So, nine months of prepping and practicing are in the books. I had intended to pull this off much faster but life got in the way. Either way, I was able to successfully host a dinner party Saturday night centered around the Tour of Thailand from Next Restaurant which ran between July and October 2011. I had so much fun working my way through this, and I can't wait until the next menu comes out, hopefully sooner rather than later.
The first four courses of the evening were Street Food. The first picture is Shrimp and Garlic, basically a shrimp ceviche and Northern Fermented Sausage. The second photo is Thai Banana and the third photo is Green Curry Steam Buns. There was supposed to be a fifth course with this but I don't have a dehydrator and burned the prawn crackers as I tried to dry them out. You can see it in the background of the third photo but these dishes were served with Joe Cat Punch which is a cocktail of Papaya Juice, Mango Juice, Guava Juice, Tea, Sugar Cane Juice, Arrack, Cognac and Sparkling Wine.
Courses #6 - 8 were the grilled courses, which of course I didn't get a picture of. This included strawberries, chicken hearts and squid.
Course #9 was Tom Yam. The primary piece of this dish was a cured, poached and roasted pork belly. Underneath the pork is a slice of tomato and the whole plate is garnished with mushrooms, garlic and shallots. The broth is a very rich and labor intensive pork broth that was made with pork feet and shanks that cooked for a total of 14 1/2 hours.
Course #10, the famous or infamous Som Tam or Green Papaya Salad. Given that I served this meal to a Thai National this was probably the one dish that I wanted to make sure was as authentic as possible since I knew that this was something that was eaten on a nearly daily basis in Thailand. Overall I was told that I got this mostly right. I was in a bit of a hurry so the green papaya was typically fettucine width and I guess it's traditionally more like spaghetti. I was also informed that this version was essentially Bangkok style Som Tam given the relative lack of chiles and addition of seafood. In my sister-in-law's hometown of Uban Ratchathani apparently they don't use seafood or peanuts and use a lot more chiles.
Course #11, Pad Thai. As you can see I started to run out of actual plates so we switched to disposables at this point, but it worked out ok. This is rice noodles that were boiled and then tossed in a combination of fish sauce and tamarind. The plate was then garnished with fried spinach, radish, chinese long beans, bean sprouts chives and egg. Typically the egg is just served scrambled in the mixture but in Next fashion they played with a little bit by placing it in a vacuum bag and cooking it sous vide.
No meal from Asia is complete without rice. These are seven relishes and sauce that were served with the rice. From upper left to lower right we have, Pepper Relish, Pickles, Spicy Sauce, Funky Sauce, Duck Egg Relish, Nam Prik Pao and Tamarind relish. My brother and sister-in-law had a blast trying to remember what some of these sauces were actually called in Thai.
Course #13, Catfish. This again is missing a couple of components, primarily the celery garnishes. I also undercooked the catfish, ultimately a product of not being as prepared as I would have liked. The sauce on the bottom is a white pepper caramel sauce and the garnish is pickled pearl onions.
The final savory course of the night, Beef Cheek. This a cured, and poached beef cheek that was served in a penang curry sauce and roasted vegetables. By this point, my guests and I were getting a little fatigued mostly because the meal was taking longer than I had anticipated. But this is a dish I had been looking forward to serving for a long time and it didn't disappoint.
There's also not a picture of it, but after this dish the palate cleanser was a watermelon ice.
The first desert of the night was a halved coconut filled with licorice tapioca pearls, cured mango, aerated and frozen corn pudding, aerated and frozen coconut mousse and corn coconut rock which is freeze dried corn, coconut milk powder and lime.
The final actual food served on the evening. This is a dragonfruit that was topped with a sugar, citric actid and rose water concoction. Needless to say I wasn't sure if this dish would make it on to the table. I realized on Wednesday night that I hadn't received my order that I had placed at least a week prior. When I looked it up on Amazon I realized that somehow, my shipment had ended up in upstate New York. After some back and forth the company sent me a new shipment overnight and they showed up at about 1 PM on Saturday afternoon.
The final course I also didn't get a photo of, but it was Thai Iced Tea.
Overall, everyone enjoyed the meal. I also learned so much about myself and my cooking skills throughout this process. I can't wait to do it again and be a little better prepared next time.
