Tag Archives: Thai vegetables

Thai Recipe: The Sauce of Life – Thai Fish Sauce, Chillie, Lime Juice and Sugar Sauce You Cannot Live Without

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The Sauce of Life - Fish Sauce, Fresh Chillies, Lime Juice and Sugar

A recent visitor to Thailand felt victory and acceptance at a local eatery when he ordered a traditional Thai omelet and asked the server for น้ำปลาพริก or “naam bplaa prik” sauce that makes life worth living and is a common condiment on Thai restaurants.  Here, “naam bplaa” means fish sauce and “prik” is chillies. While a Western restaurant might have salt and pepper shakers on the table so diners can add some flavor to their food, Thais use a version of this fish sauce and chillie combination to offer the chance to customize food.   

The restaurant makes this sauce fresh everyday and had not yet placed it on the table.  So the cook took the 30 seconds it takes to combine the ingredients and gave it to the eater with a smile and the welcome “gin gaeng” or colloquial Thai for “You know how to eat our food” – a complimentary phrase that all real Thai foodies crave.

In its simplest form, the sauce is fish sauce combined with finely chopped Thai bird’s eye chillies. 

There are other variations on this simple sauce, too. So what is this important and life sustaining sauce?  It is a simple combination of salty fish sauce, tangy lime juice, fiery finely chopped chillies and sweet white sugar – the fantastic four flavors that a diner can add to a dish to give it the balance and power it might need.  

My cooking mentor and employer “Mister Aow” has his own version.  As his time is limited, when we have the occasion to dine together, I make sure this sauce is on the table according to his formula.   My epicurean sister Susan visited me in Thailand and ate with Mister Aow and I.  After she discovered the simple beauty of this sauce, she now makes it at home in America.  I’m told she sends it to my nephew who is away from home studying at university.  I hope he appreciates his mothers love, and this sauce!

Some of the many brands of Thai fish sauce

There are a dozen brands of Thai fish sauce for sale in Thailand – the most popular brands exported are TIPAROS and SQUID BRAND.  I use the TIPAROS brand – high quality and has 4.5% sugar added that helps temper the salty flavor. 

TUMMY TIP:  When buying fish sauce, I recommend you purchase it in 60 ml bottles or 300 ml bottles.  Fish sauce can go stale and lose its flavor and aroma over time.  One sign that fish sauce has gone stale is the color of the fish sauce changes from a tea color to the color of black coffee.  So, buy smaller quantities and use the bottle, the replace rather than trying to economize and buy a large 1 liter bottle and have the chance that it goes stale before your next Thai cooking adventure in your home kitchen. 

The bottle on the left has gone stale but the one on the right is prime

I like to use this sauce to enliven omelets or add a kick to other dishes such as steamed fish or just on top of steamed jasmine rice.

INGREDIENTS

  • Fish sauce – 2 tablespoons / 30 ml
  • Lime juice – 2 tablespoons / 30 ml
  • Chillies – use Thai bird’s eye chillies, stems removed and finely chopped, 2 teaspoons / enough to fill a 10 ml measuring spoon
  • White sugar - 1 teaspoon / enough to fill a 5 ml measuring spoon

EQUIPMENT

  • measuring spoons
  • cutting board to cut the chillies
  • bowl for serving the sauce
  • spoon for stirring the sauce so the sugar goes into solution with the fish sauce and lime juice – you can use the same spoon for serving the sauce

METHOD

  1. Cut off the stem of the Thai bird’s eye chillies and slice the chillies finely into rings.
  2. Add the chillies to the serving bowl.
  3. Measure in the lime juice and fish sauce.
  4. Add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved.
  5. Taste and adjust for your own palate – if it is too spicy, add more sugar.

This Sauce of Life makes a plain omelet come alive and generally makes life worth living.

If you have sauce left over, you can store it in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator for a day or so, but it tastes best when freshly made.

A typical tabletop jar of the Sauce of Life - I hope there is enough for the next diner

The Dutch Came to Thailand and We Conquered the Challenge of Thai Cooking for Kids

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Write a Thai cookbook for use in the Dutch school system – could it be done without sacrificing the balance of flavors and the use of fresh ingredients that makes Thai food so compelling?  I thought I could do it and so agreed to help a team of Dutch chefs use my teaching kitchen as a laboratory for creating a cookbook to be used in the Dutch school system to teach students from ages 12 to 17 the basics of Thai cooking.

Peter, Tummy, Jaap and sous chefs Jeap and Jirapa celebrate their success

After six months of planning by email, we met in Thailand at my Thai cooking kitchen on Koh Phangan in southern Thailand.

I teamed up with expert Dutch chef and cooking writer Peter Schwank and his serene wife Elena along with their partners Jaap Van Duijvenbode and his vivacious wife Bella to try and translate the immense breadth of Thai cooking into 25 easy-to-follow recipes with photos to illustrate each step of the cooking process.

We spent three intense weeks pursuing our goal, with extensive debate, experimentation, trail by error cooking, filming and a lot of bad insider jokes as you get when you stand cheek and jowl with someone for three weeks.  As their books are written in Dutch, I got a crash course in Dutch cooking terminology, too.

We braved rain, heat, mosquitoes, and dozens of trips to the fresh food market to get the right ingredients.  They rigged up a lighting system to take photos of the elegant Elena serving as our “supermodel” to demonstrate how to cut and prepare each ingredient and the cooking steps.  Each ingredient was carefully measured and the cooking time recorded so the recipes could be reproduced by students in a classroom.

Chef Tummy enters the market to hunt for fresh ingredients

The book outlines what ingredients and cooking implements are needed for each dish to make the cooking process simple and fear-free. The resulting recipes are flavorful and custom-designed so Dutch school systems can get the ingredients and help the students make Thai food that is authentic. 

In addition to traditional Thai curry dishes using coconut milk, we added some delicious but less known dishes such as Northern Thai naam phrik ong (a pork and tomato dip) and the ancient dish of shrimp stirfried in a paste of garlic, peppercorns and coriander.   

We had to balance authenticity with the availability of Asian ingredients in Holland and temper the traditional fire of Thai food for palates that favor savoury and sweet tastes.  Some of the common ingredients in Thai cooking such as fresh lemongrass and galangal are in limited supply or available only in dried forms in Holland, so we had to adjust and adapt the recipes.

Ingredients common in a Thai market can be hard to find in Europe, sad to say

 But in the end, it was mission accomplished. 

 I learned so much from these professionals about cookbook writing that my head is spinning, but their vast experience in making other cookbooks made the process easy. 

This Dutch team has many other publications and shared lots of ideas on how I could better write, teach and publish about Thai food.  I sincerely thank Peter, Jaap, Elena and Bella for their great spirit, professionalism and many great meals and jokes.  You can see their website at www.werkportfolio.nl.  I’ll look forward with pride to seeing the book when it is published later in the year.

Tummy Thai Travel Tales: Flying Spinach Team Tryouts in Phitsanulok Thailand

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Catching the elusive flying spinach takes the correct gear

In the last post, I shared a recipe for stirfried Thai spinach.  Here is an exerpt from the Thai travel and food book I wrote about learning to catch the airborne version of Thai spinach.  Even with the correct gear, it is harder than it looks.

Incoming! – Flying Vegetables Fly By My Head In Phitsanulok

The phak bung stirfried vegetable winged past my ear and was expertly caught by the adept waiter to my rear. Perhaps I should tell you why vegetables were being hurled at me.  But first, let’s discuss why vegetables can fly.

My earnest attempt to make the flying spinach catching team in Phitsanulok

Phak bung is a hardy green hollow-stemmed vegetable with slender and tender leaves that grows widely inThailand, especially by bodies of still water. It is gathered for cooking as a quick vegetable stirfry, stays crisp after cooking and is packed with vitamin A, calcium, and iron (but not so much iron compared to spinach that you feel like you have chewed on aluminum foil when it is eaten). Names for this common vegetable include the more glamorous and attractive name of morning glory (in the way a Hollywood starlet might change her name to something more alluring), but it is also called water convolvulus or swamp cabbage.

The green is combined in a wok with hot cooking oil, mashed garlic, crushed chillies, and black bean sauce or yellow bean sauce and is quickly stirfried. As cooking oil drips over the edge of the wok, spectacular flames can erupt, giving the dish a smoky flavor. Some chefs tilt the edge of the wok to induce the conflagration, adding to the taste and spectacle of the dish. This flaming version is called phak bung fai daeng or literally “red fire flaming water spinach.”

To further make the stirfry an exciting eating experience, some Thai chefs have invented a new variation―phak bung lawy faa or “sky floating water spinach” where the chef flings the cooked greens through the air in a practiced arc and an agile waiter catches them on a plate. The aeration is thought to give the stirfry an added flavor.

We had heard that tryouts for the flying vegetable caching team were held every night in Phitsanulok, so we motored to the night market and parked by a riverside restaurant. At the side of the restaurant near the open-air cooking station was an aged, rusted, brick red delivery van with a set of steps leading to a platform on top.

I figured having vegetables flung at me was a logical continuation of the ‘Fun with Food” theme of the trip which had already included dodging durians, wrestling with dancing shrimp in Chiang Mai, and later chasing chickens in Isaan.

I resolutely stepped up to the chef and asked to participate in the sport. To get in the swing of things, those trying out for the phak bung catching team could don a Nutty Tourist ensemble of a red rubber apron, which I accessorized with a red hula skirt and a headband into which a waiter stuck two long eggplants as Viking horns. I declined the rubber flesh-colored fake breasts, feeling this added bit of equipment might constrict my catching arm. I climbed the steps to the top of the van and did a few light stretching exercises.

The chef set a large blackened wok over a high gas flame and added vegetable oil. After the oil had begun to smoke slightly in the pan, handfuls of the green vegetable were tossed into the wok with sliced chillies, mashed garlic cloves and black bean sauce and quickly stirfried. The chef tilted the edge of the wok so some of the oil caught fire in a spectacular supernova flare-up, like dragon’s breath. The chef drained off most of the liquid from the wok so just the greens nestled with the garlic and chillies remained. This made a cleaner missile to hurl towards me.

Four motorcycle taxi men thumped on bongos and chanted a song about phak bung to encourage my successful catch. One of them even showed his commitment to the theme music by putting down his bottle of Chang beer. Of course, it was empty.

The chef gave me a rookie oversized vegetable catching platter the size of a truck hubcap, while an encouraging waiter stood by with a plate the size of a teacup saucer. The chef stood fifteen feet away on the ground beneath the van. As I preened for Kitty’s camera, the flying vegetable hurtled past my head and the waiter leapt up to catch it like a major leaguer leaping up to snatch a line drive in the World Series.

How I managed to miss catching the hurled vegetables three times is a matter of debate. I blamed the light from the restaurant in my eyes and the flashbulbs from Kitty’s camera (One of her many nicknames earned during the trip was “Snaps” due her diligence in documenting our trek with hundreds of photos.)

My sports failure echoed my brief and unremarkable career in Pee Wee baseball where I managed to have the ball land anywhere but in my glove. Then I got eyeglasses and the world changed from Impressionist to Realist so I could see beyond my nose, but I had already become interested in cooking and never returned to sports unless compelled by the school.

 But I looked great in my phak bung catching gear and have been shopping for my own red hula skirt, size XXXXL.

 Here is what the dish looks like.

The delicious Thai water spinach from Phitsanulok

I’ve since tried my hand at slinging phak bung in the yard in front of my bungalow. I can’t tell if the aeration process substantially adds to the flavor or not, but the neighborhood kids like trying to catch the sky-floating vegetable and the local birds are well fed.

 If you are in Phitsanulok, you can practice your phak bung catching skills at the Savik restaurant near the night market on the banks of the River Nan.

Thai Recipe: Spinach Thai Style- Stirfried Spinach with Chillies, Garlic, Oyster Sauce & Fermented Soybean Sauce

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Many years ago, while living in The Great White North of America, the young Chef Tummy would outwait the ten months of winter by watching a cartoon titled “Popeye” where the hero would gain strength to save his beloved gal pal “Olive Oil” from evildoers by eating spinach.  Wanting to imitate Popeye’s manly muscles, Chef Tummy asked his good Mother to prepare spinach, but the result was often gritty on the teeth from all the iron in the vegetable.  As Chef Tummy’s epicurian adventures later found him a frequent guest in steakhouses, creamed spinach was a way to include nutrition in the diet if the spinach dish had the appropriate handful of butter added to lend flavor. 

Popeye Never Had Spinach Like This

Only after moving to Thailand in 2004 did Chef Tummy discover a new way to prepare spinach that made the old and tired recipes new and alive.  This Thai recipe combines the soft, leafy leaves of the native spinach with garlic, chillies, oyster sauce and fermented soybean sauce to make it a spicy and savoury delight.

Asian Water Spinach

Asian spinach has many names, among them morning glory, water spinach, water hyacynth, water cabbage, the contortionist sounding water convuvulos, or phak bung in Thai.  No matter what you call it, this quick strifry recipe makes a lovely vegetable side dish at any meal.

If the cook cannot find this light delicacy in their local market, baby spinach is an excellent substitute.

YOUTUBE USERS:  A video showing how to make this Thai dish can be seen on www.youtube.com under the cheftummycooks page – there are other Thai cooking videos and Thai travel videos on the same page for your enjoyment.

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 cups Phak Bung water spinach (you can substitute baby spinach or other light leafy green vegetable)
  • 2 cloves large garlic, smashed flat with a cleaver and roughly chopped (Thai chefs often include the peel in the dish because it adds flavor and aroma to the dish)
  • 3-6 small red Thai chillies – if you want a mild chilli flavor, just trim the stem off the chillies with a knife.  If you want more chilli heat, smash the chillies and then cut the chillies lengthwise.  Using red chillies helps your guests identify the chillies and eat or avoid them, according to their own taste.
  • 3 tablespoons / 45 ml chicken stock or water
  • 1 tablespoon / 15 ml yellow bean sauce (I prefer the Thai Healthy Boy brand)
  • 1 tablespoon / 15 ml oyster sauce (I prefer the Thai Mae Krua brand)
  • 1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil / 25 ml measure

PREPARATION OF ASIAN SPINACH

  • Thai phak bung water spinach comes in bunches with the roots still intact. Much like asparagus, there will be a place about four inches from the base of the roots where the phak bung snaps off easily.  Discard the lower quarter of the base stalk as it is too tough to eat when cooked in a stirfry method.  You can pluck the remaining leaves and hollow stems into two-inch lengths (5 cm) and place them in the bowl.  

METHOD

Here is a suggestion on how to segregate the ingredients before the rapid cooking begins

If substituting baby spinach, rinse the greens.  You don’t need to dry them as the water on the leaves helps the cooking process.

  • Place the plucked spinach leaves in a bowl.  Since things of the same size tend to cook at the same speed, I recommend you tear the spinach into 2 inch / 5 cm pieces.
  • In a small bowl, place the chillies and the smashed garlic. Reserve this bowl.
  • In a small cup, place the water, yellow bean sauce and oyster sauce and mix together with a spoon so the oyster sauce and yellow bean sauce are evenly distributed in the water.  Reserve this bowl.
  • Turn on the stovetop burner to medium.  Place the wok on the lit burner.  Let the wok heat up for 30 seconds or so.  Pour in the cooking oil and swirl the oil in the pan, carefully not slopping the hot oil on you.  Let the oil heat for fifteen seconds.   Add the garlic and chillies and stirfry until the garlic begins to lightly brown, about 30 seconds.
  • Dump the entire contents of the bowl containing the greens into the wok. Add the water, oyster sauce, and yellow bean paste into the hot wok.  Hold the wok handle in one hand and stir the greens rapidly for about 30 to 40 seconds with a long handled spoon, turning and flipping the greens so they become coated with the oil, water, oyster sauce and yellow bean sauce. Once the greens have wilted down to half their original volume and are shiny with the oil and other sauces, you can pour the contents of the wok into a serving bowl.  Serve warm.   Serves two persons as part of a multi-dish Thai meal.