A Thai-ish Supper

I always have at least one jar of Maesri Thai chilli paste with sweet basil in the pantry. If you enjoy drunken noodles, you'll like this condiment.

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Ordinarily, I plan our weekend dinners a few days in advance, but other times I just wing it. We normally have enough raw ingredients in the house to produce something interesting without having to make a run to the store. On this particular weekend, I decided to use some of the Trader Joe's cod we had in the freezer. Cod's not my favorite--I'm not into its weird, almost-buttery, flavor-- but it's relatively inexpensive and cooks quickly. I thought I could do something like my old standby Sriracha Bouillabaisse, which is relatively easy. (I was feeling lazy.) Then I noticed a jar of Thai chilli paste with sweet basil in the cupboard, next to a can of coconut milk, and dinner suddenly veered off in a slightly different direction.

Both recipes start with sautéing aromatics, then adding tomatoes, stock, and something spicy. In this case, the spicy element is provided one of my favorite condiments. I discovered chilli paste with sweet basil leaves at H Mart many years ago. There are a couple of variations and brands available, with holy basil, or labeled as "pad kapao" sauce. All of them contain some variety of Thai basil, chile peppers, soy bean oil, garlic, and salt. The flavors are spicy and aromatic, bright and fragrant, great with everything (I think). If you appreciate the licorice-like flavors of Thai basil and are into hot stuff, I think you'll like it.

I mostly had peppers on hand--an orange bell pepper and a bag of shishitos that I haven't gotten around to using. I chopped up a handful of those; while not really spicy, shishitos still have the flavor profile of a hot green pepper, which I vastly prefer over a green bell pepper. Green beans would work nicely in this dish, too, so if you have some, toss them in. Hell, any veg would be good, and shrimp or tofu would work just as well as the fish.

I simmer the veg and wet ingredients until they look more like a sauce than a soup, adding lots of fish sauce, lime juice, and a pinch or two of sweetener (sugar, agave nectar, honey) to get a balanced flavor. Restaurant Thai food, at least in this area, tends to be sweet. It's nice to be able to cut back on the sweetness when preparing food with Thai flavors at home, but I still think many dishes need at least a touch of sweetness to balance the more intense flavors of chiles and fish sauce.

The protein is added at the last minute and heated only until cooked through. Overcooked fish is a bad thing, so don't do it. I don't think you can overcook tofu, but probably best not to let that go too long, either. I served the dish with plain jasmine rice, your favorite grain would probably be fine. If you reduce the sauce even more before seasoning, you could probably eat this over pasta, should you be so inclined.

Thai Basil Coconut Fish

2 tablespoons neutral oil
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 orange bell pepper, sliced thinly
1-3 green chiles of your choice (jalapenos or whatever you have on hand), sliced thinly
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro stems
2 cloves garlic, minced
Kosher salt
1 Knorr fish bouillon cube plus 1 cup water, or 1 8-oz bottle of clam juice
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
1 15-oz can coconut milk
2 heaping tablespoons Maesri chilli paste with sweet basil leaves (or to taste)
Fish sauce
Lime juice
Sugar to taste
1 pound boneless, skinless cod filets, or similar white-fleshed fish
Rice for serving
Cilantro and sliced green onion for garnish

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a dutch oven or large pan with lid. Add the onion, peppers, cilantro stems, and a big pinch of salt.. Stir occasionally, cooking until veg have softened a bit and starting to brown, 5-6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook an additional minute or so. Add the bouillon or clam juice, tomatoes, and coconut milk and stir to combine. Bring mixture to a simmer and cook for 8-10 minutes to evaporate some of the liquid and concentrate the flavors.

Turn the heat down to medium. Add the chilli paste and taste for seasoning. If you are serving this with rice, you'll need the sauce to be somewhat aggressively seasoned. Add fish sauce for salt--I used a couple of tablespoons. You can add some kosher salt, too. Add a few squeezes of lime juice and a bit of sugar. Once you have the sauce flavored to your liking (it should have a nice spicy/tangy/sweet balance, but do what works for your palate), slip in the pieces of fish. Cover the pan and cook until the fish is cooked through and easily flakes apart, about 5 minutes.

Serve in bowls, with rice on the bottom or on the side. Garnish with cilantro.

Serves 4.

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Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Thai-style Crab Cakes

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on July 6, 2012.
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Sometimes I have a hankering for crab, and on those days, even mediocre crab will do. I have found that in the world of mediocre crab (the canned stuff that Phillips puts out, for instance), claw meat tends to have the most flavor. It's also more reasonably priced than lump. I bought a can of crab claw meat for the okonomiyaki I made a couple of weeks back, but didn't use all of it. The rest became crab cakes.

Our Thai basil was growing like gangbusters, so I thought I'd make a cake with Thai flavors: lemongrass; red curry paste; basil. I realized I should probably use a bit of breading, since claw meat tends to be on the moist side. I didn't want to use up the bit of bread earmarked for Mr Minx's lunch the next day, so grabbed the next carby thing I found - a box of corn Chex.

It worked quite well. After a long rest in the fridge, the cakes stayed together in the pan, and they formed a nice crispy crust, too.

My favorite thing about using Chex as a crust: getting out my frustrations by beating on them with a meat tenderizer.

Thai-Spiced Crab Cakes

2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Thai Kitchen red curry paste
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha
12 ounces crab claw meat
1/2 cup Thai basil, cut into a fine chiffonade
1/2 cup crushed Corn Chex cereal
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, mix together mayo, red curry paste, lemongrass, and Sriracha. Fold in crab, basil, and cereal. Add salt and pepper to taste. Form into 6-8 patties. Refrigerate for several hours; overnight is best.

Heat oil in a large saute pan. Add crab cakes. Cook for 10-12 minutes, turning over once, until heated through and browned on both sides.

Serve with peanut sauce.

Peanut Sauce

2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1 tablespoon milk
lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped scallions

Warm peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl or ramekin until runny. Stir in Sriracha, lemongrass, and milk. Add enough lime juice to create a drizzle-able texture (3 tablespoons or so). Stir in scallions.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Shrimp Salad with Thai Flavors

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on June 8, 2012.

When the weather gets truly hot - up in the 90s - with high humidity, we don't really want to cook. Or eat, for that matter. Sometimes a nice cold salad is the best way to beat the heat. That, and cranking the air conditioning. 

I had a pound of shrimp in the fridge that was destined for either salad or cocktail, but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. When Mr Minx said he'd be happy eating PB&J, I was inspired to create a somewhat Thai-ish shrimp salad with peanut butter in the dressing.

Shrimp Salad with Thai Flavors

4 teaspoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Sriracha
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon cold water
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1 lb shrimp, cooked, peeled, and deveined, cut into approximately 1/2" pieces
5 Peppadew peppers, diced, or 3 tablespoons chopped red bell pepper
1 tablespoon Thai basil, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
peanuts and Thai basil for garnish

Combine first ten ingredients in a large bowl. Mix in shrimp, peppers, and basil. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, if needed. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use. Serve on lettuce-lined plates or on a sandwich.

Serves 2-4
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Veggie Pancakes with Asian Flavors

A while back, I found myself with a bunch of vegetables--a fennel bulb, a bag of broccoli slaw, sugar snap peas, lots of green onions, roasted tomatoes--and not a lot of ideas. Well, there were ideas, but nothing particularly cohesive. Because we had eaten a bunch of meat recently, I wanted to make a primarily vegetarian meal. But what to do with that motley crew of produce? The tomatoes were really throwing me off, so I decided they could wait for another meal. The rest I would use in vegetable fritters.

There was also a bunch of Thai basil in our container garden. The plant was going a bit wild and needed serious trimming, so basil became part of the meal plan. And as I had just opened a new jar of pad kapao sauce, some of that would go in, too. I really love that stuff. It's spicy, aromatic, basil-y, and garlick-y, and it's good on just about everything. Mix it with mayonnaise and put it on a turkey burger. Put it in the turkey burger, too. Mix it with softened cream cheese and spread it on a bagel. Yes, for breakfast. (Hey, "everything" bagels have garlic and onion on them, so why not?) Mix it with softened butter and stuff it under the skin of a chicken before roasting. Put a tablespoon of it in plain tomato soup to eat with that grilled cheese sandwich. Pad kapao sauce is my sriracha. I've gotten my brother hooked on it, too, and the last time we hit an Asian supermarket together, we each bought several jars.

Eventually, I ditched the fritter idea and went with okonomiyaki-style pancakes. Okonomiyaki uses dashi, which isn't vegetarian, but you can certainly substitute some veg stock or just plain water in the batter. Me, I like the vague fishy flavor of the dashi.

Okonomiyaki are commonly served with Kewpie mayonnaise and unsweetened pickled ginger. Instead, I added some of my favorite chilli basil paste to a little Duke's mayo.

Veggie Pancake with Asian Flavors

For pancakes:
1 cup water
2 teaspoons dashi powder
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch salt
3 eggs
1 tablespoon Maesri Thai chilli paste with basil leaves(pad kapao)
1 bunch scallions, chopped
3-4 cups mixed raw vegetables (I used sliced sugar snap peas, fennel, okra (because we had only 3 pods), and broccoli slaw mix)
1/4 cup roughly chopped Thai basil

For sauce:
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Maesri Thai basil and chilli sauce

Put the dashi powder and water in a microwave safe bowl. Heat long enough to warm the water and dissolve the dashi, 45 seconds to 1 minute. Let cool.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add the cooled dashi to the flour mixture, stirring to make a batter. Add the eggs and chilli sauce. Cover and refrigerate batter for at least an hour and up to three hours.

After the batter has rested, add the scallions, vegetables, and basil to the batter; it will be very thick.

Add a tablespoon of canola oil to an 12" nonstick frying pan and heat until it shimmers. Make 3 approximately 5" pancakes with the vegetable batter. Cook until bottoms are golden brown. Flip with a spatula and cook other side until brown. Remove pancakes to a paper towel-lined plate. Cover with foil to keep warm. Repeat until all batter is used.

Make a sauce with the mayo and chilli sauce. Serve with the pancakes.

Makes 9 pancakes.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Thai-style Crab Cakes

Sometimes I have a hankering for crab, and on those days, even mediocre crab will do. I have found that in the world of mediocre crab (the canned stuff that Phillips puts out, for instance), claw meat tends to have the most flavor. It's also more reasonably priced than lump. I bought a can of crab claw meat for the okonomiyaki I made a couple of weeks back, but didn't use all of it. The rest became crab cakes.

Our Thai basil was growing like gangbusters, so I thought I'd make a cake with Thai flavors: lemongrass; red curry paste; basil. I realized I should probably use a bit of breading, since claw meat tends to be on the moist side. I didn't want to use up the bit of bread earmarked for Mr Minx's lunch the next day, so grabbed the next carby thing I found - a box of corn Chex.

It worked quite well. After a long rest in the fridge, the cakes stayed together in the pan, and they formed a nice crispy crust, too.

My favorite thing about using Chex as a crust: getting out my frustrations by beating on them with a meat tenderizer.

Thai-Spiced Crab Cakes

2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Thai Kitchen red curry paste
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha
12 ounces crab claw meat
1/2 cup Thai basil, cut into a fine chiffonade
1/2 cup crushed Corn Chex cereal
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, mix together mayo, red curry paste, lemongrass, and Sriracha. Fold in crab, basil, and cereal. Add salt and pepper to taste. Form into 6-8 patties. Refrigerate for several hours; overnight is best.

Heat oil in a large saute pan. Add crab cakes. Cook for 10-12 minutes, turning over once, until heated through and browned on both sides.

Serve with peanut sauce.

Peanut Sauce

2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1 tablespoon milk
lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped scallions

Warm peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl or ramekin until runny. Stir in Sriracha, lemongrass, and milk. Add enough lime juice to create a drizzle-able texture (3 tablespoons or so). Stir in scallions.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Shrimp Salad with Thai Flavors

When the weather gets truly hot - up in the 90s - with high humidity, we don't really want to cook. Or eat, for that matter. Sometimes a nice cold salad is the best way to beat the heat. That, and cranking the air conditioning. 

I had a pound of shrimp in the fridge that was destined for either salad or cocktail, but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. When Mr Minx said he'd be happy eating PB&J, I was inspired to create a somewhat Thai-ish shrimp salad with peanut butter in the dressing.

Shrimp Salad with Thai Flavors

4 teaspoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Sriracha
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon cold water
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon lemongrass paste
1 lb shrimp, cooked, peeled, and deveined, cut into approximately 1/2" pieces
5 Peppadew peppers, diced, or 3 tablespoons chopped red bell pepper
1 tablespoon Thai basil, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
peanuts and Thai basil for garnish

Combine first ten ingredients in a large bowl. Mix in shrimp, peppers, and basil. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, if needed. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use. Serve on lettuce-lined plates or on a sandwich.

Serves 2-4

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Fennelicious

With a hurricane threatening and a full bag of Trader Joe's langoustine tails in the freezer, I knew I'd have to whip up a pre-storm dinner with them or essentially flush an Alexander Hamilton down the toilet. We also had three Cubanelle peppers from the garden and a bulb of fennel from the grocery store. I was pondering the combination when Mr Minx suggested that I think Thailand. Genius! Our container garden was overflowing with the licorice-y Thai basil, which would be a great reinforcement for the similarly-flavored fennel. Additionally, we always have a jar of Thai chilli paste with sweet basil in the fridge, so I didn't have to try particularly hard to get Thai flavors in the dish.

Rather than cook the whole fennel bulb, I reserved some of it in order to make a raw salad, to add yet another licorice-y dimension. It was a delicious combo, one which made me realize just how much I love the flavor of fennel, particularly when it's cooked. (Oddly enough, I don't like licorice candy at all, and am not all that hot on Italian cookies, either.)

Fennelicious Thai Basil Shellfish

4 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
1 bulb fennel, cored and sliced (divided use)
canola oil
3 Cubanelle or Italian frying peppers, cored, deseeded, and sliced (if you don't have the Cubanelles, you could add a small amount of ripe bell pepper; too much, however, might drown out the much more-delicate fennel flavor)
1 carrot, chopped into matchsticks (divided use)
1 heaping tablespoon Thai chilli paste with sweet basil
1/2 cup Thai basil leaves (divided use)
1 tablespoon finely minced cilantro
10 ounces medium shrimp or langoustine tails
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon agave syrup
salt
steamed rice, for serving

In a large sauté pan, heat a bit of oil and add scallions and about 2/3 of the fennel. Cook until vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Add peppers and 2/3 of the carrots and cook an additional 2-3 minutes until peppers wilt. Stir in chilli paste, half of the basil, and cilantro. If using shrimp, add to skillet and stir fry until shrimp turn pink and opaque - 3-5 minutes. If using langoustine tails, add to skillet and heat through. Before serving, stir in remaining basil.

While vegetables are cooking, toss 1/3 of fennel and carrots with the rice wine vinegar and agave syrup. Season with salt to taste.

Serve stir fry over rice and top with fennel salad. Serves 2-4.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.