welcome to hot thai kitchen so today i'm excited to be doing a special video sponsored by our good
friends at the thai trade center vancouver and as you can see we are not in the kitchen because we
are first going to go shopping so many of you over the years have told me that you have difficulties
getting thai ingredients where you live so today what i want to show you is you can still have real
thai flavors without having to go to a specialty or asian grocery store
and without really having to make a full-on authentic thai dish so here's the challenge
i'm gonna go shopping at a western grocery store and we're gonna go to the international aisle
and with whatever thai ingredients i can find there that's what i'm gonna use to cook with
now i have some idea of what i wanna do but i will make my final decision once i see exactly
what i've got available to me but before we go shopping because of the time that we're in
i have found it the aisle is called asian foods let's see what we have
this is all we got for curry paste i got red i got green and i got
this is the product of poland this is a thai curry taste
from poland we're gonna go with the tiger it is from thailand okay i got coconut milk we're gonna
definitely take this adam would you please hold these thank you water chestnuts are from thailand
now fish sauce fish sauce they must have fish sauce give me fish sauce
oh my god is there no fish sauce oh oh i found it i found it yay
gluten-free fish sauce awesome oh and we're gonna need snacks we're gonna need snack these
are so good you guys if you haven't had these you must try it okay what have we got for fresh herbs
is there any lemongrass no lemongrass i was hoping for lemongrass
but i guess we're not gonna cook with lemongrass today
all right i'm so excited about this by the way this is the first time i've ever made this
so i won't have exact recipe written out for you but i want you to think about this not so much as
a recipe but as an inspiration of how you can take whatever thai ingredients you can find and apply
it to things you're already familiar with and get thai flavors in that way okay all right so this
taco i think i'm gonna use ground pork because pork is the most commonly eaten meat in thailand
flavor it with thai curry paste and then we found water chestnuts which i didn't expect to find so i
think i'm going to add that in for crunch and then on top i'm going to add a little bit of a thai
slaw so we got some cabbage and some cilantro we'll make a little slaw with a thai dressing to
go on top it's gonna be great first let's look at the pork see how they're always tubular when they
come if you put this directly in the pan you might end up with tubes of pork which does not look good
so you want to go in and like mash them out first so they end up looking a little bit more natural
and by the way you can totally do this with beef i don't see any reason why not or chicken but
if you're going to do chicken i would recommend doing dark meat okay i think that's good enough
i'm gonna start this the same way i start with any curry is to use coconut milk and the fat the
oil in coconut milk to be the oil that we use to saute the paste this way if you add vegetable oil
it's fine but you're not going to get the flavor and the richness if you reduce coconut milk right
so that's why we do this add a little bit more and i know most of the products that we have now is
thai kitchen brand it is not sponsored by kitchen it's just the only brand that we
have downstairs um but thai kitchen is a brand that's made in thailand so that's important
so that's come to a boil i'm going to add my red curry paste and you can totally do this with any
other kind of curry paste and the thing with thai kitchen that i actually like is when people say oh
they don't eat very spicy this is not a very spicy brand i guess that's the benefit of getting like a
you know a brand that's meant for a western market is they will make it less spicy
okay so now it's well mixed in i'm going to let it reduce until it's sizzling in that coconut oil
so fyi i used about half of this jar which is 112 grams you know i don't know if it's too
much or too little again this is the first time i've made this particular recipe but we can find
out and we can add more later cooking without a pre-determined recipe this is great this is such
a refreshing thing because i always come here and i got everything sorted out
okay see that see a little bit of coconut oil starting to separate
that's great that means the paste is now frying okay i gotta go in with the pork
before i get curry paste all over myself get that mixed in oh that just looks like a great start
to so many things now if i were able to get some fresh lemongrass fresh kefir lime leaves i would
probably throw that in right about now to get it infused and flavoring everything but i don't which
is okay because there is all those ingredients are in the paste already but it's nice sometimes
to get a little bit of extra and also some visual oh this would make a great burrito filling as well
how very english of adam to suggest this would make a great shepherd's pie base okay so i'm
gonna stop there because it's all cooked because i just want to taste it first like i'm not done done
but again when you're working with something for the first time and you're kind of like
freestyling it you want to know where you're at before you start
putting in seasoning right because some curry pastes are always pre-salted to some degree
i think i'm going to use that whole jar oh definitely need salt but it needs it also
it's also a little mild now it's not ideal that that paste didn't get fried
but what are you gonna do i mean you could fry it separately but we're not doing that right now and
some seasoning i'm gonna do some fish sauce and if you want to know about how to identify
good fish sauce i do have a video for that as well okay so i'm gonna turn the heat back on
and see where we're at now and yes i have used the entire jar if you're using like a maply or
messy like one of the brands with thai names you will not need this much because those pastes are
a lot more concentrated i find oh it's starting to look good too okay i'm gonna let that
fry just to let the paste cook a little bit okay let's see where we're at now
now we're talking but it needs a little bit of sweet to get that balance of flavor and
almost forgot our water chestnuts which by the way they come whole like this and i just cut them
into little little dice just to get a little bit crunch water chestnuts it's a great thing to use
um because they don't have too much of a flavor in enough themselves
but they add a lovely lovely crunch to just about anything add that in and turn the heat back on
all right i'm going to turn this off do one final taste mmm oh that's good oh toss this with pasta
and you're done you can stop right here so for this part i am thinking you know normally a taco
you might put sour cream on it or in a more hipster taco establishment they would put a
crema which is like a loose i guess like a creme fraiche type thing like a creamy
dairy thing that's a little bit tart to go on top of the taco so i want to do
something like that but with coconut milk instead which is the thai dairy i always tell people
we don't use dairy in thai cuisine we only use coconut milk whenever we want that creaminess
we're going to use this tiny little frying pan which i've been waiting for the opportunity to
use for a very long time and i need to thicken it a little bit so i'm going to add a make a
cornstarch slurry so this is just some cornstarch and i'm gonna add some water just to
dissolve it adding dry corn starch to hot liquid is something you will do
once in your life and then you'll be so traumatized by the lumps that you cannot get out
you will never do it again so let's just start with just a little splash
and we'll see where that gets us and once you add the cornstarch oh that was
quick well that thickened on me really quickly this darn stove and you want to bring it to a boil
because that's how you know that the cornstarch has reached its maximum thickening power do i
want it a little bit thicker no i think this is good because it'll thicken a little bit as
it cools as well okay so i'm going to turn it off i'm going to season it with a little bit of salt
and also to get that tart crema flavor i'm going to add just a touch of lime juice let's see
yes wow that lime really brighten it up a little a touch more lime
and i think we are good oh i'm so excited all right now the slaw which is going to add freshness
and crunch and some spiciness to not that we don't have enough spiciness but hey what's a little
extra spice so i'm gonna make basically a yum dressing which is a traditional classic thai salad
dressing and we can yum anything and i have so many yums on the website so if you just go on the
website and search for yum you will end up with a ton of salad okay so now we're going to make
is cabbage which is a great thing to go on top of taco and then i'm going to start with some
thai chilies which you don't have to add or you can add any spicy chilies i'm going to pound that
but you can also just finely mince it as well and you're going to see that there's a lot of
chili skins left but that's not a problem a little bit of sugar first i was hoping to find palm sugar
i did not find palm sugar but come to think of it maybe i should have looked in the sugar aisle
but see this is the this is the hard part about shopping for asian ingredients is you don't know
if it's in the international aisle or it's in the like the isle of the food category that it
belongs to so maybe i should have looked in the sugar aisle and then the sugar helps the chilies
break up a little bit more as well okay and now just some lime juice and of course fish sauce
rule of thumb for salad dressing roughly one part lime juice one part fish sauce and then
you kind of taste and adjust depending on the recipe that you're doing let's see where we're at
oh perfect oh nice and then when you pound chilies you get a much prettier dressing too
okay and then i'm going to also add some shallots into here you can do red onions thinly thinly
sliced and then what i'm going to do also is i this just occurred to me that i was going to add
tomatoes to the to the tacos somehow but i think i'm going to add it directly to this yum dressing
so that the tomato juice has actually become a part of this dressing and that
idea to me just came from something or thai green papaya salad where we pound the tomatoes in with
the dressing to like bruise it a little bit to get that juice mixed up so i think that's a good idea
mmm that looks good so i'm using purple cabbage just because it's pretty you can
use green cabbage or a mixture of cabbage and carrots or whatever sort of crunchy vegetable
radishes would be really good in this too give that a nice mix oh i also got green onions
i also have some cilantro which i guess i'll add half now and then leave the other half to
garnish oh that looks so good already
oh yeah oh spicy oh spicy alright so time to assemble i'm so excited about this this is looking
so good so the store did not have any all corn tortilla and they didn't have any
mexican food aisle because we're in canada they only had the asian food aisle so the
only tortilla that they had was 50 corn and 50 wheat so i'm gonna heat that up
and this is quite big i'm used to corn tortillas that are smaller okay so i just
want a little bit of brown spots because i think when it's slightly brown it has a better flavor
but you can just heat this up until it's hot yay there we go
go in with our filling or just have this over rice my goodness how did i forget that
this would be just good over rice our slaw oh some tomatoes in there yes oh my god that looks so good
and i was um thinking about penang curry which in thailand we often drizzle a little bit of
thickened coconut milk on top so i thought about that i was like oh yeah that would be like a crema
and a little bit of garnish cilantro just cause why not yay i'm so excited to eat
mmm oh my gosh so good i'm shocked how good this is i think i want to add a little more sloth
maybe i just didn't get much slaw on that bite but i just love crunchy crunchy bits
that is ah amazing that surprised me i mean i fully expected it to be good but how good
it is is like completely shocked to me that slaw works so well somebody call
chipotle tell them they need to put this on the menu you can really taste the red curry
paste it is unmistakably thai and if you did this with green curry paste i think it would
be just as fantastic and it's rich with that coconut milk that we added and the slaw just
gives it the perfect balancing point crisp light fresh there's no oil no anything in the dressing
and it just works together so well the crema adds just a little bit of that creaminess
but it still has a spirit of the taco because of the flavor of the tortilla i mean like this
is basically thai food right here right like we we made thai food right here but we assembled it
using only one non-thai ingredient that is the tortilla and you've turned it into something
completely fantastic and wonderful yay so i really really hope you give this a try this will knock
your socks off trust me on this i will do my best to write down the recipe with the most accurate
estimated ingredient amounts and that will then be on hathaikitchen.com i'll link to that below
and if you haven't subscribed to the show make sure you do so you don't miss
a recipe and click the bell icon as well so you get a notification when i post a new video thank
you as always for watching and i will see you next time for your next delicious thai meal you