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

Literally the Thai name means poured prawns, reflecting the vegetables and sauce that are poured over the prawns. There are two main parts to it, the Chinese cabbage thick sauce-like soup, and the prawns. Both parts are normally combined on the same plate with the souped poured over the prawns.

Ingredients 2 People
6 Prawns
20 gms Mushroom
20 gms Garden Peas
30 gms Green Cabbage
1 Tablespoon Cassava Starch
350 ml Water
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Chicken Stock Cube
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
3 Garlic Cloves
1/2 Black Pepper

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, remember to cut down the back and remove the black thread gut.
2. Peel the garlic and fry for a few seconds, then add the prawns and fry for 1 minute. Place them on the serving plate.
3. Boil the water with the stock cube. Add the sugar, light soy sauce and cook until the soup is just boiling. Then turn the heat to low.
4. Chop the mushrooms and green cabbage and add to the soup.
5. Add the peas.
6. Mix the cassava starch with 40 ml water and add to the soup. Stir for a few moments for the soup to thicken.
7. When you are ready to serve, pour the soup over the prawns and sprinkly with black pepper.

Serve With
Vinegar (Guests can add a dash to make the dish sour)
Dried Flake Chilli
Sugar

This recipe is a steamed dish of prawns rolled in pork and Chinese cabbage. The sauce adds a slight sweetness to the whole thing. For the photograph, I sliced the rolls so that you can see inside, but I normally served them whole.

Ingredients
10 Uncooked Prawns
50 gms Pork Mince
4 Garlic Cloves
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper
1 Teaspoon Salt
10 Green Chinese Cabbage Leaves
2 Tablespoon Plum Sauce
1 Tablespoon Orange Juice
1/2 Tablespoon Brandy or Thai Whiskey if you can get it.
10 Toothpicks

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, remove the black line gut and the shell, tail & head.
2. Chop the garlic finely, mix with pork mince and salt.
3. Clean the green cabbage leaves and cut into 6x20 cm lengths.
4. We now roll the parcels up:
5. Lay down a cabbage leave, spread some of the pork mince over it so that it covers half of the cabbage leaf. Place a prawn at one end and roll the cabbage up. The prawn should be wrapped in a layer of pork and several outer layers of cabbage.
6. As you roll, tuck in the edges of the cabbage to enclose the meat and shrimp completely into a little parcel.
7. Secure them with a toothpick.
8. Steam for 10 minutes.
9. Mix the plum sauce, orange juice and brandy in a saucepan and warm over a low heat.
10. Serve the prawns with the sauce poured over them.

Serve With
Rice or Bread
Salads

This dish is a steamed prawn platter with garlic (pickled and regular garlic), the presentation is important for this dish. Thai chefs pride themselves on their excellent presentation (which is often far better than mine!). For this prawn platter you trim the tail of the prawn, cut a slit in the middle of the body and fold the prawn backwards on itself passing the tail through the slit to form a loop. You can see from the photograph, that this makes them open up and gives the garlic sauce more of a chance to flavour the prawns.

Ingredients
7-8 Prawns
5 Garlic Cloves
1 Head of Pickled Garlic
2 Tablespoons Pickled Garlic Vinegar
3 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1/3 Teaspoon White Pepper
2 Tablespoons Chopped Spring Onion

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns and cut the head off, remove the shell but leave the tail. Remove the black line gut.
2. Trim the end of tail to 2 cm, cut a slit in the middle of the body, then fold the prawn backwards on itself, and push the tail through the slit.
3. Place them on foil ready to steam, fold the edges of the foil up to hold the juice.
4. Chop the pickled garlic and slice the (non pickled) garlic. Cover the prawns with the garlic.
5. Add all the ingredients to the prawns, including the sauces and make sure they cover the prawns well.
6. Steam for 5 minutes then serve.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice
Chopped Chillies in Fish Sauce

I've called these raw, but they are cooked (at least oxidised) by the lemon juice, the same way that other raw meats are sometime eaten. Use only the freshest prawns for this dish. In Thailand food goes off quickly due to the heat, and so seafood is always eaten very very fresh.

Ingredients
100 gms Prawns
1 Tablespoon Chopped Chillies
1 Tablespoon Chopped Spring Onions
1 Tablespoon Chopped Garlic Cloves
1 Tablespoon Chopped Coriander Leaves
1 Tablespoon Dried Flaked Chillies
1 Tablespoon Ground Toasted Rice
3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
Mint Leaves

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, remove the middle part of the shell, leaving the head and tail, cut down the back and remove the black thread.
2. Put the prawns into a bowl, add all the ingredients and mix together. Let it stand for 2 minutes, giving it a mix every now and again.

Serve With
Lettuce
Cucumber
Cabbage

Like many Thai recipes, it may not look like much, but it's a very delicious rich sauce of minced shrimp meat and minced pork. The soya sauce you will need is brown salty soya.

Ingredients
2 Teaspoons Brown Salty Soya Sauce
150 ml Coconut Milk
30 gms Minced Prawn Meat
30 gms Pork Mince
2 Teaspoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Tamarind Water
5 Red Chillies
2 Tablespoons Chopped Onions

Preparation
1. Put the coconut milk into a saucepan over a medium heat.
2. When the coconut is boiling, add the soy sauce and stir.
3. Add the prawn mince and pork mince and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Add the chopped onions, salt, red chillies and tamarind water.
5. Cook for 2 minutes then serve it with vegetables.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice
Green Lettuce
Cucumber

That green mix in the middle in chopped green bird chillis, steamed to give the prawns a hot burn.

Ingredients
4-5 Prawn
5 Green Bird Chillies
1-2 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Sugar

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, cut down the back and remove the black thread gut. Cut a slot in the middle and fold the tail back on itself and thread through the slot.
2. Place 4 prawns into a small bowl, the bowl should fit inside your steamer.
3. Into a blender, place the garlic, chillies, lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar. Blend to a fine mince.
4. Pile this chilli mix onto the top of the prawns, make sure you cover the prawns with the juices.
5. Steam for 3 minutes.

These delicious parcels are flavoured with shredded ginger and prawns, and served in a stock soup. The carrots, ginger and celery should be shredded, or sliced very finely, since they need to steam quickly with the rest of the dish.

Ingredients
10 Rice Papers
100 gms Prawns
10 gms Carrot
10 gms Celery
10 gms Ginger Root
100 ml Water
1/2 Chicken Stock Cube
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
1 Teaspoons Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper

Preparation
1. Peel the carrot, and ginger root. Shred or grate them finely. Grate the celery too.
2. Clean and shell the prawns, cutting down the back, to remove the black thread.
3. Chop the prawn meat into small pieces.
4. Mix the prawn, celery, ginger, and carrot.
5. Soak the rice papers in warm water until they are soft. This takes only a minute or so.
6. Roll up the prawn mixture in the rice paper into a parcel, and place in a bowl. The bowl should be small enough to fit in your steamer.
7. Steam the prawn rice paper packets for 5 minutes to cook them.
8. For the soup, boil the water in a saucepan with the chicken stock, light soy, sugar and white pepper.
9. The pour over the rice parcels and serve.

Prawns and broccoli in a red curry sauce, in the photograph you can see I like to present the prawns arranged in a pattern with the head and tail of the shell still on. For this recipe you will need Garchai (Kasay, Kachai - the spelling varies), a thai root vegetable used for flavourings. If you can't find it, then you can omit it.

Ingredients
50 gms Broccoli
50 gms Prawn
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
2 Tablespoons Oil
1 Tablespoon Chopped Garchai
1 Tablespoon Chopped Kaffir Leaves

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, cut down the back and remove the black thread. I like to leave the head and tail shell on.
2. Clean and soak the broccoli in hot water for a few seconds.
3. Put oil into a frying pan and preheat.
4. Add the prawns and fry until they are half cooked, then add the red curry paste and fry for a few seconds to release the curry flavours.
5. Add all the other ingredients and fry for a minute.
6. Add the broccoli and just warm it through, it does not need to be cooked.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice

The sweetcorn in this recipe gives the shrimp loaf some structural stability! Without it, the steamed shrimp loaf has a tendancy to flatten while cooking. This dish is ideal as a table filler at a banquet, if you have some star dishes that are made from shrimp, it's a useful way to use up shrimp trimmings.

Ingredients
100 gms Shrimp
3 Tablespoons Cassava Starch
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper
2 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon Light Soy Sauce
Baby Corn
Water
20 gms Corn
20 gms Chopped Carrots
20 gms Peas

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimps, cut down the back and remove the black line, remove and discard all the shell.
2. Into a blender, place the shrimp, peeled garlic, white pepper, salt, cassava starch and light soy sauce.
3. Blend to a medium smooth mixture.
4. Take lumps of this mixture and squeeze it around the baby corn. Place in a plate small enough to go in your steamer.
5. Dice the carrots, and sprinkle some corn, carrots and peas over the top.
6. Steam for 10 minutes.
7. Pour a little more soy sauce over the top and serve.

Strawberries are in season in the northern hemisphere, and this is an interesting way to eat them - as part of a typical Thai spicy salad.

Ingredients
5 Strawberries
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoons Sugar
1 Garlic Cloves
5 Bird Chillies
1 Tablespoon Chopped Spring Onions
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Chopped Celery
5 Prawns

Preparation
1. Clean and shell the prawns, cut down the back and remove the black thread. Cut into 1cms pieces.
2. Boil a small pan of water and cook the shrimp in it for 1-2 minutes, they don't take long to cook.
3. Chop the bird chillies, garlic and strawberries, mix together in a bowl with the fish sauce, sugar, lemon juice, chopped spring onions, chopped celery and cooked prawns pieces.
4. Serve.

This dish is intense Thai food! We eat raw shelled shrimp by spooning on a mixture of chillies, garlic, mint and spring onions, a little fish sauce and lemon juice is sprinkled on, and the shrimp is eaten in one go (minus the tail which you bite off). Fish sauce has a strong taste, so does chilli, so does lemon juice, so does garlic, so does mint, and so does celery. Imagine all these strong tastes in one mouthful of fish, you can see why I call it intense food. It's like a Thai version of Sushimi, but we eat it with chillies instead of wasabi.