When it comes to Thai food, presentation always counts for a lot. I like experimenting with new recipes and even if I think the results might taste good, a Thai person would first comment on how it looks. Just take a look at this stir fried dish. It looks delicious even before you try it. A nice arrangement of complimentary colours. This one is stir fried prawns and snow peas. In the ingredients below, you can see crushed garlic and prawns on the left and snow peas and straw mushrooms on the right.

It is easy to cook for beginners. As stir frying is very quick, you need to prepare everything in advance. Wash, shell and devein the shrimps. Also prepare the snow peas by pulling the string from the pod. In a wok, fry the crushed garlic until brown and fragrant. Next comes the prawns. Don't overcook so follow these quickly with the mushrooms and finally the snow peas. Add some water or stock if it drys out. Season with oyster sauce, fish sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Very quick and easy to cook with good results. Also a nice change from the hot and spicy meals. Come back next Friday for another Thai food dish at www.thai-blogs.com.

Our Thai dish today is called "pad buap moo" or stir-fried pork and angled sponge gourd. It is also commonly cooked with prawns or chicken. The sponge gourd can grow up to three feet in length. However, you need to choose one that is young and still soft to the touch. As it grows mature it will become bitter. You can eat it raw like a cucumber or stir-fry it like a zucchini. In the ingredients below, you can see the unpeeled sponge gourd at the top, the pork, garlic and the peeled sponge gourd. In the center is an egg.

Prepare the gourd by peeling it and then cutting diagonally into bite-sized pieces. Add the chopped garlic to the wok and fry until golden brown. Add the pork and stir fry a short while. Next comes the gourd. Add a little stock if it starts to dry out. Though not too much as there is a certain amount of moisture in the gourd. Give it a good stir for a few minutes. Season with oyster sauce and soy sauce. The last ingredient is an egg which you break into the wok. Stir this in well and it should cook itself. As with anything, do not overcook. Come back next week to www.thai-blogs.com for another Thai food recipe.

One of the dishes that I often cook is stir-fried vegetables. You can adapt this in so many different ways depending on what vegetables you have in stock. If I have bought a curry from the roadside, then I usually supplement the stir-fry with some extra meat. Either pork or chicken. In the ingredients below you can see cabbage, chicken, carrots and garlic in the center.

As usual, heat up some oil in the wok and then add the crushed garlic. Try to use Thai garlic as it is believed to be healthier for you. Once it is fragrant and golden brown, add the chicken slices. Give it a good stir and fry for a few minutes. If it starts to dry out, add a little stock or water. Next comes the vegetables. Season with oyster sauce, soy sauce and sugar. Don't overcook, leaving it still a little crispy. Come back to www.thai-blogs.com next Friday for another Thai dish.

This week we have something different for you. It is a dip that you can have with green mangoes. Thai people don't often eat fruit without some kind of dip. Another popular dip with green mango is a mixture of sugar and ground chilli. In the picture below, you can see the following ingredients: green mango, red shallots and fish sauce. On the right there is palm sugar, ground dried shrimp and hot chillies.

To make the dip, you need a pot to which you add the mixture of sugar, fish sauce and a quarter cup of water. Simmer over a low heat and stir continuously. When it becomes a thick syrup, add the chopped shallots and keep stirring for a few more minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the dried shrimp and sliced chillies. The mango should still be green and also slightly sour. Peel and cut into slices. We will post another Thai dish with pictures of the ingredients next Friday at www.thai-blogs.com.

The Thai Rice Soup, or "khao tom moo sub" is not only a simple and quick dish to cook, but it is also a nice change to eat something plain and simple if you are not feeling too well with say a stomach ache or the flu. However, some people like to spice it up by adding extra condiments. Pictured in the ingredients below is steamed rice, minced pork mixture, garlic cloves, chicken stock and coriander. You could use shrimp instead of pork. The rice doesn't have to be fresh as you can use leftovers from the night before. This makes it a handy breakfast so that nothing is wasted.

You need to prepare the minced pork mixture first. Use a mortar and pestle and pound together the garlic, coriander roots and some black pepper. Remove this from the mortar. Now add the minced pork and pound it lightly, mixing in the garlic at the same time. You can add some fish sauce if you like at this stage. While you are doing this, bring some chicken stock to the boil. Take a generous pinch of minced pork mixture at a time and roll it roughly into a ball. Drop these into the boiling water. Cook for several minutes. You may need to skim off any froth. Season with some salt rather than the smellier fish sauce. Poor into a bowl and garnish with chopped coriander and fried garlic flakes.

The archives for my Thai food blogs can be found at our Thai Street Food and Enjoy Thai Food websites which are part of the Paknam Web Network of family friendly websites about Thailand. You can search these blogs and dozens of other blogs about Thailand at our own Thai Blog Search website. Please contact us if you wish to see your own blog added to the search engine.

I think my favourite red curry is this one which comes with roasted duck. In Thai it is called "gaeng phet ped yaang". In Thai restaurants it can be quite expensive to order. So, it is useful to know how to cook. The ingredients will vary a bit from book to book. I like to add pineapple and I hear some people add rambutan. In the picture below, you can see: sweet basil, roasted duck, palm sugar, kaffir lime leaves, plum tomatoes, pea eggplants and red curry paste in the middle. The ingredients of the paste include: red chilli, galangal, lemon grass, red shallots, garlic, kaffir skin, cilantro seeds and shrimp paste.

Heat the oil in a wok and add the red curry paste. Gradually add coconut milk to form a runny paste. Continue this process until it is fragrant and a red oil surfaces. Next comes the roasted pork. In preference, de-bone the duck first. In many Thai restaurants there always seem to be more bone than meat. Cook for another minute or so. You can add more coconut milk if it dries out too much. Add the plum tomatoes, torn kaffir lime leaves and the pea eggplants. Turn off the heat and prepare the seasoning. For this you add a mixture of fish sauce and palm sugar. Our red curry paste bought ready made at the market was a bit too salty. They probably added too much shrimp paste. So, we didn't put in so much fish sauce. If it is too salty, try adding more sugar, coconut and/or stock. Finish with a handful of sweet basil which you should carefully stir in. However, not all recipes call for basil. We decorated the dish with thinly sliced red spur chilli and a sprig of sweet basil.

The archives for my Thai food blogs can be found at our Thai Street Food and Enjoy Thai Food websites which are part of the Paknam Web Network of family friendly websites about Thailand. You can search these blogs and dozens of other blogs about Thailand at our own Thai Blog Search website. Please contact us if you wish to see your own blog added to the search engine.

This is a simple Thai dish that you can cook with either pork or chicken. In Thai, this one is called "gai pad prik sod". In the ingredients below, you can see chicken, spring onion, red and green spur chilli, onion and crushed garlic in the centre. The larger chillies seen here are not as hot and spicy as their smaller cousins, so don't be scared to use a lot.

As with most Thai dishes, the cooking process is very quick so you need to prepare all of the ingredients beforehand. Cut the chillies diagonally and then chop up the onions. Put some oil in your wok and then add the crushed garlic. Some people put the garlic into hot oil. But, I prefer to start it from cold so that it doesn't burn. As soon as it is brown and fragrant, add the chicken that has already been cut up into bite-sized pieces. Keep stirring all the time. When it is nearly done, add the chilli and onions. You can season with either fish sauce or soy sauce and some sugar. In Thailand they don't fry their onions for long, so turn off the heat before they become too limp. Next Friday on www.thai-blogs.com I will bring you another Thai cooking blog.