One of my favorite cuisines has to be Thai. I'm not sure how much of it is influenced by my exposure to Thai food throughout my numerous work-related trips to Bangkok (and Pattaya), and how much of it is because I'm a fan of their complex flavor profile.
While Thai dishes are normally thought to be spicy, there are other overriding flavors that can usually be experienced in a single spoonful: sweet, sour, salty, bitter. And just like Thailand's neighbors around Asia, many of their dishes are actually quite simple: either homemade or being sold on the street for a couple of baht.
I'm no expert, but I guess this contrast — their seeming simplicity while being packed with complex flavors — is what appeals to many people, is what keeps people coming back to Thailand for food trips, and is what makes people try to recreate their favorites in their own kitchens.
So after a long hiatus away from the kitchen (save for deciding to try making banana pancakes for breakfast last Thursday), I decided to try my hand at cooking Thai food yesterday for our Resurrection Sunday Dinner. Fortunately, my two youngest siblings, who also happen to enjoy Thai cuisine, helped me out in the kitchen.
My original plan was to create a menu revolving around our family's favorite dishes:
Appetizer: Tom Yum Goong
Entrées: Pad Thai, Bagoong Fried Rice, Chicken Pandan
Dessert: Sticky Rice with Mango
I got their recipes from various websites, but, to be honest, I realized I was being too ambitious by deciding to cook all of these dishes in a matter of a few hours. Thankfully, life is much more convenient nowadays and I was able to resort to employing some shortcuts.
By shortcuts, I mean that I caved and decided to buy seasoning mixes (for the Tom Yum and Pad Thai, particularly). Yep, I'm just keeping it real. It's not that I was being lazy or that I didn't want us to go through the process of grinding and combining all of the spices; really, it's because I knew that my siblings and I wouldn't have time to make everything from scratch.
So anyway, we bought the ingredients after church service yesterday morning and got to work right after lunch.
The first things we did were to prepare the Tom Yum broth and the chicken pandan.
At this point in the Tom Yum preps, we had already mixed in the seasoning plus some chicken. Notice that some soup spillage had made a cameo in this photo.
For the chicken pandan, we prepared 2 x 2" pieces of chicken and marinated them in cornstarch, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and pepper. Here, my mom and I were wrapping the chicken bits in pandan leaves. It was really tricky!
Mom wasn't a fan of the pandan preps, but thankfully, I got the hang of it after several attempts. It was hard at first, though (especially because the chicken was coated in a sticky mixture). The motion of wrapping the chicken was reminiscent of my grade school days when I used to make friendship bracelets: over, under, over, under.
We had to wait for my sister to buy some shrimp before we could add them to the Tom Yum, so I took a break from cooking after wrapping around 12 pieces of chicken. I had another 10 to wrap much later (because we would be feeding seven people).
About two hours later, we resumed our cooking. It was all hands on deck in the kitchen.
About two hours later, we resumed our cooking. It was all hands on deck in the kitchen.
CJ mixing the glass noodles for the Pad Thai together with the other components.
Cooks stir frying the bean sprouts (which we used for the Pad Thai as well).
The result of our Tom Yum Goong. For some reason, you can hardly see the shrimp (though they were there, I promise; I peeled and deveined them, so consider this "achievement unlocked"!).
Pad Thai minus spring onions/Chinese chives (as topping). Totally forgot to buy them. Whoops!
Was extremely proud of this, even if some of the chicken parts weren't wrapped so well. Another achievement unlocked!
Thanks to Cooks and CJ for preparing our bagoong fried rice!
All the dishes: Tom Yum Goong, Pad Thai, chicken pandan, and the bagoong fried rice (served in individual rice bowls).
You may have noticed, but unfortunately, we had left out one crucial element of our menu: the dessert. We pretty much ran out of time and since the other members of the family were already hungry (a.k.a. hovering around the kitchen and asking what time dinner would be served), we went ahead and served these.
I plan on trying to make sticky rice with mango one of these days (recipe here, in case you're interested) and to cook Tom Yum from scratch. I'll just need to allot more time to prepare several courses.
Not a bad attempt by three cooks at creating a full meal with practically zero cooking knowledge, right? We only started cooking back in January and early February, so I consider this a success.
'Til the next kitchen (mis)adventure! Thanks again to our mom for mentoring her clueless children, and Khorb Khun Ka to you for reading!
