Thai food recipe with easy to find ingredient

[amyreyna]

Hi,

I like cooking. I want to try cooking Thai food, but I don't live in Thailand.

What is the Thai food recipe that I can find easily the ingredients outside Thailand ?

I don't want to try cooking but then I cannot find the spices.

[AlexRRR]

Invest in a Thai recipe cook book and look it over, my attempts to cook Phad Thai 6 lunch times in a row were fruitless, now after doing a day cooking class last time in Chiang Mai I've impressed my curren TGF with a mean Phad Thai....

[NickJ]

Google thai bbq chicken .......easy to get everythinb. I think its recipe tin that has a good how to on this with pics. marinade at least 24 hrs.......

[phetphet]

Phad Grapow Gai is pretty easy. Most ingredients in the supermarket: Onion, garlic, chilli, Thai basil, fish sauce, oyster sauce, palm sugar or sugar, and of course chicken.

[SantiSuk]

Thai basil is next to impossible to find in UK supermarkets, dunno about the rest of falangland or where you live.

I like to cook for my English sisters when I go back to the UK and also when my Thai family comes with me. In my experience, so long as you have an upmarket (dare I say) middle class type large supermarket you can get most of the regular Thai ingredients like:

lemongrass

chillis

lime leaves (dried)

galangal (dried)

garlic

Everywhere has coconut milk.

That makes Tom Yam (thai or faux-Isaan variety) easy enough to make and Tom Kha Gai is particularly easy and my party piece for things like a New Year's Eve party for a large group (use thigh/legs and strip off the meat and boil up the bones for the soup stock base of the meal first. Button mushrooms or some other dense flesh mushroom is an acceptable substitute for the Chinese/Thai mushrooms and small plum tomatoes work as well as Thia ones but you must leave putting them in until no more than 3 minutes from the end of cooking

Pad Thai was also my first thought though you would have to search Chinese and Asian supermarkets for the little brown dried prawns or something equivalent and you are more likely to find good rice sticks in a Chinese supermarket than in a standard supermarket. The other stuff is dead easy to find - eggs, fish sauce, peanuts (smash the up in a pestle if you can't find small bits), beansprouts, uncooked prawns (frozen of course and most likely from coming from Thailand anyway!).

The dishes that are impossible are the ones that involve panaeng peas and Thai aubergines (the little green stripey eggplants). They cost 20 baht a kilo in an Isaan village market (or less) and the only time I have seen them for sale in the UK was in the Thai supermarket in Earls Court London at 3 GBP for 6 - works out about 1,000 baht a kilo! That rules out a proper green curry though plenty of pubs do an improper one without. Also Thai holy basil - I think I saw it once in an English Waitrose in Cambridge but then never again! A false pad-grapow with fragrant basil is actually not a bad dish and is even acceptable to my Thai family with plenty of fish sauce and red chilli in it.

My recipes attached. I'm guessing that a Thai chef would laugh, but they seem to work for my Thai family if I refuse to cook falang style burgers and/or smoked bacon,shallots and red wine sauce spaghetti (which they do prefer) for the nthh time!

Tom Kha Gai.doc

TOM YAM TALAY recipe.doc

Pad Thai.doc

Pad Graphao (fried chicken_pork_beef with basil and chilli).docx

[phetphet]

Thai basil is next to impossible to find in UK supermarkets, dunno about the rest of falangland or where you live.

I like to cook for my English sisters when I go back to the UK and also when my Thai family comes with me. In my experience, so long as you have an upmarket (dare I say) middle class type large supermarket you can get most of the regular Thai ingredients like:

lemongrass

chillis

lime leaves (dried)

galangal (dried)

garlic

Everywhere has coconut milk.

That makes Tom Yam (thai or faux-Isaan variety) easy enough to make and Tom Kha Gai is particularly easy and my party piece for things like a New Year's Eve party for a large group (use thigh/legs and strip off the meat and boil up the bones for the soup stock base of the meal first. Button mushrooms or some other dense flesh mushroom is an acceptable substitute for the Chinese/Thai mushrooms and small plum tomatoes work as well as Thia ones but you must leave putting them in until no more than 3 minutes from the end of cooking

Pad Thai was also my first thought though you would have to search Chinese and Asian supermarkets for the little brown dried prawns or something equivalent and you are more likely to find good rice sticks in a Chinese supermarket than in a standard supermarket. The other stuff is dead easy to find - eggs, fish sauce, peanuts (smash the up in a pestle if you can't find small bits), beansprouts, uncooked prawns (frozen of course and most likely from coming from Thailand anyway!).

The dishes that are impossible are the ones that involve panaeng peas and Thai aubergines (the little green stripey eggplants). They cost 20 baht a kilo in an Isaan village market (or less) and the only time I have seen them for sale in the UK was in the Thai supermarket in Earls Court London at 3 GBP for 6 - works out about 1,000 baht a kilo! That rules out a proper green curry though plenty of pubs do an improper one without. Also Thai holy basil - I think I saw it once in an English Waitrose in Cambridge but then never again! A false pad-grapow with fragrant basil is actually not a bad dish and is even acceptable to my Thai family with plenty of fish sauce and red chilli in it.

My recipes attached. I'm guessing that a Thai chef would laugh, but they seem to work for my Thai family if I refuse to cook falang style burgers and/or smoked bacon,shallots and red wine sauce spaghetti (which they do prefer) for the nthh time!

Tom Kha Gai.doc

TOM YAM TALAY recipe.doc

Pad Thai.doc

Pad Graphao (fried chicken_pork_beef with basil and chilli).docx

Santisuk... I always find fresh Thai Basil in stock in Waitrose. Only once or twice have I found they didn't have it. Alternatively Thai or Asian supermarkets. But then I am from London, so probably more chance there. Also Lemon Grass from Waitrose, and often M and S.

Edited March 10, 2016 by phetphet

[SantiSuk]

London has far better selection than a relatively middle class city like Cambridge, but Waitrose is always the best next stop after Asian shops. Asian shops outside the biggest cities tend to be too Chinese-centric for my liking. I once bought one of those Thai spice collections you get in a local Isaan village markets (lemongrass, galangal, chillis, lime leaves and a few roots) back to the UK and priced it up in the Earls Court Thai shop 10baht plays against 350 baht. I always bring stuff back on visits (fresh and dried for my English and German-living sisters)

Lemongrass always available in most towns - even Tesco. 2 small sticks for 34pence 2 weeks ago is actually not as outrageous as my prior experiences.