

I prepared a little thai feast for my family last Sunday following our little escape to Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. I chose Chiang Mai because I am a big fan of Northern Thai food. There are Burmese, Northeastern Isaan thai and Chinese influences in their cuisine. Tasted many amazing dishes such as stewed chicken feet and blood noodle soup, beef soup noodles, burmese pork curry, sweet leaves soup with ant’s eggs, laab pig liver spicy salad (my favourite), tamarind leaves spicy salad, fermented blue crab som tum papaya salad, etc.



Chiang Mai is not only rich with food and history, it has a thriving coffee culture too with many talented baristas showing off their brewing skills in many interesting cafes littered around the town. You don’t need Starbucks or Costa Coffee there. Its a pretty competitive cafe market there.

Back to my Sunday Thai post, the dishes I prepared here are served on some of the beautiful handmade tableware I purchased in Chiangmai. That was my other motive going there, not to visit touristy sites but to hunt down some nice ceramics. You can find big established factories making handmade ceramics, silver, wood items, etc, and small artisans selling their items in lifestyle shops and cafes. I was quite lucky to locate some artisans by searching through instagram. I hope show more of my collection on my future posts soon. Keep a lookout! 😉

Here are the dishes:

Moo Yang (Grilled Hungarian Pork Shoulder) with Jaew Prik Pon (Spicy) Dip (recipe below)

Goya, salted duck egg salad with Somtum spicy dressing. (recipe below)

Prawn salad with fish sauce, lime, urap urap dressing. (recipe below)

Grilled Pandan Chicken

Crayfish & squid with lemon basil dressing

Moo Yang (Grilled Hungarian Pork Shoulder)

This dish is popular in Thailand. Other similar grilled meats are neua yang (grilled beef), gai yang (grilled chicken). My kids love them and its pretty easy to make.

500-600 pork shoulders or neck or collar (so long the meat has some fats contents)

Paste Ingredients: 2 coriander root stems (chopped), 5-6 cloves garlic, 10 white peppercorn, 1/4 cup Maggi seasoning sauce (I use Golden Mountain brand from Thailand), 1/2 teaspoon of palm sugar. If you don’t have Maggi seasoning, you can use fish sauce or soya sauce.

Pound the dry marinate ingredients first, then add the wet ingredients. Massage the paste well in the meat and let it marinate overnight. The next day, just grill it over a medium fire til done.

Jaew Prik Pon Spicy Dip

This is a common Isaan dip for many thai dishes.

Ingredients: 3-4 dry red chillies, 2 coriander roots, 2-3 slices of galangal, 2 tablespoon fish sauce,1 teaspoon palm sugar, some mint leaves, 2-3 tablespoons lime juice, some chopped shallots, 1 teaspoon roasted raw thai glutinous rice.

Put the chillies and raw glutinous rice in the oven or toaster and roast them til the colour of the chillies turn deep burnt red and the rice turn crispy but not browned. Just pound all the hard ingredients first with a pestle & mortar except the rice and then the wet ingredients. The rice should be finely pounded separately and then toss in the sauce in the end.

Goya, Salted Duck Egg Salad with Somtum Spicy Dressing



This is my own concoction of goya (bitter gourd) thai salad. Bitter gourd stir-fried with salted egg is a popular Chinese dish. I did a spicy salad version with bitter, sweet, spicy, sour and salty taste notes.

Salad ingredients : 1/2 of a goya or bitter gourd, cherry tomatoes, 1 cooked salted egg (roughly chopped, you can purchased from Chinese grocery stores), cashew nuts (roughly chopped), 4-5 dried shrimps (lightly toasted)

Somtum Spicy Sauce ingredients :

4 garlic cloves, 3-4 small chillies, 3 tablespoons lime juice, 1-2 tablespoons fish sauce, 2-3 tablespoons palm sugar, 1 cooked salted egg yolk, coriander leaves

Remove the white centre flesh of the goya and cut into slices. Remove the bitterness by lightly rubbing the goya slices 1-2 tablespoons of sea salt and let it stand for 20 minutes. Rinse away the salt as much as possible and then boil the goya slices in water for about 3-5 minutes. Make sure they are still crunchy since we are making a salad with it.

Cook the cherry tomatoes in some oil and salt for about 4-5 minutes to release the sugars. Set aside.

Start pounding the garlic and chillies, then palm sugar and salted egg yolk. Add in the cherry tomatoes in the mortar and crush them lightly to release the juice into the mixture. Add in the rest of the wet ingredients.

Toss the salad ingredients well with the spicy sauce and sprinkle the chopped cashew nuts. Add more palm sugar if you find it a little salty since its salted egg based.

Prawn & bean salad with fish sauce, lime, urap urap dressing

The urap urap dressing is Indonesia Javanese based dressing for steamed vegetables but I adapted with more fish sauce and lime juice to give this dish a thai flavour. It turned out to be very good. The urap urap recipe can be found in the post Hubby Bento #22

Salad ingredients: cooked prawns, cucumber, cooked long beans, some mint leaves, some chopped cashew nuts, fried lemongrass slices

Sauce ingredients: 1 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce, 1 1/2 -2 tablespoon lime juice, 2 heapful tablespoons of urap urap, 2-3 lime leaves roughly torn. (You can increase the spiciness here by adding some small chillies.)

Lightly pound and mix the sauce ingredients and toss it with the salad ingredients. The crunchy sweet dried coconut bits coat the prawn and its a great combination.

Crayfish & Squid with Lemon Basil Dressing



This dish is easy to prepare. Some fresh crayfish cooked, squid cooked, grilled vegetables and fresh herb of your choice.

Make the dressing by using some fruity olive oil, 1 spoonful of fish sauce, some lemon juice and basil leaves (pounded into the oil to release the flavours). Just drizzle them over the salad. I did not show the dressing on the picture above. (I forgot, oops…)

As for the pandan chicken, I am not very satisfied with the recipe, so I won’t post it. I will post it once I modify it to meet my expectations.

Hope you enjoy my little post! ^x^