Bird in A Nest (Chickened Panang with vermicelli rice noodles)

There is a recipe for Panang curry on my blog here (the link) that one is simply served the curry with steamed rice and for this one I want the same curry have a different look in a nice style and also the texture is different too because of noodles.

The process is pretty easy even people who don’t know how to cook Thai food or think that cooking Thai food is so complicated, and also I have a video to show you how to make this dish (please see the video link below). Hope that also help to see a whole process.

Ingredients

4                  Large chicken breasts, cut into chunks

1 can            Thick coconut milk (560ml.)

3 cloves       Garlic, finely chopped

1tsp             Sugar

1 tbsp          Vegetable oil

1 tsp            Soy sauce

1                 Cucumber, cut into small pieces (see video)

10                Kaffir lime leaves, cut into very thin and narrow strips

320-375g.    Vermicelli rice noodles

1 – 1 ¼ tbsp Salt

3 litre           Water

Instructions from video 

Instructions

1. Cut a chicken breast lengthwise into three pieces and from each piece cut diagonally into ½ inch thick, and continue until finish all. Add chicken with chopped garlic, soy sauce and sugar, and mix well.
2. Heat a pot on a little bit more than medium high heat, and add oil and curry paste. Stir and cook curry paste until you smell the aroma from curry paste, and add chicken. Stir and mix chicken well with curry paste, add coconut milk. Cook until the mixture is boiled and bubbling, and turn the heat down to medium and simmer for (about) 20 minutes or until chicken is tender. Remove from heat.

* Use the pot is just big enough to contain the amount of chicken and coconut milk and cook on the small stove top. A large pot on the large stove top with the heat mentioned above, the liquid in the curry will be dry out before the chicken becomes tender. If this happened you can simply add some water into the curry. 

3. Bring water to a rapid boil, and add salt. Add vermicelli rice noodles and cook for 2-3 minutes or until tender. Drain well. Roll noodles into a bundle with a fork for the size of a serving, until finish all about 35 – 40 bundles.
4. Garnish noodles with lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves.
5. To serve, place a bundle of noodles on your own plate pour on chickened Panang curry and serve with cucumber cubes as a side dish.

Asian Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Chicken

This noodle dish is considered a healthy food as more than half of the dish is fresh vegetables, basically it is a salad dish and we have a bundle of noodles and grilled chicken to complete a one dish meal food.

                                                                                                            

This dish can be lunch or supper and the process is pretty straight forward. You can find all the ingredients at Asian grocery stores.

For 3 servings

Ingredients

2                   Chicken breast

1                   Lemongrass, cut and crushed

2 tbsp           Vegetable oil

1¹⁄₂ tbsp           Soy sauce

1 tbsp           Oyster sauce

1 tbsp           Honey or sugar

½ tsp            Ground pepper

 ¹⁄₆ tsp           Salt

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150 – 200 g.  Rice Vermicelli

1 cup             Bean sprouts

1 cup             Cucumber, shredded

¾ cup            Carrot, shredded

6 slices         Tomato

3 pieces        Lettuce

3 branches    Thai basil

¾ cup           Ground peanut

1 tsp             Salt

2 tbsp           Vegetable oil

Salad dressing

2 cakes       Palm sugar(see picture at Herbs page)

5 tbsp         Water

2                Fresh Thai chilies, chopped (adjustable)

2 ½ tbsp     Lime juice (adjustable)

2 ½ tbsp    Fish sauce (adjustable, each brand of fish sauce has different level of sodium)

You can also follow the instructions from the video.

Instructions 

1. Cut lemongrass into small pieces, and crush it with a mortar and pestle for 4-5 minutes or until soft and wet.
2. Marinate Chicken with crushed lemongrass, veg. oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey or sugar, ground pepper and salt for a few hours or leave it in the fridge over night if you prepare it the night before.
3. Making salad dressing, place a small pot on medium heat, and add palm sugar and water. Cook palm sugar until it is melted and let it sit for a minute after bubbling, and remove from heat. Let it cold. Add chopped chilli, lime juice and fish sauce, and stir to mix.
4. Bring a medium saucepan of water or just enough to cover rice vermicelli to boil over medium heat. Add 1 tsp salt and rice vermicelli, and cook until noodles are tender, about 3 minutes. Drain in a colander or strainer and transfer to a bowl.

5. Grill the chicken; remove lemongrass from chicken with a spoon or folk. You can use oven grill or charcoal grill, grill two sides of chicken until it is cooked. Cut into pieces the size you wish.
6. For serving, place a bundle of noodles in an individual serving bowl and put a piece of lettuce beside or under the noodles, and add and arrange tomato slices, cucumber shredded, carrot shredded, bean sprouts and ground peanut nicely. Garnish with Thai basil. Pour in the salad dressing when you are ready to eat.  

Pad Thai with Chicken

You can also follow the instructions from the video below!

Pad Thai is a well known and popular dish in Thailand and the world, from street vendors to high end restaurants food. Pad Thai in Thailand uses shrimp the most, for street vendors they use dry shrimp, and for more expensive and high end restaurants use fresh shrimp. Here my recipe is from real and original Pad Thai so there are some ingredients you might not be familiar with for example, garlic chives (Chinese chives) and salty radish. There are available at Asian grocery stores. Thai restaurants in North America use green onion instead of garlic chives and they skip the salty radish but if you would like to try the original favor then here it is.

For 4 - 5 servings for a single dish meal.

Ingredients

1 pkg. (450 g)              dry Rice stick noodles

300 g                           or 2 small skinless boneless chicken breasts  

½ pkg (250 g)              pressed Tofu – cubed

3                                  eggs

½ - 1 cup                     chopped Salty Radish (optional)

3 – 4 cloves                 chopped Garlic

2- 2 ½ cups                 or half batch of Tamarind sauce from recipe (see recipe below)

9 -10 tbsp                    Vegetable oil (if it’s too dry you can add more)

2 - 3 tbsp                      Fish sauce  (you can replace fish sauce with soy  sauce if there is a seafood allergy issue)

1 tsp.                            Soy sauce
¹⁄₆ tsp                           Salt

½  tsp                           Fresh ground pepper       

1 lb                               Bean sprouts

1 bunch                        Garlic chives (Chinese chives) (cut into 1 inch long) or green onion cut into ½ inch

           Ground chili pepper

1 - 2                                                            Limes (optional)

  Instructions

1. Place noodles in bowl and cover in room-temperature water.  Soak approx. 1 hr. and drain.
2. Marinate chicken in soy sauce, salt and garlic at least 10 minutes.
3. Stir-fry tofu cubes with 2 tbsp oil until golden at medium high heat, remove tofu from wok.
4.  Fry eggs with 2 – 3 tbsp oil at medium high heat and cut the eggs in the wok with a turner of frying pan and remove from wok.
5. Stir-fry chicken with 2 tbsp oil until nearly cooked and adds radish and mix well, and removes from the wok.
6. Add noodles in the wok with 2 – 3 tbsp oil and stir-fry until noodles set and then add tofu, eggs and chicken, mix well. Pour tamarind sauce gradually until the noodles absorb all the sauce. In the same add fish sauce and stir-fry until noodles are soft and fully cooked.
7. Add fresh ground pepper and mix well.
8. Have a taste if the favor just what you want or need more fish sauce or tamarind sauce as your favor.
9. Add some bean spouts and Chinese chives. Turn the heat off. Mix the bean spouts and Chinese chives into noodles well and serve.

** Because of this recipe is pretty big it will take a while before everything is cooked, some ingredients need less time and some need longer time so I cook them separately and mix them later but if you make a small batch just for 1 or 2 servings you can stir-fry tofu and then add an egg and then add chicken and then add noodles and mix well with the sauces.

       

Garnish with

• Bean sprouts
• Chopped Chinese chives ( cut 1 inch long or you can substitute with green onion)
• Chopped peanuts
• Ground Chili pepper
• A piece of Lime (if you need more sour favor beside from Tamarind)

Sauce (makes 2 batches) you can make this sauce in advance, it can be kept in the fridge for 4 – 6 weeks.

200 g.            Tamarind (cake of dried fruit, see picture of Tamarind this blog)

4 ½  cakes     Palm Sugar ( 8 cakes in a pkg = 454 g) (see the picture of Palm Sugar this blog)

5 cups            Water

Instructions

1. Soak tamarind in water until soft, about 30 minutes (break apart the cake of fruit as it becomes possible to speed up the softening).
2. Discard the seeds and pods.
3. Dissolve palm sugar into tamarind mixture of heat.   Heat to boiling.
4. Set aside.

Goong Ob Woon Sen

Goong Ob Woon Sen or proper name – Goong Ob Woon Sen Mo Din (literally, shrimp baked with mung bean vermicelli noodles in clay pot) is originally a Thai-Chinese dish (created by Chinese in Thailand). Goong Ob Woon Sen is well known and popular dish – it is a restaurant and food catering dish, you don’t see it at street vendors.

We have very famous and popular food catering businesses in Nakhon Pathom Province. Nakhon PathomProvince is one of the central provinces of Thailand, is about 58 km. away from Bangkok. When we talk about Nakhon Pathom we will think of 2 things from this province, one is Phra Pathom Chedi, a chedi commissioned by King Mongkut in 1870, it is one of the tourists’ destination and the other one is food catering, this style of catering is called “Dto Jiin” or Chinese Table means Chinese food with a set of 10 -12 dishes including dessert, are served at the round tables for 10 -12 people per table. I don’t know how many food caterers are in Nakhon Pathom exactly but it’s a lot. The caterers will carry pots, pans, chairs, tables and necessary utensils or kitchen wares with them in a big truck and they do it for any occasion across Thailandin a very reasonable price with fresh made food from scratch.

One of popular dishes on the food catering menus is Goong Ob Woon Sen. This dish normally we use the large size of Tiger shrimp or fresh water shrimp. The frozen tiger shrimp and fresh water shrimp from Thailandare available at Asian grocery stores.

*** If Chinese celery is not available, it can be replaced by coriander or cilantro.

For 4 servings

Ingredients

240 g                  (Dried) Mung Bean Vermicelli noodles

1 ½ lbs.               Shrimp (size 31 – 40 /lb or larger)

1 root                  Ginger 2 ½  inch long, slices

10 - 12 slices       Fat pork

1 cup                  Chinese Celery, cut into 1 inch long

1 tsp                   Ground peppercorn

6 roots                Coriander or cilantro

4 cloves              Garlic

2 tbsps               Soy Sauce

2 tbsps               Oyster Sauce

2 tbsps               Sesame Oil

½ cup                 Water

Instruction

1. Soak Mung bean vermicelli noodles in lukewarm water for ½ hour or until soft and drain, and cut into 4 inches long. Set aside.
2. Pound peppercorn, coriander roots and garlic in a mortar and pestle (chop coriander roots and garlic first before put in the mortar and pestle so that it’s easier to be broken in small pieces but not paste like yet)

   

   1. Lay fat pork and ginger over bottom.

3. In a mixing bowl (see picture), combine shrimp, Mung bean vermicelli, mixer from 2., soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil, and mix well. Set aside.
4. In clay pot (see picture), lay fat pork over clay pot bottom and layer ginger slices on fat pork.
5. Transfer the mixer from the mixing bowl to the clay pot and let shrimp stay at the bottom (see picture) and noodles on the top, before put on the heat pour (spread) ½ cup of water on noodles and cover with the lid.

   

   1. Mix in a bowl. 2. Transfer to clay pot.

6. Bake on the stove burner over medium heat until steam coming out and continuing for another 2 -3 minutes or until shrimp is cooked. Stir in Chinese celery.
7. Remove from heat and serve immediately.

Khao Pad Goong

Khao Pad Goong (literally, fried rice with shrimp) is one of the most popular kinds of fried rice. This style of fried rice is original from high-end Cantonese Chinese restaurants and nowadays you can see on the menu at higher end Thai restaurants as well. The style of this fried rice is simple and normally with more expensive meat like shrimp or crab.

There is another style of fried rice that is also popular and normally you can find this dish at street vendors and Raan Ah-Han Tam Sang (another kind of short order food shop beside Raan Khao Khaeng). This style of fried rice is a one dish food, in the dish contains with vegetable like Gai Lan or Chinese broccoli, tomato and onion and the meat will be pork or chicken, and serve with some slices of cucumber. People in Thailand eat fried rice as a breakfast, lunch or and dinner.

My recipe here is from the first style of fried rice but I make this recipe as a one dish food as it covers all category of food.

For 1 serving

Ingredients

1 cup                 (packed) Steamed Jasmine rice

1                        Egg

5                        Shrimp (31 – 40 PCS /lb) (Or any size you wish)

1 clove               Garlic, chopped fine 

1                        Small spring green onion, chopped into ¼ inch

¼ tsp                 Ground pepper corn

1 tsp                  Soy sauce

1 tsp                  Oyster sauce

1 tbsp and 1 tsp Vegetable oil (1tbsp would be enough, if you concern about your health)

3 slices              Tomato

3 slices               Cucumber

1 wedge              Lime

2                         Fresh Thai chilli, chopped

                           Fish sauce

Instruction

1. Heat a steel wok over high heat, add 1 tbsp oil and swirl to coat. Add the egg and cook for a few second then use a spatula cut and break the egg to be pieces.
2. Add garlic and shrimp, and mix well. Add steamed Jasmine rice, breaking up any lumps and stir into the mixer. Add soy sauce, oyster sauce and ground pepper, and while swirling and mixing, add 1 tsp oil on just edge of the mixer. Swirl and mix 1–2 minutes or you can see every gain of rice stay individually with slightly golden brown colour.
3. Just before remove from heat, add spring green onion and mix well.
4. Serve with slices of tomato, cucumber, (squeeze) the wedge of lime, and chopped fresh chilli in fish sauce.

Chilli in Fish Sauce

            Cover chopped chilli with fish sauce (squeeze a wedge of lime juice if you wish)

***A whole process happens very fast and on high heat only so that it produces good fried rice.

***Jasmine rice is the best for making fried rice as fried rice suppose to be dried but soft

*** Some people prefer lime juice mix in fish sauce and chilli rather then squeezing it on the rice.