Next at Home: Tour of Thailand: Practice Pad Thai

Going into this menu, this dish is all I knew about Thai cuisine.  I had had this dish many times at a Thai restaurant during my time on Illinois' campus in college and loved it.  In researching the history of this menu, I didn't think it would be a part of the meal but I got pretty excited when I saw it in the cookbook.

There were lots of components to this dish and I started with the egg custard.  Heavy cream, fish sauce, salt, white pepper and eggs. 

All the ingredients were mixed together with an immersion blender and prepped for cooking. To cook the mixture went into a vacuum bag and into a pot of water to cook sous vide at 167 degrees for an hour.

Once cooked, I chopped up the now solidified egg mixture and reserved it for plating. 

One of the garnishes for this dish was fried garlic.  I took some canola oil and garlic slices until they were golden brown.

The completed garlic

The second garnish was fried shrimp.  I took some dried shrimp and put them in some oil as well.

The completed shrimp.

The final garnish is called a chili rock.  This being the second menu that Next ever did I believe that this is the first time that they went the molecular gastronomy route and it was only for a minor component of one dish that was only served to maybe 12 people a night when this menu ran.  I say 12 people because I'm pretty sure this dish was only on the kitchen table menu.  Anyway, this component is tapioca maltodextrin (yes I have this laying around in my pantry, yes I know I'm a nerd), salt, a little bit of chili oil from a component of another dish I've started, and a thai chili. 

I mixed the ingredients together and put them under vacuum and set them aside until I was ready to plate.

Pad Thai isn't pad Thai without noodles, so I started with rice noodles, grape seed oil, salt and water. 

The rice noodles were boiled off in some of the water. 

Once the noodles were cooked there were tossed with the grapeseed oil to prevent sticking together.

The final bit of raw garnishes include tofu which was cut down into cubes, Chinese long beans, carrots, beans sprouts and radishes.  The radish was cut into thin slices, the beans and bean sprouts were sliced into bite size pieces and the carrot was broken down into a zig zag shape.

The final piece of this puzzle was the sauce.  The sauce required, shallots, water, fish sauce, garlic, galangal, palm sugar, tamarind paste and thai chiles.

I fried off the shallots, garlic, thai chiles and galangal in some oil until cooked through.

Once the veggies were cooked I added the palm sugar until a form of caramel had been formed.

Once the caramel had been made, the fish sauce and water went into the pot and simmered for about 15 minutes.

The final garnish was the fried rice noodles which were fried off in some olive oil.

I tossed the boiled noodles in the sauce until they were coated.

And the finally, the final plating, a very composed dish and there are certainly some things that need to improve.  But overall, a very solid dish. 

Next at Home: Tour of Thailand: Practice Som Tam

This is a dish I've heard a lot about.  This is like the national dish of Thailand and my sister-in-law and one of my best friends from college who has lived in Thailand for about 5 years they talk about it to me like it's an American hamburger.  One thing they always tell me is that it's spicy.  It sounds innocent but it's about the spiciest thing that Thai's make.  Needless to say I couldn't wait to try it sometime but I was scared to death because spicy food doesn't do my stomach good.

Throughout this two year journey of waiting for this Thai menu from Next I didn't think it was on the menu.  All my research didn't mention a thing about it.  So when I saw it on the ebook I was pretty excited.  My initial thoughts even looking at the actual recipe I thought that it had been westernized with less spice.  Then I looked closer this week as I prepped to cook it and realized how little dried chiles weigh.

Ok, enough prose, time for the pictorial evidence.

So this was the base for the sauce.  The infamous dried thai chiles, thankfully for me 1 gram didn't end up being as many of those little buggers as I thought, garlic, lime, peanuts, salt and palm sugar.  The one thing that wasn't in the photo was fish sauce.

I busted out my brand new mortar and pestle and crused the chiles and garlic until it formed paste. 

From there I crushed the peanuts to make the mixture that you see above.

Then the fish sauce and lime juice went in until the whole mixture made a sauce.

For the salad portion of the evening we have peanuts, green mango, green papaya, a little bit of tomato, crab, lime and cilantro. 

So to start the salad I cut little slits in both the mango and papaya then peeled it off.  Dear reader this is the lengths I go to for you.  In the process of cutting these little slivers my knife decided to attack my left thumb and I ended up with a nice little slice.  Thankfully, it wasn't debilitating and it wasn't even close to the worst cut I've suffered in the kitchen, but  know this I'm willing to sacrifice my appendages for you. 

So I pounded out the mango and papaya briefly and then prepared the rest of the ingredients to form the salad.

I combined everything together to form the final salad.  This isn't even close to a presentation I wanted for this dish.  The recipe would like you to serve this in the body of a blue crab, which I didn't use because I can't get it here. 

Overall, this was a good dish.  I think I over-sauced it, and honestly I think the recipe is still a bit westernized because it was spicy but not crazy spicy. 

Next at Home: Tour of Thailand: Practice Tom Yam

Bottom line, this might be the most labor intensive dish I've made in my ten years of cooking seriously. Portions of this dish had been in process since Tuesday.

I actually time this well.  This bad boy came in on Tuesday and I had to get started right away in order to pull this dish off this weekend.  This is a 13 pound pork belly that still had the rib cage. 

From the whole belly I broke off about a 1/2 pound section and prepared it for the cure which included canola oil, lemongrass, coriander, fennel, green cardamom, salt, sugar and thai chiles.  All of the ingredients except for the pork belly got mixed together to for the cure and then covered the belly until Saturday. 

This is the completed cure.

And here the belly is ready to go into the fridge.

Now that the pork belly was in the cure it was time to start the stock.  Two pigs feet when into five liters of water along with four pork shanks and simmered for 10, count them 10 hours.

This is the stock about halfway through the cooking process.

The stock after ten hours, notice how the shanks have broken down completely.

I strained the broth through a colander and let it sit overnight because the soup was still not done cooking.

 Next day it was time to take the soup to the next stage.  Here we have the pork stock, mushrooms, shallots, pepper, coriander, leeks, carrots, tomatoes and garlic. 

I put everything together in a stock pot and simmered it all together for another four hours.

While the soup came to temp it was time to deal with the pork belly that had been in the fridge for four days.  I pulled it out, rinsed it off and this is what it looked like. 

I cut off a small piece from the cured belly and vacuum sealed the portion and cooked it sous vide for four hours at 194 degrees.

Here is the soup after having cooked for about two hours.

After four hours I strained the remainder and this is what it looked like.

The final step of the soup was what was called the fresh infusion.  This is the soup based combined with salt, palm sugar, fish sauce, dried thai chiles, lemongrass, limes, basil, ginger, lard, garlic, galangal, kafir lime leaves and cilantro.

I combined everything into a stock pot and let it simmer for another 30 minutes.  Keep in mind this soup was 14 1/2 hours in the making.  Once the soup had simmered I let it cool to room temperature and set in the fridge overnight to allow the flavors meld. 

It's finally eating time, I prepped the garnishes first, tomato, jalapeno, thai chiles, mushrooms, galangal, garlic and shallots.

I cut the cooked and cooled pork belly into bite size pieces and pan fried them until crispy on all sides.

The completed, seared pork belly.

While the pork was being seared I heated up the soup and portioned out a half a cup for service.

Now that everything was prepped are started plating.  At the bottom of the bowl I put a slice of tomato and then topped that with the pieces of pork belly and then added the mushrooms, garlic, galangal, shallots, dried thai chiles and micro basil.

I poured the soup into the bowl table side just like they did at the restaurant.  People, I have to tell you it was a lot of work, but holy shit, was this ever delicious.  Perfect amount of spice and a bit of sour.  I'm so glad I made this dish.