How to Cook Pad Thai & Chicken Green Curry

How to cook Pad Thai and Green Chicken Curry and recipes as featured at Putia School:

These are two of my favourite Thai recipes that will have you cooking Thai at home in your kitchen as good as any take-away. You can cook both dishes and serve with toasted sticky rice for a Thai family dinner or serve them separately at different meals.

Pad see ew is a one plate meal, fried noodles that includes meat, egg, and a green vegetables. It makes for a great lunchtime dish. Overall, this is a pretty easy Thai recipe, the hardest part of making Thai pad see ew is working with the heat.

Pad Thai – Thai pad see ew

For a quick hint on how to prepare the noodles watch this video recorded during the class.

What you need:

300 grams fresh wide rice noodles

2 tablespoons oil for frying

1 egg

3 cloves garlic

2 red Asian shallots, coarsely chopped with a pinch of salt

200 grams chicken thigh diced (alternatively you could really use any meat of your choice)

½ a bunch or a good couple of handfuls of chopped Chinese broccoli (kailan)

2 tbsp hard bean curd, deep-fried and then cut into 5mm cubes

1 tbsp dried prawns, washed and dried

1 tsp shredded salted preserved radish (see Note), washed and dried

½ tablespoon dark soy sauce

2 tbsp grated palm sugar

2 tbsp tamarind water

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 handful bean sprouts, plus extra to serve

½ small bunch Chinese chives, chopped into 2 cm lengths, plus longer lengths to garnish

Crushed roasted peanuts, to serve

Garnish with chili flakes and pepper

Steps:

Comb through the fresh wide rice noodles, making sure any clumps are separated.
Peel then mince 3 cloves of garlic, slice the chicken into small bite sized pieces, and slice the Chinese broccoli into 1.5 centimetre strips.
Heat the wok (or frying pan) on a medium heat and add about 2 tablespoons of oil.
Wait until the oil is hot, and then fry the whisked egg until just done, remove the egg and chop it into pieces and set it aside. Add into the pan the garlic and cook for about 10 seconds or so, making sure it sizzles in the hot oil.
Add the chopped chicken to the wok and stir fry for it about a minute until the chicken is nearly all the way white in colour and cooked pretty well though and through.
Now, turn down your heat (or if you’re using an electric stove you can even move your pan off the burner for a moment).
Toss in the rice noodles, the Chinese broccoli, the bean curd, dried prawns and salted preserved radish. Combine the ½ tablespoon of dark soy sauce, grated palm sugar, tamarind water and fish sauce and add this to the pan.
Still on low heat, start to fold through the noodles gently by picking them up with the spatula from the bottom, and folding them over (If you stir fry too hard, the stickiness from the noodles can make them turn into a big noodle blob
Cook the noodles for about 1 -2 minutes. If it gets a little dry, you can drizzle in a tiny bit of oil.
After the noodles are well mixed, add in the chopped egg and turn up the heat
Now it’s time to crank up the heat on your stove – for the final step we want a little char on the noodles and egg for great flavour.
Fry for about 30 more seconds, making sure to be gentle with the noodles, and then turn off the heat and dish it out.

Serve the noodles topped with the bean sprouts, Chinese chives, crushed roasted peanuts and freshly ground pepper.

For the Green Chicken Curry:

First of all make the Green Curry Paste.

What you need:

1 stalk lemongrass, finely chopped

1 cup fresh coriander, include both leaves and stalks

1 Tbsp. coriander seeds, roasted and ground pounded with a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle

2 Tbsp. fish sauce or 3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp. shrimp paste (if vegetarian, leave out)

3-4 kaffir lime leaves, fresh or frozen

1 tsp. sugar

1-2 green chillies, de-seeded if you like it mild

3 cloves garlic

1 thumb-size piece of galangal peeled and sliced

1 thumb size piece of ginger, peeled and sliced

1 tsp. dark soy sauce

¼ cup fresh coconut

¾ cup coconut milk (or enough to keep paste moist)

Preparation:

Place all ingredients except the fresh basil in a food processor or blender. Process well. Store the paste in an air tight jar in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Thai Chicken Green Curry

Serves 4

400 grams chicken thigh, diced

3 tbsp green curry paste

2 ½ cups coconut milk

5 small fresh Thai eggplants, quartered

2-3 fresh red chilies, sliced diagonally

2 kaffir lime leaves, torn

1/4 cup sweet basil leaf

1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce

1 1/2 tsp palm sugar

1 tbsp sunflower or peanut oil

Sweet basil leaves and red chili slices for garnish

Preparation:

Sauté the green curry paste in oil over medium heat until fragrant, reduce the heat, gradually add 1 ½ cups of the coconut milk a little at a time, stir and simmer for 10 minutes until a film of green oil surfaces.
Add the chicken and kaffir lime leaves, continue cooking for 3 minutes until fragrant and the chicken is cooked through. Drop the heat to medium flame and continue cooking until boiling.
Add the remaining coconut milk, season with palm sugar and fish sauce.
When the mixture returns to the boil add the eggplants. Cook until the eggplants are done, sprinkle sweet basil leaves and red chilies over, and then turn off the heat.

Serve with Thai toasted rice.