Rave: A Taste of Thai quick meal

[GatewaySnayke]

I've always wanted to try Thai food, especially Pad Thai. I'd cook it myself if I had something to get enough heat going on a wok.

[docellis]

Last night I bought like 5 things from Thai Kitchen in Maryland Heights to bring to my family so that they could try Thai food.

None of these dishes contained anything crazy.

1. Spicy beef salad (omg omg omg so good)
2. Yellow curry noodle soup with chicken
3. Fish cakes
4. Honey chicken wings
5. Fried rice

You'd have thought I was presenting kittens and frog legs. They ended up pretty much converted. But the smell scared my sister. The fish cakes scared my dad. My mom was game, she ate a little of everything.

[G. Keenan]

Thai food is great but Vietnamese is where it's at.

[EastonBlues22]

I've always wanted to try Thai food, especially Pad Thai. I'd cook it myself if I had something to get enough heat going on a wok.

I highly recommend it once you have the means. My girlfriend and I love asian food...to the point that both sets of parents gave us woks the same Christmas. We're constantly experimenting with new stir fry creations.

My newest favorite: (Imitation) Crab stir fry.

Start with healthy oil
Fry frozen veggies (biggest to smallest: I like peas, broccoli, bamboo shoots...maybe corn and carrots as well if my GF isn't partaking--she doesn't like how those go with the crab but I don't mind at all)
Fry imitation crab
Add low sodium soy sauce and oyster sauce
Fry substitute egg
Add a bit more sauce/spice to taste

Amazing. I'll occasionally cook a 6 quart batch of that stuff up and just eat it all week. Mmmmm.....

[jim]

Thai food is great but Vietnamese is where it's at.

My Aunt was actually from right on the Cambodian/Thai border, and I was told by my uncle that it had a strong Cambodian influence. I don't know what the difference between Cambodian and Thai food is, but maybe there was a Vietnamese influence?

All I know is that her food was insanely hot. I'm not talking about normal Thai hot, which is generally referred to as insanely hot, I'm talking that bumped up an order of magnitude. Hotter than anything I have ever had anywhere. I don't know if that's the Cambodian influence my uncle was talking about it. I know I've gone to Thai restaurants and have had discussions with the owners who swear they are fixing it as hot as they would in their homeland, and it's nothing like my Aunt's food.

[BenNX74205]

This thread encouraged me to go to the store and pick-up some supplies to cook a batchof pad thai noodles. My grocery store didn't have "A Taste of Thai," but it had a similar brand of noodles with two servings of noodles in the box and a packet of thai sauce. I decided to make pad thai beef (not the most thai of ingredients, but what can I say), and I followed the package directions, but in addition to adding the beef I added a scrabled egg, a few chopped green onions, some chopped peanuts, and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Man oh man was that ever a good dinner! I've had thai food before at restaurants and stuff, but all I needed was a little encouragement to go out and make it myself. Pad thai is going to go into my rotation of recipes, and soon I'll try and branch out into other thai dishes. If you go to http://www.atasteofthai.com they have a few online "cookbooks" with a bunch of thai recipes using their products. Maybe next time I'll try out a curry....

Thanks, GRB!

[jim]

This wasn't bad, but there's an awful lot of sodium in there. I guess that's true of most Asian foods.

Little sodium never hurt anybody.

Cooking the Pad Thai noodles and it's 1400mg of Sodium as we speak.

[JL21]

Thai food is great but Vietnamese is where it's at.

I do not agree with this.

They're similar, but instead of, say, wacky thai peanut butter drizzle, you get lemon grass. This is not a good trade.

Thai is my favorite kind of food. And pad thai is great, but I feel like I'm chickening out if I go to a thai place and I get pad thai. It'd be like going to a Mexican place and getting a taco. I've never been disappointed, either, when I've strayed off the menu.

Snayke, pad thai is a great starting place, but your next item should be chicken satay.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Satay/Detail.aspx

[thrill]

Thai food is great but Vietnamese is where it's at.

I do not agree with this.

They're similar, but instead of, say, wacky thai peanut butter drizzle, you get lemon grass. This is not a good trade.

Thai is my favorite kind of food. And pad thai is great, but I feel like I'm chickening out if I go to a thai place and I get pad thai. It'd be like going to a Mexican place and getting a taco. I've never been disappointed, either, when I've strayed off the menu.

Snayke, pad thai is a great starting place, but your next item should be chicken satay.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Satay/Detail.aspx

Don't worry, geen is just passively bragging about how well-traveled he is as it was explained to us in the stuffwhitepeoplelike blog.

[jim]

Thai food is great but Vietnamese is where it's at.

I do not agree with this.

They're similar, but instead of, say, wacky thai peanut butter drizzle, you get lemon grass. This is not a good trade.

Thai is my favorite kind of food. And pad thai is great, but I feel like I'm chickening out if I go to a thai place and I get pad thai. It'd be like going to a Mexican place and getting a taco. I've never been disappointed, either, when I've strayed off the menu.

Snayke, pad thai is a great starting place, but your next item should be chicken satay.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Satay/Detail.aspx

I don't know that I've ever ordered Pad Thai from a restaurant, and I know my aunt never cooked it. What she did cook alot is a dish called Laap, and I have seen that in restaurants. Cucumber salad with the cucumbers cut in strips was also a staple, and there was a beef and pepper dish.

But mostly I got the impression that she just went with the flow and improvised. My Dad caught a huge Northern Pike once in Canada, and my aunt was with us and would not let us throw it back. She ended up using the whole fish, and made Northern Pike fish head soup - something that tasted very Thai but I'm pretty sure there are no Northern Pike swimming around.


edit - Ok, had the Pad Thai instant lunch and I like the Red Curry better.