Viet World Kitchen

Thai Chicken Biryani Recipe (Khao Mok Gai)

Trade, travel, and empire have fused together the cuisines of Asia in many delectable ways. This spiced chicken-and-rice dish reflects the Muslim-Indian-Thai culinary marriage.

You may not know of khao mok gai (also spelled kao mok gai) but it is deliciously complex in perfume and flavor. In fact, in the span of a week, I ate it three (3) times while I was in Sydney, one of the greatest places for Thai food outside of Thailand! Go to one of the Chat Thai restaurants for a very good rendition.

Hell bent on replicating it, I found a recipe in David Thompson’s new book, Thai Street Food.  I’ve made it several times, the first following the recipe and it was superb. Then I tweaked it slightly for the resulting khao mok gai recipe below. (Disclosure: I provided an official book jacket endorsement for Thai Street Food. Thompson’s recipe for this dish was one of the reasons why.)

Get ready. Khao mok gai takes time to make. It is not straightforward and quick like last week's Thai grilled chicken (gai yang), though you can mix a little of that lovely sweet chile sauce into the rice, if you want to.

But if you make this Thai version of biryani, you’ll have enough for 8 people, or several rounds of eating. Add a salad and you’ve got a celebratory meal that will be sure to WOW your family and friends.

A few notes:

• Basmati is my substitute for the aged long-grain rice (e.g. jasmine) that would likely be used in Thailand.
• The use of dairy (here it's yogurt) and combining cilantro and mint is unusual for Thai cooking but it works for this hybrid dish.
• The chicken and rice are great on their own but add some tart-spicy-sweet sauce and it enlivens the entire dish, making it bright and spritely. The spicy mint sauce below is akin to an Indian green chutney but the galangal zing skews it toward Thailand. Or, you can use some sweet Thai chile sauce.
• Make the paste and fry the shallots a day in advance to get a head start.
• Use a heavy-bottomed, large, wide pot that you would braise a big stew to ensure that things cook evenly. I used an All Clad 6-quart pan.
• Thai cardamom is available at well-stocked Thai markets but regular green cardamom works great.

Thai cardamom (left), Indian green cardamon (right)

Dive into the khao mok gai recipe below and parse the cultural influences as you cook and eat. For more background information on khao mok gai, read "Biryani, Bangkok Style" by Austin Bush, a photographer and writer in Bangkok.

What is Street Food? -- 2010 Eat Real Festival

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

This Friday evening, I'm participating in the Lit Fest at the 2010 Eat Real Festival. There are about a dozen writers invited to talk about street food at the Oakland event that spans 3 days. The Eat Real Festival is kinda like the Woodstock of food. It's free too!

Friday night's theme is Street Food.  I'm in  the 7 to 9pm line-up with some buddies of mine as well as other writers and chefs whose work I admire: Pim of Chez Pim, John Birdsall of SF Weekly, Rachel Saunders of the Blue Chair Fruit, Gustavo Arellano of Ask a Mexican, Anamika Khanna of Kasa Indian, Richie Nakano of Hapa Ramen, Sara Deseran of 7x7 magazine, and David Boyk of California Taco Trucks.

The other themes cover  making, growing, and finding food (Saturday), and food storytelling (Sunday). All the Lit Fest events happen on the second floor of the Harvest Hall of Jack London Square. See more details at the Eat Real Fest site.

Back to the photos. Preparing for my 10-minute talk (it's short but has to be potent!), I reflected on street food that I've enjoyed during my time in Asia and America.

The images above are from my travels spanning 2003 to 2010. Use the "Notes" function to see my descriptions and comments for each photo. There are about 24 photos here and they're helping me ponder issue such as:

• What is street food?
• What is Asian street food? Is it different from others?
• How can we get good street food all over America?

Your thoughts?

Instead of gawking at street food photos, you can always make some. Here are few Asian street food recipes on my two sites:

Viet World Kitchen

• Master Banh Mi Recipe
• Thai Grilled Chicken Recipe (Gai Yang)
• Green papaya salad with beef jerky (Goi Du Du Kho Bo)
• Beef in Wild Betel Leaf (Thit Bo Nuong La Lot)
• Taiwanese Spicy Beef Noodle Soup (Niu Rou Mian)
• Beef Pho Noodle Soup (Pho Bo)
• Chicken Pho Noodle Soup (Pho Ga)
• Hu Tieu Nam Vang (Phnom Penh Noodle Soup)

Asian Dumpling Tips

• Steamed Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom Buns (Bao)
• Japanese Octopus Dumpling Balls (Takoyaki)
• Portuguese Egg Tart (Poh Taht, Pasteis de Belem)
• Japanese Braised Pork Belly Buns

 

Thai Grilled Chicken Recipe (Gai Yang)

The sun decided to make an appearance this past week in Santa Cruz for longer than just a couple of hours a day! I was unfortunately stuck in my office reviewing edits on a writing project. After finishing on Friday, it time for a real weekend. 

To start things off, Rory opened up a liter bottle of a dry Riesling and I made Thai grilled chicken (gai yang).  Mymenu choice was inspired by two things: (1) the jar of Thai sweet chile sauce I recently made and (2) memories of a fabulous rendition of gai yang at Sailors Thai, a renowned restaurant in Sydney, Australia.

I had basically given up on ordering cloyingly sweet grilled chicken at Thai restaurants, but my dining buddy that evening, Bangkok-based journalist Jarrett Wrisley, convinced me to order the signature Thai dish. He was prescient in saying, “If this is a good Thai restaurant, they should at least do this well.”

We were startled by how good the gai yang was at Sailors Thai. Jarrett and I politely fought each other over every last bit of flesh and tangy-spicy sauce.

Sailors Thai was started by David Thompson, the chef/owner of Michelin starred nahm at the Halkin hotel in London and the soon-to-open outpost at the Metropolitan in Bangkok. David is one of the foremost authorities on Thai cuisine. He is feisty in nature and uncompromising in his cooking. Over the years, he has elevated Thai food to a high level of craftsmanship and respect that it deserves.

Thompson’s cookbooks, Thai Food and Thai Street Food are phenomenal works. Thai Food is one of my reference books and I used it to work up this gai yang recipe, which is frankly super easy.

Hardline traditionalists would use a small chicken (think game hen size) but I opted for chicken-leg and-thigh quarters. They are juicy, cost less, and taste great.

Brush the sweet chile sauce on at the end or serve it on the side. Do both, if you like. You can’t lose.

Curry Fried Rice Recipe -- Mark Bittman site

As you may know, I've been somewhat disabled by an Achilles heel injury. I'm a temporary gimp. Fortunately, that doesn't see to stop my ability to cook. The other day I scrounged up some leftovers in the fridge -- including some dry rice -- and crafted a curry fried rice on the fly.

Mind you, this is not my own creation. If you're a fan of Ramenya in West Los Angeles, this fried rice will remind you of theirs.

I posted the recipe and a few tips on how to make fried rice at Mark Bittman's site. Oh, for the curry powder, I used Sun Brand, which you can find online and at gourmet shops and some Asian markets. Look for the tall metal tins.

If you're interested in other rice dishes, check these out on Viet World Kitchen:

• Perfect Rice
• Coconut Rice
• Vietnamese Red Rice
• Hainan Chicken and Rice

Thai Sweet Chile Sauce Recipe

We’ve had a despicably cold summer in the Bay Area, the coldest since 1958! Dreary overcast skies greet us every morning. If we’re lucky, we get a few hours of sun and then it’s cool again.

Yesterday, my husband reminded me of the sweltering heat wave last August. My friend, novelist Monique Truong, just wrote to me about Brooklyn’s humidity.

I ought to be relieved to not experience global warming, huh? But as crazy as it sounds, the physical discomfort of sweating during the dog days of summer seems dreamy right now.

I figured that since the sun can’t burn through the clouds that I could at least enjoy flavors that evoke hot weather. That’s the genesis of this Thai sweet chile sauce.

Ever since I opened a bottle of the commercially-made stuff, I’ve wanted to make my own. The bottled version is terribly gloppy and cloying, without much personality. It didn’t seem like rocket science to prepare so I tinkered around in my kitchen to come up with this sweet chile sauce recipe.

Peking Duck Meal at Home -- LA Times Article

 

• 
• 
• 
• 

Remember my experiments with Sichuan and Peking duck earlier this year? After those initial forays, I wanted to make a whole 3-course Peking duck meal with the Mandarin pancakes, stir-fry and final soup. Editor Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times "Food" section let me go at it and the article was published today.

I cooked a lot of ducks to perfect the recipes, and the photos above give you the highlights. The roasted duck. Its crisp flesh in a homemade pancake (it's like a flour tortilla but better), the stir-fry with the roast duck meat, and the final soup made from ducky broth and cabbage.

Don't be daunted. It surprisingly doesn't take much to produce this wonderful Chinese meal in your home kitchen.  My husband and I ate it multiple times during recipe development. We never tired of it and didn't even develop duck tummies. Seriously.

Check out my journey toward Peking duck-dom, recipes, and techniques:

Dine-in Duck  (Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2010)

Start practicing on your family and friends. Let me know your thoughts!

Related Chinese duck recipes:

Chinese Fragrant and Crispy Duck - Version 1 (Xiang Su Quan Ya)
Chinese Fragrant and Very Crispy Duck - Version 2 (Xiang Su Quan Ya)
Homemade Peking Duck

• Step 1: How to blow up a duck
• Step 2: How to scald and give the duck a tan
• Step 3: How to roast the duck

Kohlrabi Stir-fried with Garlic and Egg Recipe (Su Hao Xao Toi)

Many thanks to those of you who contributed ideas on how to cook kohlrabi Asian style. Your thoughts fed my imagination over the weekend. I’d come home from a grueling week-long business trip out of town and was spent. Plus, I pulled my Achilles tendon on Thursday. Hobbling was the best I could do.

The nearly empty fridge had a bag of farmer’s root vegetables – carrots, watermelon radishes, and kohlrabi – half a red onion and some eggs. Recalling your comments and a conversation with my mother about kohlrabi, I whipped up this simple stir-fry to go with a bowl of rice and a watermelon radish salad.

The hardest part of it was peeling away all the tough kohlrabi skin. Trimming the root and stem ends first makes using the vegetable peeler to remove the skin easier. After an initial pass of the peeler, I did it again. Kohlrabi shines brighter once its thick exterior is gone.

Then it was simply a matter of cutting up the kohlrabi into thick julienne, about 1/4-inch wide. You can add carrot to this stir-fry too but that would rob kohlrabi of its stardom. Next time, I may throw a teaspoon or so of finely chopped dried shrimp into the skillet with the garlic and red onion.

Feeling much better after the meal, I hobbled with a much lighter step.

Serves 2 or 3

2 kohlrabi, each about the size of a large orange
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small red onion, sliced vertically into thin wedges
Salt

1. Peel the kohlrabi and cut into thick julienne. Set aside.

2. Beat the eggs with the fish sauce and black pepper. Set aside.

3. Heat the canola oil in skillet over medium high heat. Add the garlic and onion and cook for about 1 minute until just softened.

4. Add the kohlrabi and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened. It should weep some liquid. However, feel free to splash in water and/or lower the heat if the skillet looks dry.

Give the egg one last gentle beat then pour over the kohlrabi. Stir to combine and cook for another 30 seconds, until the egg has set. Remove from the heat, season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a plate and serve with rice.

Related post:  Asian Ideas for Kohlrabi? (includes tips on selecting good ones!)

Low-Cal Hmong Spicy Eggplant Recipe

I love eggplant but don’t always want all the calories that go with eating it. It’s a vegetable that’s often times cooked into rich foods, fried in oil or simmered in rich sauces. Even when I grill whole ones, either for Vietnamese eggplant with scallions or Indian bhaigan bharta, there’s some oil involved to enhance the vegetables plush qualities.

Giving into all the fatty eggplant pleasures -- deep-fried eggplant tempura, stir-fried eggplant in garlic sauce, baked eggplant parmesan -- seems inevitable. A low-calorie eggplant dish? Nah!

Never would have I thought of boiling eggplant. That sounded nasty when a Hmong farmer suggested it to me. It’s a common way for us to prepare eggplant, John Xiong assured me. He harvested some Chinese eggplant from his Fresno field and we went back to his home to prepare this dish, among others that hot afternoon in 2006.

The Hmong eggplant mash (called lws kubtshis tuav, don’t ask me for a pronunciation!) was enlightening. John and his wife, Bee, boiled their eggplants whole so they would not get water logged. When soft, they peeled them, then mixed the flesh into a fiery chile, scallion, and cilantro mixture that had just been pounded in their mortar.

The result was full of heat and herbal pungency. It was great scooped from the mortar onto balls of steamed sticky rice, but John said that it was rather lean. If you want to take it another step, he revealed, cooking it with some oil and add extra scallion. He did and it was richer tasting.