Authentic Thai Recipes: Pad Thai, Pad Siew Ew, Green Curry

What up guys, it's Mike Chen. I am in Bangkok, Thailand and this is gonna be really really cool. I've always loved Thai dishes and I tried making one, particularly pad thai. I tried making pad thai, but what I cooked came out so disgusting. What little I ate turned me off of pad thai for nearly a month. And that's why I'm so excited to be at the Novotel Bangkok Silom at the Square Restaurant where their chef is gonna teach me how to make pad thai. This is just crazy exciting and hopefully this time my pad thai will turn out a lot better than the train wreck that was last time. Alright, let's head over to the kitchen, little mini kitchen. With all the ingredients already prepped up, so excited about this, let's meet our chef. This is Ap. How you doing? Ap's been cooking for over 10 years, specializing in pad thai. You know, we have a communication thing because Ap doesn't speak English, I don't speak Thai obviously, but we're gonna communicate through the common language of food today. Let me tell you guys a little bit about the ingredients here. Bean sprouts, noodles, preserved cabbage, eggs, scallions, dried shrimp, shallots, dried peanuts, tofu. This is really interesting, it looks like cheese. And then this is the pad thai sauce. It's a combination of tamarind sauce, palm sugar, and salt. One more thing, we are cooking today with river prawns. This is a specialty of Thailand, cooked pad thai with river prawns. And I think they're gonna be a little less briny than prawns from the ocean. This is all stuff that Ap has told me and I'm just repeating it to you guys. I didn't know all this before. Alright Ap, I think I'm ready to get started. We're gonna start with the sauce. Tamarind sauce is going into the pan. Then the palm sugar, salt. Stir it until it all melts. And then let it sit for one hour and it will turn into that. Okay, got it. Alright, I'm gonna pour out my sauce. This is gonna sit somewhere for an hour because we are cooking right away. We do have a pre-made sauce here. Looks like three teaspoons of oil. More oil, more. Okay, let's do it. Tofu goes in first? Did not know that. So far, so good. I'm still matching this guy step by step. So a little charred on the outside and we're gonna turn down our heat to low again and our shallots are gonna go in. Dried shrimp, pickled cabbage. It's starting to smell good. Must be doing something right. I mean, I'm following this guy so can't mess up that much. Crack an egg into a bowl and that's where we get the egg scramble in the pad thai. That's where that comes from. And my egg is just getting mixed in with the shallots and tofu and dried shrimp. Now the noodle? Noodle goes in. And these noodles were already soaked in hot water so they're soft. Before obviously they weren't. The sauce we made before. Sauce is really thick. Turn the heat on low and we're gonna stir fry the sauce into the noodles. It smells amazing now. Couple scallions, a couple sprouts. We're gonna add more sauce. I think in total we added about almost half a cup. Now I can see the color changed to more like a pad thai consistency. So this is done. It seems so easy. What happened when I did it? You know what? I'll tell you right now. I did not have palm sugar. That's why. So we add some sprouts. This is my worst part because I'm not very artistic. Little lime. Some leeks. Leeks! Interesting. And banana flower. What are we doing with the- We're peeling the banana flower. I've been doing something origami-esque with this banana flower and I'm lost. I need a new banana flower. Let's go on. Our cooked river prawns. Oh these are massive. We have sugar, chili pepper, vinegar and red pepper and fish sauce. These are the condiments. So after you're done, we can adjust, you know, this to whatever your taste buds are. This is Ab's pad thai. This is Mike's pad thai. I want to add chilies. You think this- Oh. That's ridiculously good. You see- You see the whole thing? Oh. Kind of citrusy. It feels weird on my tongue. It's like numbing my tongue a little bit. Really? Whoa. Who would have thought? Leeks go really well with this pad thai. This guy definitely knows his pad thai. That was an amazing experience. Thank you. Today, I'm cooking with this group called Cooking With Poo. And first thing we're going to do, I'm in a van and we're going to go and shop at a fresh market for ingredients. Oh my goodness. Do you see the water bottle? Do you see my hand? Fresh spring rolls right here. We're going now to the kitchen. Good morning. Thank you for your help. No problem. I saw the instructions. I think I remember. We're going to mash the garlic first. Not too much. Not good with a knife. I'm going to slice up the carrots. A little baby corn. Garlic goes in. My chicken goes in. Stir that with black garlic. A little soy bean paste goes in. Now we're going to crack the egg in. After you just cook that for like 20 seconds or so, everything goes in. All your vegetables. Noodle goes in. Black soy sauce. Just a little bit. And that's mainly for color. A little light soy sauce. A little bit of sugar. Hello. Welcome. Pass to you. There you go. My first pass to you. I feel like there's a little too much soy sauce in here. I don't know. But I'm going to add a little vinegar and of course some chili. I'm going to taste this first. Some parts have more soy sauce on them than others, so I think I messed up a little bit. That's not bad. Definitely not as good as the restaurant I went to, but still not too bad. Cut up my onions. Not too small. Just a couple cuts. Spring onions, also not too small. These are the best mushrooms in Thailand. And I had these a lot in Tom Yum soup. First thing we're going to put in, white onions. Already smells really good. Beef goes in. A little sesame oil for flavor. Mushroom goes in. A little bit of water until you taste the soy sauce. Finally the spring onion goes in. A little oyster sauce. Declaved with a little bit of water. Beef with cashews. Mushrooms. Looks really saucy. Yeah, I feel like it needs some rice, but... I definitely overcooked the beef. These mushrooms are fantastic. You got the nice crunch of the cashews. It's really saucy. This would be really good over rice, but there's no rice. Overall, not too bad. I call this a moderate success. I'm going to pound some chili for our next dish, which is green curry. And you can't be gentle with these things. You gotta just... You gotta kill it. Start out with some eggplants. Basil. This is sweet basil. It's not holy basil. And we're going to just pluck off the leaves here. This is a lime leaf. Smells really citrusy. And then what you're going to do is you're going to fold it in half. Just pull the stem out. Lime leaf. I'm going to cut up our little eggplant. It's like the hobbit version of eggplant. Cut off the stem. I'm hoping I can remember all the steps correctly. Cut this in half. Oh, that smells good. It's all coconutty and spicy smelling. It's delicious. I think we cooked this for like 20 seconds or so. And the chicken goes in. I always wonder where the green curry color comes from. And the color... The color is all from the green peppers. We're adding a half a cup of coconut milk more. Eggplant goes in. Then half a cup of water. Adding one tablespoon of fish sauce. I'm just kidding. I would never do that. That would be crazy. And then one teaspoon of sugar. Now we're just going to simmer this and thicken it. Yummy. I think we definitely need more spice. We're going to add a big dose of chili. That's really creamy and coconutty right now. But I do feel like it needs a little more fish sauce. I love the color. Yeah, I love the color, right? It's greener because I put more chili in here. Beautiful. After you simmer it a little more, all the flavor is in there. Now, Thai basil goes in. There is my green curry with some rice. I really didn't know that the green of the green curry came from the green chilies. I had no idea. And look how green this thing is. I mean, I think it shows up a little more yellow on camera. But this is almost like Ninja Turtle green. Just try this on its own. This is my favorite dish of the day so far. Let's taste some rice. Wow. I put more chili here than I think anybody. But still, I don't think it's all that spicy. Here's some eggplant and chicken. I think I did a good job with this. Again, I can't really take credit. I do feel the eggplant could have been cooked a lot longer. So the more flavor would soak in. Right now it's just kind of crunchy almost. So I think what I would have done different with this was that I would have cooked it longer. Let the eggplant soak up more. Get more flavor in there. Also, I wish I added even more fish sauce to this. But overall, like I said, my favorite recipe of the day. And also my most surprising recipe of the day. I really didn't know this was how green curry was made. The process. And I didn't know how relatively simple the whole thing was. Finally, dessert. Of course, mango sticky rice, coconut milk. And you guys remember the little wrappy things? I saw them making so effortlessly in the morning in the market. That's these guys right here. And I think there's some kind of sweet substance inside this. They're strands of sugar. Look how light and almost translucent these little wraps are. And they make them so quickly. Seemingly so easily. It's fantastic. All the recipes they taught me today, they gave to me. So I'm gonna post these in the description box. So give them a try and let me know how you like it. This was a really fun cooking and eating experience. You know, with poop. Alright guys, thank you all so much for watching. And until we eat again, I'll see you later.