Sunday, February 18, 2007

AteThat: Thai Fried Minced Pork with Egg Noodles


Thai Fried Minced Pork with Egg Noodles
2 Garlic cloves finely chopped
3 shallots finely chopped
1 inch ginger finely chopped
2 tbsp oil
500g/1lb2oz ground pork
2tbsp Thai fish sauce
1tbsp dark soy sauce
1tbsp red thai curry paste
4 dried Kaffir lime leaves, crumbled
4 plum tomatoes, chopped
3tbsp fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped
Salt and pepper
Boiled Chinese style egg noodles


Heat the oil, add the garlic, shallots and ginger, stir frying for about 2 minutes. Stir in the pork and continue stirring until golden brown. Stir in the fish sauce, Soy sauce, curry paste, and lime leaves. Stir fry for another1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in chopped coriander, season with salt and pepper and serve spooned onto the egg noodles.

There is a series of cook books called “What’s Cooking” out here. You see them in every book store, they are really highly illustrated and they are all named for the type of food (What’s Cooking Thai, What’s Cooking Italian, What’s cooking Chicken). This is from the Thai book. They are good starter books if you are intimidated by a certain genre of food (or by cooking in general which is why I have several of them).



This recipe gets top marks because it’s dead easy and fast to make, and it’s really tasty. It’s far more subtle then you would think. As a matter of fact I think next time I might double up on the curry paste and see how that is. My sons ate it, although that might be more for the noodles then the sauce. I think it’s satisfying in the same way as a good spaghetti bolognaise is, because it is a tomato sauce, but at the same time, it’s kind of exotic and fun, cuz it’s Thai. The ingredient list looks if-y, but I can get all those things in my local grocery store, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.


One more thing… if you’ve never used Thai fish sauce before, it smells disturbingly like stinky feet and crotch. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to smell like that, it adds a beautiful flavor to cooking, just never never never taste it on it’s own.

7 comments:

MomBad said...

Dude. . . fish sauce is good. Get you hands on some tamarind and find a recipe where you mix the two.

AteThat said...

It's weird how often I find that I use the fish sauce. I bought it thinking I would use it for the one recipe and then wait for it to go bad, but it's great to have around. I feel the same way about cornflour. I've been meaning to try tamarind paste in something. I used to be totally addicted to tamarind soda when we were in Brooklyn. Any suggestions on a recipe to start with?

AteThat said...

Correction to my last comment, not cornflour, semolina. The brand of semolina that I buy calls it's self Semolina (corn flour). I noticed in recipes too, it's refered to as cornflour, but yesterday I sent albert out to get some and he came back with actual cornflour, that white powder that people use for thickening. Oops. Is it called semolina in the states? Is it cornmeal? The yellow, made from corn, use it to make corn bread stuff.
I'm confused.

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