Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen today we are making one of the most popular dishes of
Muslim Thai cuisine we are making salad kaeg which is a salad with a rich spicy
creamy peanut dressing on top it is so good now some of you may know that Thailand has a
large Muslim population down south and they have delicious cuisine that is influenced
by Malaysian and Indonesian culture so this salad is sort of our version of the Indonesian
gado-gado salad if you're familiar with that so let's get started the heart of this salad
is really the peanut dressing so that's what we're going to make first and it's
quite similar to our satay sauce but it's a bit simpler so I'm going to start by making a paste
so I've got some dried chilies here there are large ones because I don't want to make it too
spicy if you can only find small ones that's okay just make sure that you really remove the
seats and the pit from the chilies so I'm just using scissors and do doing this to get most
of the seeds out so I always like to rind my dried chilies in a coffee grinder because when
we go to pound it in the mortar and pestle the chilies are the toughest things to grind
always tap and let it settle before you open it because you know you could inhale some of
the chili dust by accident tada so that's what we're going for nice and fine and now I'm going
to change weapon and use my mortar and pestle here and you can do this in whatever grinding device
you've got so some shallots are going in and also some garlic and I'm going to add my ground
chilies right away because this will help absorb the liquid that will be released by the shallots
and garlic and pound away so you don't have to get it super fine so essentially what you've just made
is the simplest of all curry pastes the curry pastes don't have to be complicated it can just
be three ingredients I'm going to spike it up a little bit with some coriander and now I usually
don't add coriander but today I'm feeling like I could use a little extra citrusy flavor and that's
pretty much the paste so now we're going to saute the paste in a little bit of coconut milk and the
process you will notice it's very similar to making any Thai coconut curry so I've got a
cup of coconut milk here I'm going to put in just a quarter cup in here and then bring it to a boil
and now I'm going to add the paste and saute it until it's reduced and thick one of the benefits
of sauteing the paste in coconut milk instead of in vegetable oil is that first of all that extra
liquid really helps loosen the paste and prevent them from getting clumpy and since we're going to
need the coconut milk as part of the dressing anyway why not use the oil that exists in the
coconut milk to saute the paste instead of adding extra vegetable oil right and if it's starting to
stick on the bottom just seek glaze it with a little bit of extra coconut milk you want to
give it time two to three minutes to really allow the flavour of the of the spice to bloom and now
I'm going to go in with the rest of my coconut milk scrape the sides of the pot a little bit and
I'm also going to add a little bit of water and then the main ingredients going in some peanuts
roasted ground peanuts that I roasted myself and just ground in a mortar and pestle you can also
do it in a food processor now I stress roasting it myself because the difference between buying
peanuts already rose it and roasting it fresh is huge now the seasoning so this dressing should be
sort of sweet and sour that's those are the main flavors so the sour is tamarind quite a bit also
because this particular brand that I've got or this particular batch I should say is not very
sour so I'm adding quite a bit every brand and even between batches of the same brand will have
very different levels of acidity so it's something if you're working with tamarind you always want to
be tasting and adjusting palm sugar going in so that's our sweet I'm gonna keep this vegetarian
and use salt but if you don't want to make it vegetarian you can also use fish sauce mmm that's
starting to look good and smell good it looks a little runny now but what I'm gonna do next is let
it simmer and reduce for 30 minutes it'll thicken and the flavors will start to mingle and marry the
peanuts will become plump and soft with all that coconut milk trust me it'll be good in 30 minutes
so you can see it's now thickened and luscious and you really want to give it that time you want the
peanuts to sort of become one with the dirt with the sauce on the outside right okay so now make
sure you taste it mmm mmm oh I think that's good do I need a little more salt yeah I'm gonna go in
with a little more salt make sure this is strong because remember you're going to pour this over
you know a bunch of vegetables and whatnot that you know doesn't have a lot of flavor in and of
themselves so it has to be sufficiently seasoned use my mini whisk to stir there we go and if
you see a little bit of red oil around the edges that's simply just the oil from the coconut milk
mixed with the chillies that's why it's red and it's just separated a little bit so it's totally
totally normal now time to put it together so I'm going to show you the classic way this salad is
made okay and I'm going to warn you that it does involve like lots of little preparations here
and there but when you make it at home you don't have to have everything that I show you here but
I do want to show you how you might find this in Thailand so vegetables because the sauce is really
rich and heavy you want to make sure you've got some sturdy crunchy vegetables in there if it's
just a bowl of fluffy leafy greens it's going to get wilted by that sauce so I've got some cucumber
some Tomatoes some carrots the naan greens most important thing that I would say you should have
is a boiled egg so I've got an egg here that I boiled for exactly nine minutes which i think is
perfect for the salad there we go now the next thing that you'll commonly find on the salad
is fried tofu so this is just firm tofu that I cut up and fry it in a 350 degree Fahrenheit
oil tofu likes to stick together when they're in the oil don't try to pry them apart when they're
still soft let them fry for a minute or two so the outside is firm then you pull it apart and that'll
make sure that your tofu doesn't tear three to four minutes until it's nice and golden on the
outside and you don't have to fry it you can just use regular tofu if you like the flavor of that I
have got some fried potato steaks I would say do this if you're feeling a little hardcore
like I did yesterday I took a potato cut them into matchsticks and fry them keep the heat quite low
so give them time this would be ten minutes to get them completely crispy like that a lot of times
in Thailand they'll just put potato chips on top so if you're feeling lazy you can just buy plain
potato chips and put them on top I'm going to put on some fried shallots I've used lots of times in
my videos thinly sliced shallots lay them out on a paper towel and then salt them let them sit for
about ten minutes and then dab the moisture that is drawn up from the salt fry them in very low
heat gentle bubbles all the way into their golden brown and the bubbling has subsided and then when
all is said and done this is like crack mmm so good I like to let the dressing cool down a little
bit first so it doesn't just wilt and cook your vegetables instantly all right you can always add
more dressing always a little bit of egg potato cucumber mmm so good as far as salad goes it
does not get better than this fresh vegetables crunchy potato creamy and rich in a little bit
spicy dressing creaminess of the egg oh my God look every day it's like a an orchestra in your
mouth it's fantastic ah so please give this recipe a try it's so delicious and the sauce will live in
your fridge for at least a week and you can use it as a dipping sauce if you want don't have to
go on a salad and the recipe as always is on hot side kitchen comm when you make it send me a photo
on Facebook Twitter or Instagram and I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai