically don't like Thai iced tea, but this one was good. It had a lot of interesting flavors. We all agreed that there was too much of an almond flavor, so if we make it again, we would cut down on the almond extract. I also think I would use half and half instead of evaporated milk, so that it's not as sweet. Overall, it was a decent meal, but not one that we will make again. At least not with this recipe...