Meowie's Foodies Foodgasms And Addictions

Meowie’s Note:

Sawasdeeka from the Land of Smiles! It took me so long to post, and another apology is not accepted.  It’s been quite busy considering the fact that were living in a village in the northern part of Thailand. So, without further ado… this is one of the Thai dishes that I love and I am proudly sharing it with you.  It is very easy to make, yet the flavours are quite exotic (for those who hasn’t been to Asia yet) and just have this really home-cooked meal goodness.

Also, I used ground pork here.  Where we are it is quite a luxury to have beef in our market. Chicken, pork and fish is quite plenty– although when it comes to seafood there is not much of a variety unfortunately. But whatever it is that we have I make sure  that every substitute is as good as the original one. That’s a bit of a challenge, but when you’re a Cook by heart, your gut instincts tells you and you have to follow it and it’s all worth it!

Enough of the blahs, and let’s get cookin’!

Here are the ingredients:

(Serves 4-6)

1 pound of ground pork, beef, or chicken
8 large cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped finely
6 bird’s eye chilies (or however many you can tolerate) I would usually put less than that, am not a spicy eater! lol.
1 large shallot or medium sweet onion, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon Kecap Manis
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
about a few leaves of Holy Basil

Procedure(s):

1)    If you have a mortar or an eartherware 9 inch mortar, with a wooden pestle.   Ideal for grinding herbs and spices and for making curry pastes. The   earthenare mortar and pestle also sometimes known as the Laos or Laotian mortar and pestle is commonly used to make Green Papaya Salad (sohm tahm) which is a dish of Issan, or North East Thailand. This set works best for salad making because of its larger bowl size. The spices are mashed up first with the wooden pestle and then the shredded papaya is added. This is then pounded and tossed to blend the ingredients. We go back to our ingredients…pound together the garlic, chilies, and shallot until you get a coarse paste. If no mortar, either chop them all up with a cleaver on a chopping block or pulse them into a coarse paste in a mini-chopper attached to a blender..or whatever just make it finely chopped if you don’t want to mess with such things!

2)   In a frying pan or skillet, heat up the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add the paste to it and fry until fragrant.

3)   Add the meat to the skillet and break it up with the cooking or slotted  spoon, cooked until slightly brown.

4)   Add the remaining ingredients, taste before adding the seasoning. I love my pad kra-pao a little bit sweet (my husband is not in favor with that, but he knows when I make it, he still loves it! hrhrhrhrrhr) so I would add a half a teaspoon of sugar, you can use white or brown sugar either way works fine.  I heard locals just use soy sauce instead of oyster sauce or if they can get away with just the fish sauce alone.

5)   Once the meat is cooked through, check the amount of liquid in the skillet. If it’s too dry, add a little bit of water or sodium-free broth or if you don’t have available you can drop in half of beef/pork/chicken/vegetable bouillon cube with a little bit of water.

6)   Before taking the frying pan or skillet off the heat, add the basil leaves to the mixture and give it a couple of stirs. We just want to wilt the basil with the residual heat that is still in the pan so as not to mute the fragrance of the fresh holy basil leaves and you can always add more if you love Holy Basil as much as I do, but sometimes people don’t like the smell of H.Basil. So ask first if I were you before putting a generous amount.

7)   Serve over a nice hot steamed rice, and another option would be a  Thai-style crispy fried egg on top (aka known as sunny side up) and a tiny bowl of nam-pla prik on the side. Otherwise, you can go ahead and dig in!

I am very fortunate to know the cuisine to my advantage just being here and living the life as a local folk.  I am hoping to learn more and share it with you as much as I can!

As always, Bon apetite!

xx

Meowie