Lemongrass soup with shrimp

or tom yam goong
Probably one of the most famous Thai dishes around the world is the one called tom yum kung. In English, it is sometimes called Hot and Sour Shrimp Soup or Lemongrass and Shrimp Soup. I took the above photograph at Pornsiri Kitchen in Samut Prakan this afternoon. This version has shrimp, but you could also cook it with chicken if you like. The basic ingredients are all the same. Shrimp, straw mushrooms, lightly crushed hot red chilis, sliced galangal, lemongrass stems, torn kaffir lime leaves, coriander, and seasoned with fish sauce, sugar and some lime juice. Use chicken stock to make up the soup. It is very quick and easy to make. In the supermarkets in Thailand, you can buy the starter kit with most ingredients for only about 8 baht!
If you would like to see how this dish was cooked, then visit our free downloads section:
http://www.enjoythaifood.com/videos/
This dish is number 21 in set 3. This video is 13 MB. If you have a slow internet connection or would like a better quality video clip you can now purchase CDs of the downloads. At the same time you will be helping to support the running cost of having so many free downloads! The pad thai video is the most popular one so far with over 1200 downloads in the last 7 days.
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Chicken Yellow Curry

You may remember me sharing you pictures last week of the Massaman Curry that I ate for lunch. I bought this at Seri Center where I quite often go at the weekend. This week I bought gang gari gai otherwise known as Chicken Yellow Curry.You might be interested to note that "gari" is actually a Tamil word which gave us the English word "curry". Like before, I ordered this meal with a roti. A few readers pointed out that I should really call it a "Parantha" as roti is a single layer and is cooked without oil. That might be true, but Thai people still call it "roti"!
The main ingredients include: coconut milk, potatoes, onion, palm sugar, fish sauce and deep-fried shallots. You could also add cherry tomatoes which I quite like to do in my curries. The meat here can either be chicken or beef. The ingredients for the yellow curry paste include: red spur chilies, roasted shallots, roasted garlic, galangal, ginger, lemon grass, coriander seeds, roasted cumin, curry powder, salt and shrimp paste. This curry has a sidedish of cucumber relish which I told you about last time.
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Noodles in a thick vegetable gravy

One of the first Thai meals I really enjoyed when I came to Thailand was this one - rat naa. It not only tasted good but the name was memorable too. I remember writing home and telling people that I had eaten a Thai dish made from rat (I was young back then). And not forgeting of course the other delicious meal made from cow pat (khao pat). Anyway, this meal is basically noodles served with a thick gravy containing kale (Chinese broccoli) and pork. However, I once had a version with seafood. The type of noodles is up to you. In the picture above you can see that I chose sen yai (the wide noodles). But, I sometimes have mee grob (deep fried noodles) with this dish to make a change. You can see that noodle in the picture below.
The recipe for rat naa varies a lot so some people, like myself, will cross town just to find the perfect version. Actually, I don't have to travel far as my local rat naa food shop is at the top of Tetsaban 4 Road where my school is located. It is easy to tell this is a popular shop as there is always a line of Thai people waiting to buy. There are two shops in my soi that cook rat naa. They are Ok but not perfect. So, I have to cross Sukhumwit Road to buy my noodles in gravy. A word of warning, if you go to my favourite shop then make sure you are very hungry. A normal serving costing only 25 baht will easily fill a big bowl. They give you a lot of gravy unlike other shops. For an extra 5 baht you can order special but don't do that unless you can eat for two people!
The recipe for rat naa that I want to share with you today is for food shops. The ingredients here are enough for 40 plates and apparently will only cost you 150-200 baht.
The main ingredients are:
เส้นก๋วยเตี๋ยวเส้นใหญ่ - wide noodles ( 2 kilograms)
เนื้อหมูสันในหั่นชิ้นพอคำ - sliced pork fillet (1.5 kilograms)
ผักคะน้าหั่น - sliced kale (1 kilogram)
กระเทียมสับละเอียด - chopped garlic (quarter of a cup)
พริกไทยป่น - ground pepper (1 tablespoon)
แป้งข้าวโพด - corn flour (6 tablespoons)
เต้าเจี้ยวดำ - fermented soybeans (quarter of a cup)
น้ำตาลทราย - sugar cane (quarter of a cup)
ซีอิ๊วขาว - light soy sauce (three quarters of a cup)
ซีอิ๊วดำ - dark soy sauce (quarter of a cup)
น้ำปลา - fish sauce (three quarters of a cup)
น้ำซุป - stock (half a cup)
น้ำมัน - oil (one and a half cups)
น้ำส้มพริกดอง - chili sauce in vinegar
Mix the pork with the light soy sauce, ground pepper and one tablespoon of sugar cane. Leave to marinate for one hour. Mix together the noodles and dark soy sauce. Add one tablespoon of oil to a wok. Once it is hot, add the noodles and fry until it is ready. Take out and place on a plate. Add the remainder of the oil to the wok. When it is hot, add the garlic and fry until it is fragant. Add the fermented soybeans and stir as you fry. Add the sliced pork and fry for a little longer. Then add the kale and stock. Season with sugar cane and fish sauce and give it a good stir. When it is boiling, add the corn flour which has been mixed with water. When it is ready, serve.
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Noodles Fried in Dark Soy Sauce

A little while ago, I blogged about a favourite dish of mine called noodles in a gravy (rat naa). Well, today I want to introduce you to its twin! Usually, if a food stall is cooking rat naa, they will also cook noodles fried in soy sauce (pad see-eel). You could say that this is the dry version. The noodles here are the wide ones called sen yai, although you could use the small ones such as sen lek. It is quite simple to cook. First fry some garlic until golden brown. Then add pork or chicken and fry until it is almost cooked. Add the noodles together with some dark soy sauce, then kale (Chinese broccoli) and one egg. You then season with soy sauce, sugar, salt and white vinegar. As usual, I have a video of one of my local food shops cooking this dish. There is also a new video of rat naa being cooked by this same shop. The videos are numbers 22 and 23 on the list.
http://www.enjoythaifood.com/videos/
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