Recipes Som Tam Thailand

Ingredients

• 8-12 Thai chillies (bird peppers), each cut into 3-4 segments
• 8 cloves garlic, peeled and cut each into 2-3 pieces
• 2 Tbs. small dried shrimp
• 4 cups julienned peeled unripe papaya - in strips 2-3 inches long and 1/8 inch thick
• 1 cup cut long beans - 1 1/2-inch-long segments
• 1 julienned carrot
• 1/4 cup tamarind juice the thickness of fruit concentrate
• Juice of 2-3 limes, to taste
• 2-3 Tbs. fish sauce, to taste
• 2-3 Tbs. palm sugar, melted with 1 Tbs. water into a thick syrup - use as needed
• 2 small tomatoes, cut into bite-size wedges; or 12 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts

Prepare the ingredients as indicated. Make tamarind juice by starting with 1 Tbs. of compressed tamarind in 1/3 cup of warm water. Work the tamarind with your fingers to dissolve the soft fruit; gather up remaining undissolvable pulp, squeeze to extract juice and discard. Add more tamarind or water as necessary to make 1/4 cup of concentrate.

Divide the ingredients into two batches and make each batch as follows.

Using a large clay mortar with a wooden pestle, pound the garlic and chillies to a paste. Add the dried shrimp and long beans and pound to bruise. Follow with the green papaya and carrot. Stir well with a spoon and pound to bruise the vegetables so that they absorb the heat and flavor of the chillies and garlic.

Add the tamarind and lime juice, fish sauce and palm sugar. Stir and pound a bit more to blend the vegetables with the flavorings and seasonings. Taste and adjust flavors to the desired hot-sour-sweet-and-salty combination. Then add the tomato pieces, stir and bruise lightly to blend in with the rest of the salad. Transfer to a serving plate and sprinkle with peanuts. Serves 6-8.

Notes and Pointers:

Green papaya has a very mild, almost bland, taste, but it is the medium through which robust flavor ingredients take body and form. It picks up the hot, sour, sweet and salty flavors, giving them a unique crisp and chewy texture unlike that of any other vegetable. When made into salad, you wouldn't know that it was mild and timid; you remember it only as bold and spicy.

Unripe papayas are readily available in various sizes and shapes during the summer at many Asian markets. Select one that is very firm with shiny green peel suggesting that it is as freshly picked as possible. Any very firm unripe green papaya can be used for the recipe, ranging from the small Hawaiian papaya to the huge Mexican variety. The important thing is that it should be unripe - the flesh still light green, almost white, in color after it is peeled. Select the firmest one you can find. Even green fruits will eventually ripen and turn soft if allowed to sit around for some time.

There are many ways to make green papaya salads, with varying degrees of hotness, sourness and sweetness. The hottest salads are probably made in northeastern Thailand and Laos where they are eaten with barbecued chicken and sticky rice as a staple food of the populace. There, the salads are made by bruising julienned green papaya with garlic and very hot bird peppers in a large clay mortar with a wooden pestle, then seasoning with lime juice, fish sauce and other flavorings.

Nasi Lemak Malaysia

As a self-proclaimed Malaysian home cook, it’s a shame that it took me so long to prepare nasi lemak, the de facto national dish of Malaysia. In my opinion, a truly remarkable nasi lemak is not to be taken lightly; it should fulfill a few requisites: quality, texture, flavors, and, of course, the right ingredients. This past weekend, I finally found the time and dedication to make this legendary dish…

The difference between a good nasi lemak and an exceptionally marvelous nasi lemak lies in the use of pandan leaves/screwpine leaves. Possessing highly fragrant floral smell, these leaves are used abundantly in Malaysian cuisine to infuse rice dishes or desserts with the signature aroma; a nasi lemak will not be a true nasi lemak without their presence. The other main ingredient of nasi lemak is dried anchovies, or known locally by ikan bilis. These little salted fish are used in the sambal.

As sambal is of the essence when making nasi lemak, I was extremely zealous when preparing it. I shun away from electrical appliances. Nasi lemak deserves better, it deserves to be prepared the traditional way, that is, with mortar and pestle.

I gathered all the ingredients for my rempah (spice paste), patiently and gracefully pounded away just like any traditional Malaysian home cooks do. This very exercise brought back a flood of memories. As a child, I loved observing my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt when they prepared their rempah with batu giling (a flat surfaced granite grinding stone); I would always volunteer to help them with the chore as it was pure fun playing real life masak-masak (cooking). As I reminisced back those childhood days in my family’s kitchen, I came to realize that it was probably the beginning of my life-long passion for cooking.

So, here I present you nasi lemak, a truly Rasa Malaysia dish.

Recipe: Nasi Lemak Ingredients:
Coconut Milk Steamed Rice
2 cups of rice
3 screwpine leaves (tie them into a knot as shown above)
Salt to taste
1 small can of coconut milk (5.6 oz size)
Some water
Tamarind Juice
1 cup of water
Tamarind pulp (size of a small ping pong ball)
Sambal Ikan Bilis (Dried anchovies sambal)
1/2 red onion
1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies)
1 clove garlic
4 shallots
10 dried chillies
1 teaspoon of belacan (prawn paste)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
Other ingredients
2 hard boiled eggs (cut into half)
3 small fish (sardines or smelt fish)
1 small cucumber (cut into slices and then quartered)
Method:

1. Just like making steamed rice, rinse your rice and drain. Add the coconut milk, a pinch of salt, and some water. Add the pandan leaves into the rice and cook your rice.
2. Rinse the dried anchovies and drain the water. Fry the anchovies until they turn light brown and put aside.
3. Pound the prawn paste together with shallots, garlic, and deseeded dried chilies with a mortar and pestle. You can also grind them with a food processor.
4. Slice the red onion into rings.
5. Soak the tamarind pulp in water for 15 minutes. Squeeze the tamarind constantly to extract the flavor into the water. Drain the pulp and save the tamarind juice.
6. Heat some oil in a pan and fry the spice paste until fragrant.
7. Add in the onion rings.
8. Add in the ikan bilis and stir well.
9. Add tamarind juice, salt, and sugar.
10. Simmer on low heat until the gravy thickens. Set aside.
11. Clean the small fish, cut them into half and season with salt. Deep fry.
12. Cut the cucumber into slices and then quartered into four small pieces.
13. Dish up the steamed coconut milk rice and pour some sambal ikan bilis on top of the rice.
14. Serve with fried fish, cucumber slices, and hard-boiled eggs.