Basic Thai Chili Sauce – Best Condiment

I was over at a friend’s home the other day (ok, it was Kristyn) and she said she was doing a Thai meal in a pressure cooker. Hmmm…I was intrigued. Thai food is almost never done in a pressure cooker, a blender, a crock pot or any other western appliance of that type.

Not that those tools can’t be used, it’s just that – well, they’re not.

But it looked good, and as I took a whiff from the pressure cooker, I could smell coconut milk, Thai basil, lemon grass and etc. It smelled really good! Then she left a comment here saying that it was just ok, not great.

There are three basic ingredients for every meal – salt, pepper and garlic. Salt, pepper and garlic. That’s it.

In Thai food, the salt comes from fish sauce, the pepper is chili and the garlic is – garlic.

This basic Thai chili sauce will make any pressure cooker meal taste great – be it Thai or anything else.

Mark my words.

Here’s how you make it -

You will need a mortar and pestle. I cannot in good conscience say you can substitute with another electrical tool because you will need to mash the garlic. It’s a very rustic and low tech method of cooking but the most effective as far as flavor profiles of Thai food goes. Notice I said mash the garlic, not blend, chop or pulverize the garlic.

In addition to garlic, you will need some dry chili peppers. I have used the McCormick ground peppers that you would put on your pizza but I like to mash the dried whole chili with the garlic. It’s just better, I can’t explain it any other way.

Put both the chilis and the garlic in the mortar and pestle and ground until you get a rough consistency. Don’t over ground – you might as well be using a blender if you do.

Put the mashed chilis and garlic in a bowl. Add fish sauce. This is about a half a cup.

Then squee in the juice of a half of a fresh lime.

Here’s the other culinary secret – taste your food. If it’s lacking in something, put some more of that ingredient in. I don’t want to make it appear too simplistic but some people will follow a recipe to a tee and never taste it. Constantly taste and then add something if necessary, especially if you are doing a dish for the first time. Sometimes I’m so full after cooking that I don’t eat that much at the meal. That’s how often I taste my food in the preparation process.

Cooking is an art -

So there you go, make this sauce and put it aside for later on. It does not need to be refrigerated but you cover it and use it within three or four days.

You can put it on you want -  but try this first. Make plain white rice (jasmine, not Uncle Ben’s) and boil an egg. Put this sauce on it, and it’s a meal. I promise you that pressure cooker meal will never taste better.

Thai Cucumber Salad

The husband and I – we have a little garden. It’s our pride and joy. And last week, we had a little harvest.

Five cucumbers. We were so proud!

I decided to make a Thai cucumber salad with them. I wasn’t quite sure if they were edible but they came from the ground in our yard and my hands weeded and tended the little garden myself. I was determined to eat them.

First you peel the skin off. Peeling the little one was fun. I actually ate this one in two bites after I peeled it.

This next step takes a little bit of practice. After peeling the cucumbers I used a,shredding technique that my mother taught me as a little girl. I take a sharp knife and using short chopping movements I hit the cucumber so that it creates small, almost julienne pieces. Make the cuts long and rough.

Once I make enough cuts, I thinly slice the pieces off cucumber, being careful to slice just as far as the cuts.

I know this may be intimidating. You can come over and we can practice;) No drinking wine until the chopping is over though. We need all of our faculties so we don’t hurt ourselves.

What you want are pieces of cucumber that looks something like this. As you can see, they are not uniformly cut.  It gives it a much more interesting texture.

Or you can just use a shredder. It’s up to you.

Here’s an important tip – use just the “flesh” of the cucumber. Don’t put in the seeds. They have too much water in them and the seed really detract from the salad. Discard the above.

Garlic – it’s the key to youth. I peel two cloves per three cucumbers. That’s two cloves per three cucumbers. I wanted to reiterate the more you use, the hotter the salad.

Put the garlic and some crushed red peppers (to taste) in your mortar and pestle so you can crush the ingredients together.

Or you can use a blender on pulse mode.

Once the garlic and peppers are crushed, put in the cucumbers and use the pestle to once again carefully crush the ingredients together. Just press down with slight pressure, don’t pulverize the ingredients.

I don’t have a photo of this for some reason…

Now add a roughly chopped tomato and the juice of a half a lime. I showed you how to cut a lime here . . .

Then you put in some fish sauce. This is also for taste. I like it salty and after years of doing this I added just the right amount. If you are new at this, added a little bit at time, mixing and tasting as you go.

Then gently crush all of the ingredients together again in your mortar and pestle. You can also just put it in a bowl and mix well with a big spoon. However, there is something about that crushing motion that just makes the salad.

Please buy a mortar and pestle today… I use mine all the time as you can see.

So here we go . . . Thai cucumber salad.

We eat a variation of this salad almost every week, sometimes twice a week. Next time I’ll show you how to do this with carrots! Enjoy!

Ingredients –

1. Three medium sized cucumbers
2. Two cloves of fresh garlic
3. Two tablespoons crushed red peppers (or to taste)
4. One medium tomato
5. Juice of half a lime
6. 1/8 cup fish sauce (or to taste. I usually put in more, tasting as I go.)

Keep you taste buds alive!

Posted on Foodie Friday.

What’s For Dinner Today

Today I am hungry for roast pork soup. I stood in line at the Thai food festival to get a bowl but just as I got to the front – they ran out. Since then, I’ve been making it for our family here at home. Actually, the kids won’t eat it but the husband and I are enjoying this new craving of ours.

I will be posting the recipe – when I have a chance to measure. Right now, here are some photos of what I will be making tonight for dinner.

Wide rice noodles, green onions, cilantro and bok choy. Zero fat calories.

Aaaah, here’s a little fat, some ground peanuts and sugar.

Add some roast pork -

- and you have a bowl of goodness.

The noodles are plain rice noodles that you can get the corner grocery. Soak for a few minutes before cooking in boiling water and adding to the soup stock.

I will be posting the recipe soon. Right now I’m just indulging in posting photos. I wonder when I can start cooking dinner . . .

Beauty At The Food Stands

There was more than great food at the Thai festival I attended with my parents a couple of weeks ago. I was nicely surprised to see so many pretty food stand ladies.

Flowers adorned behind the ears.

I find it very charming. To me, it’s more than just putting food in a plastic container. They really love what they are doing.

And look at all of the jewelry these ladies were wearing. Holy moley.

Some were in suits. Suits! I think there’s a lot of pride in peeling a mango.

Look at these two charming ladies. I love the lavender hat. It doesn’t look like she was standing over hot oil all day. Beautiful!

I think this lady is so pretty.

She was shy and said, “I’m not pretty!”

Oh yes you are! I just thought I’d share. It reminds me that there is pride in even the smallest tasks.

On A Search For A Condiment Dish

And not just any condiment dish. And not this condiment dish either. But similar . . .

I’m looking for one this size but with more substantial knobs. The husband can’t get a grip on these because the knobs are too small and he drops them and makes an embarrassing noise in the restaurant. I like the blue color also, it matches all of my other dishes but I’m flexible.

We’ve looked all over the internet. Can you help?

This one has fish sauce in it.

The reason I want some like this is because . . .

1. They are small and the contents won’t be in there a long time and spoil.

This one has crushed red peppers in it.

2. You really don’t need a bunch of this crushed red pepper to make a difference in the spice level – if you know what I mean – so small is good.

This? This is red chili sauce.

3. Having four separated containers will allow you to serve many types of chilis. You’re not allowed to have only one kind. At least not in my house.

This is green peppers with vinegar.

4. Asian cooking is savory, sweet, and tangy. And vinegar is tangy.

This was my lunch exactly one week ago tomorrow. I put little, or a lot, of the above condiments in it. I wish I had some right now.

So does anyone know where I can get a pretty blue condiment holder with big knobs? If not, I’ll  have to fly to Thailand.

Kratiem Dong – Thai Pickled Garlic

I do most of the cooking but the husband likes to piddle around the in the kitchen when he has the time. It wonderful when he does since he will cook things that I don’t normally cook, like pickled garlic.

This is a fun thing to make and we all know how garlic is good for your health. It doesn’t do much for your love life though so don’t eat this before going on a hot night on the town. Pickled garlic and hot nights on the town tends to cancel each other out.

Here’s the recipe right from the Beautiful Thai Cookbook. This cookbook is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. Gorgeous.

Ingredients:
2 cups of water
1 lb of garlic

Pickling Solution:
2 cups of white vinegar
1 lb sugar
1/4 cp salt

- Heat the water to boiling in a medium saucepan and simmer the clusters of garlic for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside to dry for 5 minutes.

- Heat the pickling solution to boiling a in a medium saucepan. Turn the heat off and put in the clusters of garlic. You don’t have to peel the cloves, just drop the entire thing in the pickling solution. Let it cool and put it in a glass jar and allow to pickle for a week. We used a big plastic jug. Peel the garlic before eating or cooking!

After the garlic is pickled you can leave it indefinitely in the solution.

I use a lot of fresh garlic in my cooking and I like to snack on these but only sparingly. Only eat your fill if you not in close contact with another human for the next 48 hours.

This is another public service announcement. I only have your best interest at heart!

Thai Red Curry Chicken

Even in our multi-cultural society, certain ingredients that are necessary to make the foods that are indigenous to many countries are scarce.

It bugs me.

One of our favorite things to eat is Thai curry. You can put anything into your curry that you want so it’s a very versatile ingredient. Here is what I put in mine . . .

1.8 lbs of chicken breast sliced into small pieces
2 small eggplants
3 red peppers
3/4 cup Thai Red Curry Paste
1/2 cup coconut milk
water
fish sauce
vegetable oil

Neighbor Kathy gave me two eggplants.

I cut them up into bite size pieces to use.

She also gave me a bunch of jalapeno peppers. I cut those up and threw them into the mix.

I then cut up the peppers from my not-so-big garden. These aren’t spicy but they will add good flavor.

I then cut up the chicken but no pictures of that thank goodness.

I heated the oil and put the red curry paste in. Stir for about 1 minute on high heat.

Reduce the heat and put in the coconut milk.

Stir well for about 3 minutes on medium heat.

If the curry is too thick put in some water to thin it out and keep stirring.

Put the chicken in and stir occasionally until the chicken is cooked through.

After the chicken is done cooking, put in the vegetables.

Stir until the vegetables and covered and al dente, which is how I like them.

After you take the mixture off the heat, put in some fish sauce and stir.

Like I said, you can use any vegetable or meat that you want. Beef or pork is excellent with it. Just make sure the vegetable will not wilt or get too soft so no spinach or kale or anything like that.

I get my Thai ingredients at several Asian or Thai stores around the Washington DC area. However, if you do not have the luxury of a Thai market near you, you can order these ingredients online. Be aware! It’s expensive. This container of curry paste was $9.47 at Amazon, I nearly fainted.

You can try this resource, importfood.com. The prices are better but unfortunately the shipping is a bear. You can get this coconut milk at your local market though, it is in mine.

But if you want to try it every so often for a treat then I think it’s worth the price. I’m hoping most of you are close enough to a Thai place to get some of this stuff.

Bon appetite!

Thai Beef Salad or Waterfall Beef

Update: This post is updated for iHeartfaces beef challenge but it still remains a timeless favorite;)

One of my all time favorite dishes – ever – is Thai beef salad. I make it at home often and I order it in Thai restaurants whenever I have the opportunity to go. My mother makes the best beef salad but I do the best I can.

Disclaimer – if you are a vegetarian, this is definitely not the dish for you.

To make it truly authentic, you will need to make the ground rice. This can be done in one big batch and stored for later use. That being said, I make this dish many times without it. It can be time consuming and I’ll skip if I’m desperate and in a hurry. That being said, please know that it does add quite a bit of authenticity to the salad if you take the time and make it.

Ground rice:

Brown some rice on the stove top. This is only about a half a cup but you can do as much as you want and put it aside.

Increase the heat until the rice begins to look brown. You must stir constantly. This is important. Do not walk away to finish a load of laundry. Trust me.

Once the rice is a nice brown color, take it off the stove and let cool. Once it’s cool, you can put it in a grinder/mixer and ground the rice to a fine but not too powdery mix. There should be small pieces of rice for texture.

You can put the rice in a container and put it aside to store or you can go ahead and make the rest of the dish.

I use a London Broil cut because it’s affordable and what my mother used:) If however, you are feeling frisky and rich, go for a nicer cut.

This is a three pound piece of meat. I know it’s a lot but I put the rest aside for leftovers.

Now we chop.

1. Chop a bundle of well washed cilantro, more if you like.
2. Chop red onion into slivers.
3. Chop the mint.
4. Cut cherry tomatoes in half.
5. Chop the hot peppers into small pieces.

Speaking of peppers…this is definitely one ingredient that you can moderate according to you own taste. Our household (everyone but the boy) can eat very spicy food. If you are not as experienced with it, put in only what you are comfortable with. I am not going to post a quantity for how much pepper to put in. It’s up to you.

If you don’t have small Thai peppers as shown in the photo, you can use whatever pepper you like. Last week, I used McCormick ground pepper. Works just fine! Mint as shown here is also something that you can choose to put in if you can find it. My yard was overgrown with it for a period of time.

Ingredients:

1. 2 1/2 pounds of beef (London Broil)
2. 1/2 cup Thai fish sauce
3. 1/4 cup water
4. Juice of one lime (here’s how you cut that lime.)
5. 2 – 3 tablespoons of chopped Thai hot peppers (or any other pepper to taste.)
6. 2 cups chopped cilantro
7. 2 cups thinly sliced red onion
8. 1 cup chopped fresh mint
9. 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
10. 1/4 cup ground rice

Directions:

Grill or broil the beef. Be careful to not over-cook it. Leave some pink in the middle.

Slice the beef into small slivers being careful to discard any fat.

Put in the fish sauce, water and juice of one lime. Toss well (sometimes I’ll use my hands.) Put in ground rice. Toss well. Put in the peppers. Toss well. Put in all chopped and prepared vegetables. Toss well.

I make it for guests quite often and they love it! Even some of the boys at the lake ate it. You gotta try it.

How To Grammatically Correctly Cut A Lime

I had no idea how carelessly and quickly I had been posting this week. The husband called and said, “Your photo is on the right and Kristina’s photo is on the left.”

I corrected it.

And the girl told me tonight, “Mama, “we was” or “we were?” when she read this post.

I corrected it.

At least she’s reading my blog, that’s more than I can say for the boy. However, unlike bloggers with small children, my kids may be offended by what I write about them so it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t read LifeSignatures. Teens are strange creatures.

So tonight, I am taking my time. Not rushing. And I dare you to find a grammar mistake.

I’m going to show you how to cut a lime. Because next week, we are going to make waterfall beef. And I measured the ingredients, which is something I rarely do so just know that I did it for you.

I know I start quite a few of my sentences with prepositions or conjunctions. It’s a writing style. There’s nothing grammatically incorrect about it…I don’t think.

Begin with a lime and a very sharp knife.

Cut the lime just off center.

Then flip the lime and cut it again, off center.

Flip the lime again and cut it off center.

Are you getting the point?

Cutting the center out will eliminate the tough sinewy center part of the lime which will make squeezing it much easier. You will get more juice out of the lime and with much less effort than cutting it through the center. Limes are expensive during certain times of the year, and you want to get as much juice out of it as you can.

Once the lime is cut off of the center, you can squeeze the center to get every last bit of juice out of the lime and you don’t have to be a weight lifter to do it.

Limes are very important in Thai cooking and it is much easier to cook Thai food if you know the techniques that are handed down by Thai grandmothers.

So get your lime cutting technique down before next week. You can use the juice for margaritas:)

I hope this is of use to someone, not just bartenders.

Pho Pho What Do You Know

It’s cold and it’s snowing and I want some warm soup to warm my chilly bones. Pho is a Vietnamese stable and it’s a favorite of mine. Actually, I’m craving some now.

I start with this…rice noodles. You can actually find rice noodles of various brands in your local market.

And I also start with this…pho broth cubes. You can’t actually find pho broth cubes in your local market. I was torn as to whether or not to post this since it’s not an ingredient that was commonly available. So I do what everyone does, I go to Amazon.com. They have it! I can’t believe the stuff you can get there.

It’s not this kind, but it’s close enough.

I watched the cubes dissolve and I stand over the stove because I’m chilly…and I’m hungry.

I slice some mushrooms and throw them in the bowling pot. It’s the only thing I had in the refridgerator. Some other veggies that will work are – mushrooms. I normally don’t cook the veggies in the broth, but rather, I put them in after the soup is ready. That way they won’t get soggy. Some good veggies to throw in after are sliced cabbage, Thai basil,  and bean sprouts.

Now I put in my noodles. Notice I didn’t soak this particular kind. Or maybe you didn’t. Anyway, follow the directions on the package.

Hmmm…it’s a little plain.

Throw in some green onions.

Now that’s more like it…spicy, spicy, spicy. This is srachi sauce. We have a gallon of it. I also put in fish sauce, limes and a little bit of sugar.

It warms my stomach on this cold winter day.

I’m playing on Foodie Friday…

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