Straw mushrooms are a common ingredient of Thai cuisine, often used in Tom-Yum spicy soup and in other dishes. Where you would use white-cap mushrooms, Thai's normally use Straw or Shitake mushrooms. Best bought fresh, also available canned, I don't recommend the dried mushrooms, straw mushrooms lose a lot of flavour when they are dried.

Chillis are the core of most Thai food. Like a lot of hot countries, Thailand spices its food, both to preserve it and to 'cover' any unwanted flavours. You see the same pattern in Mexican cooking, Indian curries and other countries on the equator where it's hot.
The larger red chillis are not as strong as the smaller green 'bird' chillis, but they are still mighty powerful.
Be careful when handling chillis, do not touch your eyes or nose afterwards, be sure to clean your hands thoroughly.

Here you can see the difference in size between the red and green bird chillis, the red ones are typically 6 or 7 cms long, the green bird chillis 2-3 cms.

Uses
Adds the spice to dishes, can also be sliced finely and place in vinegar or fish sauce as a side seasoning sauce.

Storage
1. Discard any chillis that are soft, they either have fungus, or insects in them and are best discarded.
2. Remove the green stem by pulling it off.
3. Wash and let them dry.
4. Freeze, they can be kept in the deep freezer for a year.

Bird chillies are usually green and approximately 2-3cms long. They are the spiciest chilli available, far stronger than jalapeno peppers. In contrast red chillies are usually twice the size and slightly milder.

Uses
They are used to add spice to Thai food, and also they are inserted whole (minus the stalk) into dishes to add a pocket of sharp hotness to bite into. Thailand has a dish, 'Nam mu' which is raw pork pounded together with rice and formed into parcels for eating. At the centre of the parcel they often place a bird chilli which is quite a shock as you bite into it.

Storage
As with large red chillies, remove the stalks, wash, discard any soft chillies and freeze them. Once frozen they can be kept for up to a year.

This is a common condiment used to add a garlic flavour and crunchy texture to dishes. You can see it used in noodle dishes, poured over the top of dim-sum to enhance the taste and also added to soups. It is very easy to make and can be kept for up to a year without special storage. If you are serious about Thai cooking, make a batch and store it in an air tight jar, as it is needed for many other dishes.

Ingredients
3-4 Heads of Garlic
200 ml Vegetable Oil (Sunflower is Best)
3-4 Slices of Bacon (optional)

Preparation
1. Separate out the individual garlic cloves, it it not necessary to peel the garlic.
2. Chop the bacon into fine pieces.
3. Chop the garlic into small pieces, (a food processor helps).
4. The skin of the garlic can be kept to add texture to the mixture.
5. Fry the bacon for a few minutes in the oil.
6. Add the garlic.
7. Fry until the bacon and garlic are completely brown and crunchy.
8. Leave to cool.
9. Pour into a jar with lid, including the oil.
10. When you want to use it, spoon some of the garlic and bacon together with the oil onto the dish you want to flavour.

Lemon grass is used to add a citrus flavour to Thai dishes. It is especially useful for soups, whereas lemon juice would lose its fragrance during cooking, the lemon grass flavour strengthens as it cooks. It is available from Asian grocers either in fresh form, or in dried form. Get the fresh form if you can.

Preparation
It requires no special preparation, simply chop and add to a dish.

Storage
Dried lemon grass should be kept in an airtight container.
Fresh lemon grass can be kept in a deep freezer for 3-5 months.

I'd recommend you buy this in tins, it's a lot easier than making it, and the tins last practically forever. Once opened, keep them in the fridge or use the coconut milk within a few days. You can also buy coconut cream in Thailand. This is the richest, most concentrated part of coconut milk and is used in some recipes. You can make this by reducing the amount of water used, to make the milk more concentrated.
However if you can't find tinned coconut milk, but you can find fully ripe coconuts (brown coconut rather than green young coconut) you can make it yourself. The watery liquid inside the coconut is coconut water, not coconut milk. Coconut milk is made from the flesh of the coconut. A final note, don't try this with desiccated (shredded dried) packet coconut, it does not contain any juice.

Save the Water
1. When you break the coconut it will contain coconut water, which you should save as part of the coconut milk.
2. Top this water up to 2/3rds of a litre with regular drinking water, or half a litre to make a richer coconut cream.

Removing the Flesh
1. In Thailand when we make this we have a special grater, shaped like am orange juicer. Coconut-halves are twisted on this grater to remove the flesh easily. Another variant is shown below, a manual rasp on a seat.
2. If you have a strong blender, you can break the coconut into pieces, remove the hard outer shell and blend it into a pulp - it does not matter if some of the brown soft backing comes off too when making coconut milk, it will be filtered later.
3. If you have a flat grater, break the coconut into small pieces and grate them against the grater.

In the photograph at the top you can see the coconut, grated coconut in the middle and the finished coconut milk at the right.

Preparation for the Milk
1. You can make about 2/3rds litre of rich coconut milk with a regular sized coconut.
2. Add all the coconut flesh from 1 coconut into the litre of water and mix it with your hands. Squeeze the coconut flesh repeatedly to squeeze out the juice.
3. After about 10 minutes of squeezing the water should be very milky.
4. Strain the liquid through a large strainer or muslin cloth. Squeeze the flesh to get the last bit of juice from it.
5. That's it, there's no special magic to it - just a little hard work.

This is how I make Bami noodles. Bami noodles are a fresh egg pasta, they can be made very easily and very quickly with the minimum of effort and without special equipment.

Ingredients
100 gms Wheat Flour
1 Large Egg
1 Teaspoon Oil
2 Drops Green Food Coloring
A Rolling Pin

Preparation
1. Whisk the egg with the food color, add the oil and mix with the flour.
2. Knead it for 1-2 minutes to form a stiff dough, then leave for 5 minutes to rest.
3. Roll with a rolling pin into a long flat thin piece of pastry. Approximately 12-14cms wide and as long as you can make it.
4. When I make it, I let the pastry hang over the side of the table, I roll out a piece, move it to hang over the edge, then roll out some more and keep doing that until all the dough is rolled out.
5. Once I have a long thin piece of pastry, you can either roll it into a sausage shape, or like I've done here, fold it concertina fashion. You can see this in the photograph below.
6. Next take a knife and cut thin sections off the end of the folded up pastry.

How to Cook
Simply drop them into boiling water for 3 minutes. They cook very quickly since they are fresh. They are not suitable for freezing, you should make them the same day you want to cook them.

You can see a typical brand of preserve turnip at the bottom right of the photograph (not full size!), it is sold in clear packets and is widely available in Asian supermarkets, so it's easy to spot. The taste is slightly sweet, slightly tangy.

It's used in stir fries and omelettes and also as a flavouring in plain rice soups to add a tang.

Tapioca pearls are starchy balls made from processed cassava starch. When cooked they form a chewy textured ball, you may be familiar with tapioca pudding, but we use them differently in Thailand for desserts and snacks and in some drinks.

In the photograph you can see a packet of tapioca pearls bottom right (a common Chinese brand), together with a bowl of tapioca pearls.

Star anise has, not suprisingly an aniseed taste and is used to flavour not just sweets, but also soups in Thai cuising. Store in an airtight containers and it will last for a year.

Pepper is common ingredient everywhere, this is the fresh green peppercorns used extensively in Thai cuisine to add spice to fried dishes, soups and sauces. Unfortunately it doesn't last long fresh, the best way to keep them is in the freezer, remove them from the stalk into a plastic bag, freeze them, and press the bag between your fingers to separate the individual seeds. You can then use them straight from frozen. If a recipe requires green peppercorns, you can also substitute dried peppercorns instead.

Palm sugar is impure sugar made from sugar palm. It is easiest to buy and store as sugar cakes (as in the photograph). When you need some sugar simply tap the cake with a Thai Wooden Pestle to break off pieces.
As with other sugars, keep it dry in an airtight container and it will last for years. If you cannot obtain palm sugar substitute brown sugar or sugar molasses to achieve a similar heavy burnt sugar flavour.

Thailand doesn't use cinnamon as much for desserts, as it is used for soups and savoury dishes to add a non-hot but still spicy flavour. A typical dish is Cinnamon Soup with Eggs or Cinnamon Pork Chops.
Cinnamon is the inner bark of a tree cut into small sections that curl up to form sticks like the ones in the photograph.
This is the best way to buy cinnamon, as sticks rather than powder. Cinnamon powder loses a lot of its flavour in the air and for many Thai dishes, the cinnamon is added and removed later, something you can do with cinnamon sticks but not with cinnamon powder.

A gelatine like substance made from a herb that comes in packets and more commonly in tins like the brand in the photograph. It is vegetarian (unlike gelatine), and does not dissolve if you put it into hot liquids. We eat it in hot and cold desserts.

Limestone, also known as calcium carbonate, CaCO₃, and in one form, it is blackboard chalk!
In Thailand it's sold as a powder dissolved in water and is used to crisp-up vegetables, squid and in batters for frying to make the batter crunchy.
It is typically sold in small plastic pots like the one in the photograph, inside there is a bag of the limestone mixed with water. When cooking you only need the water which has the limestone already dissolved in it, leave the powder sediment in the jar. To make more liquid, add water to the jar and shake, then give the limestone plenty of time to dissolve. I find the best thing to do is to keep the water topped up after use, so that the limestone is always ready when I need it. The jar lasts a long time, it requires no special preservation.

In Thailand we eat the shoots of the Matum tree as a salad vegetable, you can also eat the fruit raw and make jam from the unripe fruit. In it's dried form the main thing we use it for is to make a 'health' tea like drink by boiling the fruit in water.

"Hales blue boy" is a range of sweet concentrates used to create several Thai sweet drinks, for example Iced Condensed Milk with Helbruboy. Really it's "Hale's Blue Boy Brand Sala Syrup", but you'll often hear Thai people call it 'Helbruboy' for short. When mixed with soda it makes a cream soda like drink, but it can be used for many other sweet drinks too.

These are yellow sheets of bean curd, in essence they are tofu in paper form. They can be used as wrappers for fried or steamed dishes and make a useful edible wrapper.

This is a typical seasoning pack for seasoning noodle stock and making soups. The main flavours are ginseng, galangal, star anise, lotus nuts and cinnamon bark. You will see this ingredient in todays other recipe, duck noodle soup.

You will need this to make the next sausage. It is a spicy old fish paste used in to add the kick into the sausage. We also use it as a side sauce. For the best result, leave it overnight to meld the flavors and oxidize a little.

Ingredients
50 gms Old Fish Sauce and Flesh (Boiled)
2 Tablespoons Faked Chillies
3 Red Onions
5 Garlic Cloves
3 Coriander Roots
4 Kaffir Leaves
10 gms Galangal
10 gms Lemon Grass
1 Teaspoon Sugar
3 Tablespoons Lime Juice or Tamarind Juice

Preparation
1. Blend all the ingredients together.
2. Leave in the fridge for a day.

Hales Blue Boy, there use to be many soda syrups in the west too, but as ready mixed fizzy drinks took over they disappeared to be replaced by colas and orange drinks. However they're hanging on in there in Thailand! The green one is lemony.

Nigari are salt crystals, mostly magnesium chloride crystals used to make tofu. It is the Japanese name for the bitter salt extracted from sea salt. I'm going to be making tofu in the coming days, and this is the easiest tofu salt to get hold of. It is sold as Japanese Nigari, but if you can't buy it you can also make it.
You will need real sea salt, processed sea salt already has this bitter salt removed and will not work. Look on the label for the presence of magnesium chloride.

Instructions for Making Nigari from Sea Salt
1. Wrap your sea salt in a cheese cloth or place them in a plastic colander.
2. The Nigari salt dissolves faster than other salts, so the aim is to get the salt in a moist atmosphere so that it can drip into a tray, leaving the other salts behind.
3. I used a steamer, with a small plate to catch the drips and a wire stand to stand the bag of salt on. You can see this in the photo.
4. I place the steamer on a very low heat, I don't want the water to boil, just to make the air moist. Once the water is hot I turn off the heat and leave it covered for a at least a day, often longer.
5. The magnesium salts absorb the water far faster than other salts, and drips down into the plate. So the bitter salt that drips onto the plate is Nigari and what is left can be used as cooking salt.
6. You can the drive off the water to make crystals simply by leaving the plate out in the sun. But you can also use the liquid directly to make tofu.

Ah tofu. I wanted to learn how to make tofu, it looks so simple yet it takes so much effort and the result I made was, to be honest, not as good as shop bought tofu! I think I removed too much water from the mixture. I recommend you don't press it as much as I did when you make it!
For the preparation, I'm going to make my tofu from dried soya beans, but you can make it directly from the soya milk you buy in the supermarket. Just make sure the milk is not sweetened or flavoured.
I'm using Nigari (Nigari info) as my coagulating agent, this is the Japanese bitter salt they extract from sea salt. There are many types of tofu and different tofus are made with different coagulating agents, silken tofu is made with Glucono-delta-lactone (E575), a chemical made by bacteria, or Epsom salts can also be used.

Ingredients
500 gms Dried Yellow Soya Beans (1kg-1.5 kgs if fresh beans)
2 Teaspoons Nigari Salt

Preparation Soya Milk
1. Starting with the dried beans, soak them in 1.5 litres warm water overnight. You can see how they plump up to twice the size from the photograph.
2. Drain off the water, add one cup of fresh water to help form a slurry and blend them, I used a hand blender on mine to make the slurry you see below.

3. Next up, we need to boil the soya slurry. This is done to destroy an enzyme in the soya that would make it difficult to digest. Add 1.5 litres of water to the slurry in a pan. bring to the boil and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.

4. Now we need to separate the liquid from the pulp, to do this I used two layers of cheese cloth in a collander. The liquid that drains off is what we are interested in, so make sure to have a large pan underneath the collander to catch the liquid.

5. At this point we have soya milk, you could leave it to cool, add a little sugar or salt and drink it if you wish, but we need it hot to make the tofu, so it's best to go straight ahead and make the tofu.

6. Dissolve the Nigari salt in quarter a cup of cold water. Add to the hot soya milk and leave it to coagulate for 10 minutes, perhaps longer. The liquid part should be clear and the curds visible, you can leave it longer until this happens.

7. Another cheese cloth covered colander is needed to get the curds. Pour through the liquid and keep the curds in the cheese cloth, leave it for 5 minutes to let any excess liquid drain off.

8. At this point I pressed the curd under a heavy weight and drained off the liquid. However that was a mistake. Instead I would put the curd into a bowl and leave it to settle and even itself out in the fridge.

9. That's it. But after all that work, you wish you'd simply bought it!

In Thailand we use dried yeast rather than fresh, traditionally we didn't have fridges in Thailand and some upcountry villages do not have electricity, so dried yeast keeps where fresh yeast would go off.

Yeast is used sometimes as a raising agent as in the west, but mostly to ferment rice to make alcoholic beers and wines! You'll need this and sticky rice to make next weeks Rice Wine (Sato) recipe.