Cooked up another Thai meal last night

[chickenfeet]

Gang Som - Sour curry of Shrimp and vegetables (recipe)
Amaranth stirfried with garlic and bean sauce
Nam prik with cucumber and red pepper slices
Grilled squid (sorry Castalia!) with choo chee sauce
ETA - Sweet pork
Ham hock soup
Rice

Comments

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

what about that wonderful cold sweet pork?

[thidwick.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that I don't even know you, I thought of you yesterday at work...I was processing some new magazines (I work in a library) and the latest Smithsonian has a headline on the cover: Lemurs and the woman who loves them.

:-)

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

Yay! Lemurs! :)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

oops!

[thidwick.livejournal.com]

Are there any cookbooks you'd recommend for Thai cooking? Jim and I adore Thai food, but it's a haul to the nearest decent Thai restaurant (there are others that are closer, but they're subpar) and we haven't yet ventured beyond pad thai at home.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Kasma Loha-Unchit has written a couple that I really like. Some of her recipes and details of the books are here (http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipe.html).

The food blog Chez Pim is good and has an LJ Syndication (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/chezpim/profile).

The most important thing I've learned about reading Thai recipes, and indeed cooking Thai food in general, is when a recipe says "it should taste hot, then salt, then sour" (for example) that's the important bit and one should feel entirely free to adjust the fish sauce, chillis, lime juice or whatever to get the balance right.

The second most important thing is one I learned in Thailand. Thai food is typically much more strongly flavoured (not just hotter) than food in Thai restaurants here. That's because Thais almost invariably eat quite small amounts of several contrasting dishes and a lot of rice.