Cooking instead...

No more massage for the moment. Cooking instead.
We started off with Pad Thai, of course. We used rice noodles collected from the market around the corner. We were able to obtain all of the ingredients that we needed from different merchants all found only two blocks from the house. We used two different types of tofu. The first, was what you'd generally be able to find in The States … just your regular, run of the mill, firm tofu. We cut this into little rectangles. The second type was cured with turmeric for a yellow color on the outside. This variety, we diced finely. The Thai variety of garlic is much smaller than to what I'm accustomed and in Thailand, they generally leave the paper on. I used soy sauce in place of fish sauce and mushroom sauce rather than oyster sauce. Chinese chives, bean sprouts, egg, and water. The heat element was situated as such so that we could tilt the wok to a 45° angle in order to allow parts of the dish to remain on the side of the wok while cooking other parts. I've always used this technique with stir fry by the 45°-angle tilt makes it so much more effective. I think I'm going to try to find one of those wok rings so that I can try this at home. I particularly liked the ground peanuts and chillies that we sprinkled on top.

After sitting down to eat the first course, we went back to the kitchen for Hot & Sour Soup. The dish traditionally includes chicken and prawns but I substituted with oyster mushrooms and tofu. There were a couple of ingredients that were used for flavoring but were not intended to eat. Those included kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and galangal which is a root grown in Thailand which is similar to ginger. If you know me at all, you know that I'm a huge ginger enthusiast. I was excited to try galangal but it's definitely no replacement for my one true love. This recipe includes those super-hot little chiles. Here, they call them mouse-shit chiles. Hilarious, right? Now these can be quite dangerous for the novice but I decided to use six for the soup. It turned out pretty spicy, for sure. But not just spicy for spicy sake. It was tasty and complex with a whole bunch of heat at the end. Added to the pot were mushrooms, onion, tomato, lime juice, soy sauce, sugar, chiles, and chile paste.

Moving on to my absolute favorite Tai dish: Green Papaya Salad. We learned a fancy way to use a huge knife in order to shred the papaya which is actually only green because it's harvested early … which is what I suspected. (It's one of the many questions that I asked. I seemed to be the only one engaged enough to ask lots of questions.) Since the knife trick was a bit scary, we were also provided with a zig-zag vegetable peeler if we preferred to stay on the safe side. There were only two cooking injuries for the evening: a burned finger and chili peper-oiled eyeball. Neither of those incidents involved me though. We used a big, wooden mortar to pound and "cement" (as they call it,) garlic, chiles, and long beans. Knowing that this dish is raw, I chose to use only three chiles as opposed to the six that I used in the soup. After pounding in some lime juice, soy sauce, and tomatoes, we created a bit of a dressing in which we could dissolve the palm sugar which is not related to the cane plant at all but rather extracted from the flower of a palm tree. (That is another tidbit that I learned which was spawned from one of my questions.) It's a very dense, sticky paste which has a much fuller body than the refined sugar with which I'm familiar. We added the papaya and some carrots then pestled away. Watching the people on the streets, you can tell that it takes some practice to master the pestle-and-spoon combo technique. When five or six people join in together, it makes for a bit of a meditative musical jam session. Finally, we topped it with peanuts. All done. The whole Papaya Salad process was much simpler than I had expected it to be. It's so rewarding that I now know how to make my favorite dish. It's a good thing that there were tissues at the table 'cause this one was a-spice-aaaaayyyy.

And onto the main event with the Panaeng Curry. We started by making our own red curry paste: soaked red chiles, shallots, garlic, galangal, lemongrass, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, coriander root, and turmeric. The stuff that we avoided eating in the soup (kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and galangal,) went right in 'cause we pounded the hell out of 'em with the mortar and pestle. (I've got to get myself one of these.) We used a wooden set for the Papaya Salad because it's a more delicate process. We used a granite mortar for the paste in order to truly pulverize the ingredients. I used tiny eggplant instead of pork. It's called Pea Eggplant because it's so small; it adds a pretty tart flavor to the curry and they sort of explode in your mouth like a grape tomato. Into the hot wok went paste, Panaeng spice blend, tofu, and coconut milk. We squeezed our very own milk from the flesh of a mature coconut; it smelled so good. (I imagine it didn't hurt in moisturizing our hands either.) After allowing the mixture to thicken a bit, we added soy sauce, palm sugar, and ground roasted peanuts. The chiles for spice, the lime for tart, the coconut for smooth and creamy. It's perfection.

I met some great people and learned some priceless skills. So … when are y'all comin' over to my place for curry, huh?