Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen now a few of you may remember that last year when
I went back to Thailand I met up with mark Wiens from migration ology and one of the things that we
had was crispy fried catfish with a green mango salad and it was delicious it's something that
I've always loved and I'm so excited that I can finally make it for you guys today because green
mango something we became available at my local grocer so this dish in Thai is called Yum pla duk
foo yum is a type of Thai salad pla duk is catfish and foo means fluffy so it's a very
interesting cooking technique so if you haven't had this before stick around it's very cool let's
get started now as the name suggests this dish typically uses catfish and not just any catfish
Thai catfish that has been slowly grilled on a charcoal grill and those are widely available in
Thailand so it's you know something easy to find I can't find them here however as you'll see it
really doesn't matter what kind of fish you use so I go with the least expensive kind basically so
I've got here some tilapia so some tilapia fillet that I get frozen but I want to give them a little
flavor so I'm going to add some soy sauce you can just salt them it really doesn't matter at this
point and now I'm going to cook this off just use the easiest way to cook it so for me I'm going to
steam them green mangoes so when they sell mangoes at the store these are like the ones nobody wants
except me so it's great I don't have to fight over these with anyone so green mangoes are just
under ripe mangoes okay they're not a special kind of green variety or anything and you can
use other varieties of mango as long as they are sour and that's important to note because not all
varieties of mango are sour when they are green okay and the sourness is really what we want see
even this one is has gone a little riper than I'd like too because it's quite yellow now but it'll
still be very sour so I'm going to make little Julianne's and I'm going to use the same trick
same technique as when I julienne my green papaya we just a chopped up chop and you can hear that
the flesh is quite firm and then you just slice off nice thin slices of mango just like that right
there we go all right so here's my shredded mango I want to point out though that this
is softer and yellower than it should be if you can get your sperm er even better okay it's just
I got these four days ago and we weren't filming til today so they've had time to ripen a little
bit in the fridge if you get a mango and you're not ready to use it to prevent it from getting
sweet put them in the fridge okay and then they won't sweeten and ripen as fast they might turn
yellow like this but the sweetness won't come out as quickly all right so the dressing that
we are making is just a standard yumm dressing I'm going to start out with some fresh chilies
going into my little wooden mortar here and I'm just going to grind the chilies up and now I'm
going to add some palm sugar it might look like a lot but we're making quite a bit of sauce and also
you want to contrast the sourness if the dressing isn't sweet then this will be way too sour so I'm
going to just mash it after it's turned into like a muddy paste kind of like this then you're ready
to go in with the liquid seasoning which is of course fish sauce cannot have a yum without fish
sauce so keep swirling that until the sugar seems like it's mostly dissolved so now we've got sweet
spicy salty and of course sour so I'm going to add some more lime juice okay see if I can
do this without spilling a mmm well that looks good so now I'm going to add some shallots as
the shallots sit the pungent is going to slowly leach into the dressing and sort of bring all
the flavors together right so you want to do this a little bit in advance I think this is optional
but I chopped up some dry shrimp I added in it adds a little nice chewy umami flavor I'm going
to add the mango in as much as I can fit while sort of keeping everything submerged you may just
sort of have to save the rest for refills okay so that looks good oh my god I'm like so and the
smell of it is so so good so here's the fish it's been cooked and by the way I did say you can cook
this however you want but I would avoid any method that creates hard crispy surface like a you know
deep fryer pan fry where you get that thick crust because those thick bits don't tend to fluff up
as well later when we go to fluff it so steaming I think is the fastest and easiest way to do it
that's why I do it okay so I'm going to transfer this now into a bowl lined with muslin hang with
me hang with me I know this is looking a little strange right now squeeze all the liquid out of
this fish because we're going to deep-fry this fish and all that liquid will make it will make
the fish not fluff as well and also it could be really dangerous or so much liquid in that right
now if we deep-fry it your oil will just kind of go crazy right so I just squeeze and just look
how much liquid comes out of there yes you are literally juicing your fish here see this is why I
said go with the cheapest on if you're in Thailand you want to use the grilled catfish you don't need
to do this because the catfish is slowly grilled on charcoal and the meat is so dry by the time
it's done that you won't have this problem okay so now as you can see you've got fluffy
fish we're gonna make it even fluffier don't put this in your laundry hamper for three days that
would be really gross so now we need to pound it just to get it all really really fluffy and it'll
happen really quickly so you won't it won't take long and by the way in Thailand some people will
bulk this up with some panko breadcrumbs and for two reasons one it's cheaper right because this
is all protein and the other reason is the panko helps absorb some of that moisture but because
we squeeze all that liquid out of it and then we don't need to do that then we can get all
protein let's talk safety okay because it could potentially be dangerous now we're going to deep
fry the fish fluff in this oil here what's going to happen is the oil is going to go you want this
very hot so 400 degrees ish so it's important that you don't fill the oil apps too far so I
would not even go halfway up the pot because when oyel fluff stop it's going to overflow and then it
will catch fire and I know this because I know someone that this happened to so here we go and
you can put in more than you think so I probably this will make to this size so of course the size
will depend on the circumference of your pot right actually that didn't feel quite hot enough once it
starts to turn kind of golden I'm going to kind of fold it in half so that because that's the shape I
want it to be at the end so some people fold it into different shapes or they just leave it as
a circle that's it look at that and magically they just kind of hang together okay nice I'm
going to go in with my second batch although I'm going to let the oil heat up a little bit more
and you want to sprinkle it in right you don't want to dump it in the middle and
then as you can see they want to sort of stick to the side I go in and I push it
in that second round there is sort of how hot it should be that first round
there was a little weak so have a you know fire extinguisher on him
all right so just want to point out this first one the oil wasn't quite hot I mean it works
but as you can see it's not as fluffy as this one and it took a bit longer I mean they're both fine
but I'm just pointing out the difference how fascinating huh all right so when you weren't
looking I stirred in a little fresh cilantro into the mango salad and by the way you want
to make the mango salad before you fry the fish because you want to serve the fish hot
and also as the mango sits it releases some of its juices into the dressing so this will get
better as it sits some people serve the mango separately but I think this is so much better
you get a much more cohesive flavor okay now ever so gently yay oh so cute some peanuts so I'm just
gonna actually scatter them all around because I want a lot of peanuts okay nice get some rice
look so perfect oh yes take some of the mango salad and then make sure you get some peanuts
in there or cashews a lot of people do cashews if you're allergic to peanuts and so hungry I
can't think of another dish that I prefer oh that catfish is so crunchy but because it's all protein
they're sort of there's a really satisfying flavor to it with tartness and freshness of
the mango and that slight sweetness on the sauce it do it's it's so good so please please please
if you can find mango that is sour give it a go I know it's a little bit intimidating to try to
fry that fish I know I was intimidated to fry it the first time but it really isn't that hard if
you are careful with it and you will be so glad that you did so the recipe as always will be on
hot side kitchen comm when you make it send me a photo on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and I
next time for your next submission time meal so this is why I said go with the cheapest one here's
some twenty dollar pound halibut yes doesn't it look beautiful now let's let's lately destroy it