Shrimp Sour Curry is a traditional food of Central & Southern Thailand. Think of it as curried soup. Although the ingredients are the same for the two refions, the south of Thailand variation tastes more spicy because they add more dry chilli during cooking. The Central Thailand version is closer to sweet and sour soup and is the one given here. This is medium hot.

Ingredient For 2 People
50 gsm Sour Curry Paste.
800 ml. Water.
50 gms. Tamarind
8 Shrimp
50 gms. Pak Kra Chate (Or Green Vegetable)
50 Long Beans (Or green beans)
4 Oyster Mushroons
4 Tablespoons Fish Sauce.
2 Tablespoons Sugar.

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, ensure you cut the shell and remove the entrails which can spoil the appearance of the dish.
2. Clean the oyster mushrooms, pak kra chate, and long beans and chop into 3 cm pieces, set aside.
3. Mix the tamarind with water, squeeze until the water goes brown and taste sour. For this curry we need the sour tamarind water but not the tamarind, seive the mixture to remove the tamarind and place the sour water into a pan.
4. Add the sour curry paste to the pan and stir over the heat until the water boils.
5. When water start boiling, add the fish sauce and sugar in and taste it. You are aiming for sweet, sour, salty, spicy taste, you can adjust the sugar, salt and curry paste to achieve this.
6. Add the vegetables and shrimp and cook over the heat for 2 minutes.

Thai people love seafood and spices and this dish is typical of a spicy Thai seafood dish. Its a whole Squid or calamari and they're widely available in Thailand and always very fresh, usually it's fried or barbecued, but this dish is a different way of cooking it. The squid is stuffed with seasoned pork meat and steamed to cook it gently then served in a spicy soup.

Ingredients for 2 people
100 gms Pork Mince
4 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon Pepper
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1 Large Whole Squid

Ingredients for Soup
1 Chicken stock cube
200 ml Water
50 gms Mixed Red and Green Chillis
1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Serve With
Sliced Thai Cabbage
Must be served warm

Preparation of Squid
1. Peel the garlic, put the pork mince and garlic together with the salt and pepper in a blender and blend it until the garlic is well mixed in.
2. Clean out the inside of the squid. Cut off the head and try to keep the body of the squid intact as a hollow tube.
3. Stuff the pork mince mix into the squid until its full.
4. Score cuts into the top of the squid - this will allow the steam to reach the meat to cook it.
5. Steam for 10 minutes.

Preparation for the Soup
6. Take a small pot pan, add water & the chicken stock cube and bring it to boil until the cube has dissolved.
7. Put the chilles in a blender and blend until they are fine pieces. If you prefer, you can cut them by hand, but they must be fine.
8. Add the chillis to the soup and remove the soup from the heat.
9. Place the steamed squid on a serving plate, squeeze the lemon juice over the top of the squid.
9. Pour the soup around the base of the squid, and place some of the chilli pulp on the top for show.

Notes
Ideally this should be served on a heated metal plate with candles heating the base of the dish.

This is an excellent side dish that adds lots of vegetables to a meat & rice or noodle main dish. The shrimp provides the flavour. You can use red or yellow peppers (capsicums) in place of the green, but green is the pepper most used in Thailand.

Ingredients for 2 People
100 gms Shrimp.
100 gms Green pepper.
50 gms Onion
50 gms Carrots
1 Garlic Clove
3 Tablespoons Oil
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
5 gms White Pepper

Serve With
Hot Fragrant Rice

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, cut them down the back and remove the intestine.
2. Chop the green pepper, onions, carrot and garlic.
3. Put the oil in the pan and heat it.
4. When the oil is hot add the garlic and cook for a few seconds.
5. Add the shrimp and fry it for 1 minute.
6. Add the green pepper, onion and carrot.
7. Add fish sauce, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper fry it for 2 minutes.
8. For a stir fry the vegetables need to be cooked for a short time on a high heat.

Thai food can be overwhelming, with lots of strange ingredients and foreign vegetables. So here we have a very simple and very tasty recipe using sardines! We used sardines in oil, but you can also use sardines in tomato sauce, in which case you don't need the tomato puré. This should be served with fragrant Thai rice, but can also be served along with salads.

Ingredient for 2 People
2 Cans of Sardines in Oil
2 Teaspoons of Tomato Puré
20 gms Lemon Grass
20 gms Coriander Leaves
50 gms Onion
2 Red Chillis
2 Bird Chillis
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce

Preparation
1. Remove the sardines from the can.
2. Mix the oil from the can with the tomato puré in a small mixing bowl.
3. Slice the onion, lemon grass, and chilles, and add to the bowl.
4. Add the fish sauce and lemon juice and mix all the ingredients together well.
5. Pour over the sardines.
6. Chop the coriander put around the edge of the sardine plate.

Serve With
Hot rice or salads.

For those who like squid, this is an easy Thai dish with only a few ingredients. The main flavour is garlic and the squid is very easy to prepare.

Ingredients for 2 People
100 gms Squid
4 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
2 Tablespoons Light Soy sauce
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
100 ml Oil

Preparation
1. Cut the squid like squares clean the inside of the squid carefully, remove the beak if it is still present.
2. Score the squid with diagonal criss-cross scoring, this will make it more tender and less chewy once cooked.
3. Pound the garlic in a Thai mortar and mix with squid, light soy sauce and fish sauce.
4. Put oil into a frying pan over a medium heat.
5. Add the squid mixture into the pan and cook for 3 minutes.
6. If you overcook squid it becomes chewy, so only light, short cooking is necessary.

Serve With
Fragrant Rice
Salad Vegetables
Tomato
Lettuce
Cucumber

This dish is seafood in a set red curry. The seafood is normally a mixture of chopped shrimp, crab meat, squid, mussels and minced white fish, but you can omit or exchange similar seafood if you prefer. For a true authentic look, make little parcels of the mixture in banana leaves and steam those, but the taste is the same if you steam it in serving pots, or even foil cups can be used. This dish can also be made with coconut milk in place of the soya milk.

Ingredients for Family
100 gms Shrimp
100 gms Crab Meat
100 gms Squid
100 gms Mussels
100 gms White Fish Meat, Minced
1 Egg
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
250 ml Soya Milk
2 Tablspoons Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
2 Red Chillies
2 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
50 gms Chinese Cabbage Sliced Finely
20 gms Sweet Basil Leaves

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, cut along the centre of the back and remove the black thread 'gut'.
2. Clean the squid, remove the gladius (the hard plate in the body of the squid).
3. In a blender, mix the red curry paste with the fish mince and egg and blend until they are well mixed.
4. Add the soya milk, salt and sugar and blend until you make a red paste.
5. Take several bowls for steaming, I used square serving dishes for the photograph above.
6. At the base of the dish, layer some cabbage and sweet basil, then add some of the chopped seafood as the next layer, then finally fill the dish with the red curry mixture. Tap the bowl to make sure the red curry fills all the gaps.
7. Steam for 10 minutes in a chinese steamer, you can test if it is cooked by pushing a fork in it.
8. Slice the kaffir leaves and chilli into fine strips and garnish the top of the curry with them.

Serve With
Hot Rice

This is a very simple noodle dish of pork and shrimp, 'Woon Sen' is glass noodle, 'gung' means shrimp, but the important word here is 'op'. We call it 'op', because you layer the ingredients in the frying pan, add a little water and cover the noodles with a lid, the water sort of part-steams, part-fries the noodles. 'Op' refers to this cooking method and there isn't a simple word in English that corresponds to it. A couple of things to note: 1. Use pork with some fat in it for this dish, it will give the dish a lot of extra flavour. 2. Maggi sauce is a savory flavouring sauce that is available worldwide, you should be able to find it easily.

Ingredients for 2 People
100 gms Shrimp or Crab
50 gms Glass Noodles
50 gms Fatty Pork
30 gms Celery
1 Teaspoon Black Pepper Corns
1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
1 Teaspoon Maggi Sauce
1 Tablespoon Water
10 gms Sliced Ginger Root

Preparation
1. Clean the pork and shrimp. Cut the shrimp down the back and remove the black thread 'gut' when you clean it.
2. Chop the pork into small pieces.
3. Soak the glass noodle for 15 minutes in water to soften them.
4. Pound the pepper corns until fine and mix with the shrimp.
5. Drain the glass noodles.
6. Into a frying pan layer the ingredients with the pork at the bottom (so that it gets most heat), the noodles in the middle and the sliced ginger and shrimp on the top.
7. Add the light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, water, and Maggi sauce.
8. Cover with a lid, and simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes.
9. Chop the celery into 3 cm lengths and add to the pan.
10. Cover the pan again and cook for 1 more minute.

Serve With
Hot Rice
Soup

These are the Thai fish balls used for soups, Suki-Yaki, and other dishes that call for fish balls. Use a soft meat fish, there are many cheap, tasty, smaller fish that are rarely used because they either contain too many bones, or the flesh is not white. As a guide, if you can pull the head of the fish easily with your hands, it's soft meat, but if you have to cut the head off, it's hard meat and not suitable for these fish balls.
These balls take a little work to prepare, so I recommend you make a batch and freeze them immediately after cooking. They can be dropped straight from frozen into boiling water to cook, so you can keep a bag of frozen fish balls and grab a few straight out of the freezer as needed. Crushed ice in this recipe is used to make the mixture spongy, the ice crystals melt during cooking, leaving small holes.

Ingredients
250 gms Soft Fish Meat
2 Teaspoons Salt
1 Teaspoon Black Pepper
4 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Chopped Spring Onions
2 Tablespoons Cassava Starch (Tapioca Starch)
50 gms Crushed Ice

Preparation
1. Clean & gut the fish and remove the backbone, on soft meat fish you should be able to open the fish and pull out the backbone with the small bones attached. You can then scrape the meat off the skin with a knife.
2. Put the fish meat into the blender with the garlic, salt, pepper, spring onions, and cassava starch.
3. Blend until smooth.
4. Put a pan of water onto boil, and a bowl of cold water next to it.
5. Crush the ice, if you don't have an ice crusher, place the cubes in a plastic bag, wrap it in a towel and bash it with a rolling pin.
6. Add the crushed ice to the blender and blend it into the mixture.
7. Using two teaspoons, scoop out spoonfuls of the fish mixture and shape into balls, then drop them into the boiling water.
8. Cook for 1 minute, the ball will float to the surface.
9. Scoop out the balls and drop into the cold water to cool quickly.
10. If you want to freeze them, keep them separate on a tray until frozen, then transfer them to a freezer bag. That way they won't stick together.

Serve With
Suki-Yaki
Noodle Soups
Rice Soups

These may look like Japanese Sushi Rolls, but they are cooked soft fish Thai rolls. They can be eaten, either as a side dish to a main meal, or dropped into a Suki pan as part of Suki-Yaki or just to pep up a soup.
If you want to make a large batch and store some, freeze them before cooking. They can then be cooked straight from frozen, simply drop them into boiling water for 3-5 minutes.
It's easier to make the rolls if you have a Sushi mat, a Sushi mat is a flexible mat made from wooden sticks that can be rolled up with the seaweed roll inside it. You can also do it by hand, it's just a little more fiddly. One final note, use a soft meat fish, the meat should be a soft pureé rather than firm flesh.

Ingredients
150 gms Soft Meat Fish
2 Teaspoons Salt
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
3 Garlic Cloves
30 gms Celery
4 Sheets Dried Seaweed

Preparation
1. Clean and gut the fish, pull out the backbone, scrape the meat off the skin and place only the meat into a food blender.
2. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and blend until the mixture is smooth.
3. Spread the mixture evenly over a sheet of seaweed.
4. Cut a stick of celery down to form a thin baton, and place the baton along one edge of the seaweed paper.
5. Roll the seaweed up into a sausage shape.
6. Place the seaweed sausage in the freezer for 10 minutes, this will make it firmer and easier to cut into slices.
7. Cut the fish sausage into slices, you will find it easier to cut with a serrated knife.
8. If you want to freeze them, lay them on a flat tray separately (so they don't stick), freeze them and transfer them to a freezer bag once they are completely frozen.
9. If you want to cook them, drop them into boiling water for 3-5 minutes. For Suki-Yaki, they are dropped into the Suki pan to cook with the rest of the ingredients.

Serve With
Suki-Yaki
Noodle Soup

This dish is a different way to eat oysters, they are cooked in a sticky sauce together with fresh mushrooms. If you use fresh oysters, when you remove them from the shell, empty the liquid into the pan. If you use canned or frozen, drain off the liquid instead. The liquid from a fresh oyster carries extra flavours into the dish.
When serving this, it is normal to serve this on a steel hotplate with candles underneath to keep it good and hot.

Ingredients for 2 People
50 gms Oysters
30 gms Assorted Mushrooms
1 Egg
2 Tablespoons Rice Flour
1/2 Tablespoon Cassava Starch
50 ml Water
4 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1/4 Teaspoon White Pepper
1/4 Teaspoon Sugar
3 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Chopped Spring Onion
2 Tablespoon Oil
Stainless Steel Hot Plate

Preparation
1. Mix the flour and starch together with water.
2. Mix the egg with the oysters and mushroom together.
3. Chop the garlic and fry into the pan to release the garlic smell.
4. Add the mushrooms and oysters and mix in the flour/water mixture into the pan. Stir to avoid lumps forming.
5. Add light soy sauce, sugar, white pepper, and spring onions and fry for 30 secound.
6. Serve on a stainless steel plate, over a heater.

Serve With
Soya Beansprouts
Flaked Dried Chilli
Sugar
Vinegar

If you made my mince stuffed crab (above) then you will have left over crab stuffing and this bake is a terrific way to use that up, with only a few extra ingredients needed. Crab is very cheap in Thailand and is not considered a luxury food, rather it's just another type of seafood.

Ingredients for 2 people
50 gms Crab Meat
50 gms Pork Mince
50 gms Cubed Raw Potato
1 Tablespoons Corn Flour
1 Egg
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1/3 Teaspoon White Pepper
1 Tablespoon Chopped Onions
2 Tablespoons Butter
Tin Foil Tray

Preparation
1. Mix the crab meat with the pork mince, add the fish sauce, salt, white pepper, corn flour, egg, and chopped onion. Mix together.
2. Butter the inside of the foil tray, spread chopped potatoes around the base os the tray, the spoon the mixture on the top.
3. Cook for 30 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice
Salads
Chilli Seafood Sauce

It's Valentine's day and I thought I'd make heart shaped food to celebrate. This fish & rice heart is fried in batter and makes a complete filling meal.

Ingredients
100 gms Fish Meat Minced
4 Tablespoons Fragrant Rice
4 Tablespoons Lime Juice
2 Teaspoons Salt
1 Teaspoons Black Peppercorns
4 Garlic Cloves
2 Eggs
1 Tablespoon Corn Flour
Bread Brumbs
Oil For Shallow Frying

Preparation
1. Pound the garlic cloves and black peppercorns together until ground in a Thai mortar.
2. Add the fish mince and continue pounding to make a paste.
3. Into a saucepan, mix the paste, the rice, the corn flour and the yolks of the eggs (keep the whites for later).
4. Heat the ingredients, stirring until they thicken.
5. Push into moulds suitable for steaming. I used heart shaped moulds.
6. Steam for 10 minutes in a Chinese steamer and remove from the moulds.
7. Whip the egg whites, and cover a plate with breadcrumbs. Dip the finished hearts into the egg whites and then the bread crumbs so they are well coated with breadcrumbs on all sides.
8. Shallow fry in hot oil, until they are golden brown on all sides. I find a 1cm layer of oil in the pan makes it easier to get the sides of the heart golden brown.

Serve With
Chopped Chilli
Chopped Red Onion
Chopped Galangal Root
Chopped Peanuts
Coriander Leaves
Mint Leaves

'Tom Yum' is a spicy soup made from chilli, lime leaves and lemon juice, 'Gung' is the shrimp form of this soup. 'Tom Yum' is what people think of when they think of Thai food, it is the poster dish you must learn to cook to be able to say you cook Thai food. In the North East it's common to eat 'Tom Yum' made from chicken, it can also be made from pork or even fish.

Ingredient for 2 People
150 gms Shrimp
250 ml Water
30 gms Galanga
30 gms Lemongrass
20 gms Kaffir Lime leaves
25 gms Bird Chilli
1 Sprig Coriander
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Tom Yum Paste
1 Teaspoon Chilli Paste
2 Tablespoon condensed milk

Serve With
Hot Fragrant Rice

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp and remove the black thread (the intestine) from the shrimp by cutting it down the back.
2. Slice the galanga and lemongrass, into short 3cm pieces and pound it in a mortar to break out the flavours.
3. Put the water in pan bring to the boil.
4. When the water is boiling add the galanga, lemongrass, kaffir, salt, and Tom Yum Paste, and wait for it to come back to biling again.
5. Add the shrimps in cook for 2 minutes.
6. Break the chillis into a mortar and pound them for a few moments to a pulp, add to the soup.
7. Add the fish sauce, lemon juce, chilli paste and condensed milk to the soup.
8. Turn off the heat and add the coriander leaves, serve hot.

Good quality eating crabs are a staple of the Thai diet. Rather than dress the crab, as you would in the west, we prepare it by mixing the crab meat with mince and stuffing it. We steam and eat the claws and legs separately. The spicy red sauce you can see underneath in the photograph, is used as a dipping sauce for the crab. For this dish that sauce is normally served in a separate bowl.

Ingredients
1 Large Eating Crab
70 gms Pork Mince
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
3 Garlic Cloves
1 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns
10 gms Coriander Root
1 Tablespoon Chopped Spring Onions
1 Egg
4 Tablespoons Oil
1/2 Teaspoons Breadcrumbs

Preparation
1. Clean the crab, remove the legs and pull out the inside of the crab.
2. Take the meat and any eggs of the crab, leaving only an empty shell, clean the shell.
3. Mix the crab meat with the pork mince. Pound the garlic with peppercorns and coriander root and add to the mince/crab mix.
4. Add light soy sauce, spring onions and egg, and mix them all together.
5. Stuff the crab shell with this filling, and steam it for 10 minutes.
6. Put oil into a frying pan over a medium heat.
7. Add breadcrumbs to the exposed part of the stuffing in the crab shell. Fry this (meat side down) for 2 minutes.
8. Serve with the following chilli sauce and garnish with coriander leaves.

Ingredients for Sweet Chilli Sauce
5 Big Red Chillies
1 Garlic Clove
2 Tablespoons Sugar
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Vinegar

Preparation
1. Pound the garlic with chillies until fine.
2. Add all the ingredients except the coriander and pound until they are all broken up.
3. Warm in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved.
4. Serve this as a dipping sauce for your crab.

An Orada, is a type of fish with soft white flesh and few bones that is pan sized - making it ideal for frying. This dish is a shallow fried fish with a spicy sweet sour sauce, the sour comes from tamarind. For this recipe any similar non-oily fish can be used if Orada is not available. Thailand people loves fresh fish and fish dishes are to be found on most menus. Gut and clean the fish carefully, you can clean inside with lemon to rid the fish of any bitterness if necessary.

Ingredients
1 Orada approx. 500 gms.
3 Teaspoons Salt.
700 ml Oil ( or better if you have frying pan )

Sauce Ingredients
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Light Soya Sauce
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1 Tablespoon Tamarind Juice
3 Red Chillis
2 Garlic Cloves
4 Basil leaves
1 Red Onion

Preparation
1. Tamarind juice, is water added to tamarind pulp, the tamarind is squeezed in the water to made a sour bitter flavoring water.
2. Clean the fish and take entrails out, score it across each side with 3 lines.
3. Mixed with salt and leave it for 10 minutes for the salt to flavour the fish.
4. Put oil in pan turn heat on high ( the oil should be 190 degrees C if using a deep fat fryer) . The oil should just submerge the fish.
5. Fry the fish for 15 minutes and place it on a plate.
6. Put a tablespoon of oil in small frying pan on medium heat.
7. Chop the chilli, garlic and onion into small pieces.
8.When the pan is hot, fry the chilli, slice the onion and garlic for a few seconds and add the fish sauce, light soy sauce, sugar, and tamarin juce.
9. When the sauce is well mixed turn off the heat and add the basil.
10. Just before you are read to serve, pour the sauce over the fish.

We have a lot of coastline in Thailand and a lot of fishermen. Cockles and other seafood are very fresh and widely available. This is a shell fish ('hoy' in Thai) in spicy Thai sauce recipe. Although we used cockles here, other small shell fish are also excellent for this recipe. When cooking shell fish, it's important to soak them in water for 30 minutes or more to clean them. If the cockle is alive, it will continue to 'feed', cleaning itself through with the clean water.

Ingredients for 2 People
200 gms Cockles
4 Red Chillies
2 Garlic Cloves
1 Spring Onion
5 Basil Leaves
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper
1 Tablespoon Water
3 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Soak the shells in water for 30 minutes.
2. Put the oil into frying pan, chop the chillies, and garlic, and fry for a few seconds to bring out the flavour.
3. Add the shell fish, soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, white pepper, and water, stir fry it for 1 minutes.
4. Chop the spring onion and basil and add at the end of cooking.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice

This is a great way to use tinned tuna in a Thai style. 'Yum' in a Thai dish means its a spicy version, Yum Tona is spicy tuna. This is a very very simple dish to make and is excellent when served with rice soup or as a side dish to other meals.

Ingredients for 2 People
2 Cans Tuna (Approx 160gms) in Oil
10 gms Lemon Grass
10 gms Spring Onion
10 gms Mint
5 Bird Chillies
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce

Preparation
1. Place the tuna in a mixing bowl (including the oil).
2. Chop the chillies, spring onion, mint and lemon grass into very fine pieces.
3. Mix into the tuna.
4. Add the lemon juice and fish sauce and mix well.
5. Serve.

Stop, don't run away! Although this dish is normally made with fish stomachs, Thais also make it with fried pork rind, the kind you can find as a snack next to crisps (chips) in your local supermarket. It's not particularly unusual to see odd parts of fish used in soups, think of shark fin soup in Chinese cuisine, so this dish is not as strange as it may seem, but still, if fish stomach puts you off, use pork rind gratons instead. Another item you may not be familar with is Maggi sauce, this is a Nestlé made dark seasoning sauce that is very popular in Thailand and is available worldwide.

Ingredients for 2 People
100 gms Fish Stomach or Fried Pork Rind 'Snacks'
500 ml Chicken Stock
50 gms Chicken Breast
50 gms Crab meat
50 gms Cooked Bamboo (e.g. Canned)
6 Hard Boiled Quail Eggs
2 Shitake Mushrooms
1 Tablespoon Maggi Sauce
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Corn Flour
20 gms Chopped Coriander Leaves

Preparation
1. Clean the fish stomachs very very well and soak in water for 30 minutes. You may need to soak and rinse the fish stomachs two or three times.
2. Boil the fish stomach for 5-10 minutes and clean again in cold water.
3. Soak the shitake mushrooms for 10 minutes and chop them into bite sized pieces.
4. Boil the chicken stock, add the shitake mushrooms, and the chicken breast.
5. When the chicken breast is cooked, remove it from the boiling stock and shred it into smaller pieces and set aside.
6. Continue to cook the chicken stock with the mushrooms until the mushrooms are so soft, they nearly break up in the stock.
7. Add the crab, bamboo, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, Maggi sauce, and sugar.
8. Dissolve corn flour into 4 tablespoons of water and add to the soup, cook for 1 minutes to thicken it.
9. Serve the soup in a bowl with the shredded chicken meat and the boiled quail eggs added, and some chopped coriander to garnish.

Serve With
The following condiments are typically served for the guest to choose from:
Flaked Chilli
Vinegar
Sugar

A little snack, these are crab and pork pastry crowns. I normally use these little dishes for Ta Ko, but they make perfect bite sized snacks. See the red chillies in the foreground to get an idea of the size of them.

Ingredients
50 gms Crab Meat
100 gms Pork Mince
Pinch of Salt
Pinch of Pepper
4 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon Ground Pepper
2 Coriander Roots
3 Tablespoon Honey
1 Tablespoon Chopped Chives
1 Tablespoon Chopped Coriander Leaves
1 Teaspoon Sliced Chillies
Shortcrust Pastry (See kratongs)

Preparation
1. Pound the garlic, ground pepper, and coriander roots together. Mix in the pork mince and crab in a frying pan.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients, and fry to part cook the mixture.
3. Cut the pastry into squares, approx 8x8cms. Insert into the small dishes, and spoon the mixture in.
4. Cook for 10-15 minutes.
5. It's nice to add a drop of honey or sweet plum sauce to the top for the last 5 minutes of cooking to glaze these.

Normally I'd serve the chilli seafood sauce separately, not sprinkled over the top like that, but it wouldn't make such a good photograph then!

Ingredients
1000 gms Mussels
5 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Chopped Corainder Leaves
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Leave the mussels in water for 30 minutes to let them clean themselves.
2. Chop the garlic finely, fry in a little oil inside a large saucepan. This pan needs to be big enough to cook the mussels.
3. Add the chopped coriander, and drain and add the mussels to the pan. Cover the pan.
4. There is enough water coming from the mussels to steam them in their own juice.
5. Cook for 1-2 minutes until the mussels are opened and cooked.

Ingredients Seafood Sauce
Juice of a Lime
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 Garlic Cloves
3 Big Red Chillies
3 Green Chillies

Preparation
1. In a blender, blend the red and green chillies and garlic.
2. Add the fish sauce and lime juice.
3. Serve on the side.