Street food

If you're in a hurry and don't want to make for a street vendor to make soup, or salad, or some kind of meat dish, most places sell what I call "tub food", not to be confused with tubgirl, of course.
Tub food is basically made in bulk, and presented in rectangular tin tubs. There is no 'list of ingredients' on these tubs, naturally, but if you look closely you can usually figure out the 3 important aspects of it:
Q: What kind of meat is it? A: Fish, chicken, pork, beef, squid
Q: Is it full of bones A: Likely
Q: Is the acid from the chilies going to disintegrate my tongue? A: Let's hope not.The one I picked out today was a pretty good choice. It is fish balls, which is better than whole fish, because I don't think anyone cleans the fish before chopping it into chunks and throwing it in. Fish balls are just ground fish meat, rolled together. Here I could actually see palm prints in them from where someone smashed them in their hands before cooking. Yummy. In this one there are also mini eggplants, which I have really grown to like.

Another street food you can try, if you're not as brave as me, is just having a nice refreshing bottle of orange juice or a fresh coconut. If you can wake the guy up, that is

Sorry for the skipping out on this info. This is the honey grilled chicken from Cabbages and Condoms on Soi 12. The money from the restaurant goes to HIV/AIDS prevention and education. When my parents come in November, this is one place that we will be sure to hit.
Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.

Singapore chicken and Couscous

We live on a street in the city that has a lot of foreign options. You can get Korean, Japanese, Thai, and, at the very end of the street, you can get Singapore Chicken. Now, I'm not expert, to be honest, but I have been told that Singapore chicken and rice is superior to Thai chicken and rice. Personally, I like both. When you get it from Singapore (the restaurant) it comes with a yummy array of sauces, and you can get Thai greens with oyster sauce.

The chicken is a popular Thai dish called "kao mun gai". At this place they serve it with sprouts, adding some appreciated crunchiness.

On Fridays, a small hole-in-the-wall that usually serves delicious wraps, serves this amazing Moroccan couscous dish. It has lamb, carrot, potato, pumpkin, onion, cabbage and banana pepper. Tons of people show up for this dish on Fridays since it's only once a week. It costs a little over $4, but it serves us both for two meals. You also eat it with an orangey, savory soup.

Eat it at home!

By popular request (i.e. Aunt Sue), I am putting a recipe for one of my favorite Thai dishes. It is the soup from the cafe I mentioned like 2 posts ago.

It's called tom kha gai. The recipe I have in a cookbook actually is quite sparse, so I am supplementing it.
Ingredients:
2-inch piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup chicken stock
1 stick lemongrass (cut into 4 pieces)
4-6 fresh bay leaves
1/4 cup diced red onion
2-3 cups chopped mushrooms (I like the button mushrooms above, but feel free to experiment)
1-2 (or more) finely chopped red chillies
3 chicken breast fillets, cut into thin strips
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
cilantro for seasoning
1. Combine the ginger, coconut milk, chicken stock, lemongrass, and bay leaves into a medium pan. Bring to a slight boil and simmer, uncovered, for about 12 minutes. Don't forget to stir it.

2. Add the chicken, chopped chillies, mushrooms, and onion. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the chicken is done.

3. Add the fish sauce and brown sugar. Season with as much cilantro as you like. Mixed in works well, as well as sprinkled on each bowl.

Makes 4 small servings of soup. Eat with rice for a full meal. <3
I like to eat with with a heaping serving of plain steamed rice. Thai rice is woooonderful if you've never had it. I recommend going to an Asian grocery and getting a bag. It's easy to do in the microwave or stove top if you don't have a rice cooker. Keep in mind that it will triple in size. I made the mistake of making 2 cups of rice for our soup, which turned out to be able to feed a small army.

The next day, I tried my hand with curry. Curry paste is actually surprisingly easy to use, and with delicious results. This little number is a bit easier to make, takes less time and less brainpower.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons curry paste in whichever flavor you like
4 chicken breasts cut into pieces
3 large potatoes
4-6 fresh bay leaves
2-4 (or more) fresh red chillies
fresh basil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil

The key to using curry paste is to actually cook it before you mix it with other things. Simmer it for 3-5 minutes with some water, then add some vegetable oil until it has enough to it to put the chicken and potatoes in. At this point, put in everything else and let it simmer. It will probably take up to 25 minutes for the potatoes to cook all the way through.
Just like any good Asian food, serve with rice.

Gaeng Keaw gup Gai

I am a little behind on the posts, but I wanted to give this one a posting all of its own. This is one of my favorite Thai dishes, and we recently went to a cafe that did it exceedingly well. The Thai name is hard to remember (I always have to ask Marc "What's that thing I like again?"), but in English it's just called plain ol' green curry.

Curry comes in lots of colors and flavors, some are spicy, some are not. Green curry Thai style is a southern dish. A lot of the curry dishes are from the South, since there is quite a big Muslim population there. It is usually made with beef, but Thai beef is chewy (think the thin water buffalo) and doesn't really help out any food. I get it with chicken whenever I can. It is cooked with Thai basil, bay leaves, capers, and lots of chillies! I ate it with two heaping servings of plain rice.

Elefin Cafe

As you might know, I work on the biggest road in Thailand, called Sukhumvit. I actually work off of the first small street, and it's called Soi 1. So I basically walk up and down this street 10 times a week, give or take. There is a cute little place that I love to go to called the Elefin Cafe. They have lots of dark wood furniture and comfy chairs for relaxing. It looks like it might be expensive, but it's not at all, and has really great Thai and western food. My bowl of soup today was less than $3, and the extra rice was $.40. Also they play the greatest old cartoons.


When Sue posted that she would like some recipes that she could try at home, I knew that I had just the thing. One of my absolute favorite dishes is Tom Kha Gai. It is a soup, and like most of ther Thai food, it incorporates many flavors together: sweet, spicy, sour. The broth is made from coconut milk, and it has chicken and mushrooms it in. It can range from being really thin, almost more like an appetizer, to being so thick and rich that you can eat it for desert.

For dinner, we had Thai food again before we went to see Bruno (not recommended, if you were wondering). Here I have 2 dishes with plain rice, which is pretty common.

The orangey one was red snapper fried with a sweet and sour sauce. It was really good, but a little too sweet for my taste.

The lighter one is chicken and tofu, cooked with a few veggies and chilis. It was quite hot, and very good. Tofu is really common in Thai food, which I love. I think in general that Americans get a bad impression of tofu. When I told my dairy-farming grandmother that I loved eating tofu and ate it all the time, she asked why I just didn't eat "real food". I told her that I also love chicken, and pig, and cow, and duck, and just about anything else there is, but I also like to eat tofu. Thai people eat about anything. You don't need to substitute it for meat. If you've never had it, give it a try! It tastes a little nutty. Most people aren't crazy about the texture, which is understandable. I suggest small pieces eaten with other things, like a salad or noodles.
So, tonight I am cooking again! I am going to make (and photograph) my second attempt at the soup above. I will post the recipe and steps tonight or tomorrow.