Tag Archives: thai cuisine

Thai salty limeade

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thai salty limeade

A couple of years ago a friend came back from Thailand with an easy recipe for a cold lime drink that’s a little salty.  She said it was a popular drink there, given the extreme heat.

I’m grilling some chicken this weekend, and it’s supposed to be nice and sunny, so I thought I’d make some of this in place of my usual iced tea.

While sweet-salty-sour combinations are desirable in Thailand, here, well, there’s still a bit of pioneering involved.  Not everyone will like this, and I wasn’t sure I liked it until I raided the fridge for the pitcher a few times.  In addition to the salt, there’s a little bitterness from the rinds. limes in water and sugar 2010

I make the drink as written and then add extra ice and water to my glass.

Give this a try and see what you think.  Set yourself up somewhere under a patio umbrella with a good book and sip away.

Thai Salty Limeade
   makes about 5 cups

1 cup fresh lime juice (squeeze from limes that have been rinsed well)
all the lime halves the juice was squeezed out of
1 quart water
3/4 cup sugar
pinch good sea salt or Kosher salt

1).  Place lime halves in a glass bowl
2).  Boil water, sugar and salt together for 2 or 3 minutes
3).  Pour over lime halves and allow to sit for no more than 5 minutes (longer and the drink will be very bitter)
4).  Strain mixture into a glass pitcher, squeezing lime halves to obtain the liquid they absorbed
5).  Strain lime juice into pitcher and mix
6).  Refrigerate for at least 4 hours and serve over lots of ice, adding more water, as desired

Thai steak salad

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Thai steak salad - a great way to use leftover steak!

Thai steak salad – a great way to use leftover steak!

I had a large piece of leftover tri-tip (end of the bottom sirloin) on my hands the other day and wanted to use it as-is, since it was nice and rare.  One of the best ways to use leftover steak is in a salad with Thai flavors.

The inspiration for this dish is nam tok, the Issan/Laotian* grilled beef salad containing herbs, fresh veggies, rice powder and a fish sauce/lime juice dressing.  Anyone who knows me knows I love the food of Issan, the Northeastern region of Thailand, which is famous for its hom mali (Jasmine) rice production and, sadly, the poverty of its farmers.  Many of these farmers have been spending time in Bangkok in recent years selling street food, which has made Issan goodies quite popular there, particularly gai yang, a pungent version of grilled chicken.  I’ll post more about Issan in the future, but the one thing you should know about its food is how clean tasting and bright it is, being highly dependent upon fresh produce.  *Note that Issan and Laos share a border, and that the people of Issan are of Laotian heritage, because there wasn’t always a border between them.

The one thing that may throw you here is the rice powder.  Rice powder is toasted rice that has been ground to something between coarse and fine, and it gives Issan warm salads a nice crunch.  It is best to make it yourself, and I’ll tell you how to do that.  In a pinch, though, you can use rice cereal (Cream of Rice).  Just toast it slowly and carefully in a pan over a flame and then allow it to cool.  This will not be half as good as real rice powder, but sometimes you have to make do.  Make sure that whatever you use is not so hard that people will damage their teeth.  Check your work – make sure it’s toasted enough.

If you want to make this a meal, serve it with sticky (sweet) rice.  This would be authentically Issan/Lao.

Renate’s Thai-stye Steak Salad
   Serves 4 or 5

3/4 – 1 pound leftover steak, sliced in thin strips (nothing with destinctive seasoning)
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon sugar
1 red chili pepper, seeded & deveined, finely minced
2 green onions, sliced into small rounds
1 English cucumber (if a huge one, use half), sliced
1/4 cup Thai basil, thick chiffonade (roll and cut)
1/4 cup cilantro, rough chop (don’t make tiny pieces)
1/4 cup mint, thick chiffonade
1 tomato, cut into large cubes
1 small red onion, sliced medium
6 cups lettuce
2 tablespoons rice powder (recipe below)

1)  Combine the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and chili pepper well and set aside
2)  Place the sliced steak into a bowl and toss with a couple of tablespoon of the dressing; set aside for 10 minutes
3)  In a large bowl, toss everything (including the marinated beef and dressing) except the rice powder
4)  Check seasoning.  If too mild for your liking, mix up a little more dressing.  If not sour enough, a little lime juice.  And so on
5)  Toss in the rice powder at the last minute and serve

Rice Powder

1/4 cup sweet rice (it’s not really sweet )
Heavy saute pan
Mortar & pestle or clean coffee grinder* or stand blender or bullet blender (blenders have to be very dry!)

1)  Toast rice over low-ish flame until golden brown.  Keep it moving.  Don’t burn it.
2)  Remove rice to a small bowl and allow to cool completely
3)  Grind until you have a coarse powder
4)  Store what you do not use in an airtight container, but don’t keep it more than a month or so

*If you use a coffee grinder that you use for spices, make sure it is absolutely clean.  You can grind a batch of rice to clean it completely.  Don’t use a coffee grinder that you also use for coffee.

Tom Kha Tuna

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tom kha tuna 2010

I had quite a few frozen albacore tuna steaks in my freezer that I needed to use up, which is the only reason I would use such a protein for this dish – let’s get that straight up front.  Why?  If you overcook fresh tuna, you may as well use canned, and it would be very easy to overcook it in this dish.  Albacore and ahi steaks are best seared and served on the rare side.  However, if you find yourself with some that have been hanging around in the freezer till their drop-dead usage date and you want to cook them through, you may want to try this recipe.  If not, use another kind of meaty, white-fleshed fish, shrimp, scallops, or chicken.

This recipe uses tom kha paste. Even people who spend way too much time dealing with food don’t always want to grind lemongrass and galangal, so Thai curry pastes are a Godsend.  That said, tom kha pastes tend to have too much salt and lack the brightness you’d have in a homemade version.  To get around that, we add a few fresh ingredients to amp it back up.  Generally speaking, this problem is less pronounced with other pastes, like panang, green and masuman, to name a few, than it is with the tom kha, which I always need to doctor up.

This is usually offered as soup in Thai restaurants, i.e., Tom Kha Gai (chicken), but I serve it with rice as a full meal.
This recipe will provide dinner to 6 – 8 people if you make a pot of jasmine rice to go with it.  Serve in large bowls and then mound rice on one side.

Tom Kha Whatever-you-like 

2 – 14 oz. cans coconut milk
28 oz chicken stock
1/4 cup tom kha paste (buy in Asian markets)
1 stalk lemongrass, peeled of outer leaves, cut into short (2″) sticks, using the bottom 2/3 of stalk only
2 large slices of fresh galangal or standard ginger – no need to peel
6 red bell peppers, in large chunks (they add some smokiness, but feel free to use some green and some red)
3 1/2 lbs. firm, white protein, i.e., chicken, in large cubes
1/8 cup fresh lime juice

1).  In wok or large cooking vessel and over medium heat, whisk coconut milk, stock (fill each empty coconut milk can with stock to measure) and tom kha paste until blended.
2).  Add lemongrass and galangal.
3).  Bring to boil and add the peppers.
4).  Bring to simmer and cook for 2 minutes.
5).  Bring to boil over high heat and add protein, stir in, bring to simmer, lower heat and cook until protein is just done.  If using something like albacore, this would be only a couple of minutes.  For chicken or shrimp, generally no more than 4 or 5 minutes.  Depends also on the size of your cuts.
6).  Turn off heat and stir in lime juice.
7).  Taste and add a little more lime juice, if needed.
8).  Ladle into bowls.  A couple of scallion curls on top would be nice, or cilantro sprigs.

Albany Bowl’s restaurant

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Entrance to Albany Bowl in Albany, California

I admit it:  I love to bowl.  I hold the key to locker #1 at Albany Bowl (540 San Pablo Avenue), the bowling alley in Albany, California, a city with only about 17,000 people but boasting both a pool and a bowling alley, for crying out loud.

They keep it nice in there.  It’s sparkling clean but still has that retro feel, what with all the black and white photos of famous visitors, a dark, secluded bar, pool tables and a pro shop.  Patrons include various league members there to practice, and kids from the Albany school system walked over in groups.  While there are video games for teens who use the Bowl as a hang-out, it never gets out of control because management keeps a lid on it.

Since I had to go renew my locker for another year, Matt and I thought we’d have something to eat at the cafe, which serves Thai food in addition to the usual suspects, like burgers and cheese fries. There’s a counter and a half-dozen or so tables, and you order from a board behind the counter.  Honest to God, you can get a very decent pad Thai at Albany Bowl for $7.50.  There are ample shrimp and tofu cubes in this large, hot portion of noodles served with a slice of lime on the side and ground peanuts on top.  Matthew ordered the cheesesteak for $6.95, which had plenty of meat, cheese, and, I think, green peppers and onions, but he got mad when I wanted all the details so I left it alone.  His sammie came with criss-cut fries, which was a nice touch.  We also shared a fried calamari for $6.75, served with sweet/hot sauce.  It was all strips (no tentacles) but nice, thick, non-uniform pieces that were not overcooked and not greasy.

Fried calamari at Albany Bowl in Albany, CA

The food here is cooked to order and handed to you right out of the tiny kitchen, so you can’t go wrong, and the proprieters of this little diner are super-friendly, too.  If I were you, I’d check it out and bowl a couple games, too.

Albany Bowl is a remnant of a mostly-lost world, where cocktails, Brunswick machines and Formica tables still happily coexist.  While the smoking part of the equation is no longer allowed, they do have free wi-fi.

Thai-style lettuce wraps

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Thai-style lettuce wraps

Thai-style lettuce wrap filling

Make something easy and refreshing, like I did.  I had a 1 pound container of lump crabmeat from Costco on hand that I needed to use, as well as three heads of romaine lettuce.  What else would there be to do but make Thai crab lettuce wraps?  I could rig up the lettuce leaves and filling and then we could all roll our own wraps on the fly while watching a movie.  Sold.  I broke up the crabmeat and mixed it with chopped scallions, roasted peanuts, lime juice, fish sauce (you can get this in any Asian market), Sriracha sauce (ditto about the Asian market, but you can use some kind of dried, ground chili, as well, though not the ‘chili powder’ mix  for chili con carne), chopped cilantro, a few chopped mint leaves, shredded red cabbage, a pinch of sugar and a little salt.  Make your filling to taste with the things I mention, but if you are not used to nailing that hot-sour-sweet profile so common in Asian cuisine, then mix the liquids, Sriracha and sugar by themselves until they work well together (taste as you go) and then add the result to the other ingredients.  You don’t want to waste a pound of crabmeat, which I would rather die than do.  Advice:  don’t add too much liquid to the filling; you can always save leftover sauce for something else.  Go easy on the salt, because there is plenty of it in fish sauce.  Go easy on the fish sauce.  Fish sauce is magical.  If you use a little, you’ll get great flavor that won’t immediately make you think of fish sauce.  Too much, and you will be turned off and won’t taste the crab.  Let the mass sit and mingle in the fridge for an hour, covered.  To prep the lettuce, just cut off the stem and separate the leaves.  Fill your sink with cold water and some ice, if you have it, and let the leaves soak in there for a few minutes.  Move them, in layers, to paper towels.  You can then roll them up in the towels, wrap up and store in the veggie crisper of your fridge, if you won’t be eating right away.  I don’t need to tell you how to eat this, do I?  I thought not.