To Cook
In a wok or a pan, stir-fry coconut milk over low heat until oils float to the surface. Stir in Valcom Yellow Curry Paste and cook until fragrant. Add prawns and continue cooking until they are thoroughly cooked.
Add fish sauce and sugar, and cook until curry thickens. Add onions and cherry tomatoes and leave to cook. Then, add rice and stir-fry until evenly heated and coated in curry.
Remove from heat and dish out on a plate. Garnish with spring onion and red chilli, and serve immediately.
Seafood
Pad Thai Wrapped in Egg (Pad Thai Hor Kai)
To Prep
In a small pot, mix all ingredients for pad thai sauce and cook over medium heat for 15-20 mins until sauce thickens. Taste test and add more sugar if the tamarind is too sour for your liking. Store sauce in a sealed container and refrigerate for use later.
To Cook
In a wok or a pan, heat 2 tbsp of oil and fry shallots until fragrant. Add noodles and stir-fry until softened. Using the spatula, push the noodles to one side of the wok.
On medium-high heat, add ½ tbsp oil, prawns, fermented radish and bean curd to the now empty side of the wok. Stir-fry fir a minute and fold the noodles onto the ingredients.
Add pad thai sauce and continue to stir-fry until sauce evenly coats the noodles. Then turn up the heat and add bean sprouts, chives and peanuts and stir-fry for about a minute. Dish out the noodles and set aside.
In a small bowl, beat 1 egg and set aside. Wipe the wok clean and return to medium–high heat. Add 1 tbsp vegetable oil, ensuring it coats the surface of the wok evenly. Take hold of the wok handle with one hand, pour in the beaten egg and quickly swirl the wok in a wide circular motion to coat wok to create a thin crêpe-like layer of egg. Cook for about a minute until the egg crêpe is set.
Spoon the noodles into the centre of the wok and scatter over the peanuts. Then fold over the sides of egg crêpe into the centre to cover the noodles and form a parcel. Flip the egg-wrapped pad thai over in the wok to briefly seal the folded ends, then slide it onto a serving plate. Serve the dish with fresh bean sprouts, chives, peanuts, sugar and lime wedges.
Thai Crispy Fish with Mango Salad (Yum Pla Duk Fu)
To Cook
Cut the fish into chunks, season with soy sauce or salt, then steam for 5 mins until the meat is fully cooked. Set the fish aside to cool.
In the meantime, prepare the mango salad. In a mortar, pound 2-3 bird’s eye chillies until there are no big chunks, then add palm sugar and mash to a paste. Add fish sauce and lime juice and mix until sugar is completely dissolved. Transfer paste to a bowl and add the shallots, dried shrimp, and julienned mango. Set aside to sit while you fry the fish.
Once the fish is cool, transfer it to a bowl lined with muslin cloth. Wrap the cloth around the fish, twist, and squeeze as hard as you can to remove as much liquid as possible.
Then, transfer the fish to a mortar and pestle and pound it until it’s fluffy with no chunks left.
In a wok or a large pot, heat about 3 cm of oil over high heat. Now to put the fu (fluffiness) in the fish, the oil has to be heated to about 200℃.
Once the oil is hot enough, sprinkle half of the fish into the oil. Be careful as the oil will bubble aggressively. While the fish cooks, try to tuck the edges of the fish and push the fish down to submerge in oil to fry and brown evenly. Once fish is golden brown, remove from oil with a slotted skimmer and set it on paper towels to drain.
Place the fish on a serving plate and sprinkle with roasted peanuts. Garnish mango salad with chopped coriander (optional) and serve beside the fish. Serve the yum pla duk foo as a snack or as a main dish with steamed rice.
Prawn Yellow Curry
To Cook
Stir-fry yellow curry paste with oil over low heat until fragrant, add kaffir lime leaves.
Slowly add coconut milk, potato, water, fish sauce and sugar. Stir well and bring to the boil. Add prawn meat, continue cooking over high heat.
Add tomatoes to curry, simmer for a few minutes before adding red chilli and coriander leaves.
Remove from heat. Serve with steamed Thai Moon Jasmine Rice.
Fresh Spring Roll (Popiah)
To Make Popiah Skin
In a food processor, add flour, water and salt. Process on medium speed for 6 mins, at 2 mins intervals. The batter should be glossy and elastic. Let the batter rest for an hour.
After an hour’s rest, the dough should look slimy yet elastic.
Heat a heavy-based non-stick pan over low heat to warm the pan.
With gloves on, scoop a ‘ball’ of dough onto your hand, enough to fit your hand that it doesn’t overflow. Using a motion as if you are wiping the dough onto the pan, press and spread the dough onto the warm pan in a circular motion until a thin layer forms a circle. Lift your hand, and in doing so, the uncooked extra dough will lift from the pan. (Note: If pan is too hot, the dough will not stick to the pan. Turn off the heat and let the pan cool off before spreading the dough on the pan again.)
Once a thin layer is formed on the pan, use the rest of the dough ball to dab on thicker parts of the popiah skin to lift unwanted bits of dough and to ‘thin’ parts of the popiah skin.
As the popiah skin cooks, the outer parts will curl up from the pan. Use your other hand to gently peel it off the pan set aside to cool on a cooling rack.
Repeat until all the dough is used. Makes about 25 popiah skins.
To Make Filling
Heat up 1 tbsp of canola in a pan medium heat. Add in the prawns and cook until they are cooked through. Remove the prawns from the pan and set aside.
Add the remaining oil in to the pan and heat over a medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic, and cook until soft.
Add in the jicama, oyster sauce, and sugar (optional), and toss evenly. Add water to the pan and turn the heat to low. Let it cook for 15 mins or until the jicama is soft.
Return the prawns to the pan. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Strain the jicama filling and set aside to cool.
Reserve the remaining sauce from the strained jicama filling.
To Assemble Popiah
Lay a sheet of popiah skin on a clean surface and put a piece of lettuce on top.
Spread the hoisin and chilli sauce onto the lettuce.
Scoop jicama filling with prawns, and any optional ingredients of your choice. Top with a teaspoon of fried shallots and gently fold the extra skin over to form a roll.
Serve whole or slice up rolls into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Serve with extra hoisin or chilli sauce on the side.
Note
Besides the must-have jicama filling in the popiah, there are not set rules to what you can add in the wrap. Pack your very own version of popiah with any meat or vegetables of your choice.
BBQ Sambal Fish (Ikan Bakar)
To Prep
Thoroughly clean the fish fillet and pat dry with a kitchen paper towel.
Place red chillies, shallots, belacan and lemongrass in a blender, add a little oil and blend to a fine paste.
To Cook
In a frying pan, heat 6 tbsp of cooking oil over medium heat and add sambal paste. Add salt, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice, and stir well.
Saute the sambal paste over medium-low heat for about 10 mins, then evenly spread the paste on both sides of the fish fillet, and place it on one of the banana leaves.
Place the second banana leaf on top of the fish fillets and use the bamboo skewers to pierce and weave in both ends of the banana leaves to hold them together.
Place the ikan bakar parcel on either a hot griddle or BBQ and grill for approximately 8-10 mins.
Place ikan bakar parcel on plate and carefully remove the top banana leaf. Squeeze lime over the fish and serve immediately.
Singapore Chilli Crab
To Prep
To prepare the crab, remove the top shell, and then remove the lungs using your hand. Use a small brush to gently scrub the crab to remove the mud on the shell and claws. Set aside in a bowl. By the time the crab is ready to be cooked, the ‘juice’ will seep out into the bowl. This ‘juice’ will be used to make the sauce.
To Cook
In a wok or a shallow saucepan, heat the oil over medium high heat.
Add garlic, ginger, and shallots and stir-fry for 1 min.
Add the preserved soya beans and chilli, and stir-fry till fragrant.
Add in spring onions, stir-fry for another minute
Add in the crabs and its liquid, and give it a quick stir before placing a lid on the wok or pan.
Leave crabs to steam and cook on medium high heat.
Combine all ingredients for Sauce, mix well and set aside.
Break the egg into a separate bowl, gently whisk to break the yolk and set aside.
When the crab is cooked (the crab shell will turn to bright orange when it is cooked), remove lid and give the crabs a stir again before adding the sauce.
As the sauce come to a boil, pour in the egg and stir to combine with the sauce and crabs.
Remove from heat and serve in a platter. Garnish with fresh coriander and serve with steamed mantou.
Vietnamese Crab Noodle Soup (Bun Rieu)
Broth
Add half of the water in to a pot and boil. Put the pork bones in to the pot and continue to boil for a few minutes before draining the water and washing the bones to remove any impurities.
Rinse the pot before returning the bones back in and adding the remaining water in to the pork bones pot. Bring the broth back to a boil before reducing to a simmer and cooking for an hour or longer.
Peel the shells off from the shrimps and separate the meat from the shells. Set the meat aside and put the shells in to the broth. When the broth begins to turn red from the prawn shells, remove them along with the pork bones.
Add in the remaining broth ingredients except for the tomatoes and stir well till all the soluble ingredients have dissolved. Bring the broth back up to a boil before finally adding in the tomatoes.
Meatballs
Put the saved meat from the peeled prawns as well as all of the meatball ingredients except for the crab meat into a food processor and blend them together until they have formed a paste.
When the paste has been made, add in the crab meat and hand mix the meat in to the paste until it is relatively evenly mixed in.
Cook the meatballs in the soup broth until they begin to float on the surface of the broth, which means that they have cooked through. Add in the fried tofu at this stage too.
To Serve
In a bowl, add in the noodles and add any of the toppings you want. Pour the broth over the noodles and place a few pieces of the tomatoes and meatballs. Finish with a lime wedge and serve!
Fish Fillet Rice Vermicelli
To Prep
Marinate the fish meat with white pepper, sesame oil, tapioca flour and salt for about 1 hour.
To Cook
In a heated pot with adequate cooking oil, deep fry fish fillets until golden brown. Drain and set aside.
In another stock pot, add 1-2 tbsp of oil, sesame oil and ginger slices, then sauté until fragrant. Add the anchovies, the white parts of spring onion, and for about 5 minutes until fragrant. Add chicken stock and bring to boil. Then let it simmer for half an hour.
Strain the soup into another pot to remove anchovies, ginger and spring onions. Bring soup to boil again then add tomatoes and salted vegetable. Continue boiling for another 10 mins.
Place a serve of noodles and choy sum into a bowl, ladle soup and top with fish. Garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves.
Note: If you’d wish to keep the fried fish fillets crispy for longer, serve them on a separate plate.
Pork and Prawn Wonton
To Prep
Put all ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix well with your hand.
Set up plate, wonton skin, filling tray, and a little bowl of water for wrapping the wontons. Dust plate and tray with a little plain flour so that the wonton will not stick.
To Cook
Prepare the soup by bringing the chicken broth to boil. Add salt, white pepper, and sesame oil to taste.
Start wrapping wontons by placing about 1 tsp of meat filling on a wonton wrapper. Dip finger into water and apply around the bottom edges (U shaped). Fold and seal the edges. Fold in half again length wise and pinch the ends together. Repeat until all meat filling is used up. To store for later use, freeze wontons on the tray.
Cook wonton in a boiling pot of water. After wonton is cooked, take it out and set aside in a bowl of room-temperature water to prevent the wontons from sticking to each other.
Transfer the wontons out with a strainer and into the soup and serve immediately.
Note: To improve the taste and texture of the wonton filling, buy pork mince that contains at least 30% fat. Mince with less fat will make the wonton’s texture harder and less juicy.
Japanese Dashi Stock (Awase Dashi)
To Cook
Combine water and kombu kelp in to a saucepan over medium heat. When the water almost boil, remove the kombu.
Add the bonito flakes to the pot and bring to boil. Lower the heat to simmer for a further 30 secs.
Turn off the heat and set aside for 10 mins.
Strain the broth through a fine strainer to remove the bonito flakes. Refrigerate to use later.
Tom Yum Fried Rice (Khao Pad Tom Yum)
To Make the Sauce
Pound lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, and chillies until fine. Add in the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar and lime juice. Alternatively, blend all ingredients in a blender.
To Make Thai-style Fried Egg:
In a wok or small frypan, heat about 1cm of oil to very hot over medium high heat, before smoking.
Crack egg into the oil, then reduce the heat to medium. The egg white would bubble immediately if the oil is hot enough. Fry the egg for about 1.5 mins or until the edges are browned. For non-runny yolk, reduce heat to medium low after adding the egg. If the egg sticks to the pan, gently nudge it with a thin spatula after frying for 1 min for the bottom of the yolk to get firm. Keep the oil for later.
To Make the Fried Rice
Coat a wok with the oil from fried egg, heat over medium high until hot. Sear the prawns until browned on each side and cooked. Remove and set aside.
Add a little oil to the work and saute onion until translucent. Add the Chinese broccoli and toss slightly until the leaves turn bright green, then the rice and toss until most lumps are loosened.
Add the sauce over the rice and toss until they are evenly coated by the sauce and dry.
Remove from heat and stir in green onions. Serve with fried egg, prawns and cucumber. Garnish with spring onion, coriander, chillies and lime.