Seattle diary: amazing home-cooked Thai food

Thai fried noodles (guey toew pad thai)

All three of our sons are great cooks and we're always excited when we have a chance to sample their cooking. When the oldest decided to cook a Thai dinner during our Seattle visit, we couldn't wait to see what he would prepare. We weren't disappointed. He made Chinese broccoli, spicy long beans, pad thai, and potato curry. Our middle son helped out by grilling tofu and the rest of the leftover potatoes. I have the recipes for this unusual version of pad thai, the potato curry and the long beans. They are from the cookbook, "Gourmet Thai in Minutes," by Vatcharin Bhumichitr. (It's not a vegetarian cookbook but many of the recipes can be easily modified. The author also has a vegetarian cookbook called Thai Vegetarian Cooking that sounds really good.) The pad thai is lighter and fresher tasting than the more familiar version. Just ask and I'll send the recipes to to you. The recipes are very simple and fast but involve some ingredients available from Asian grocery stores, like kaffir lime leaves and long beans. I think you could substitute regular string beans for the long beans but I'm not sure about the kaffir lime leaves. I think it would be worth it to find this stuff because the recipes are great!


Spicy quick-fried long beans (pat prik king)


Potato curry (gaeng kari)


grilled tofu


Chinese broccoli


grilled potato slices

The night after our Thai extravaganza, we opted for something simple — a miso-based soup and a veggie stir fry. In addition to greens and mushrooms, the soup contains yuba. Yuba is made by skimming off the surface skin that forms on simmering soymilk and drying it. You can buy it in packages as sheets, or rolled into sticks. It requires soaking and then cooking but is very easy to prepare. We usually use the sticks (bean-curd sticks) and cook it in soup. It has a very chewy and satisfying texture and absorbs flavors well.


Miso soup with bean-curd sticks


stir-fried veggies

Be sure to visit CCK (also known as CCV) to win a case of Jocalat bars from Larabar. You have until March 19 to enter. Who wouldn't want a case of Jocalat bars?

Benja Krayatip Rice with greens, tomatoes and cashews

One of my husband's graduate students from China gave him a gift of a muslin bag filled with many different colors of rice. It came with a folder, mostly in Thai, with a English description of the rice, cooking instructions and a note that the rice was recommended for "diabetic people, weight control people and aged people." With a description like that, how could I lose? The bag contained Thai brown glutinous rice, Thai hom mali rice, Thai brown hom mali rice, Kam Doi Muzer rice, red hom mali rice and hom kurlap rice. Much to my surprise, when I googled the name Benja Krayatip rice, I found information about how the rice is grown. Here is what I found:

THAI ROYAL PROJECT

Queen Sirikat promotes and directs the production of Benja Krayatip Rice on a Model Farm in Baan Yang Noi, Khuengnai District, Ubon Ratchathani Province, Thailand.

Benja Krayatip Rice

Benja Krayatip Rice is a perfect mix of 6 Thai rices. Grown under the auspices of the Thai Royal Family, in rice fields maintained according to strict Royal standards, this special blend of rice is selected, grown and harvested in the greenest possible way. Only natural pesticides ( a solution of marigold and black sugar cane) are used and in the actual planting process only the power of the water buffalo hand plow and strength of native farmers is used. No machinery of any kind is used in or near the rice paddy fields. The rice is then harvested by hand so no rice is damaged, and subsequently sorted using a computer camera laser method. This ensures that only the perfect rice grains are selected packed and shipped.

With this Royal project, the goal of the Royal family is to ensure that the rice is grown in the “greenest” possible way, minimizing the chances of contamination from oil-based machinery and using only “natural” pesticides. Lastly, in keeping with their ecological approach to farming, the rice is “fair – traded”.


So, apparently this is no ordinary rice. One of my sons said he has seen similar rice in Asian grocery stores, and if you can find it, I highly recommend it. This bag was purchased in the Beijing airport. I was going to label this post, "leftover rice," because that's what it was, but after uncovering this information, I decided to upgrade the title. I cooked the rice in my rice cooker and it cooked up perfectly and tasted delicious. I had a lot leftover so I used it in a stir fry the next day. For this stir fry, I kept the ingredients separate as I cooked them. Along with the rice I used beet greens and cippolini onion from our CSA, tomatoes from our garden and raw cashews.

Tofu squash curry with swiss chard

My son and daughter-in-law have a large garden in their back yard and one of their most successful crops is swiss chard. You know, anyone who plants swiss chard in their garden is bound to have success. It's hard to fail with this prolific leafy green. Growing it is good for your gardening self-esteem, but when you have a lot of it, you should eat it. Swiss chard has been off my list of favorite vegetables for a long time — maybe this has something to do with my past success at growing it, and eating it and eating it and eating it...But after having this fabulous curry, I'm thinking of growing it again. My kids all tend to cook "free-hand," but I've been forcing them to pay attention to ingredients and quantities so they can share their creations with me, and I can post them on this blog. My son made this dish, and he said in the summer he uses summer squash and zucchini, but his favorite way to prepare it is with winter squash. He said he peels and bakes butternut squash in the oven until it's soft, and then uses it in this recipe. We used to have a Thai food cart on campus that used both summer and winter squash in their squash curry all year. I like the idea of cooking with the seasons, so this recipe will be presented with summer squash.

Tofu squash curry

• 1 pound block extra firm tofu, cut into 1" cubes
• oil for browning tofu
• tamari or soy sauce
• 1 can light coconut milk
• small can bamboo shoots, cut into strips
• 1 to 2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste (Thai Kitchen is a good one)
• 1 tablespoon Sucanot or similar organic unprocessed sugar
• 1/4 cup basil (Thai basil if you can get it)
• 3 small summer squash, cut into chunks (or 1 butternut squash peeled and baked until soft)
• large bunch of swiss chard, washed well and roughly chopped, tough stems removed
• cooked (brown) rice

1. Lightly brown the tofu in a small amount of oil in a dutch oven. Sprinkle it with tamari as it cooks. (about 1 to 2 tablespoons) Remove tofu to a bowl.
2. Dissolve the curry paste in 1/3 of the coconut milk. (Curry paste varies in spiciness and some are really hot. Use more or less depending on how hot you want the dish to be. Use caution if you are unfamiliar with red curry paste.) Place in the dutch oven and simmer for five minutes.
3. Add sugar, tofu, squash and remaining coconut milk. Cook until squash is almost done.
4. Add chard and cover. Steam for several minutes. Remove lid and mix.
5. Add basil and cook a couple of minutes longer until flavors are blended and vegetables are cooked.
6. Serve over rice.

Thai spring rolls

These have basically the same ingredients as the bun salad from the last post but the sauce should be thick and spicy. You use rice flour sheets to wrap the ingredients instead of putting them in a bowl. I recommend dipping them in a pan of warm water only long enough to make them flexible. If they get too wet they won't stick together and you'll have rolls like ours - falling apart and messy to eat! They will absorb enough moisture from the ingredients to completely soften the wrappers. We find the square wrappers seem to work better than the round ones.

note: When we made the rolls above, we used homemade seitan instead of tofu. We made these again tonight substituting sautéed tempeh instead of seitan, savoy cabbage instead of bok choy and no bean sprouts since we didn't have any. The sauce was unmeasured amounts of agave syrup, Chinese red pepper, fresh lime juice, red chili paste and unsweetened organic ketchup. It may sound weird but it worked!