Heart healthy soup recipe –Ivy gourd soup

This heart healthy soup recipe use ivy gourd as a main ingredient. Thais usually grew ivy gourd as a homegrown vegetable. We use its tips and leaves as a side dish for many curry paste and to cook. This recipe is really easy to cook.

Ivy gourd soup

1 cup Ivy gourd  

2 Coriander roots, sliced

¼ cup Garlic

1 tbs. Pepper

½ cup Ground pork

½ ts. Sugar

½ tbs. Soy sauce

2 tbs. Fish sauce

3 cups Water

1. Thoroughly crush garlic, coriander roots, and pepper. Mix with ground pork. Add sugar and soy sauce.
2. Boil water with medium heat. Flavor with fish sauce.
3. Put the mixed ground pork in 1  into the soup.
4. Add ivy ground and cook for about 1 minute. 

You can eat this heart healthy soup alone or eat it with spicy Thai dish. If you cannot find any ivy gourd, any vegetable that has sweet taste would be a good substitute ingredient. 

Photo:

- http://www.oknation.net/blog/print.php?id=381228

Easy curry sauce recipe- Northern spicy meat and tomato dip

Northern spicy meat and tomato dip (Nam Prig Ong) is an easy curry sauce recipe from Northern Thai region. Despite the name is “spicy”, it is just mild in taste (according to my tongue). If you have a chance to come to northern Thai region-Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang, etc- and have local dinner, I’m sure that this dish would be one in the menu list. It is one of the most famous Northern Thai (or what we called Lanna) food.

Easy curry sauce recipe- Northern spicy meat and tomato dip

9 Dried chilli (or 2 tbs. crushed chilli)

3 tbs. Shallot

2 tbs. Garlic

1 ½ tbs. Shrimp paste

1 ts. Salt

1 tbs. Galangal

1 tbs. Palm sugar

1 ½ cup Ground pork

4 cups Tomato, thoroughly sliced

2 tbs. Fish sauce

1 tbs. Coriander root

Coriander, spring onion for topping

1. Crushed dried chilli, shallot, garlic, coriander toot, galangal, salt and shrimp paste together.
2.  Add palm sugar, ground pork, and sliced tomato.
3. Fried the curry paste with oil. Flavor with fish sauce.
4. Top with coriander and sliced spring onion.

This  homemade curry sauce has lots of fresh vegetable as side dishes.  Of the fresh vegetable that Thais eat with this menu are cucumber, coriander, cabbage, yardlog bean, etc. Surely this menu will be good for your health! Though Northern Thai people usually eat this dish with sticky rice, jasmine rice is okay. I myself sometime use this easy curry sauce recipe as a pesto for pasta and it’s get along really well. Kind of fusion food. :) You can also try it if you’d love to. 

Photo:

- http://library.cmu.ac.th

Easy snack for parties -Pineapple canapé

Here is the Pineapple canapé recipe that should be one of the easy snacks for parties. You can used this dish as a stater/appetizer. Pineapple canapé or what we called in Thai as “Ma Hor” is an authentic Thai food that seldom young generation known about this food. It was served as a snack for many Thais.

Pineapple canape'

½ cup Pork, ground

½ cup Prawn, ground

1 tbs. Pepper, garlic, and coriander roots blended thoroughly together

1 ½ tbs. Fishsauce

1 tbs. Sugar

¼ cup Peanuts, roasted and sliced or crushed

1 Chilli, sliced

2 tbs. Coriander

3 tbs. Oil

1 Pineapple

1.  Put the oil in the wok and fry blended pepper, garlic, and coriander roots for about 1-2 minutes

2.  Add ground pork and ground prawn

3.  Flavor with fish sauce and sugar. The taste should be lead by salty, follow by sweetness

4.  Add roasted and crushed peanuts

5.  Take the ingredients out and wait until it cool down

6.  Sliced pineapple into pieces 

7.  Top with the ingredients in 4.

8.  Decorate with sliced chilli and coriander.

This recipe is one of the easy snacks for parties. You can cook all the staff and keep it in a refrigerator before the party start. If you don’t have a pineapple, any fruit with the sour taste-tangerine, kiwi fruit, etc. -would be a good substitute.   

I’m a little bit busy with my work. Making plan about opening an e-commerce shop about home decorating items so I almost forgot to update my blog. But here I am. :) Anyway, I have to go again. Hope you enjoy your life. Well, see you!

Photo:
- http://www.papamenu.com/?p=1585

What to make with pork-Fried pork with garlic and pepper

If you have a pork and you don’t have any idea what to do with pork, here’s an easy and quick Thai dish for you.

Fried pork with garlic and pepper

½ kg. Pork, sliced

20 Pepper, crushed

1 ts. Salt

2 tbs. Soy sauce

2 tbs. Oyster sauce

5-10 Cloves of garlic

3 Coriander roots

2 tbs. Palm sugar

1.       Crushed pepper, coriander roots, and garlic thoroughly

2.       Diluted palm sugar with soy sauce and oyster sauce

3.       Marinated pork with all the ingredients for 2-3 hours

4.       Fried with low heat

You can eat this dish with rice, top the dish with coriander. Use chilli sauce or fish sauce with chilli to flavor the dish if you love. Also add some fresh sliced cucumber as a side dish. Easy, right? This is another common a la carte food in Thailand.

The secret of cooking this dish is the frying. You should use a lot of oil with low heat. Wait until the oil is warm or almost hot then add marinated pork.

Crushed pepper, coriander root and salt is what we use a lot in marinating Thai cuisine. Some of my friends even called it “three stooges”. My mom usually prepares this ingredient and put it in a small jar keeping in a refrigerator.  You can try it too.

Now you have an idea what to make with pork. Hope you all enjoy your meal!

Photo:

- http://toptenthailand.com/

Thai dehydrated fruit recipe-dried candied mango

Dried candied mango is a common dehydrated fruit recipe for Thais. If you are a fruit lover, Thailand should be your paradise. We have so many types of tropical fruit- banana, mangosteen, rambutan, durian- you name it! Their price also so cheap compare to prices in the western or in some countries. I heard that other countries sell mango by unit, right? In Thailand, most of fruits usually sell by weight! Mango is another local fruit.  Sometime in the plentiful seasons there left some surplus, so Thai preserve them by making dried candies mango. It is easy to make but take a lot of energy. If you wan to try, here is the recipe.

Dried candied mango

6 and 1/2 cups Mango, thoroughly chopped 
1 ts. Salt

1. Mix mango and salt in a wok and stir with medium heat for about 1 hrs. Take it out and leave the mixture for cooling down. 
2. Spread plastic wrap on the table. Put the mixture for 1 and 1/2 tbs. each and use the back of the spoon to spread it over the plastic wrap.
3. Dry in the sun for 5-6 hours
4. Turn the upside down and continue dry them for another 2-3 hours. 
5. Keep the dried candied mango in a jar.

You can also add some Thai paprika to make them more tasty and eat them as a snack.

Although I know that mango is hard for many of you to find (plus the price is so high), I post this dehydrated fruit recipe because I think you can adapt your local fruit with this recipe. I would love to try strawberry (or other berries) with this preserving food technic.

Photo:
- https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YQRvivoLVgjGSvoP3UqKpg