Recipe of the Week: Sunday Thai Food

Kyle and I are getting ready for our big kitchen remodel! If you look at our photos taken from our cooking adventures, you will notice how I strategically photograph things to avoid capturing our hideous countertops and 1960s appliances. I am looking forward to having a beautiful new kitchen as a backdrop to my food photos.

While spending a day packing away dishes and scraping the last dregs of ugly wall paper off a kitchen wall, Kyle and I decided to say farewell to the old kitchen with a Thai food extravaganza. Instead of our usual Thai take-out, we picked out a couple of recipes from a cookbook I picked up from the library. It is a cookbook for Keo's Thai Cuisine, an amazing Thai/pan-Asian restaurant in Waikiki.

Several years ago, my friend Ali and I traveled to Hawaii as a part of the Japanese Community Queen Scholarship Program and were wined and dined for a week. Keo's was one of the stops on the trip, and when I found their cookbook, I was instantly transported back to the amazing dinner we had on that trip. Although my attempt was not quite up to par with the restaurant and took about 1 1/2 hours of shopping at Ranch 99 in order to find all the ingredients, it was well worth it in the end. I will post the recipes for all three dishes we tried over the next couple of weeks!

Evil Jungle Prince with Chicken

Ingredients:

1/2 lb boneless chicken breasts

2-6 small red chile peppers

1/2 stalk fresh lemon grass

2 kaffir lime leaves (I think they are also called curry leaves, and found them in the produce section of Ranch 99)

2 TBS Vegetable Oil

1/2 cup coconut milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-3 TBS fish sauce (amount depends on brand and personal taste--Kyle and I found a bottle of the stuff that was made in Thailand, so we thought it would have a more "authentic" taste!)

10-15 sweet basil leaves (make sure you get the Thai basil, not Italian...)

1 cup chopped cabbage (we got Napa cabbage which is a little crunchier and sexier than boring normal cabbage!)

Thinly cut chicken into 2-inch strips. I found that if you slice the chicken length-wise in thin strips and then cut those strips in half width-wise, they end up perfect for this dish. Grind together red chile peppers, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves in a food processor or pound in a motar. Heat oil to medium-high and saute pepper mixture for 3 minutes. Stir in coconut milk and cook for 2 minutes. Add chicken and cook for 5 minutes, or until cooked. Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in fish sauce and basil. Serve on bed of chopped cabbage. I have to note that the dish ended up a bit salty, so I would reccommend going easy on the fish sauce and extra salt. You can always add salt, but unfortunately cannot take away salt once it is in the dish....

Thai Broccoli Noodles with Shrimp...look for the recipe in next week's post!



A very blurry photo of the eggplant with chicken...look for the recipe in another future post!

Happy Eating,

Emi