http://www.khiewchanta.com/ en Copyright 2013 Wed, 08 May 2013 13:58:56 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Yoghurt is a western thing, and I've included this recipe, not because it's Thai, but because it contains a common Thai ingredient: coconut milk. You see, yoghurt doesn't need to be made from milk, it can be made from coconut milk too, and if you use the coconut milk powder you can make a much thicker concentrated and creamier yoghurt by using less water than the powder was designed for. Once you've made it, it's not healthy! Coconut milk is rich at the best of times, and a concentrated coconut yoghurt is best used sparingly as a topping for fruit, or a sauce on a desert! The main things you'll need, a thermometer that can read 40 degrees Celsius and a live yoghurt as a starter. It must be live, with live bacteria, as the lactic acid making bacteria are the key to a yoghurt. I've used Yolida, a Thai brand. I've also made this using my rice cooker, which I found to be ideal, but a double boiler pan can also be used.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/ice-cream-recipes/coconut-yoghurt.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/ice-cream-recipes/coconut-yoghurt.html Ice Cream Recipes Wed, 08 May 2013 13:58:56 +0000 This mango pudding is moist, quite dense and not very healthy! But a treat in small doses is fine. The key flavors are coconut, mango with plenty of sugar making for a sweet fruity desert. You can see from the ingredients, I've used coconut cream powder here. I've really taken to it, it's lasts for ages in the cupboard and all you need to do is add some water to make it back into coconut milk. You'll need 150 ml of Coconut milk, or the equivalent made up milk powder, coconut cream is just richer coconut milk by the way.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/steamed-desserts/mango-pudding-sung-ka-ya-mamuo-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/steamed-desserts/mango-pudding-sung-ka-ya-mamuo-1.html Steamed Desserts Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:12:00 +0000 This pie is popular during celebration times (it's Songkran!), and it's very expensive and complicated to make. Well I decided to make my own, without all the pomp and ceremony and traditional flower molds and they tasted just as good. I'm using the salted duck eggs I made a few weeks back. The duck egg yolk is large, and I find I can cut the cooked yolk into quarters and use only a quarter in each pie. The yellow beans need to be soaked overnight, so best to prepare these the day before. Melon seeds add a bit of bite and crunch to the filling, you can substitute other seeds, or flaked almonds if you prefer. Finally, the traditional shape for these is a flower, and special molds are available if you can find them. I'm going to be using my cute animal egg molds instead! ]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/baked-cake-recipes/green-tea-salty-egg-pies-ka-no-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/desserts/baked-cake-recipes/green-tea-salty-egg-pies-ka-no-1.html Baked Cake Recipes Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:22:26 +0000 More pickling at Cassa Khiewchanta to go with my preserved mangos. We have a small cucumber in Thailand that very cheap and widely available. Whereas pickled gherkins have to be imported and are very expensive. But since a gherkin is just a variety of cucumber, why not simply pickle the small cucumbers and use those instead? It works! But to get the sourness into the center, you will need to slice them and make pickled sliced gherkins instead. The Thai cucumber isn't quite small enough for the vinegar to permeate all the way through, but the finished flavors are the same. Oh, and I added some coriander seeds and chillies for a bit of bite and burn, but that's what we do in Thailand, it seems a pity to have sour all on its own. ]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/pickled-cucumbers-tang-dong-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/pickled-cucumbers-tang-dong-1.html Ingredients Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:23:47 +0000 I've made salted eggs before, normally using the brine technique. That involves soaking them in saturated brine, and letting them absorb the salt. But there's a second kind of salted egg, the dry salting. That's salted in the salt and white clay, with soot, ashes and charcoal powder to dry them out. The result is a firmer egg yolk than the wet method, but the strong salt flavor remains, the end flavors are the same. Since Songkran is coming, and white clay is sold everywhere, (it's used to powder the faces of people, a more polite alternative to spraying them with water), I thought now would be a good time to make some dry salty eggs with them. I'm also going to be making salty egg sweet pies, a tradition for this time of year, and so I'll need some salty eggs for this.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/meats-fish-eggs/dry-salted-duck-eggs-kai-kame.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/meats-fish-eggs/dry-salted-duck-eggs-kai-kame.html Meats, Fish & Eggs Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:52:37 +0000 Pickling and salting is a worldwide tradition and Thailand has it's own set of classic pickled dishes. Pickled cabbage, pickled limes and so on. It's April and I have a glut of mango. I could leave it to go ripe and eat myself silly on ripe mango, but instead, I'm going to take some unripe mangos and make pickled green mango, that I can keep and eat slowly. I call it pickling, but there's less vinegar and much more salt than regular pickling. The sour green mango can't take too much extra sourness, the saltiness is what preserves it. Pick the mango at the firm green unripe stage, you can see the stage they're at from the photo below.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/pickled-brined-green-mango-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/pickled-brined-green-mango-1.html Ingredients Sat, 06 Apr 2013 05:03:50 +0000 I went to a night fishing competition at Yamu, well the fish auction afterwards anyway. I planned to buy a big fish and have a barbecue, but things didn't work out as planned. I did get some soft meat fish which they assure me is great for Haw Mook, the traditional Thai fish curry. Soft meat, no small bones, who am I to argue! So I decided to make Haw Mook in the style they make it here in Phuket. In the north we add a layer of coconut, in Phuket they serve it without that layer, and wrapped in betel leaves. Video is after the break.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/curries/fish-seafood-curries/haw-mook-phuket-style-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/curries/fish-seafood-curries/haw-mook-phuket-style-1.html Fish & Seafood Curries Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:00:29 +0000 Last year, I launched an Android application for my site, aimed at smartphones with 'big' screens. Well a year has passed, and the world is changing so fast that now everyone has these Android tablets, with screens large enough to show the full site. Time to update! The new version works on Android tablets and Smartphones, with Android 2.2 or later. It now lets you mark your favorite recipes, and filter to show only those. It downloads images faster, and doesn't overload my website the way the old version did. If you use it on a larger screen tablet, it shows the full website page, on a smaller screen browser, it takes you to the mobile version of my site, optimized for small screens. If you search for 'Appon Thai Food' on Google Play, my app isn't visible. No matter, look through the 'users also installed' section and you'll find it listed. Or follow the link below. You can also find other disappeared apps on Google Play, by using the main Google search.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/android-application-v2-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/android-application-v2-1.html Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:57:59 +0000 There's a waterplant, known as the Asian watermeal. It's like a finer version of watercress, and I was lucky enough to find it for sale at the market. It's like a fresh water seaweed that can be cooked with flavorings and we eat as a side dish for a bit of healthy green freshness. My fish like it too, I sprinkle a bit on their pond and they've eaten it by the next day. ]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/vegetarian/asian-watermeal-gang-kai-pum-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/vegetarian/asian-watermeal-gang-kai-pum-1.html Vegetarian Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:01:49 +0000 The problem with the traditional version of this recipe, is that the laab flavors are lost in the frying. You end up with fried meatballs, without the nutty citrus flavor, only the spiciness survives. Well, trying to recreate the KFC Laab Chicken gave me an idea. Add the nutty citrus flavors back in as a seasoning powder dusted on at the end! Dusting the flavors on, really makes a world of difference to this recipe, do try to get hold of the dried lime powder. The nutty flavor in laab dishes comes from pounded, toasted sticky rice. A common ingredient in Thailand. Goki flour, is a Thai brand of tempura flour, if you can't find it use wheat flour and a pinch of salt for some flavor.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/fried-dishes/fried-pork-recipes/laab-fried-pork-balls-laab-mu-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/fried-dishes/fried-pork-recipes/laab-fried-pork-balls-laab-mu-1.html Fried Pork Recipes Sat, 09 Feb 2013 07:14:22 +0000 If you've been reading my Thai Travel blog, you'll know my seafood fanatic friend visited, (boss of Crystal Beads by the way, a great site for buying Swarovski beads, and hand made jewelry). I decided I'd neglected the seafood recipes for a while, and needed to catch up! Fried rice is a great way of using up yesterdays cooked, left-over rice, and seafood is plentiful and fresh in Phuket, so time to combine the two and make seafood fried rice recipe, using squid, squid eggs I found in the squid, prawns and some crab meat I had left over from the Crab Kapi recipe. I've made a video to show you how to prep the seafood, since it's a little tricky if you're not so familiar with it, but once you're familiar with it, it's a really simple dish to make. ]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/seafood/seafood-fried-rice-koa-pad-rom.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/seafood/seafood-fried-rice-koa-pad-rom.html Seafood Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:38:19 +0000 This is a traditional Phuket breakfast, tiny little pots of a steamed plain rice flour base, flavored with chopped dried shrimp, fried garlic, spring onion and a spicy sweet sauce. You can serve then either in their pots, as I've done, or scoop them out, and then cover them with the traditional garnish and serve. Served out of the pots and ready covered with the garnish, is how they're traditionally served, but that's only because they need to empty the pots to make the next batch! I think it's a nice ceremony to serve them in the pots and let the guests garnish their own breakfast. Think 'sweet shrimp' and you've captured the dominant flavors, then an after kick from the chillie. The traditional pots can be bought from Super Cheap, if you visit Phuket. The four garnishes: fried garlic, sweet sauce, dried shrimp, spring onion.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/starters/phuket-breakfast-kiem-kooy-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/starters/phuket-breakfast-kiem-kooy-1.html Starters Sat, 26 Jan 2013 07:01:29 +0000 Oh how I've neglected crabs! I'm so use to just barbecuing them and eating them straight from the shell, that I completely failed to make recipes from them. Well until the recent visit of a friend from the UK and our seafood tour of Phuket! For this recipe you'll need female crabs, the roe makes for a more intense crab flavor. It also uses Kapi, shrimp paste, a concentrated Thai shrimp paste used in our spicy salads. To see how to prepare crab, and how to tell the sex of it, visit the crab prep ingredients page.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/seafood/dressed-female-crab-with-roe-n-1.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/seafood/dressed-female-crab-with-roe-n-1.html Seafood Sat, 26 Jan 2013 04:58:01 +0000 The classic eating crabs. Seafood is fresh is Thailand and popular, we normally barbecue the crab and pick them apart to eat, but for some dishes you need to prep the crab by removing the meat and any egg roe it has. Male crabs have more meat in the body, female crabs have less meat, but also have red egg roe, which is a more concentrated crab flavor. (See after the break for how to determine the sex of a crab and how to prep it).]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/meats-fish-eggs/eating-crabs.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/ingredients/meats-fish-eggs/eating-crabs.html Meats, Fish & Eggs Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:39:46 +0000 KFC in Thailand has a new style of chicken, with Laab style flavours. That's a mint and coriander mix, with toasted sticky rice for a nutty flavour, chilli for spice, and a squeeze of lemon for sharpness. I like their chicken, and thought I'd have a go at recreating it. Many failures later, I think I've got it pretty close. Catch the video after the break. The problem ingredient is probably the dried lime powder. If you can get it, terrific, it keeps the chicken crunchy and dry, if not, put a lemon slice on the side of the chicken, the person eating it can squeeze the lemon over it at the last minute so it doesn't make the crunchy coating soggy.]]> http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/fried-dishes/fried-chicken-recipes/laab-fried-chicken.html http://www.khiewchanta.com/archives/fried-dishes/fried-chicken-recipes/laab-fried-chicken.html Fried Chicken Recipes Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:46:27 +0000