Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen today I am making something called haw mok which is a spicy
red curry custard with fish now I know that sounds good it ought right now but stay with me and you
see this is so so so delicious super easy and it's actually been requested many many times so let's
get started so this dish is basically a custard and a custard is just a mixture of egg and some
sort of liquid and then cooked and this custard is flavored with red curry so that's what I'm going
to start with I've got three tablespoons of red curry paste which is a lot it is spicy this dish
is a spicy dish but you can just use too if you think this is too spicy and to this I'm just going
to add a little bit of coconut milk just enough to break this up if I pour the whole thing in
it'll just slosh around then it'll be impossible to get it mixed up okay so now that that's smooth
I can add more of this coconut milk and it'll mix in more easily now the rest of it since this is
a custard or any eggs so I've got two large eggs beat them first then the egg goes into the custard
and then seasoning some fish sauce again you have to taste and adjust the amount of fish sauce
needed because every curry paste has a different level of salt now you wondering well how am i
Matthysse this is raw eggs in it when you're done with the base you can just put a little bit in a
cup and steam it or microwave it so you can cook a little and taste it some sugar to round off the
spiciness and if you're using palm sugar which is what I'm using you want to make sure it's chopped
quite fine because otherwise won't dissolve when you get big lumps now some extra aromatic kaffir
lime leaves which I finally finally slice and this will add sort of a bright citrusy aroma that will
help sort of mask any fishiness that comes from the fish and now for the fish there are actually
two ways to do this some people like to take the fish and blend it together with the custard and
make a firmer almost like a fish mousse but what I like is I like to keep the pieces of the fish
whole so I've got here some barramundi but you can use absolutely any kind of fish you like
really anything that you've got on hand you can even try it with salmon get it mixed in so the
fish gets a chance to absorb some of that flavor and you can also use other kinds of seafood you
can do shrimp mussels and clams without the shell are or squid we actually sometimes do
humble calais which is palm up with the mix of seafood in it all right that's the base let's
prep our containers normally in Thailand we steam home up in a banana leaf container sometimes we
make a cup out of it sometimes we wrap it in this present and for convenience sake though I'm going
to use a ramekin however the banana leaves are not just for containers when you steam food in banana
leaves it infuses that sort of woodsy force the aroma into the food as well so in order to mimic
that what I've done is I've got some banana leaves which you can get in the frozen section of Asian
groceries love the smell the important thing is you got to clean it banana leaves are dirty
they've got chalky dusty stuff so you got to take a white paper or towel and give it a good wipe I'm
going to line my container with them shiny side up there's always a dull side and a shiny side so
this is a little too fat it's really easy to trim banana leaves this way see the grain banana leaves
have a have a grain and you just tear it off and pull it comes off really really easily this way
though you have to cut okay so that fits well and I'm going to take another strip and line it this
way that's my container and you know what this is the first time I've actually done this normally I
too lazy I just do it in a ramekin with nothing in it but this is for a special occasion okay so
I've got my containers ready to go so the bottom of Hummel is always a bed of vegetables and that
vegetable can be a variety of things but one of the common ones is cabbage so I've got some
shredded cabbage here which I have steamed and I just steamed this in the microwave make sure
there's a little bit of water on it and the reason why I steamed it is so that it settles nicely at
the bottom otherwise it's just sticking up all over the place and its really annoying I've done
it before and what I like though is add a little bit of kale in Thailand we use this vegetable
called bye y'all and it's impossible to find here and it's a dark green vegetable stir dee leaves
just like kale just to kind of mimic bhaiyaa I'm gonna use scale also steamed so I'm going to do
both cabbage and kale and it's up to you really how much vegetables you want to put in all right
basil Thai basil also goes on the bottom and as it cooks it will infuse that and sweet floral aroma
into the custard Thai basil and red curry always go together fill the cup starting with the fish
always sir before you later because the curry paste likes to fall to the bottom
press it down to get rid of any air bubbles which is not a big deal and just being a little
excessive I've got my handy dandy steamer here medium heat I don't want it too high
because otherwise it will pop up a lot and not be smooth but unlike my steamed egg it doesn't
have to be super low because there's just so much going on curry paste fish and all that
stuff that it doesn't have to be super super smooth so about 15 to 20 minutes so the way to
tell these are done is first of all they're going to be quite puffed up from they were before and
I like to do a quick jiggle careful it's hot but it just like do a quick jiggle and you see how it
just doesn't really it doesn't jiggle that much it's quite firm and you can always just poke it
in with a little knife and see there's liquid coming out and but I think that's pretty good
yeah there's a very classic garnish that goes on top of home oven of course it's all optional
at this one you could go ahead and eat them if you want but if you want to look a little nicer
what I've got here is just some thickened coconut milk it is just coconut milk that I cooked with a
little bit of cornstarch you can do rice flour or even all-purpose flour anything that will make it
kind of this consistency and then I'm going to top the custard and it just adds a little creaminess
but more importantly it will be a canvas for our final garnish and the final garnish spiritually
or you can also do just julienne red bell pepper and you can do extra julienne kaffir lime leaves
which is really common or I just like to do a little leaf of cilantro and there you go that
is how look now this is not something you just didn't eat a bowl on its own it's strong spicy
stuff you always always serve this with rice the texture is so tender practically melt in my mouth
and you really smell that fear lime leaves the banana leaf and the Thai basil cut the same time
it's super it's spicy its strong definitely kicks your senses you can also do tiny tiny
little ones and little teacups and make it like a little appetizer you for parties where you've got
lots of people there as well so do give this a try if you've never had savory custard this
will change your world and when you do send me a photo Facebook Twitter or Instagram the recipe as
always is on top Thai kitchen comb and I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai