INFO
The curry recipes on this website will produce a fairly mild curry without an oil skim on the surface. If you like a strong curry then you are looking at about a quarter of a jar of paste to one 400ml can of our coconut milk (which is 18% coconut oil). If you like it spicy then you will need chillies as well, the paste will add a certain amount of hotness but the paste is primarily for flavour – look at fresh or dried chillies for controlling the hotness.
We know that the result of Thai cooking is fairly awe inspiring, even to those people that know it well. It is not difficult to achieve a similar result given the right ingredients however. Many techniques are completely foreign to those of us that might not be used to cooking in this style. It is very easy to pick up the basics and achieve great tasting dishes with a minimum of effort.
The Thai meal has changed somewhat over the years, but the essential basics are the same. There is a formal Thai style of eating, but this is rarely practiced nowadays except in very special company. A normal Thai evening meal has no starter. All the main courses are served together at the same time in the centre of the table. Each diner is given a dinner plate with nothing on it. The host then serves the rice, always boiled. Fried rice is for chinese meals and lunchtime snacks.
For about three billion people around the world rice is the basic staple. For the rest of the world population there seems to be a bit of fear associated with getting it cooked right. There are a number of simple rules of thumb that make it a lot less complicated.
There is certainly a reputation that Thai food is hot. What is not well understood though is that there are lot of choice available in terms of the level of heat. Thais themselves do not all like the same level of heat, there are even a proportion who don't eat hot at all.
Noodles are a bit different to anything we have in the usual western kitchen, both in terms of how we cook them and how we use them. First the noodles are cooked and then afterwards they are added to a cooking dish for reheating. They are very easy to use, quick to cook and a healthy source of low density carbohydrate.
There are a few basic things that we all need to know in order to be able to stirfry. Stirfrying is about having all of your ingredients ready to go, adding them to the wok and cooking over a very high heat for a couple of minutes, turning and tossing frequently.
