Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Phat Si Ew


(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

This is the second awesome recipe we tried from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok. This time, we cooked together, which was not only a hoot and a holler, but made the fast pace of the cooking a lot easier. I was kind of amazed at what we produced from this recipe. I don't know what I was expecting, but it looked like the Phat (which I usually see as "Pad") Si Ew you get in restaurants, and tasted…well, better! This is truly not a difficult recipe, and it's fun to make and delicious to eat. You'll need a wok, and if you have it, a wok spatula, which is kind of square-ish and slightly turned up at the sides. Ikea sells one for like $4. A mortar and pestle is also good to have (Ikea has a cheap one of those, too - $15!).

Probably the trickiest part was making the fried-garlic oil, just because you have to cut up so much garlic. You could also make a fried-shallot oil - you only need three shallots, sliced very thinly, and you follow the same process, except they cook a little longer - looks more like 10-20 minutes to get them crispy and golden brown.

His recipe calls for a few things to enhance the dish for serving, most of which are recipes in the book as well - fish sauce-soaked chiles, vinegar-soaked chiles, toasted-chile powder, and sugar. We didn't take the time to make and add these, but I bet they'd be delicious if you had them.

I was thrown off at first by how Ricker's recipes are organized. He breaks the recipe into sections - in this case, separating the ingredients and steps for pork and noodles; some ingredients then get repeated in both sections. But actually, this helps to break the recipe down and understand it better.

Finally, he recommends making this in single-serving batches. We cheated and made two batches at once, but the recipe below is to serve one. Just go ahead and double it - cooking two at once was fine.

Things go pretty fast once you start cooking, so having everything prepped, and having a helper, are great.

We started by making the fried garlic oil:
15 cloves peeled garlic, cut into about 1/8 inch pieces
1 cups vegetable oil

Set a fine-mesh strainer over a heatproof bowl.

Pour the oil into a small pan (oil should be about 3/4 inch deep). Put the pan over high heat and heat until a piece of garlic bubbles right away when added to the oil. Add all the garlic, and turn the heat down immediately to low. Stir once or twice.

Cook, stirring, until the garlic is light golden brown and crisp. It should take about 4-6 minutes. Don't rush it.

Pour the pan's contents through the strainer. Done! The oil keeps for about 2 weeks in an airtight container, and you can also save the garlic (not in the fridge) for up to two days.

And for the main event:
PORK
1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1 small clove peeled garlic, crushed into small pieces in a mortar
4 oz boneless pork loin or lean shoulder, thinly sliced against the grain into bite-size strips (about 1/8 inch thick)
1/2 tsp Thai fish sauce
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

NOODLES
6 oz fresh wide, flat rice noodles (you will buy these pre-cooked; we found ours in sheets and then cut them up)
1 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
1 tsp Thai black soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
Small pinch ground white pepper
1 tbsp fried-garlic oil (see above)
1 large egg, room temp
1 tbsp crushed garlic (in mortar)
2 oz baby Chinese broccoli, stems trimmed to 1or 2 inches and clusters separated (or regular Chinese broccoli, leaves coarsely chopped and stems thinly sliced)

Cook the Pork
Heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl it around the wok, coating the sides. It should start to smoke just lightly - take it off the heat and add the garlic. Let the garlic sizzle, stirring a little, until it's fragrant but still white (about 15 seconds).

Wok goes back on the heat. Add the pork, stir well. Add the fish sauce, sugar, and stir and scoop and flip until the cork is just cooked through. Transfer the pork into a bowl.

Prep the Noodles
Separate the noodles. Put them in a bowl and pop them in the microwave for about a minute.

Cook and Finish
In a small bowl, combine the thin and black soy sauces, sugar, and pepper, and stir well.

Heat the wok over very high heat again. Add the garlic oil, swirl it around the wok to coat the sides. The oil will start to smoke lightly again - at this point, crack in the egg. It should spit and sizzle. Don't touch it until the egg starts to turn light golden brown around the edges. Then, flip the egg, not worrying if the yolk breaks. Push it to one side of the wok.

Add the noodles and cook about 15 seconds, prodding them so they don't clump together. Add the garlic and cook another 15 seconds, stirring to mix and break up the noodles and egg a bit. Add the broccoli and stir, scoop, and flip, until the leaves just start to wilt, about another 15-30 seconds.

Last, add the pork and the soy sauce mixture (you can put a splash of water in the bowl that held the mixture, and swirl it around and add to the stir fry to get all the sauce out). Stir, scoop, and flip, letting the egg break up, and mixing everything together to absorb all the flavors, about another minute or so.

And you're done!


Sunday, January 5, 2014

Thai-Style Pork Ribs (Sii Khrong Muu Yaang)




(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

My family knows me well, and I got about five new cookbooks for Christmas this year, all of them awesome. One is Pok Pok, a Thai cookbook that at first completely intimidated me. I tend to feel more comfortable with recipes with limited, easily-recognized ingredients. But where's the fun in that? I think this cookbook might be turning me around. It is really fantastic, different, fun. We've made two dishes from this book in the past week, and they've both been incredible, and not really that complicated when it comes down to it.

Now, in fairness, Joef made these ribs. 100%. I didn't even really help. I just enjoyed the amazingly delicious result. He marinated the ribs the day before, and then grilled them the next day for about two hours. Yes, that's a lot of prep; yes, it's absolutely worth it.

Ideally, you'd grill these over a charcoal fire. All we had to work with was a gas grill, and they still came out great. If you can't find some of the ingredients, you could probably do regular soy sauce (vs. "thin"), although it is a little different, use medium-dry sherry for the Shaoxing wine, use regular black pepper, etc. But if you can find the right ingredients, so much the better.

So, here's Andy Ricker's fantastic recipe for about 20 "riblets" (drool):

6 tbsp honey
2 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
1 tbsp finely grated ginger
1/2 tsp Asian sesame oil (try to find brands that are 100% sesame oil)
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1/8 tsp ground Ceylon or Mexican cinnamon
Pinch grated nutmeg
2 lbs pork spareribs, cut lengthwise across the bone into 2-inch-wide racks (ask your butcher to do this for you)
2 tbsp hot water

Start by marinating the ribs for at least two hours, and as long as overnight. Whisk 2 tbsp of the money with the soy sauce, wine, ginger, sesame oil, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg together until the honey dissolves. Put the ribs in a large Ziploc bag, pour in the marinade, get the air out, and seal it up. Put it in the fridge.

Once the ribs have marinated, you're ready to grill. Prep a baste - stir the remaining 4 tbsp honey with the 2 tbsp hot water until the honey dissolves, and set aside.

Prep your grill to cook at 200-250 degrees. Ideally, you want to cook your ribs over indirect heat. If you're using charcoal, push the coals to one side of the grill and shape them into a mound. Place the ribs, meat side up, to the part of the grill opposite the charcoal. If possible, rotate the grill top so that the open vents are directly over the ribs. Cover the grill.

Slow-cook the ribs for 2-2.25 hours, flipping them occasionally and rotating them 180 degrees when flipped. You might need to add more charcoal to maintain the temp. They should end up a mahogany color, crisp, with slightly charred edges. In the last 30-45 minutes of cooking or so, you can start brushing the ribs with the honey mixture every 10 minutes or so.

When they're ready, take them off the grill, let them sit for about 5 minutes, and slice them into individual ribs. Devour!

(You can oven-bake these, too. Preheat the oven to 250. Put the ribs on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 2 hours, rotating the sheet a couple times. Increase the heat to 300 degrees, and brush with honey every 10 minutes, about 30-60 minutes more.)