Thai

This is one of my absolute favorite recipes and it’s so easy to make. The garlic gets the flavor going, the peanut butter adds the creaminess, and the chili paste adds the heat. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: if you haven’t used chili paste before, be careful; it’s extremely hot. You may want to start with one tablespoon and add more to taste.

If you enjoy rice pudding, you’ll love these Thai packets of soft sticky rice flavored by coconut cream. Steaming in banana leaves lends an alluring fragrance to the rich rice, which encases soft banana and cooked black beans. The beans offer interesting texture and color contrast in these popular street snacks. According to legend, kao tom padt (also called kao tom madt) was all that some religious pilgrims had on their journey to visit the Lord Buddha. They presented their precious food to the Lord Buddha upon arriving, and that gesture continues today as these packets are still an offering at religious ceremonies. Thai cooks typically make these packets in large quantities and thus soak and boil a fair amount of black beans. For small homemade batches, canned black beans, drained and rinsed of their canning liquid, work fine. Omit the beans for nom n’sahm chaek, a Cambodian New Year must-have. You can also grill the steamed packets and serve them with the Coconut Dessert Sauce (page 221).

Thai food is full of bold juxtapositions of flavor and texture. For these crystalline dumplings, the chewy skin is made from tapioca pearls (saku in Thai). The filling of pork, peanuts, shallot, palm sugar, and fish sauce is crumbly, sweet, salty, and savory. To eat, the dumplings are wrapped in lettuce leaves with fresh herbs and hot chiles. Saku sai mu is a popular street food in Thailand; here in the States, I have purchased them at Thai markets and snack shops. Making the dumplings at home ensures freshness and availability, and the ingredients can be found at most supermarkets. Hard-core cooks may handmince pork shoulder or chicken thigh and seek out cilantro root and palm sugar from Southeast Asian markets, but ground meat (avoid superlean pork or chicken), cilantro stems, and brown sugar are terrific stand-ins.

My first introduction to Thai curries came while I assisted a friend in preparing a luncheon for Nancy Reagan at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. What a surprise: the curry sauce was red! Although Thai curries have many ingredients in common with those of neighboring India, they tend to be tinged with a hint of sweetness from the combination of coconut milk and a traditional dash of sugar, and they are often colored red or green by the red or green chiles in them, rather than the more familiar yellow color of Indian curries. As with most Thai curries, serve this over rice.

Thai curries differ from northern Indian curries in that they add some typically Thai ingredients, such as dried red chiles, onion, garlic, coconut milk, galangal, lemon grass, and kaffir lime, to the warm Indian spice blends. They are categorized as red, yellow, or green based on the kind of chile or ingredients used in them (but not necessarily by the color of the finished product), and they have an element of sweetness to them that is lacking in some Indian curries. They can be made from scratch, but most Thai home cooks today rely on either commercially prepared pastes or pastes prepared by a vendor down the street. Many supermarkets in the United States carry Thai curry pastes. And if you really want to save time, you can purchase a jar or two of Thai Red Curry Simmer Sauce (Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s are two good bets) and save yourself the trouble of doing any mixing at all! Most Thai curries, including this one, should be served with steamed rice.

This popular Thai soup, known in its native tongue as tom kha gai, uses some choice ingredients that may be a little difficult to find, but I’ve listed substitutes for them in case there isn’t a specialty Asian market in your neck of the woods.

What’s the first thing you think of when somebody says, “Let’s get Thai food”? Most of my friends have an involuntary response: they start to sweat. Many people think that Thai food is hot, hot, hot. Well, maybe not, not, not. True, some Thai food can set off smoke detectors. But real Thai cooking emphasizes distinctive flavor combinations regardless of the heat. This soup, a takeoff on traditional Thai tom kha gai (a chicken soup), uses coconut milk, which is very soothing to the nerves. The ginger aids digestion, while the lime brightens up the overall flavor. The result is a soup guaranteed to jump-start even the most jaded taste buds.

Think of this no-cook soup as a Thai-flavored gazpacho. It’s best with really lush summer tomatoes. Serve with a cold noodle dish for a quick summer meal.

As in many Asian-style soups, this ingredient list may look long, but it’s a snap to prepare. Adding any of the optional ingredients gives this soup a deeper and more authentic flavor.

With Thai ingredients available at most natural food stores and well-stocked supermarkets, it has become easy to enjoy the delightful flavors of this cuisine at home. Use your discretion with the red or green curry paste; a little will give a hint of heat, but if you want a spicier stew, you can step it up from there.

My cousin Julie learned this recipe when her sister, Abi, worked in Thailand. Julie throws in whatever vegetables she happens to have on hand, and the results are always outstanding. Instead of tofu, try substituting raw, peeled shrimp or scallops, chicken breasts, or fish fillets. Notice that this recipe does not call for water to hydrate the rice. The coconut milk provides enough liquid to cook the rice and make a wonderful curry sauce. It doesn’t seem to make any difference whether you use regular coconut milk or “lite.” Thai curry paste comes in yellow, red, and green—each works beautifully in this dish. Try the Mae Ploy brand found at Asian markets. Use more or less to taste; the amount here gives mild to medium heat.

Larb is traditional Thai comfort food. The mint adds a clean jolt of flavor to this casserole-type meal. My cousin Abi lived in Thailand for a time and helped me fine-tune my version of this classic dish. Typically, the meat and rice are served over raw cabbage, but we think this style is pretty tasty as well. You can use serrano, Anaheim, or almost any other kind of chile pepper if you can’t find a jalapeño. Of course, your meal will be as spicy as your chile. Consider adding 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh basil or cilantro to the mint mixture for a slightly different taste.

This gorgeous salad is the perfect balance of hot, sweet, salty, and sour that is the core of Thai cuisine. The cool mixture of mango, onion, and radish is topped with hot crunchy fried fish. This salad is downright addictive and will blow you away with its tastebud-awakening flavors and mix of textures. When cutting the fish, don’t worry if the pieces are not perfectly uniform. Take note: this salad doesn’t like to sit around, so serve it as soon as you can after you fry the fish. Leftover soy-lime vinaigrette will keep covered in the refrigerator for up to five days and is awesome tossed with chilled soba noodles or served as a dipping sauce for dumplings.

In this recipe, fish sauce stands in for the salt to make a savory-sweet spicy salad or side dish. If possible, include two or more types of melon for variety. We get most of our melons from Whitted Bowers, a biodynamic orchard and farm just north in Cedar Grove that also offers a spin on U-pick berries: dig-your-own Carolina Ruby sweet potatoes. Cheri Whitted and Rob Bowers grow many melons; my favorites include the musky Emerald Gem (considered the finest melon in the world after it was developed in 1886), Pride of Wisconsin, and Sugar Baby, the icebox-size watermelon.

Bottled peanut satay sauce is a convenient way to add the traditional Thai flavor combination of basil, peanut, and coconut to your cooking.

Turn leftover roast beef such as from Tuscan Braised Beef (page 172) into a taste adventure by adding Thai-style dressing.

If you have never experimented with Thai ingredients before, try this recipe—the flavors are mental. Lemongrass, coconut milk, basil, lime: They all hit the palate in perfect harmony. If you love Thai food, this is a great dish to start playing around with—and it’s very easy. The floral aroma of green curry simmering on the stove is hypnotic. Kaffir lime leaves are crucial to this dish and are worth the trip to your local Asian market. Serve with Perfect Steamed Jasmine Rice (page 240).

We'll happily make room on our condiment shelf for yuzu kosho, a blend of citrus zest, garlic, chile, and salt. It adds aromatic acidity (and some heat) to rice dishes, noodle soups, fish, and chicken. We substitute lemon, lime, and grapefruit zest for the hard-to-find yuzu, a Japanese citrus.