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Archive for May, 2013

~Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel Recipe~

Posted in Recipes, Thai Curry Recipe, Thai Gluten Free Recipe, Thai Ingredient 101, Thai Main Dish Recipe, tagged , , , , , , on May 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Love the One You’re With

When you want to cook Thai food outside of Thailand and rare ingredients are missing or their availability is limited, we learn how to make substitutions for critical ingredients. Thus it often transpires that some ingredients in traditional dishes change over time. Green papaya salad – Som Tum – is not acceptable without green papaya, so how do you create this traditional dish when the freshest texture and flavor are important and all you can find is an aging and bitter green papaya? My friend in Switzerland and some Hmong farmers in the Pacific Northwest use sweet, fresh local carrots from their gardens in place of the hard-to-find green papaya. The homesickness for this traditional dish can be cured by the sound of the mortar and pestle and the pungent authenticity of the rest of the ingredients. I never forgot the taste of the Som Tum I ate in Switzerland after being away from Thailand for two months for the first time. Love the one you’re with!

Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel

Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel

The best and freshest ingredients from our garden can also replace the absent or impossible to find tamarind leaves. This is perhaps what led me to this next local Pacific Northwest ingredient—sorrel—and the discovery of a pattern of substitutions: the similarity of the texture of carrots to that of green papayas, the similarity of the flavor of sorrel leaves to young tamarind leaves, and the similarity of the flavor and texture of green apples to green mangoes. I am not here to change Thai cuisine. These new dishes arenot the same as the old, but the substitution of nostalgia for a traditional culinary love affair.
young tamarind leaves

Young tamarind leaves

My photos from a fresh market in Surathani
Young Tamarind Leaves 
ยอดใบมะขามอ่อน
Yod Bai MaKham Oon
Young tamarind leaves have been used as food in Southeast Asia for a long time. My family and other Thais in my village cook them in vegetable stews like Tom Som and use them to add a sour flavor to coconut milk and non-coconut milk based curry dishes. In addition to having a delightful tangy sour taste, tamarind leaves have a medicinal benefit: they are packed full of vitamin A.
Sorrel

Sorrel – ซอรเรล – Rumex acetosa

Sorrel– ซอรเรล- Rumex acetosa is native to Europe and northern Asia. Only 15 years ago, I discovered cooking with sorrel for the first time. It was at a Thai community kitchen when some elders from Lao and Cambodia brought a fresh sorrel and vegetable condiment. Then my friend Ruth Huffman showed me the sorrel  in her garden. Ruth uses it as a leaf vegetable and culinary herb. Now I have three vegetables in my garden from the Polygonaceae (buck wheat) family: regular sorrel, sorrel ‘raspberry dressing’, and rhubarb. Sorrel is recommended for eating in small quantities because of its oxalic acid content. High levels of oxalic acid, like in the green in rhubarb leaves, can be a poison. In the recipe below,  you can use more Swiss chard if you do not have sorrel and simply add more lime juice as desired. I am staying in town this summer and you will find me posting more Thai recipes made with wholesome local sustainable foods. My summer lifestyle is big on gardening, grilling, and entertaining outdoors.
Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel

Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel

From left to right, I combine regular sorrel, sorrel ‘raspberry dressing,’ and baby Swiss chard from my garden in this curry.
You can find sorrel and Swiss chard all year long in the Pacific Northwest.

Khmer Chicken Curry with Sorrel leaves

แกงไก่เขมรใบซอรเรล

Gaeng Gai Khmer Bai Sorrel

The delightful taste of Khmer chicken curry with sorrel leaves can make it hard to make the recipe stretch to six servings. This curry is more of a comfort food, reminiscent of vegetable stew, with a hint of citrus curry—rice porridge with a wonderful aroma. It is packed with health benefits from fresh turmeric, galangal, and tamarind or sorrel leaves. The curry is flavorful, but not hot, and the coconut milk is only required to taste. The toasted rice makes the soup rich in texture but light in taste. I enjoy this as a one-dish curry meal with a bit of steamed rice on the side. This recipe tastes best made with fresh Khmer Curry Paste or Phuket Curry Paste.

Serves: 4–6

3 tablespoons canola oil
1 chicken breast or 4 chicken thighs, sliced
5 tablespoons Khmer curry paste 0r 3 tablespoons Phuket Red Curry Paste or 3 tablespoon Thai red curry paste
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/4  cup to 1/2 cup coconut milk
3 to 5 tablespoons toasted rice powder
2 cups sorrel leaves
2 cups Swiss chard leaves
½ tablespoon lime or tamarind concentrate
1 tablespoon palm sugar, optional
 

Heat a pot with a heavy bottom on medium-high heat, then stir in canola oil, chicken, and Khmer curry paste; cook until fragrant and you see the oil separate out from the remainder of the ingredients. Pour in 1 cup water and let cook on medium heat with the lid on until the chicken is tender, about 10 minutes.

Stir in coconut milk and toasted rice powder and cook for 5 more minutes. Stir in sorrel, Swiss chard leaves, and lime juice and cook for 30 seconds. Serve right away with warm steamed jasmine rice.

 
© 2013  Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen
I Love Thai cooking
Pranee teaches Thai Cooking classes in the Seattle area.
Her website is: I Love Thai cooking.com 
 
I grow my sorrel in a pot

I grow sorrel, sorrel “raspberry dressing” and Swiss chard in the same pot

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~Sweet Chili Vinaigrette Recipe~

Posted in Recipes, Thai Gluten Free Recipe, Thai Recipe for Kid, Thai Salad Recipe, Thai Sauce & Condiment Recipe, Thai Vegetarian Recipe, tagged , , , on May 7, 2013| 8 Comments »

East Meets West Salad Dressing

I have been gone from regularly writing in my blog and would like to thank you for your patience. I haven’t forgotten it. In fact, there are many posts with photos and recipes waiting in line! Finding time to focus on writing has been most challenging as I am thinking in two languages but must write it in only one. Here is the Sweet Chili Vinaigrette Recipe that I promised to recreate after the Thai Dinner at Dog Mountain Farm last fall. Finally last month I had a scrap of paper in my hand with my notes on the ingredients and quantities and all of the necessary ingredients in my kitchen. With a little fine tuning, Sweet Chili Vinaigrette is now ready to share with you to help you welcome summer. This delicious dressing has been enjoyed by my friends and family. It is good for easy entertaining as well as for an every day salad dressing. It is a Western dish with an Eastern twist!

Thai Flavor - Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

Mixed Salad with Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

Just two weeks ago I was lucky to have Sylvie, a French chef, caterer and the owner of Sylvie Cooks for lunch. While I prepared Asparagus & Lovage Soup, Sylvie helped me prepare the salad and sweet chili vinaigrette. Thirty minutes later we were enjoying the soup and salad in the warm sunlight on the deck. Thank you to Sylvie for a great presentation on plating the salad. In the photo I use an organic mixed green salad with a few fresh red sorrel leaves from my garden, a hard-boiled egg and a mandarin orange.

 
Mixed Salad Green, Hard-Boil Egg and Mandarin Orange with Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

Mixed Salad Green, Hard-Boil Egg and Mandarin Orange with Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

Having friends over for lunch should be fun and casual. In my case it is often spontaneous in time and cooking style as well.

Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

My Thai take on a vinaigrette when cooking for friends and family is not constrained to just one tradition. In fact, this is not a traditional Thai recipe but a study of the tastes of Thai ingredients co-existing with Western cuisine. It illustrates for students and blog followers that often we can take one ingredient beyond where we usually find it. In this recipe I use the Thai sweet chili sauce, fish sauce and lime juice that I would use in traditional Thai salad dressing (nahm yum) and combine them with the ingredients for a classic vinaigrette such as olive oil, vinegar and mustard.

The forecast for Seattle promises a long week of sunshine and warm weather, so I will prepare hard-boiled eggs and sweet chili vinaigrette again tonight and keep them in the fridge. For dessert, I will prepare Yangon Almond Pancake to serve with strawberries and whipped cream.

Sweet Chili Vinaigrette

น้ำสลัด

Sweet Chili Vinaigrette is easy to love and easy to adapt. The flavor is great—you will hardly recognize the fish sauce or sweet chili flavor, just a nice balance of sweet and salty. The fish sauce is used here in much the same way as a French vinaigrette uses anchovy. The sweet chili sauce has complex ingredients like garlic and chili, but is also just a plain sweet contribution. I love the tangy flavors of the vinaigrette. I recommend adding toasted sesame seeds to the dressing or to the salad itself to bring out more flavors of sesame oil and an essential oriental flavor and texture.

Yield: 1/2 cup

2 tablespoons sweet chili sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon coconut vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon white or black pepper powder
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Whisk sweet chili sauce, lime juice, coconut vinegar, fish sauce, sea salt, white pepper powder, mustard in a medium size bowl until well blended, about 30 seconds. While whisking rapidly with one hand, use the other hand to pour in the sesame oil and olive oil. Continue whisking for 1 more minute to emulsify the dressing. An alternative method is to place all of the ingredients in a salad dressing bottle and shake well, then shake well again before serving with your choice of salad.

 
© 2012  Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen
I Love Thai cooking
Pranee teaches Thai Cooking classes in the Seattle area.
Her website is: I Love Thai cooking.com 
 

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