Thai Food

With my recent experiences with Thai Noodles, I may be moving towards switching from my usual favorite of Pad Thai possibly to Pad Kee Mao.   I've always loved Pad Thai; but, I've recently had a couple that were just too sweet and "heavy".   Pad See Ew and Pad Kee Mao are both made with the thicker rice noodles; but, Pad Kee Mao with the extra peppers for spice and the thai basil really has a nice flavor.

Either way, I have been inspired to start trying to cook Thai noodles.   I have tried Pad Thai in the past with some limited success; and will try to do so again this week, since I did buy the ingredients already.   But, I just might try to make Pad Kee Mao and Pad See Ew also in the future.  I would love to be able to replicate the unique flavors I remember from my experiences in some of the best Thai restaurants that I have tried.

17-Jul:  I came across a recipe that shows a Thai Sauce that can be made using lime juice, brown sugar, fish sauce, and Asian hot sauce.   I haven't tried it yet; but, it seems like it would make interesting flavors.   There's another recipe that mixed thick soy with fish sauce and oyster sauce, which may be interesting.   Also, I intend to experiment with Thai basil and maybe some sweet chili peppers in my cooking.

22-Jul:  Rather than making Thai Noodles, I thought I'd experiment with Thai cooking without the noodles.   Following are some of the dishes I made:

• Fava Bean - Heated the beans, added a mixture of garlic, lemon juice, salt, and parsley, and added diced tomatoes at the end.   The other optional ingredients like green onion, olive oil, and add'l parsley were not needed
• Kale Chips - Oven roasted kale with olive oil; and then added very little salt after the kale was crisp and done.  This tastes good mainly when it is still hot and crispy.  And, it would be good with some sort of protein dish served over it (like fish or tofu).
• Thai Kale - Stir fried green onion, garlic, blanched kale, mint, basil and tajin (a lime and chili pepper spic), fish sauce, and brown sugar.  This was quite good.
• Italian Mushroom - pan fried onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley, salt,. pepper, and red wine.  This turned out well.
• Thai Bell Peppers - stir fried green onion, garlic bell peppers, mint basil, fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, hot and sweet chili sauce, and tajin.   The tajin spice was good for this dish; and the bell peppers worked with this heavier sauce
• Thai Cucumbers - stir fried sliced Persian cucumbers with basil, mint, lemon juice, sweet & hot chili suace, tajin, brown sugar, and fish sauce.   This may have been the best dish from all these experimental dishes
• Radish Greens - I used to just throw these away and only kept the radishes; but, learned last week that these can been cooked.  So, I stir fried them with onion, garlic, a little basil, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mediterranean spice.   It tasted pretty good and the cinnamon and nutmeg helped to counteract the bitter taste of the radish greens.
• Curly Mustard Greens - stir fried with olive oil, onion, garlic, fish sauce, basil, and mint.   This dish seemed better with just simple ingredients in order to allow the natural mustard green flavor to be tasted.
• Burghul Pilaf - Bought a box of this pre-made and just boiled it.   The flavors weren't so good, and definitely missed the taste of fresh ingredients.   I probably wouldn't buy this again.

Overall, it was fun to experiment.   I'm not sure whether the Thai chili peppers would have made the extra difference, since most of the dishes seemed to be "missing something".   I liked the smell of the mint and basil when cooking; and the brown sugar was really good in balancing some of the other flavors.   I still need to practice more before; and I do intend to try, try again.