CHEF TUMMY’S TASTY THAI COOKING

CHEF TUMMY COOKING TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

To add a little style to your plates, make a spring onion/scallion brush. Cut off the very end of the spring onion/scallion at the base where the roots are. Cut off the lower stalk about 3 inches from the base. With a sharp knife or kitchen shears, make several cuts into green spring onion leaves/fronds. Place these trimmed spring onions into a bowl with ice and cold water. The green leaves will blossom out like a miniature palm tree. You can dice the remaining spring onion leaves for use in a recipe or retain it for use in making stock.
To add flair to your plates, make a chilli flower. Remove the stem from the chilli. Using a sharp knife or kitchen shears, cut three quarters of the way from the pointed end towards the base in a star pattern. Immerse the cut chilli in a bowl of ice and cold water. The chilli will blossom like a flower.

Wet a wash cloth or tea towel, wring it out and place it under your chopping board — it will keep the board from slipping off the kitchen counter.
When chopping an onion, curl your finger tips in and rest them on the top of the onion to keep from cutting yourself.
For optimal food safety, remember the “Three Fours”. If you are going to have cooked food out of the oven or off the stovetop for more than four hours, keep it at below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or above 140 degrees Fahrenheit to inhibit the growth of bacteria.
Keep separate cutting boards for vegetable versus meats. Some types of meat such as chicken can have unpleasant bacteria on the outside. After cutting chicken, make sure to wash the board in very hot, soapy water to get rid of any contamination. Some professional kitchens use color coded cutting boards to distinguish between vegetable and meat boards.

If stir frying meat or vegetables, let the oil in your wok get hot so when you add the food, the hot oil locks in the flavor of the food while cooking it. If you want to have the flavor of the food come out, put the vegetables in less hot oil and cover with a lid. This “sweating” technique helps the vegetables surrender their flavor by exuding the liquid inside.
When making a stir fry, food that is cut the same size tends to cook at the same rate, so cut your meat and vegetables to a uniform size so it all ready at the same time.
Removing the skin from a shallot is made easier of you can catch the end of the skin with a kitchen knife, trap it against your thumb and pull towards yourself.
When you make stock for use in cooking, you can freeze some of it in an old ice cube tray. Then, when you are cooking, you can remove as many cubes as you need and reserve the rest for another meal.
The quickest way to get the skin off a clove of garlic it to lay it on a cutting board and whack it with the side of a chef’s knife or cleaver. Thai cooking sometimes retains the peel of small garlic cloves to perfume the dish. You can remove these small peels according to your taste.
Enliven the taste of a chilli paste from a can or package by heating it in oil over low heat for a few minutes.

Tom Yum Kung or Hot and Sour Shrimp Soup: this classic Thai soup uses aromatic vegetable and herbs like lemongrass, galangal and lime leaf to flavor and perfume the soup. You can dice these very small or keep them large in the soup. If your guests are new to eating this type of dish, you can remove the bits and pieces of the flavorings, leaving the shrimp.
If making Tom Yum Kung, Thai chefs use the bottom end of the stalk for the soup. Save the tougher outer peel and other parts of the lemongrass stalk to add to your stock pot to give it a perfumed, citrus flavor. If you are making a Western style stock, you can save kitchen scraps like mushroom stalks and bits of spring onion/scallion. Like Grandmother always said, waste not, want not.

Cucumber slices are often served as a method of picking up small quantities of spicy relishes like nahm phrik. Slice the cucumbers on the diagonal to give more space for holding the side of the cucumber while you scoop up the nahm phrik.
Spicy relishes like nahm phrik are served with vegetables to serve as an instrument to pick up the relish and guide it to the mouth. You can soften vegetables like cabbage by immersing cut pieces into boiling water for a minute, then removing from the hot water and plunge them in an ice water bath. This will take some of the harshness out of the raw vegetable, yet keep it crisp enough to eat.