blog about Thai food and Thai cooking. Focuses on using local ingredients in Thai food.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Pad Ka Prow w/ Goat Meat
About a month ago, I did a demo at Austin Farmers Market downtown on the same day Pamela Walker had her book signing. Her book Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas is an essay of eleven farms in Central Texas. I was cooking up some Pad Ka Prow or stir fried basil with ground goat meat. I was using all the vegetables from the market that day from holy basil and Thai Apple eggplant from Simmons Family Farms, mushrooms from Kitchen Pride, bell peppers from Chris at Milagro Farms, Thai eggplants from Cas at Animal Farms and Thai chilies from Two Happy Children Farms. The goat meat was from Singleton Farms. I have only used goat meat to make Thai style Biryani and I just absolutely loved it. I thought the ground meat should work with this dish very well.
This post might have come a little late especially after the first hard freeze we had last Friday night. All my tender plants were frozen and we are done with Spring/Summer garden. Mushrooms are all year round and you can use only those in this dish. I hope this post will help you decide what to plant in your garden next Spring. Check out an article in Edible Austin on how to grow your own Thai garden.
Those vegetables were picked less than 24 hours before I cooked them. They were sweet and firm. The bell peppers from Milagro were exceptionally delicious. They were the best bell peppers I have ever tasted.
The show started with the wonderful smell of fried garlic and chili paste that brought people in from the other end of the market. The recipe is from this post back in Spring 2008 when I harvested some green beans to make this dish. You can use pretty much anything as long as it's firm. You can turn this into a noodle dish, Pad Kee Mao or Drunken Noodles by adding noodles after the meat. You can use flat noodles. If using dry flat rice noodles, soak them for about an hour. You can also use cooked spaghetti noodles or Penne pasta in this dish as well. Add some dark soy sauce to give some dark color and a little bit of molasses flavor. You can also make Basil fried rice from this same recipe.
As for basil, I used holy basil or Bai Ka Prow, in this dish.
You can substitute Thai sweet basil or Bai Ho Ra Pa for this dish. Thai holy basil is very tender and they have to be used the same day it's harvested. Simmons Family Farms brings it to the market every Saturday morning. It is spicier and sweeter than sweet basil. Thai basil plants are annual in central Texas. If you have them in pots, you can bring them in during the winter and it should come back in the spring. Some friends who grow Thai basil in the ground cut it down during winter and cover it with plastic tarp to protect it. If the plants make it through winter, they will come back stronger and bigger.
Posted your site on my Facebook fan page today: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Chicago-IL/The-Spice-Doc-eating-your-medicine/192167455583?ref=ts
ReplyDeleteYour recipes (I grew up in Thailand) are excellent and stay true to Thai cooking and flavors just like chezpim.com's! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for stopping by Spice Doc. I am just making the food the way I grew up seeing my grandmother and my mom cook. Thank you for the compliment.
ReplyDeleteI hope this post will help you decide what to plant in your garden next Spring. Check out an article in Edible Austin on how to grow your own Thai garden.
ReplyDeleteHey, Term Papers,
ReplyDeleteJam wrote that article in Edible Austin. ;) Not sure from your post if you knew that.
Best wishes,
Kim Lane
Edible Austin
Thanks Kim.
ReplyDelete