Nancie McDermott - Quick & Easy Thai: 70 Everyday Recipes

QUICK & EASY THAI

70 EVERYDAY RECIPES

byNANCIE McDERMOTT
photographs byALISON MIKSCH

To my father, my inspiration in seeing the beauty of light and guiding me toward my love of photography.Alison Miksch

Text copyright 2004 by Nancie McDermott. Photographs copyright 2004 by Alison Miksch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

McDermott, Nancie.
Quick & easy Thai cooking : 70 everyday recipes / by Nancie McDermott.
photographs by Alison Miksch.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8118-3731-9 (pbk.)
1. Cookery, Thai. 2. Quick and easy cookery. I. Title: Quick
and easy Thai cooking. II. Miksch, Alison. III. Title.
TX724.5.T5M33 2004
641.55509593dc21
2003008935

Manufactured in China.

Designed by Lisa Billard Design, NY
Prop styling by Barbara Fritz
Food styling by William Smith

Chronicle Books LLC
85 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

http://www.chroniclebooks.com

This book is for my sweet sisters,

LINDA LLOYD McDERMOTT AND SUSANNE McDERMOTT SETTLE,

who are quick to laugh and easy to love.

My goal in this book is to celebrate the extraordinary, delicious food of Thailand, and to help you cook Thai food at home with pleasure and success. To me, that means being able to put terrific, delicious Thai dishes on my table without devoting a weekend to the preparation and execution of a meal.

I first encountered Thai food as a Peace Corps volunteer, during the three years I spent teaching English as a second language in Thailand. In cafs and market stalls, bus stations, Buddhist temples, and in the homes of students and friends, I reveled in the chance to savor Thai food all day, every day. I devoured rice with countless delectable curries; I snacked on crisp golden fritters made with bananas, corn, or shrimp; I nibbled delectable chicken grilled on bamboo skewers; and I slurped away at steaming bowls of rice noodles in garlicky broth. Homesick for Thai food once I had returned to North Carolina, I began learning how to cook it in my Western kitchen.

Ingredients and equipment were difficult to find at that time, but to me the challenge was a plus. All week I taught school, but Saturdays I gladly spent tracking down a source for this coconut grater or that aromatic herb, standing beside Southeast Asian friends and watching them cook, and making Thai feasts in my tiny apartment kitchen for my family and friends. Newly married a few years later, I moved to Southern California, already home to enough people from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to support supermarkets filled with Asian food and tools. From fresh Thai chilies and wild lime leaves to sticky rice steamers and roasted chili paste, I suddenly had the vibrant world of Asian food close at hand. Soon I was teaching Thai cooking classes around the country, creating recipes and stories on Thai food for newspapers and magazines, and writing two of my previous cookbooks, Real Thai: The Best of Thailands Regional Cooking (Chronicle Books, 1992) and Real Vegetarian Thai (Chronicle Books, 1997).

The great blessing of our two daughters meant the dawn of a new era in my kitchen, one in which I reacquainted myself with old friends like creamed corn, tomato soup, cottage cheese with pineapple, and cinnamon toast. I began to understand the despair I had seen on some of my students faces as I presented a recipe with 23 ingredients and 19 steps. I gravitated toward dishes I could cook with one hand while the other hand held a telephone, a Raffi cassette, or a cookie. I found myself very interested in what I could do with the ten thousand items already awaiting me in my nearest grocery store, and far less attracted to the glorious and perfect ingredients available anywhere off my standard errand path.

I still love seeking out obscure traditional cooking utensils and reading up on the culinary legacy of the Sukothai period, and I am glad I took the time to master such street-food classics as crispy spring rolls and curry puffs, and such complex palace-style creations as mee grop and red curry seafood mousse steamed in bananaleaf cups. The results were magnificent, but required much from me: devotion to the task, considerable effort, quantities of time, and lots of shopping and dishes. I chose to undertake these projects, and I loved the process and the results, but quick and easy they were not.

Both girls are now in school and they not only adore red curry, our older daughter, Camellia, can make it for us. I still cook almost every night, and I still love to do it, but these days I want to balance my passion for cooking with my busy life. That life is bubbling along, overflowing with my wonderful children, my sweet husband, a little garden, a big dog, a faith community, helping out at school, going to the gym, walking with my neighbor, and keeping up with precious sisters, parents, and friends.

I wrote this book because I want to enjoy the dazzling flavors of Thai food even on a weeknight, to be able to cook Thai dishes as easily and happily and quickly as I make other favorite dishes for our table. To accomplish this, I focused on the enormous repertoire of Thai dishes that are intrinsically easy, the everyday food that Thai people cook at home. I also worked out recipes for great street food and classic restaurant dishes that are manageable in a home kitchen: most people in Thailand do not cook them, since they can stroll down to the night market for a bowl of noodles, a single serving of chicken with basil over rice, or a tall frosty glass of Thai iced tea. I also included a few dishes that would take too much time and effort in their pure form, for which I found reasonable shortcuts to a simpler but still wonderful version.

The result is this handbook to Thai cooking, filled with dishes that can become part of your everyday kitchen repertoire. A delectable spicy curry; a tureen of fragrant, nourishing soup; a plate of shrimp and snow peas with garlic and pepper; a pot of jasmine rice; a five-alarm salad of grilled beef seasoned so perfectly with chilies, lime juice, sugar, and fresh mint that it nearly puts out sparks: these are Thai dishes you can make anytime, anywhere, quickly and easily.

To give you background information about particular ingredients used in Thai cooking, I have included A Thai Pantry (page 154), along with Mail-Order Sources for Thai Ingredients (page 162), to help you track down any items unavailable near your home. I have also provided you with detailed explanations of Useful Utensils for Cooking Thai Food (page 146) and Techniques (page 150), along with a list of Menus for Quick & Easy Thai Meals (page 142), to help you enjoy these recipes.

I hope this book will live in your kitchen, earning the stains and creases of frequent countertop use. I hope you will enjoy the Thai food you make, and the time you spend making it. I hope that you will cook often, and with friends, the way Thai people do, feeding themselves wonderfully, body and soul.

INTRODUCTION TO APPETIZERS & SNACKS

This chapter sparkles with an array of contrasting dishes that epitomize the Thai philosophy of food; theyre playful and varied, delicious and diverting, full of energy, surprises, and wit. Bright flavors abound, from brash chili sauces and tangy dressings to an aromatic breeze of lime juice, cilantro, and mint. This food makes noise, from the crunch of pork rinds and tart green apples to the sizzle of frying fish cakes and the hiss of satays browning over glowing coals. Garlicky spareribs invite you to lick your fingers, serene soft spring rolls look almost too pretty to eat, a bowl of Swedish meatballs turns out to be