Stir-fried Cabbage with Fish Sauce (กะหล่ำปลีทอดน้ำปลา)

Stir-fried Cabbage with fish sauce or Ka Lam Plee Tod Nam Pla (กะหล่ำปลีทอดน้ำปลา) is a very popular vegetable dish in Thailand. I got this vegetable recipe from Pantip.com. Pantip.com is a popular Thai language internet forum. And also the recipe is widespread being shared on the Social Media.

Actually there are two versions of Stir-fried Cabbage with fish sauce or Ka Lam Plee Tod Nam Pla (กะหล่ำปลีทอดน้ำปลา).  The differences are the process – one: deep fry cabbage before stir frying it with fish sauce and the other one: use small amount of oil and use fish sauce to steam the cabbage on a hot steel wok. And this recipe is the second one.  

What is the secret turns this simple dish to be a popular dish? There are two factors – first one: (to have) a good fish sauce, and second: the steam and caramel from the fish sauce (see the instructions) that is created from a hot wok to produce a good result.

* Use a steel wok only!

For 2 servings

   

Ingredients 

400 g.                       Asian Cabbage

3 – 5 cloves              Garlic, crush and chop roughly

2 tbsp                       Fish sauce

3 tbsp                       Vegetable oil

Instructions

1. Separate each leaf and wash the cabbage in the cool tap water or if the cabbage is not fresh then soak the leaves in cool water for a few hours or until the leaves are crisp.
2. Drain the cabbage leaves and cut or break into big pieces or 2.5 x 3 inches.
3.  Heat the wok over high heat, and add oil and follow with garlic.
4. Leave the garlic in hot oil for a second and follow with the cabbage, and leave the cabbage in the hot wok for 20 – 30 seconds or count 1 – 10.
5. Stir and toss and mix the cabbage with oil and garlic well and pile the cabbage in the middle of the wok.
6. Pour fish sauce on the wok around the cabbage. Let the fish sauce creates steam on the hot wok so that fish sauce steam will cover and cook the cabbage. Leave it for 20 second or count 1 – 10.
7. Stir and toss and mix the cabbage with fish sauce caramel that burned on the wok totally for 20 second or count 1 – 10.
8. Remove from heat and transfer the cabbage to a serving plate. Serve hot with steamed Jasmine rice. 

Khua Kling Moo

Khua Kling, literally dry frying (“Khua” means the kind of cooking process with little water or no water at all and cook until the food is very dry, for “Kling” means tossing or rolling, and for “Moo” means pork), is one of  well known southern Thai dishes.

Southern Thai food is significantly different than the food from the other parts of Thailandas Southern Thai food got a lot influence from Indian, Arab and Persian cuisine. Turmeric is an important ingredient and plays a big part in Southern Thai food.

In general Southern Thai food is very spicy it can be burning hot so when you go to a restaurant in Southern Thailand, they always give you a basket or big plate of fresh vegetables covering with ice. These vegetables help to reduce feeling burning hot your tongue.

For this recipe it is not that spicy compares with Khua Kling in Southern Thailand but the flavor is still real Southern Thai food. You can use other kinds of meat like chicken, beef or fish but if you use fish then you should reduce ½ cup of water to be 1 – 2 tbsp of water and the cooking time should be reduced too so that fish will not be over cooked.

**** Very spicy

Ingredients

500g.              Minced pork loin

3 tbsp             Thai southern style curry paste (see recipe below)

½ cup             Water

2 tbsp             Fish sauce (adjustable, each brand of fish sauce has different level of sodium)

2 tbsp             Vegetable Oil

1 ½ tsp           Palm sugar

5                     Kaffir Lime leaves, cut into very thin stripes

Instructions on video

Instructions

1. Heat the wok over medium high heat, add vegetable oil and following with minced pork. Cook until pork turns prink and add curry paste, fish sauce, and palm sugar, and mix well.
2. Lower the heat to medium, add water and cook until pork is tender and dry.
3. Turn of the heat, add Kaffir lime leaves and mix well
4. Serve with lots of fresh vegetables like cucumber, lettuce, snake beans etc, and steamed Jasmine rice.

Thai Southern Style Curry Paste

Instructions on video

Ingredients

12                Dried Thai chilies or dried Prik Kee Noo

6                Fresh Thai chilies or fresh Prik Kee Noo, chopped

3 cloves       Garlic, chopped

2                  Shallots, chopped

1 ½ tbsp      Chopped turmeric (about 2 inches long of turmeric)

2 tbsp          Galangal, finely chopped

2 tbsp           Lemongrass, finely chopped

1 tbsp          Fresh ground pepper

1 ½ - 2 tsp    Shrimp paste

¼ tsp Salt

Instructions

1. Soak dried chilies in a bowl of boiling or hot water until soft 15 minutes to 30 minutes depends on the temperature of water – hotter water takes less time. Rinse and remove the seeds, and finely chop.
2. Wrap shrimp paste with a piece of tin foil and roast on the cook top of a stove until smelling the air with an aroma.
3. Put all the ingredients in the mortar, and pound and crush with the pestle until smooth. It can be done with a food processor also. (Store in the freezer if you don't use all at once). 

Pad Cha Squid

Pad Cha (literally, stir-frying with cha cha sound or sizzling sound of burning food from the hot wok.) is a very popular stir-fried spicy dish and commonly is seafood. Pad Cha dish has many different versions from different kinds of seafood for example squid, fish, shrimp, crab and or clam. Each kind of seafood may have slightly different flavors from different herbs beside the kind of seafood itself.

This dish has a very nice and strong fragrance from herbs which is good as the herbs be able to cover the smell of seafood and at the same time the aroma and nice flavor delight the palate.

This dish is not complicated to make, and it doesn't consume a lot of time to make either, to create a nice real Thai meal at home.

*All the ingredients are available at Asian grocery stores.

For 2 servings

Ingredients

1                         Fresh squid (about 400 – 420g.)

3                         Fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo (adjustable)

3 cloves             Garlic

½ cup                 Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil

¼ cup                Fingerroot (about 3 - 4 roots), shredded or cut into stripes

2 tbsps               Young or green peppercorn

2 - 3 tbsps          Vegetable oil

1 tbsp                 Fish sauce (adjustable)

1 tbsp                 Oyster sauce

2 - 3 tbsps          Water

Garnish (optional)

¼ cup  Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil – for deep frying in oil until crisp.

You can also follow the instructions from the video.

Instructions

1. Cut the squid tube in half lengthwise. Clean and remove the quills. Cut into rectangle or square pieces and cut each piece a criss-cross pattern on the inside of the squid.
2. Pound fresh Thai chilli and garlic in mortar until break to be small pieces or you can use a knife to chop chillies and garlic.
3. Place the wok on medium heat with vegetable oil and swirl the oil to cover the bottom of the wok.
4. Add the mixture of chilli and garlic, stir-frying until its sends the fragrance and then add squid and stir to mix well.
5. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, young pepper corn, fingerroot and stir to mix well and add the water on the wok beside the food and so that water will be hot before the water mix into food.
6.  At last, add Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil and mix into the mixture and stir until Holy basil wilt and remove from heat.
7. Garnish with crispy Bai Ga Prao. Serve hot with hot steamed Jasmine rice.

Pad Prik Khing with Squid

Pad Prik Khing is one of popular Khao Khaeng dishes. Raan Khao Khaeng is a type of traditional Thai diner; the style of this diner is similar to cafeteria that all the food, it can be 20 – 30 different kinds of items are ready made and display for customers to choose and food will be served to you at the table.

Raan Khao Khaeng is one of food services that play a big part of city life; people who living in cities from low level labours to white collars rely on it as it is served as a breakfast, lunch and or dinner for many people. Every time when government increase the price of cooking gas (In Thailand, the price of cooking gas is controlled by government) and the prices of Khao Khaeng food will increase as well. Often the prices of food increase more than cooking gas by percentage because it’s easy to take an advantage of increasing the price of food each time by 5 baths rather than 1 or 2 bath base on the part that increased. The gas price increased last time was in February 2013 and the prices of Khao Khaeng food are still at 25 – 40 baths per dish. (Bath is, Thai currency, about 30 bath= 1 USD)  We use the prices of Khoa Khaeng measure the economy in a sense of everyday life of cost living so the inflation rate in Thailandis still pretty good as Khoa Khaeng food prices are not much different than many years before.

This recipe, I use curry paste from a can instead of making curry paste from scratch so that people who don’t have much time on cooking will be able to enjoy some Thai food. Some time I will post another recipe with homemade curry paste on this blog as well.

*** Prik Khing curry paste in a can is available at Asian grocery stores.

     

Level of spiciness - mild

For 2 – 3 servings

Ingredients

2                      Fresh squid tubes, about 300g.(or 2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts)

1 ½ cups          Snake beans, cut into 1 inch

2 tbsps             Prik Khing Chilli Jam or Prik Khing Curry Paste (114g./can)

5                      Kaffir lime leaves, chop into very thin stripes

2 cloves           Garlic, chopped fine

 ²⁄₃ tsp              Sugar

1 tsp                Fish sauce

2 tbsp              Vegetable oil

2 – 3tbsps       Water

Instruction

1. Clean the squid and cut the squid tubes in half lengthways. Cut a criss-cross pattern on the inside of squid. Cut into 1 ¼ inch x 2 inch. Or if use chicken breasts, cut into ½ inch x 1 ¾ inch.
2. Heat the steel wok over high heat with 1 tbsp oil and swirl to coat. Add squid or chicken and chopped garlic, and stir-fry for 2 minutes and add curry paste. Mix well.
3. Stir in snake beans, sugar, fish sauce, the other tbsp of oil. Stir-fry for another 2-3 minutes during the process adds 1 -2 tbsp of water before remove from heat stir in kaffir lime leaves.
4. Serve with steamed rice.

Gai Pad Khing or Kai Phat Khing

Gai Pad Khing or Kai Phat Khing (literally, stir-fried chicken with ginger) original this dish is from Taejew Chinese food (Taejew is one of Chinese dialects and it is the biggest group of Chinese in Thailand). This dish is used to be found at Raan Khao Tom which is kind of Taejew Chinese restaurant (literally for Raan Khao Tom, rice porridge shop) but nowadays it is available almost every Raan Khao Khaeng. Raan Khao Khaeng is a short order Thai restaurant, it is a Thai fast food but all the food is made from scratch everyday. Gai Pad Khing is pretty much one of Raan Khao Khaeng’s main dishes.

Chinese immigrants introduced ginger to Thai people through Chinese food in Thailand, when we talk about ginger we will think about some of Chinese dishes that have been known for a long time and became a common food for Thai people, for example - Pad Khing, steamed fish with ginger and as well as a well-known dessert called Bua Loy Nam Khing , is made of sticky rice dough balls in the ginger and brown sugar water. Chinese people use this dessert as part of a wedding ceremony.

Ingredients

2                 Chicken breasts (about 400 g.), cut into ½ inch x 1 ¾ inches

3 cloves      Garlic, chopped fine

¹⁄₆ tsp          Salt

2 tsp            Soy sauce

Marinate chicken with other ingredients above for an hour.

½ cup          Young ginger, shredded

1                  Onion,small, cut into ½ inch wedges

¹⁄₂  cup        Cloud or wood ear or Chinese black fungus, soak in warm water until soft and cut into stripe ½ inch x 2 inches 

Vegetable cuts



3                 Green onion, cut into ¾ inch long

½ tsp           Sugar

1 ½ tbsp      Soy sauce

1 ½ tbsp      Cooking wine

4  tbsp         Oil

6 – 8 tbsp    Water

Instruction

1. Heat a steel wok over high heat, and add 2 tbsp oil until smoke coming up from the wok. Add marinated chicken, stirring and breaking up any lumps until chicken turned pale colour.
2. Add cooking wine and stir and flip a few times with a spatula. Add more oil, ginger, onion, fungus, and stir and flip a few times, and add soy sauce. During this process add 2 -3 times of water. Cook until vegetables wilted.
3. Just before remove from heat, add green onion and mix well. 
4. Serve with steamed rice

   

   On the left is dried fungus and after soak in water the size can be as big as on the right