thai food

yep def better when on the dry side. if a forkful of it drips, that's too much sauce.

xp the sweetness should be in balance with the spiciness and saltiness tho, like in basically every thai dish. americans are known to prefer sweet things and lots of places will up the sweetness in their dishes to appease/lure them.

yeah i use tamarind, it's not that kind of sweet that's bad though it's too much added sugar

i had some really nice Pad Kee Mao the other day from a pretty mediocre restaurant. it might be my new favorite fried noodle dish.

was in bangkok for 5 days a couple of weeks ago + holy shit that city has so much good food

omg made a jungle curry that is destroying my insides as we speak

brb, dying

screaming matches with my hallucinations brb

abrby's

love it, gives me spicy poos tho

(move to tmi ughhhhhhhhh)

do u know of any good vegan versions of fish sauce

i love spicy food and all. and i hate when i go into an asian or indiain restaurant and they give my white ass the "minnesota hot" variation of their food. but there were some amounts in this recipe i found ~very suspect~ and should have trusted my gut.

xp idk if that's possible, exactly? fish sauce is the runoff from salted down fish, you'd maybe have to work out some weird substitute?

o hai: http://www.thaigrocer.com/VegAdapt.html

I discovered the recipe for amazing Pad Thai recently. This is amazing shit that I've found that only 1/10 Thai restaurants gets right. The secret sauce is made of 1 part fish sauce, 1 part tamarind paste, and 1 part palm sugar. Mix them and cook over heat until dissolved. Then cook it with rice noodles!

thai was never my favorite but it has slipped down the power rankings to the extreme low end of choices for home cooking or dining out.

sadly, not a fan!

Is it possible that you don't have a good Thai place near you? I used to think Chinese food sucked until I went to a real Chinese place with real Chinese-Szechuan food (i.e. not deep fried meat covered in generic sweet sauce sitting under a heat lamp, like 99.99999% of Chinese restaurants in the US). It was fucking amazing and it's currently my favorite restaurant of all time.

I have eaten Thai across the globe including in Thailand with some resident gourmets/foodies. It's not a matter of access to Thai restaurants but just that my taste for it is pretty low.

I do like that you point out your preference to cook the spices down because I've found that a majority of Thai chefs would rather leave the spices in a raw or partially developed state which is probably the biggest turnoff. Either that or the abundance of sugar in everything. Bold, overt sweet flavors are probably my #1 biggest culinary turn-off (other than for dessert obviously and even then it remains a factor).

I think bold sweet flavors are my favorite thing =(

I am kinda full of shit...

I mean how many times have I asked you about HK milk tea? Or disclosed home many jars of nutella I consume on a monthly basis. :E

lol no worries. it's just that bold, sweet flavors are pretty present in a lot of chinese cooking

Thai food has a sweet/salty thing going on, which is why it's so delectable to me.

i dont think thai food in thailand is that sweet? i remember them liking sour things more

i guess i mean compared to anglicised thai food

I was in the southern part of thailand (just north of phuket, very local & not touristy) and I remember sugar being in EVERYTHING. there were these bottles of soy sauce on the table and they'd be almost as sweet as honey. my friend who was teaching english there confirmed that they put sugar in nearly everything. might have just been a regional thing tho

hmmmmmm yeah ive only been to bangkok

(and really really loved the food there)

don't know how authentic this is but the "lamb mince with broccoli" dish on this page is like one of my favourite simple dinners...so amazing. eating it right now :)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/19/recipe-foodanddrink

I remember sugar being a condiment at most restaurants and private homes we dined at (especially those in Bangkok JS), similar to salt and pepper. Actually instead of salt they had ajinomoto...

yeah they did that a lot in vietnam as well (the msg)

oh weird, i always think of thai food as having only minimal amounts of sugar and being more about the chillies and lime leaves and galanga and stuff. i've never been to thailand, all i know is from cooking at home and nearby restaurants (fwiw tho my neighborhood is home to a pretty mondo hmong population)

i looked up a thing:

Today many view Frogtown as a new enclave for Vietnamese and now Hmong immigrants, who, in Saint Paul, comprise the largest urban contingent in the United States

(also turns out i'm not technically in frogtown, just one neighborhood over, but anyway rah rah thai food etc)

What is the best way to fry curry paste when making a curry? I've tried numerous times to heat the coconut milk until the oils and solids separate and then to fry the paste in that, but it just gets really thick and starts browning/burning. What am I doing wrong?

I've never tried frying it in the coconut milk. I just put a little oil in a skillet, maybe some garlic, a bit of ginger, some onion, then when the onions are soft I stir in some curry paste until it becomes fragrant, then add the coconut milk.

xp are you frying the cream part of the tin of coconut milk? the top, thick parts of the can?

yeah, and I use Chaokoh so it's got a really nice thick cream w/ no emulsifiers.

I usu put it in the fridge overnight.

best thai food porn ever

i've lived there and am pretty sure you can safely label the people of thailand "foodies". they take this shit seriously, as amply demonstrated by the variety of dishes available from street food vendors in the above thread.

thread link

omg made a jungle curry that is destroying my insides as we speak

i'm not a spice wuss but had some sort of jungle curry at Jitlada (place had the biggest disparity between food quality and service ever) in LA that was really tasty but i could barely eat any of it cause of the heat, bummed me out cause i don't live in LA and had been looking forward to a meal there.

yeah, and I use Chaokoh so it's got a really nice thick cream w/ no emulsifiers.

― Yo! MTV La Tengo (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, 29 January 2013 05:27 (4 hours ago) Permalink

hmmm that sucks then, that was my one pro tip that helped me.

I've never tried frying it in the coconut milk. I just put a little oil in a skillet, maybe some garlic, a bit of ginger, some onion, then when the onions are soft I stir in some curry paste until it becomes fragrant, then add the coconut milk.

yeah isn't the paste always before the milk? this makes sense in terms of cooking generally, at least anything else like this you tend to let your aromatic stuff get going before you add the bulk of liquid.

you tend to let your aromatic stuff get going before you add the bulk of liquid.

yeah you do this, you fry it in the fat from the cream, then you tip in the rest of the milk... as per - http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/greencurp.html

ah okay... i must try that way.

wouldnt it be easier just to start frying the paste in oil (maybe coconut oil?) and then put the cream in tablespoon by tablespoon separating each time

Okay so now my general technique is:

Fry 2T red curry paste in some oil for a few min
Add 1 can coconut milk, mix together
Add 1 lb protein (I've only done chicken and beef), cook for a bit
Add veggies, cook until tender
Balance flavors w/ fish sauce, palm sugar, etc (usu 1T of each)

Tonight I'm going to make a red fish curry w/ broc, bell pep, shallot, mushroom. I am thinking of a) frying some kaffir lime leaves w/ the curry paste/simmering them in the coconut milk b) maybe frying the shallot w the paste too c) adding the veggies with or even before the fish time bcz the fish only takes a few minutes to cook.

Is this OK enough re: my proportions, technique, order of stuff? How can I improve my thai curry game?

I'm no Thai expert, just an amateur cook, but it sounds pretty good to me. I agree with shallot in the oil first, and def. the veggies before the fish. Depending on what the veggies are, you may even what to steam/blanche them a bit before adding them to the coconut milk.

Also jarred curry paste is usually not spicy enough for my taste, so I'd also chop up a few chili peppers and fry them with the oil & shallots, but that's just me.

I usually saute the protein and veg in the curry paste before adding the milk, so that they get some more of the flavor. But I've never really explored proper technique so I am probably breaking several curry laws lol

Probably would work fine with most proteins, but I think fish prob. too delicate for that.

mackerel