Day 25 – 27.10.2016
We woke up very early today to receive blessings from the local monks and offer them alms before breakfast.
The monks cannot be touched by women, as women are considered „unclean“ and unworthy. You always take your shoes off before going into temples and receiving blessings. The monks walk around each morning with a big pot in their hand. The monks can’t actually go out in the mornings and buy food and so they walk around with this pot not begging for food but receiving the alms in return for a blessing. It was a bit of a weird experience receiving these blessings on the side of the road at 06:30 in the morning.
For breakfast we had a typical congee (rice soup) with pork and spring onions. A savoury Thai breakfast.
After breakfast we got picked up by the daughter of our homestay for the next day and night. We headed off to the market to pick up some further ingredients such as grilled green peppers.
Young pandan leaves:
The galgan root:
Young bamboo sprouts:
Jack fruit and other lovely vegetables.
Dried shrimp paste. You just break it to pieces when ready to use, and throw it into hot water.
We also tried several snacks at the market – including this lovely omelette with bamboo sprouts, cucumber, spices, pickled cabbage and turnips and onions. Absolutely devine!!!
Following the market we headed for some lunch at a famous noodles restaurant. Here we learned how to make a speciality of fermented rice noodles. The batter is pressed through a type of sieve into the hot water and is then taken out and left to set under cold water.
Then they are rolled together into little balls of noodle:
You choose a type of curry to go with it and separate vegetables are served with it – such as bamboo sprouts (normal and fermented), spring onions, lettuce, pickled cabbage and a very bitter vegetable which I unfortunately forgot the name of.
The noodle balls: (The green ones have been dyed using finally chopped pandan leaves.
The finally product with a crab curry (relatively spicy!)
Next we headed closer to the homestay. Before starting the cooking we stopped at a mushroom farm where we learned how oyster mushrooms are produced and farmed. The spurs are placed on a glucose bed into sterilised glass bottles.
Inside these bottles they grow and reproduce. One bottle can produce up to 800 new spurs!
The spurs are then extracted and placed into these plastic bags with mother soil and nutrients with ths opening at the top out of which the mushroom then grows out of.
These bags are then stacked en masse in the dry and dark shed. Here we actually harvested some mushrooms for a dish later that day.
The oyster mushrooms grow really well during the wet season and during the dry season the owner of the farms plants a different type of mushroom. She also grows this type of mushroom during the wet season:
Our harvest!
A passionfruit „tree“
The farmer harvesting lemongrass.
Growing coriander.
The actual plant of the galgan root.
Growing more herbs!
The washed galgan root.
On our way to the homestay we stopped once more at a rice field, this time to look at a sticky rice field. This field was not quite ready yet.
This little fellow was a very cheeky but lovely kid!
Just such stunning views!
All of us girls slept in the same room at the homestay, and each one of us received their own „double bed“ topped with a mosquito net.
They have walls of these lovely decorated bricks at the homestay. What a creative idea!
Let the games begin!
We started out with this chili dipping paste:
Northern Green Chili Dipping Paste (Nam Prik Noon)
1 – 2 servings
Ingredients:
5 green chili peppers
Garlic – 4 cloves
3 Red shallots
Fish sauce – 1/3 teaspoon
Fresh vegetables for serving with (cabbage, baby corn, long bean, cucumber etc.)
Preparation:
Grill chili peppers, garlic and red shallots until done and aromatic, let them cool down then peel off the outside skin.
Use mortar and pestle to crush all ingredients. Season with salt and fish sauce. You may add lime juice a little bit if you want.
Transfer to a dipping sauce bowl. Serve with prepared fresh vegetables (or steamed vegetables) and hot steamed rice (or sticky rice).
The pork rind for the pork scratchings. This is how they are made:
Pork Rinds (Kaeb Moo)
For 3 servings
Ingredients:
Pig skin – 1 kg
Salt – ½ teaspoon
Soy sauce – 2 teaspoon
Vegetable oil
Preparation:
Clean the pig skin by scraping until clean.
Cut the rinds into 2 x 2,5 in pieces. Rinse with water until clean.
Mix with salt and soy sauce and marinate the rinds at least 30 minutes.
Heat oil in a wok over low heat, add the rinds and fry for 2-3 hours until light brown.
Remove and drain and let it cool down for 20-30 minutes (deep fry about 3 times)
Deep fry the rinds again over the medium heat. Sitr constantly to let the rinds get the heat equally and puff up thoroughly. The temperature of the cooking oil is very important when deep-frying. If not hot enough, the food will absorb all the oil and be greasy; but if too hot, the food will burn.
Remove and drain on a strainer. Drain an absorbent paper to remove excess oil. This will also help the rinds to stay crisp longer. Let them cool and keep in a plastic bag and seal it tightly or in an airtight container.
Next up we worked on a curry with chicken:
Hung lay Curry with Chicken (Gaeng Hung Lay Gai)
1 – 2 servings
Ingredients:
Chicken breast or thigh, cut in bite-size pieces – 250 g or 1 cup
Finely sliced ginger – 1 teaspoon
Tamarind paste – 2 tablespoons (peel and add water)
Palm sugar – 1 ½ tablespoons
Fish sauce – 1 tablespoon
Hung Lay powder or curry powder – 1 tabelsoon (like Masala curry powder)
Turmeric powder – 1/3 tablespoon (for colour)
Black soy sauce – ½ teaspoon (the sweeter type)
Water – 2 cups
Curry Paste Ingredients:
5 Dried chilies
Minced shallot – 1 tablespoon
Minced garlic – 1 tablespoon
Minced galangal – 1/3 tablespoon
Sliced lemongrass – 1 tablespoon
Shrimp paste – 1/3 teaspoon
Salt – 1/3 tablespoon
Preparation:
Start preparing the curry paste: pound all the ingredients together thoroughly. Add Hung Lay powder or curry powder and pound together until it’s well mixed. Marinate chicken with the curry paste for 1 hour. (or 15 minutes if you are short for time)
After marinating, cook the chicken in a pot over medium heat, and stir until cooked. Add water enough to cover all the meat. (Don’t use any oil) Keep stiring, add water and then repeat. After all the water has been added, let simmer.
Add turmeric powder, tamarind paste and ginger and stir well. Bring to boil and simmer over low heat for 40 minutes or until chicken is getting tender. Take the chili paste from the edges down to the liquid. Add palm sugar and fish sauce and taste, you can add more if you want. If it is too spicy add more water. However, the original taste should be just enough salty, sweet and sour. Let simmer till the liquid is low and it has turned quite thick. Transfer to a serving bowl. (Add ginger if you want!)
Cut the lemongrass, onions and garlic.
Grind the ingredients in a mortar
Add the paste to the chicken:
Next up a lovely pork salad, including another chili paste:
Northern Style Spicy Pork salad (Larb Moo)
1 – 2 servings
Ingredients:
Finely minced pork with fat – 250g or 1 cup
Finely sliced boiled pork skin – 100g
Finely sliced boiled pig intestine – 100g (optional)
Finely sliced boiled pig liver – 100g (optional)
Coarsely cut sawtooth coriander (culantro) – 1 tablespoon
Coarsely cut spring onion – 1 tablespoon
Coarsely cut mint leaves – 1 tablespoon
Chopped garlic – 1 tablespoon
Vegetable oil – 1 tablespoon
Chili Paste Infredients:
4 Roasted dried chilies
2 Roasted red shallots
5 cloves of roasted garlics
Roasted minced galangal – 1/3 teaspoon
Roasted Sichuan pepper (or Anise pepper) – 1/3 teaspoon
Salt – 1/3 teaspoon
Preparation:
Start preparing the chili paste: pound chilies and salt until fine and add all ingredients and pound together thoroughly until fine.
Well mix minced pork with the chili paste together with the pork skin, intestine and liver.
Set a pan on low heat, add vegetable oil then garlic, cook until golden brown. Add water to keep it moist. Add the pork mixture and stir-fry till cooked. Taste is as you like. Season with fish sauce and palm sugar if necessary.
Transfer to a serving plate, garnish with sawtooth coriander, spring onion and mint leaves.
Serve with fresh vegetables i.e. cucumber, cabbages, long beans and/or pork rinds.
Yes add intestines if you want... (They are not that bad, especially when you know German sausages...)
The final product:
Time for some frying...
My very own chicken dish...
The pork rinds – after the first fry:
More frying of the pork rind:
A little snack prepared by our tour guide Soon – delicious!
Next up TFC „Thai fried chicken“ and the fried mushrooms from the farm:
Fried Chicken (Gai Tord)
For 3 servings
Ingredients:
Wheat flour – 200g
Salt – 1 teaspoon
Sugar – 1 tablespoon
2 coriander roots (pounded coriander root)
Pepper – 1 teaspoon
Garlic – 100g
Vegetable oil
Preparation:
Clean chicken and cut in desired pieces.
Pound pepper, garlic and coriander roots together until fine.
In a large bowl, mix the chicken with the pounded mixture, followed by sugar, salt and wheat flour. After mixing everything well, marinate the chicken at least 30 minutes.
Heat oil in a wok over medium heat. When the oil is hot enough, add chicken and fry until golden and crispy. Remove and drain on a strainer.
Mushrooms Tempura (Hed Choop Paeng Tord)
5 servings
Ingredients:
Sarjor-caju mushroom (oyster mushrooms) – 500g
Tempura flour – 1 cup
Cold water – 1 cup
Salt – 1/3 teaspoon
Pepper – 1 teaspoon
Vegetable oil
Sweet chili dipping sauce or tomato sauce or chili sauce
Preparation:
Heat oil in a wok over low heat and wait.
Meanwhile prepare the serving plate by putting the oil blotting paper on.
Cut off the stems of the mushrooms (use only caps)
Mix the tempura flour with ½ cup of cold water by an egg whisk. Then add another ½ cup of water and quickly mix.
Add the mushrooms in the flour mixture and mix thoroughly.
Test the heated oil by dripping the flour mixture into it, if the oil is hot enough, the flour will float up straight away.
Add mushrooms (already coated with flour mixture) and fry until golden and cirspy (use medium heat). Remove and drain and put on the prepared plate.
Arrange fried mushrooms in a serving plate. Serve with dipping sauce (sweet chili dipping sauce, ketchup or chili sauce)
Dipping sauce for Fried Chicken (or mushrooms!)
For 3 servings
Ingredients:
Vinegar – ½ cup
Sugar – 1 cup
Salt – ½ tablespoon
Water – ½ cup
Red chilies, finely pounded – ½ tablespoon
Garlic, pounded – 1 tablespoon
Preparation:
Mix water, vinegar and sugar in a pot over a medium heat and stir until the mixture ist hick.
Add salt, pounded chili and garlic, remove from the heat.
Trying the final product:
Northern Tomato Chili Dipping Sauce (Nam Prik Ong)
1 – 2 servings
Ingredients:
Minced pork – ½ cup
4 – 6 tomatoes, halved and sliced
1 stem sliced coriander
1 stem sliced spring onion
Vegetable oil – 1 tablespoon
Fish sauce – 1 tablespoon
Palm sugar – ½ teaspoon
Chili Paste Ingredients:
5 dried chilies
Minced shallot – 1 tablespoon
Minced garlic – 1 tablespoon
1 – 2 coriander roots
Shrimp paste – 1/3 teaspoon
Salt – 1/3 teaspoon
Preparation:
Start preparing the chili paste: pound all the ingredients together thoroughly.
Set a pan with the oil on a medium heat, add the pounded chili paste and stir-fry until the mixture becomes dry and fragrant.
Add the minced pork and stir until cooked. Add a little bit of water. When boiled add the tomatoes and stir until it’S well mixed and well cooked, add fish sauce and palm sugar.
Remove from heat and transfer to a serving bowl and garnissh with spring onions and coriander. Serve with fresh vegetables or pork rind (pork scratchings)
Here we learnt how to carve a flower from a tomato... It is quite challenging!
After the carving – now to the dipping sauce:
Finished and a tomato flower!
Proud cook!
After our long afternoon of cooking we finally sat down to endulge our hard work Thai style. We got to sit in the families living room and were even accompanied by the family on various musical instruments!
We even got to learn how to play the instruments (a sort of xylophone, a type of violin, the drums and the „guitar“). We also got a little neck and shoulder massage! We then moved over to the garden where we got to witness the children of the family perform dances:
We then all signed a lantern with our thoughts, wishes and names and let it fly in the hopes that our wishes were to be granted.
After that – time for desert!
For desert we had little balls made of rice flour that were died by natural colours such as green –pandan leaves, blue from the butterfly pea flower, and red and yellow colour for the other little balls.
Rolling these little balls were definitely a team effort...
They were then cooked in coconut milk and palm sugar and the little „soup“ was a very light but lovely desert!
We even learnt how to make bouquets out of pandan leaves:
After all of the excitement we were all glad to head to bed and couldn’t wait for the next day!
