Hubby's Thai Food Tests

Thanks to my thoughtful friend C, I recently visited a Trader Joe's near her and purchased many fun treats for my family.  One item was meal ready green curry thai sauce.  Thanks to my husband, who wanted to make Thai food and loves to experiment in the kitchen, we had a wonderful homemade Thai meal.  He offered us green curry shrimp and/or red chili shrimp over jasmine rice and pad thai noodles.  I know my Mother would have loved tasting this!

  
Green Curry Shrimp
a bottle of Trader Joes green curry sauce, warmed
add in some whole peeled prawns
serve over rice
Note:  Even in our small town we can find Thai Kitchen products and great recipes on the internet, so to make something similar to us with out a Trader Joe's, we can use Thai Kitchen green curry paste and a 14 oz. of coconut cream.  


Red Chili Coconut Shrimp
1 14 oz. can coconut milk
3 T Thai Kitchen roasted red chili paste
2 T Thai Kitchen premium fish sauce
1T  white sugar
Stir ingredients together, simmer on medium low heat for 7 minutes. 
Add 1/2 cup frozen green beans sliced asian style  
1 water chestnut, diced and optional
1/4 cup frozen peas
Continue to simmer for 3 more minutes.  Turn off heat.  Add 7-10 cooked, peeled prawns or 1/2 cup smaller shrimp and serve as soon as warm over white jasmine rice.  


Note: You may use chicken or pork of course, but one of our son's announced 2 weeks ago that he is not vegetarian, but will eat fish -- thus this further exploration in the kitchen. 

Toronto Pad Thai

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package pad thai rice noodles
• 1/4 cup tamarind paste (To substitute for tamarind paste, blend equal parts dried apricots, prunes, dates, plus lemon or lime juice. Use 2 tablespoons of this mixture for every teaspoon of tamarind paste.)
• 1/3 cup boiling water
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 limes, juiced
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon chili paste (sambal oelek)
•  
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 pound firm tofu, drained and cubed
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 3 cups bean sprouts
• 1/2 cup coarsely ground peanuts
• 5 green onions, thinly sliced

Directions

1. Place the rice noodles in a large bowl, pour in enough very hot tap water to cover, and let them soak for 30 minutes. Drain the noodles, and set aside.
2. Stir together the tamarind paste with boiling water in a bowl until well mixed, and let the mixture stand for 15 minutes. Press the paste mixture through a fine-mesh sieve to strain, and discard any fibers or seeds. Combine the strained tamarind paste with the ketchup, lime juice, soy sauce, sugar, and chili paste in a bowl.
3. Heat the vegetable oil in a wok over medium-high heat until the oil shimmers. Cook and stir the garlic and tofu until the tofu begins to show brown edges, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour in the eggs, and scramble for 30 seconds, then add the noodles, tamarind mixture, and bean sprouts. Cook and stir until the noodles are separated, heated through, and covered with sauce, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with peanuts and sliced green onions.

When I make rice, I want Karjalan Piirakka

If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for  . . . 

Yesterday I was making rice for lunch and it made me think of making rice porridge 

which made me think of Karjalan Piirakka. 

Then, I remembered my Mother recently talking about how she'd always wanted to try Karjalan Piirakka made with barley porridge filling, but she had never made it, which made me want to try it. 

For the Barley Filling, just follow the instructions on the package, but then add about 5-6 cups of milk to cook with it as well to make it porridge like you do for the rice porridge.

I attempted this with whole barley grain and it was a miserable failure.  I  guess that's why there is such a product as "Quick Barley" because I  cooked the other all day and it still wasn't ready and when it was I never could get it like a porridge.  

Here you see the different looks on this cookie sheet full with some barley ones and some rice ones.  You can see the flecks in the barley and they are darker, especially in the picture above.

I read an old Finnish cookbook that even adds carrot in with the rice.  Yummy.  Sounds like Porkkana Laatikko to me. 

And of course you can use  mashed potatoes for the filling.  This is what they used during the war when neither rice nor barley was easily available.

Now my Mother suggests trying rutabaga filling.  I found this recipe blog, mainly Estonian  (cousins to the Finns), but a few Finnish recipes and one is for Karelian pasties. Check her out.  She confirms many fillings may be used!