Miang Kam - Thai Tasty Tidbits

Miang kam is a tasty snack often sold as street food. It involves wrapping little tidbits of several items in a leaf, along with a sweet-and-salty sauce. Chewing all the myriad ingredients together gives taste receptacles on the tongue and mouth a thrilling experience – from the rich, roasted flavors of coconut and peanut, to the tanginess of lime with zest and the pungent bursts of diced ginger and chillies. It makes a great party food.

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 bunches of bai cha plu (wild pepper leaves), or substitute large leaves from 1-2 bunches of spinach; or 1 head of leafy lettuce, tear leaves into 3- to 4-inch round or square pieces

Filling Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
• 1/4 cup small dried shrimp
• 1/2 cup roasted unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1/3 cup diced ginger (about the size of a pea)
• 1/3 cup diced shallots or onion the same size as the ginger
• 1 lime, cut into small peanut-size wedges, each with both peel and juice sacs
• 4 heads pickled garlic, stem removed and bulb cut into peanut-size pieces
• 6 serrano peppers, cut into thin half circles; or use Thai chillies ( prik kee noo), cut into thin rounds
• 1/3 cup cilantro leaves

Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup finely ground dried shrimp
• 1/2 cup roasted shredded coconut
• 1/4 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
• 1/4 cup palm or coconut sugar
• 2 Tbs. fish sauce (nahm bplah), or to taste
• 1/2 cup water

To roast coconut, place unsweetened fresh or dried shredded coconut in a dry cast iron pan over medium heat. Stir frequently until the coconut shreds are evenly a golden brown and very fragrant. Pickled garlic is available in jars from Southeast Asian markets.

Arrange the spinach or lettuce leaves and filling ingredients on a large serving platter, piling each separately and aesthetically for a pleasing presentation.

To make the sauce, grind the dried shrimp, roasted coconut and peanuts separately and as finely as possible in a clean coffee grinder. (For the dried shrimp, measure out 1/4 cup after the shrimp is ground.) Place in a small saucepan together with the palm sugar, fish sauce and water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer, stirring frequently to make sure all the ingredients are well blended and the sauce as smooth as possible. Cook about 10-15 minutes, or until the mixture has thickened to the consistency of light batter. Transfer to a sauce bowl and allow to cool to room temperature before using. The sauce will thicken more as it cools.

To eat, take a spinach or lettuce leaf, fill it with a little bit of everything, top with a dab of sauce, roll or wrap up, stuff the entire leaf packet into your mouth and chew everything all at once. Enjoy the explosion of flavors!

Thai Beef and Mushroom Salad (Yam Nua Yang)

This recipe is adapted from the superb (and all too quickly out-of-print) "The Ultimate Thai and Asian Cookbook", which I have found used on Amazon for $2.22. We have been swamped with kidding season (finally over) and planting season (now onto weeding!) and this quick and super-delicious and it fits the qualification as a SuperFood (mushroom, cilantro, garlic, chiles, and pretty much everything here is good for you).

This meal is perfect for us right now - heavy on salad, lots of great no fat "dressing" to drizzle over top of it, and an easily marinated slice of "Burgess", our quarter of an Angus cow from LongLesson Farm. These feeds four comfortably - just go heavy on the salad and get some awesome fruit or veg sides to round it out.

Ingredients

1. Meat

• 1.5 lbs of round steak
• 2 Tbsp of lime juice
• 2 Tbsp of fish sauce
• 2 Tbsp of olive oil
• 2 small chiles (Serrano are a good choice here)
• 8 ounces of Shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced

2. Dressing

• 3 scallions, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp of lime juice
• 2 Tbsp of fish sauce
• 1 tsp of brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp of cilantro, chopped

3. Salad Fixin's

• 1 (or 2) heads of romaine lettuce, coarsely chopped
• handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 of a cucumber, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced long-ways
• 3 Tbsp of toasted sesame seeds

Steps

1. Marinate the round steak with the fish sauce and lime juice for 2-4 hours.
2. Preheat the broiler (or grill!) to high heat - place the rack at the highest setting.
3. Cook the steak for 2-4 minutes (more for thicker cuts) on each side. The Thai prefer this beef be on the rarer side, but your mileage may vary. Remove the beef and let it rest for 10-15 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, heat a frying pan and add the olive oil.
5. First add the chiles and saute for 30 seconds alone. Add the mushrooms and saute for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally. If there is too little oil, add 1 or 2 Tbsp of water to keep it from sticking.
6. Take the pan off the heat.
7. Thinly slice the beef, across the grain. The thinner, the better, so sharpen your knife beforehand.
8. Add the steak slices to the mushrooms in the pan and mix well.
9. Make the dressing by mixing the scallions, garlic, lime and fish sauce, sugar and cilantro in a small bowl. Drizzle the dressing over the steak and mushroom mixture.
10. Lay out the romaine, tomatoes, and cucumber on the table. Each person makes a mound of salad on their plate.
11. Place 1/4 of the steak mixture on the salad and garnishes with the sesame seeds.
12. Make Yum-Yum noises.

If you are finding that this is not quite enough food, add another 8 ounces of mushrooms to the saute pan (use a larger one or cook in two batches). This bulks out the mixture with no fat and lots of good protein.

Mo' Better Drunken Noodles

We had leftover duck, a block of frozen tofu, and an urge to eat something that would drive away the cloudy blues. This mod of a Thai recipe (somewhere between Drunken Noodles and Pad See Ew) took advantage of what we had as fridge leftovers and the produce that our local grocery would stock that wasn't wilted nasty.

We liked it - the fried tofu is awesome - the girls liked it. And it only took 25 minutes.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 lb of extra firm or firm tofu, frozen and thawed, drained
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 inch of ginger, peeled and minced
• 1 hot Thai pepper or 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• 6 scallions, chopped
• 8 ounces of cooked chicken, duck breast, pork or beef, sliced
• 1 lb of bok choy or napa cabbage, sliced thinly
• 2 carrots, cut thickly on the bias
• 1/2 cup of cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 cup of basil leaves, chopped
• Lime juice to taste

STIR-FRY SAUCE:

• 2 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. fish sauce or substitute 2 Tbsp. oyster sauce
• 2 Tbsp. lime juice
• 1 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. Thai chili sauce OR 1/2 tsp crushed dried red chilies

Steps:

1. Cook 8 ounces of noodles (wide rice or wide egg noodles) until al dente - cool off with cold running water and set aside.
2. Mix the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. Taste for balance - it should be sweet, sour, spicy and hot simultaneously.
3. Fry the tofu in 1/2 inch of canola or peanut oil until crusty and golden. Drain on towels and set aside.
4. Set up a wok with 3 TBSP of oil and stir fry the garlic, ginger, and red pepper. Let it fry for 1 minute.
5. Add the bok choy (or cabbage), meat, and carrots. Stir fry for 3 minutes.
6. Add the sauce to the wok and stir for 1 more minute.
7. Remove from wok and add to a bowl with noodles. Add cilantro and basil.
8. Toss to coat evenly. Taste test and add more hot pepper flakes if you are brave!

Eating Thai Food @ Land Thai (NYC)

It is a sad thing to say it, but there is some crappy Thai food out there. I love the fresh tastes of Thai food - galangal (a perfume-y cousin to ginger), cilantro, lemongrass, fresh seafood, wok-ked beans or greens, and of course hot red peppers. Aah.

Up here in upstate, there isn't much to Thai food (of course, according to the first item from this episode from NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", there isn't much of anything in Albany).

But when we went to NYC, we decided to go looking for something good to eat. Something we couldn't find here. And that rules out pizza and Italian.

We cruised the NY Magazine's restaurant excellent search engine (sort by neighborhood and cuisine) and settled on "Land Thai Kitchen" on the Upper West Side. It was fabulous, fast and fresh and spicy (although the waitress specifically asked if we wanted the kids' salad to be mild instead! Awesome = 25% tip!).

Things we would like to note:

1. Restaurants are smaller (quite the discussion with the 7-yr old about real estate values and the size of city lots). Land Thai is literally 10 feet wide, elbow-to-elbow.
2. Really good food doesn't need to be hard to make - the ingredients here were fresh and not cooked to destruction. Texture choices - yum!
3. Even kids will eat spicy food if it is good.

Things we would like to eat again (I linked to blog recipes that look close)

1. Drunken Chicken Noodles - (above) spicy hot and yummy, this one used wide noodles.
2. Esan Roasted Chicken - (E-san is (as far as I can tell) a commercial version of Nam Jim Jeaw sauce) and this was a dinner which the kids loved and it came with a side of Green Papaya Salad (oh, to die for)
3. Chicken Galangal Soup - delicious broth with big oyster mushrooms in it.

Great recipes for more Thai over here at RasaMalaysia!