Homemade Iconic Thai Dishes I Make Time & Again | Marion's Kitchen

This is one of Thailand's most revered street foods. Bang! Fresh spicy basil, so good. I love the balance of the flavors. It's sweet but it's also tangy. This is probably one of the first curry pastes my mom ever taught me to make and it's still one of my favorites. Oh yum. Today we're going to be making Yentafo. You make everything sound Italian, Dad. So a Thai green curry. In its many forms can be many different things but at its very essence it starts with like the most amazing fresh produce. The chilies, the galangal, the spices, the herbs. So I've come down to the market here so we can take a look at some of those ingredients. Typically most Thai people, even my mom, doesn't make her own Thai curry paste, you know, all the time. And the great thing about living in Bangkok is that you have these markets where you can actually come and buy beautifully made fresh curry paste from the market. But we're going to make our own today. So as much as I'd love to cheat and just buy this beautiful curry paste, we're going to get all the ingredients and make our own from scratch. The curry paste is the most important thing that we're going to make in this video so let's start with that. I like to go with two types of green chili here. One is always for colour, the other is for the heat. Colour and heat, that's what we want. I'm in Thailand so I have here my two Thai chilies. So I have some large green chilies here. These ones are more mild and I use them for colour. And then I have these smaller green chilies. These ones are actually very spicy. Chop those up, add those into your mortar along with some salt. That helps to break everything down a little bit. And we're going to go ingredient by ingredient. So next up is the lemongrass. To prepare that lemongrass, you're going to get home from the market or the supermarket with something that looks like this. Now you need to just trim it up a little bit here. So have a look at the end. This part is also a bit hard and woody so I chopped that off. These pieces are really great to make tom yum soup or something like that. And they freeze really well so don't waste them. And then peel off the outer layers which are also very tough. Now this part here, just take your knife and bruise it. And then finely slice the centre. Now that can go into your mortar and pound that through as well. Now let's talk about galangal. Because a lot of people and a lot of recipes and videos tell you that you can substitute ginger for galangal. I'm saying that you can't. Sorry. For me, they're completely different things. I mean they even look different. Have a look here. This is galangal. This is ginger. The ginger is very earthy. The galangal has a very citrusy pine forest kind of flavour. So try and get the galangal if you can. When you do happen to find galangal, it freezes really well. Even if you don't want to make curry paste straight away, keep it in your freezer for when you do. To prepare it, just peel off the skin, finely chop it and then pop it into your mortar. Now because I'm in Bangkok and I can take advantage of going to the market and getting all the amazing ingredients, I am using this. This is the magroot lime. You're probably very familiar with magroot lime leaves. That's these guys here. This is the actual fruit from that tree. This peel is really fragrant and very zesty and limey. So I like to kind of thinly slice it off. Try not to get too much of that white pith in there. And then finely chop that. You also need to pound in some shallots and some garlic. And by now, your whole kitchen should be smelling like a beautiful Thai fresh market. This is the kind of situation that you're looking for in your mortar here. Just have a couple more things I need to add here. So here are my dried spices. So I just toasted off some coriander seeds and some cumin seeds and I ground that up in my mortar earlier. Spices go in and then also some shrimp paste. Now this little packet here, I actually put the shrimp paste into the foil and then dry roasted it in my wok until I could smell that like shrimpy shrimp paste kind of flavour. You know what I mean? Okay, so open that up, pop that in, stir that through. And that my friends is your homemade Thai green curry paste. So I know it's not as smooth and fine textured as your store-bought one or the one from the market. But actually, I think that's pretty cool because you want people to know that you went to the trouble of making your curry paste if you are going to do it. So a little bit rougher I think is okay here. Round of applause, please. Thank you. Next up, let's do the curry. And now the technique for frying your paste here is a little bit different to if you're using a jarred curry paste. So if your curry paste comes from a jar, it's most likely already been heated. So it doesn't need to fry as long. Hear that sizzle? That's what I want here in the wok. And I need to give this curry paste time for all those raw fragrant ingredients like the garlic, the shallots to really kind of soften down and mellow out. So turn the heat down, about medium. Just let all of this sizzling happen for about five minutes. So to compare, if you were using a jarred curry paste, you would probably only do this for about a minute. Now an interesting thing that I learned at the market from the curry paste lady was actually that a lot of locals add in a little bit of red curry paste into their green curry paste when they're making their green curries at home. Now that's all really great when you're buying the curry paste from the lady at the market, but I'm not going to make a whole red curry just so I can put some red curry paste in my green curry paste. So thank you market lady, but I will not be taking your advice. But what I will be doing is doing what I always do and what my mom does and that is adding in some dried red chillies into the mix here. It will make things a little spicier, so it's up to you, but I like the extra heat in my green curry. Now I'm going to add a little bit of coconut milk and at this point you're probably thinking, wow, that green curry looks really pale and insipid. But don't worry, trust me, it will all develop as we go. Then once that's mixed through, now I add the rest of my coconut milk. One of the big differences between say an Indian curry and a Thai curry, I think, is the thickness. So a Thai curry often has the thickness of say like a lighter soup kind of texture rather than a really thick, heavy, creamy curry. What you need to do is add in a little bit of water to get the right texture. And then also some magroot lime leaves. Just crush those up in your hands before you put them in, release all that flavour. And then I'm going to put in my chicken thigh fillets. Of course I'm using thighs, you guys know I'm a legs and thighs girl and actually this takes quite a while to simmer and I want to keep my chicken really nice and juicy. So much better to use thighs than breasts here. Add in some palm sugar and some fish sauce. For my vegetables, I'm going to go really traditional here and I'm using apple eggplants and pea eggplant. So the apple eggplant is this one here. They have a slight bit of flavour but you just want to cut off the tops and quarter them and then put them in some salt water and that kind of takes a little bit of the bitterness away. Once they've soaked for about 15 minutes or so, then you can put them into your curry. So I'm just going to turn the heat down low for around about 15 minutes. So now you can see the curry started to change colour a little bit. I'm going to add in my pea eggplants. This is another very traditional Thai vegetable to add in here. They're actually a little bit bitter and I love it. The curry is like a little bit sweet and spicy then you have like the bitter eggplant. It's really nice. I like to add bamboo shoots as well but you know, if you wanted to here you could do zucchini or any other kind of vegetable that you like. Now just let that simmer away for another 10 to 15 minutes or until your apple eggplant is really lovely and soft. And the colour! Look at how it's developed as it's simmered down. Oh so beautiful. Okay now, final bits and pieces. I'm going to add in some Thai basil here at the end and quite a bit of it because it really adds a beautiful fragrance. And that my friends is the way that I make Thai green curry from scratch. This is probably one of the first curry pastes my mum ever taught me to make and it's still one of my favourites now. And I hope you enjoy and love this curry just as much as I do. Let me show you how I would get stuck into it if I was you. Pop that onto my rice. So good. Always, always just the best. I love this so much. Bang! Fresh spicy basil. So good. Bank is literally laughing at me. Do I have to add this? Deep breath. It's not fine. I think even for me this is too much. Call the ambulance. Pad Kra Pao has to be one of Thailand's most like well-loved dishes. I know for me whenever I touch down in Bangkok after being away it's like one of the first things I want to eat. Why? Because it's spicy and like strong and pungent and it has a beautiful basil by Kra Pao which is what it's named after. It's a type of like spicy basil and it's like very hard to get outside of Thailand. So this is very special. Now I'm here at Master Kra Pao which is a great name for a shop by the way because I want to try out three different types. First of all I have sort of like your regular you know everyday pad kra pao. This one is a pork pad kra pao and I've asked them just to make it a little less spicy. So not as spicy as usual. This one is a very fancy pad kra pao made with 45 day aged beef. I've asked this one to be like just a regular kind of spicy. This one I'm a little bit scared about. This is the Carolina Reaper version. I am a little terrified of that one but we'll get to that one later on. I want to try the pork one first of all. Now if you want to eat pad kra pao like a local you need to grab what's called prik nam pla which is basically fish sauce, extra chilies. Even though this is jam-packed full of chilies you always add the extra chili fish sauce and this usually has a little bit of lime in there as well. Sometimes some garlic. Differs from place to place. If you have a sensitive stomach, you don't like spicy food probably time to look away right now. This restaurant is also really special because they do fried duck eggs. A little bit more fancy than your regular chicken egg. I feel like there's already a lot of chili on my spoon and this is like the non-spicy version. Okay so they've used lots of basil here. Immediately my palate is like bang! Fresh spicy basil, so good. And then the aftertaste is just pure chili spice and I mean this is the non-spicy level. I think you can always tell a good kopao by like you want it to be spicy but still salty and have that balance of flavor against that flavor from the wok the flavor from the herbs. But I gotta say if you're expecting that not to be spicy, way off. It's a good start though. Next up we have the fancy beef on the fancy plate. I love that. Typically you would never get like such a fancy pad kopao. Usually it's made with just regular old like minced pork or minced beef. So I'm really interested to see what the dry-aged fancy beef will bring to the situation. This is the standard hot one. Just want to try this on its own. So I want to see if the beef makes a difference to the flavor. Yeah typically when I eat a pad kopao that's made with beef I don't really, you don't taste a lot of the beef flavor because the chilies and the herbs take over so much. But actually with this one when I finish kind of chewing I'm left with this really great beefy flavor. They sort of haven't minced it as finely as a regular ground beef. So you're getting like some really good like dry-aged steak flavors in there. I like it. I would definitely pay more to just have that little bit of extra like beefy flavor. And yep it's getting hotter. So now Bank is literally laughing at me. He's behind the camera and he's laughing. Look at him. Yeah he's laughing but I haven't even eaten and he's laughing. Do you know I'm gonna make you eat this after Bank. We'll see if you're laughing then huh? We'll see if you're laughing. Yep you'll be fine. Okay he's so tough. Okay do I have to add this? Yeah? Apparently you're not a local unless you add the extra. Okay I think even the people in the kitchen are waiting for me to try it. Okay I'm just gonna go right in there. Big mouthful. Can you see the chili on here? Look at the chili on here. Chili. Chili's everywhere. Deep breath. It is it's it's fine. It's not fine. Oh my goodness. It really hits you in the back and then it just it just stays there. It just like it doesn't go away. It's still going. It's like it engulfs your entire tongue. I think even for me this is too much. This is like competition eating food. Like you eat this like to have a competition with your friends. I'm gonna try one more. I just want to see if I can get a bit more flavor from like what's in the actual stir fry. Not just the chili. Bet my mouth's getting used to it now. I can still taste the herbs but man that's hot. Whoa. I think all of these are really great examples of pad kra pao. Very different. Like for me the pad kra pao more which is the first one. Probably most the most traditional. The most you know well known that I would have eaten growing up and coming coming to Bangkok. The dry age was lovely. This one is like only only if you love chili. So I am going to make for you my version that I make at home. And it won't be as spicy as this one I promise. Bank I'm saving this to you. I can't eat anymore. Cut cut. Making a really good pad kra pao comes down to two very simple things. The herbs and the chilies. So first of all I'm going to do the chilies. These ones are called pritinda which are like the medium hot ones. And these ones here are prikinu and they are the really hot ones. What we need to do now is pop those chilies into my pestle. Add some garlic. Give that a crush. Actually loosens the skin so you can easily peel them. The Asian mum tricks. They always work. I'm just going to give this a really rough pounding. So this is the kind of situation that you're looking for here. I want kind of like big chunks of chili in there. I do want lots of that chili in there. I want to be able to see the chili in the finished kra pao dish. So that one's good to go. The other thing we really need to talk about here is the basil. The dish is called pad kra pao which means you want to be trying to use kra pao. Which is this basil here. So I've got all the basil's here so I can show you. This one here is Thai basil and that has that purple stem. It's the kind of flavour that reminds me of like Thai green curries and noodle soups. We use Thai basil a lot for that kind of dish. In the middle, we have good old Italian basil. So you guys should be familiar with this. The leaves are quite dark, quite big. You can see the stems are green. And then over here, we have the star of the show for today's episode. Which is pad kra pao. Also known as holy basil or spicy basil. So if you have a look here, the leaves themselves have a bit more of a jagged edge compared to the other basil's. We use this basil in this stir-fry because it enhances the spicy flavour of the dish and the spicy chillies and everything. If you can't get a hold of pad kra pao, please do use the Thai basil. I don't want you to miss out on a great dish. But you know, try and search it out if you can. I've actually found that growing it is the easiest way because it's a bit hard to find outside of Thailand. Now before we get to using our pad kra pao and making our actual spicy stir-fry. First of all, we need to make prik nam pla. To make a very simple prik nam pla, start off with some finely chopped chillies. Add some finely sliced garlic. A little bit of lime here is great. And then pour over some fish sauce and there you go. A really lovely prik nam pla. For the stir-fry sauce, you just want to mix together some oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar and a little bit of black pepper. For my fried egg, I just heat up some vegetable oil. And when it's hot, crack in an egg. When I get that really lovely deep crispy edge to my egg, I take it out and just drain it on some paper towel. Just before you start cooking here, a word of warning. Because the chillies are spicy when they hit the oil, there's going to be a lot of fumes. So open up the windows maybe. Take any small children out of the room. Be prepared is all I'm saying. I have some oil left over from when I was doing my crispy egg. It's about 2 tablespoons or so. Chilli garlic. Oh, that smell! Add in the minced pork. Give that a stir-fry. I do quite like to add some extra scud chillies in at the stir-fry stage. So I'm going to add in another little handful of these guys. That's optional. It's optional. And then once the pork is almost cooked through, then you can add in your sauce. I like to drizzle it around the side of the wok. That means the sauce starts to caramelise and bubble straight away. And I think that gives you the best flavour. Mix all of that through and then add in your basil. Loads of basil here. The basil should be such a big flavour in this dish. So make sure you don't skimp on the basil. Starting to get right in there. It's the only way you know you're doing it right. Toss all of that through till the basil is wilted. And there you go, my friends. That is your Pad Kra Pao ready to serve. Add that to my plate of rice here. Crispy egg. And that, my friends, is a very, very sexy plate of Pad Kra Pao. If I do say so myself. And I just did. I love it. It just looks so spicy and yum and delicious. Of course, it wouldn't be complete without our prik nam pla. I'm going to get a little more of my chilli on the top here. Let's break that egg open because I mean, you can't finish a video without some egg yolk porn, right? Second it hits, it's like, whoa, spicy. So herbaceous, salty, porky. So good. The Carolina Reaper was way too hot in my opinion. This is just the right kind of spicy. It just keeps going like it won't stop. I think it's getting worse. It's getting worse. No, I'm not okay. Call the ambulance. This is one of the ultimate. I love the balance of the flavours. It's sweet, but it's also tangy. It's a little kick of chilli powder in there as well. Prawn Pad Thai at its very best. Guys, this is the version that I want to show you how to make. So let's make proper Pad Thai. So good. So back here in the kitchen, what do we need to do to nail the perfect Pad Thai? Well, there's three things in my opinion. One, the noodles. Two, the sauce. And three, the cooking technique. Let's get started. Okay, so we're going to pretend that you and I are out shopping together in an Asian grocery store and I'm going to run you through all of the ingredients we need to make a very traditional style of Pad Thai. Now you guys know I'm not always traditional about things and I will be giving you some substitutes for ingredients that I think might be a bit difficult for you to find. But first of all, let's just start off with something very simple, the noodles. So if you're here in Bangkok, you're most likely going to see this type of noodle being used in a street cart or in a restaurant. This is a fresh type of rice stick noodle, which is widely available here. It's ready to go, throw it straight in the pan and it will start to soften and absorb the sauce. But if you're outside of Thailand, you're most likely not going to get that type of noodle. This is the type of noodle you're going to get, which is a dried rice stick noodle. There's nothing wrong with the dried noodles. It just takes a little bit of technique to get the perfect springy texture. So to do that, what I like to do to start with is soak the noodles in room temperature water for 30 minutes. If after the 30 minutes your noodles look like this, very pliable, you can see they're really nice and loose, then this is the type of noodle that you can actually try to do the technique where you throw it into the pan and stir fry and absorb the noodle sauce. That's going to give you a really good pad thai noodle. If your noodles look more like this after soaking, as in they're still a little firm and stiff, then I think you need to do the backup technique. Now you've seen this technique in a lot of my videos where I soak the noodle first and then do a really quick boil, like one to two minutes before I stir fry. The soaking is still important because it does help with a better texture, but this kind of like thicker noodle, which hasn't softened after soaking, that's not going to cook in the pan. So you can either go two ways here. You can go the street food way if your noodles will allow it, or if you want to give yourself a little bit of a safety barrier and you're not quite sure if you've got the right noodles, then I would do the boil method. Up to you. Either way, you're going to have a great pad thai, trust me. This one here is tamarind in its rawest form, so straight out of the pod. This one is one that I made earlier, and this one is probably your most convenient. So it is concentrated tamarind paste. Sometimes it's called tamarind puree, tamarind concentrate, but if you want to make it from scratch, let me show you. So your raw tamarind goes into a bowl. Just need some warm water. Squish it around, and you're basically just loosening all of the tamarind pulp that's stuck to the seeds and twiggy bits. And if I keep squeezing, we're left with this thick tamarind puree. Let's take some of those seeds out. So here we have the tamarind puree made from scratch. And to be honest, I'm typically using the ready-made jar or bottle because it's just a bit easier. But if you want to go the whole way, feel free to. You know how to do it now. Another ingredient that is really great if you can get a hold of it for a traditional pad thai is garlic chives or Chinese chives. They almost look like spring onions, but they do have a more garlicky kind of flavour. Hence the name garlic chives, I suppose. If you can't get a hold of these, you can use spring onion. I do often do that when I'm at home in Australia. But these are great if you can get a hold of them at your Asian grocery store. And the Asian grocery store ingredients continue here with pickled radish. Thai pickled radish sometimes comes in bags like this or in like sort of jars or plastic tubs. Tangy, salty, pickled flavour. Oh, I like that really sour flavour. Like pickled flavour, which is really great. If you can't get a hold of this though, what can you substitute? Nothing, really. For me, it's like really essential for a traditional pad thai. I find that it's widely available in a lot of Asian grocery stores or you can search it out online. So Thai pickled radish. So we're not finished yet. I've got palm sugar here as well, which can come in this soft form or in a rock form. And I also have my red Asian shallots. Now in Australia, I often find these difficult to find. So I will use a French shallot or red onion. Both really good substitutes here. Okay, so you've done the shopping. We're ready to go. Let's make the sauce. Now I'm going really old school here. I'm going to use pork lard. Yes, pork fat to start off my sauce. This gives it a lot of depth of flavour and savouriness. You could just use a little bit of oil if you would like also. When your saucepan is hot, add in your shallots and the dried shrimp. Now dried shrimp can vary from this very fine, thin sort of style dried shrimp to a very thick dried shrimp. If your dried shrimp is really thick, then you might need to soak those and chop them up before you add them in. Just have a look at what you're getting when you go to your Asian grocery store. Now you want to sizzle your ingredients here for like 3 or 4 minutes or so, just until the onion is soft and sweet but not burnt or going too brown. Once that's happened, then you can add in your palm sugar, your tamarind, fish sauce, a little bit of extra white sugar here for some sweetness. Stir everything together and then turn the heat down and let it gently bubble away until that sugar has dissolved and your sauce is beautifully glossy. So this is what your sauce should look like. You will probably have more sauce than you need for this one recipe which serves 2. But I mean you can keep it in the fridge for up to a week and who doesn't want pad thai twice in one week? Alright, let's get started. Now we're ready to actually stir fry. So I'm going to add some pork lard. Again, I'm using the traditional pork fat here into a hot wok and then I can add in my prawns. You could do chicken here as well if you want to. Just toss them around until they're sort of almost cooked. Then I'm going to throw in my tofu and give that a stir fry until the tofu is starting to turn just a little bit golden. And now let's do the eggs. So push everything to the side of the wok. Just whisk your eggs lightly and then a little bit more fatter oil on the side of the wok. Pour the eggs in, swirl them around and just kind of push them so that they make a nice, flat, thin omelette on the base of your wok. Once that omelette has settled and kind of cooked for a minute or two, then you can break it up with your spatula and then in goes my pickled radish. The all-important pickled radish that gives you that really authentic, tangy pad thai flavour. Keep stir frying that just for another half a minute or so and mix it through the rest of the ingredients. So now we're here with the noodles. So I'm going to take my noodles straight out of the water and toss them straight into my wok. I'm going to get some sauce in here and then a little bit of water around the side of the wok. That's going to help the noodles cook through. Now you just keep tossing and swirling your noodles around until they're beautifully tender. A few more fresh chives here so I get that nice, fresh garlic chive flavour. Toss all of that around, a few bean shoots as well and then your pad thai should be looking gloriously beautiful just like this. Now we're almost there. There is some final plating bits and pieces that happen right at the end here. Bean shoots, some extra bits, some garlic chives and roasted peanuts. A little sprinkling of chilli powder so you can mix that into your heart's content and a wedge of lime. So there you go friends, a very traditional recipe for pad thai. It's not the only recipe but it is one that is quite traditional in terms of its flavour and the ingredients used. How do we eat this? Let me show you. A little bit of lime juice, get some of that chilli powder in there. Good pad thai. It's just one of those things that makes me so happy. I love the flavours here, the balance is so beautiful. The sweetness plus the sour tamarind. Ah so good, yum. I really hope you guys give this one a try. The broth, the noodles, the wontons. When you get all of that just right, it really is pure magic. Now you know that I love to eat street food noodle soup. Ah yum. And I know it seems a little daunting to make that style of thing at home but I have so many great cheats and hacks here. You're going to be making noodle soup like a pro. Let's do it my friends, let's make barbecue pork wonton noodle soup. One of the key things that I think is quite daunting about making a street food noodle soup at home is the broth. So let's do that first. I have some really cool cheats here which you are going to love. Okay starting off with the paste. So garlic, some fresh ginger, some black peppercorns. Now the whole point of this little magic paste is that we're going to doctor up some store-bought stock. That's right, I mean literally stock cube stock. But it's going to taste amazing, wait and see. So this is the kind of situation you're looking for. It doesn't have to be too finely ground. Now the great thing about using a store-bought stock is that I only need a little bit of chicken in order to boost that chicken flavour. So it makes it really budget-friendly. I'm also using some chicken wings. Also very budget-friendly which I like. So let's get started on the stock itself. Now add a little vegetable oil into a saucepan, add in your paste. Now be careful here not to let that garlic burn because burnt garlic gives you a really bitter flavour in the broth. So just a gentle sizzle here and now I can add in my chicken wings. Now chicken wings are a great thing to use for this broth because they're really cheap, economical. Also because I'm going to be using store-bought stock, I don't need that many wings. All of this is a really great hack. Then I add in my star anise and then my stock which I made out of stock cubes. But when I'm done with this, no one will know that. Add in the soy sauce and then bring all of that up to a simmer. Turn the heat down, let it gently bubble away for 30 minutes. Now let's do the wontons. So I'm going to start off with some spring onion. But you also want to make sure you finely chop it. Very finely so you don't get big chunky bits through your wonton. Now you can add your pork mince, some white pepper. These are all really good flavours. The cornstarch and some water. Both of these things create like a slurry within your wonton filling which keeps it really moist and also makes it really nice and soft. Sesame oil. Last thing is just a little bit of salt. Now the mixing here is also really important. You want to get in here and wait until your mixture turns into a singular kind of ball. You'll see it's similar to like mixing a dough for example. So when things look like this, sort of come together, now your filling is ready. To make the wontons, you just take yourself a wonton wrapper. I like to use these yellow wonton wrappers if you can find them. But you could also use a gyoza wrapper if that's easier for you. Take your wrapper and your filling. This is like the easiest dumpling fold ever. You literally just squish it together. Kind of like in a comet shape. You've got this tail at the end. Your nice juicy pork at the other end. That is your wonton. Go ahead and use all of your wrappers and filling until they're all finished. Our broth is now looking and smelling amazing. I did actually come back and scoop some of that like scummy stuff that comes up to the surface as it simmers. So that's looking really lovely. I just want to strain it off. Look at that colour! I mean it looks like we simmered it for hours and yet it's just half an hour. This is getting me so excited already. Now you guys ask me a lot about what I do with like the bits and pieces that I've used for the broth. Those chicken wings. Don't worry about that. I will be eating those as soon as we stop rolling with some chilli sauce. To finish everything off, you want to cook your noodles. Yes, always cook your noodles in separate boiling water so it doesn't affect the flavour or the texture of your broth. Add that into your bowl. Cook your wontons in the same water. They take about 3 or 4 minutes. They go straight into your bowl as well. Now if you're getting this on the street in Asia, you are most often going to have this with sliced BBQ pork. This is my homemade version. You could also just get this from like a Chinese takeaway or you could leave it out if you wanted to as well. So quite a few options there. Just a few slices. So just like that. A little sprinkling of spring onion. Ladle over your broth. And there you go. BBQ pork wonton noodle soup. This is like an Asian street food staple and I just love that you can make it at home in a very quick, actually and simple way. So here we go. I'm going to try it out. Oh wow! That broth, it tastes so complex and you would never know that that came from a chicken stock cube. Oh my goodness, so good. And noodles. So good. So this is a very traditional thing for people to have for breakfast on the way to work in Thailand. It's pork and there's like lots of bits of pork fat in there as well which make it really juicy and tasty. Oh my god! It's so good. This is one of Thailand's most revered street foods. Sticky, fatty, char-grilled pork skewers and Khao Neow, sticky rice. Oh my goodness. This is the street food I dream of when I'm not in Thailand. Now it might look like just pork skewers and rice but it's not. It's quite a bit of technique here. Let's go through it together my friends. Let's make Mo Bing. I'm going to start off with the sticky rice first of all. Now there are a lot of kind of like Thai in-the-know kind of tricks to making the perfect sticky rice. So I'm going to run you through it so that you too can also have the perfect sticky rice. Now I have here some Thai sticky rice. It's sometimes often sold as glutinous rice as well. So that's what you're looking for. And you'll notice compared to like regular jasmine rice, so the grains look more opaque here. And the first little trick is that you need to soak it overnight before you cook it. So here's one I started soaking yesterday and you can see that the rice really has soaked up some of that water. The water is a little bit cloudy. The rice is kind of plumped up a little bit. Now you can drain the rice into a sieve or a colander. Then to cook the rice, I'm using a very traditional setup here. I have like a conical shaped steamer basket and this is a special pot that kind of snugly fits the basket and this lid here as well. Now you could also do this with just a flat bamboo steamer over the top of a regular pot of boiling water. But this is going to give you the best texture if you can find this little setup here. Okay, take the lid off and then line the basket with a very light cloth like a cheese cloth or a muslin cloth or a light tea towel. Place the rice into the cloth and then fold over the tops of the cloth to completely cover the rice. Put a lid on top and then steam that for 10 minutes. Now I want to kind of flip the rice over so that it cooks evenly. So use the steamer basket to kind of juggle and flip the rice over. If you're doing this in a flat steamer basket, you could just use a spatula to kind of like flip the rice parcel over. Lid on and steam for another 10 minutes. The final trick to perfect sticky rice is to take it out of the steamer now. Be careful here because the steam is really hot. So use tongs if you need to. Pop it onto a tray, open up that cloth and then tip the rice out onto the tray. Use a spoon to kind of spread it out a little bit. This is going to help like make things evenly sticky and make sure we don't have like one big sticky clump of sticky rice. You want things sticky but not like firm and clumped together if you know what I mean. If you're in Thailand, you might have one of these cute little rice baskets. I've just lined mine with some banana leaf. That actually gives it a really nice flavour and stops it from sticking to the basket also. So you can put your sticky rice into the basket and that is our cute little sticky rice box. We'll save that for when our pork is done. Pork skewers. Okay, so I know that if you're not in the know, you might think this is just literally about marinating some pork and popping it on a skewer. Not really the case. There is a little bit more to it than that. You need two different bits of the pork. You need pork loin which are these big pieces here and then you also need pork back fat. So that is the very traditional fat that we use in this particular skewer. So take your pork loin first and you want to try and slice it as thinly as possible. In fact, this first slice probably isn't thin enough. I want you to go really thin. More like this kind of thin where you can almost see through the pork. That's going to keep your pork really lovely and tender. You'll see what I mean later on. Once you've sliced your pork loin, just pop that into a bowl and set that aside for later. Now we're going to get into the pork back fat. Take the pork back fat and slice it a bit thicker than your pork loin pieces and pop that into a separate bowl. For the marinade, you want some garlic. Now I always pop my garlic into my mortar and then just crush it a little bit so it makes it really easy to take the skins off. Add in some coriander root so you can just chop the root end off and a little bit of the stem as well. Then pop in some coriander seeds and some white peppercorns. Use your pestle to pound this into a rough-ish kind of paste. This is the sort of situation you're looking for here. Spoon that out onto your pork and then the rest of the ingredients are very simple. You just need some palm sugar. Now my palm sugar is really nice and soft so I can just add that straight in there. If yours comes in a big block, you might need to just shave it very finely with a knife so that it will dissolve in the marinade. Add fish sauce, Thai black soy sauce or ketchup manis. Either one is fine. Vegetable oil, salt, a little bit of cornstarch and some coconut milk. Use your hands to mix all of this together. You might need to squish that palm sugar to make sure that it dissolves and then set that aside for at least an hour or so. Let all those flavours make friends in there. To start off with, you want to make sure that you soak your bamboo skewers and if you're using metal skewers, you don't have to. This is to make sure that your skewers don't burn when they're on the grill. Start with a piece of fat. Now take a piece of pork and thread it onto the skewer like this. You don't just want to shove it on any old way because then the pork kind of like clumps up and gets really hard and not very tender. This way, the pork stays really lovely and tender and in nice thin slices. Do a couple of pieces of pork and then fat and then another couple of pieces of pork and that is your pork skewer. To cook the skewers, there are multiple different ways to do this. I'm going to go more traditional and use a charcoal grill but you could use a frying pan, a grill plate, a regular gas barbecue, whatever you like. The charcoal does give it a nice flavour though. Grill the skewers 2 or 3 minutes each side and I'm actually going to baste my skewers with a little bit more coconut milk. I've made this nifty little brush out of some pandan leaves. Kind of adds a bit more flavour. Also kind of looks fun too. Once your skewers are cooked and I have to admit, mine are like slightly charred. I kind of like them charred but you know, typically on the street, they might not be so dark but whatever. I think the caramelisation makes it taste really good. You can also use scissors to kind of like snip off any bits that are a little charred but I wouldn't worry too much about it. I think it's delicious. Now here we are. We're ready to go. I've got my little basket of sticky rice here. I'm going to place my pork skewers down and you can just see how like sticky and glossy they are which is amazing and just what you want. Oh, so good. It smells so good. Wow, that pork is so tender. Just like melts in your mouth and the marinade makes everything kind of just a little bit sweet, a little bit salty, a little bit of your sticky rice. And there you go, my friends. Mor Phing, a very, very common, popular, favourite kind of Thai street snack. Often really eaten for breakfast in the morning. Now this is my kind of breakfast, I have to say. Unless you're actually in Thailand, you're probably never going to be able to taste this soup which is why I'm going to make it for you. This is Yentafo. Yentafo. Is that right? How do you say it? Yentafo. Today we're going to be making Yentafo. You make everything sound Italian, Dax. One of the things that's scary about trying to make like street food style noodle soup at home is that it kind of looks complicated but I'm going to break it all down for you so at the end of this video, you are going to be making street food noodle soup like a pro. One of the first things you might have asked yourself is why is it pink? There's a few reasons why it's pink. Let's start off with the chillies first of all. I'm using large and small, mild and hot to get a good balance of flavour. Now I'm going to use Thai sriracha sauce because that's the original and the best. I love rooster as well, it's just that for this particular soup you want the tanginess and the tartness of a Thai sriracha sauce. Add some tomato ketchup and then here we go again with the red things. This is red fermented bean curd. You want the bean curd itself and you want that red bean curd-y sauce. This is widely available in Asian grocery stores or search it out online. Add some fresh garlic cloves and pickled garlic. So peel off the little cloves, pop those in and you want some of the pickled garlic juice as well. This is all the tangy flavour that you're going to love. Add some white vinegar and some sugar and blend. Wow, look at that colour! It's such a happy colour! We're not finished yet though, we just need to pop that into a saucepan. Heat that up and let it simmer for 5 or 10 minutes just to let all those flavours make friends in there. And that is your Yentafo sauce. The broth for any Asian noodle soup is really important and I'm going to show you this really great trick which I stole from my mum of turning water into the most amazing stock with the most simple ingredients. We're actually going to start off with some pork mince. Typically my mum would use pork bones here but they were really expensive in my supermarket this morning. So we're going to do this pork ball method which is also amazing. Add some fish sauce, white pepper, mix it. So the Asian mumma trick here is slap that pork around. I don't know, it sounds rude but it's what you need to do to get the right texture. Have I done a good job? Is that what I'm supposed to do? Yeah. You show me. Bang it a bit more. Yeah, you bang it a bit more then, alright. I knew it wouldn't be right. I'm going to start messing around. Really harnessing some Asian mum. Why do we do that? Because we want the texture, right? Do you want to make the rest of the soup now? Not too big, I don't like it too big. It's too big. No, not too big. It's too big. No. Yes, it's too... Yours are not the way I like mine. It's too big, look, like this. No, not too big. Don't tell Noi how to do it. My ball's too big. I know, I'll just go. Alright Noi, what's next? Okay, so we are now making meatballs and broth in here. And as that pork cooks in that water, the water is going to be beautifully flavoured by the fish sauce and the pork and the pepper. So the pork balls just need to simmer for around about 10 minutes. Take them out with a slotted spoon. And you've got the start of a really great pork broth here. But we need to add some extra things. I'm going to take some coriander. And I just need the root end of the coriander. Chop that roughly. Pop it into my mortar. Add some garlic and some pepper. And give that a pound. This is what's called sam kler in Thai. It's a 3-flavour paste and it is magical. Makes everything taste really good. Spoon it out into your broth. The other really traditional ingredient to add to a Thai pork broth like this is daikon. Now I couldn't find daikon at my supermarket this morning. So I'm going to replace it with turnip. So if you can't find daikon, turnip is a great alternative. Trim, peel, slice into your broth. Add in soy sauce and sugar. And that just needs to simmer for another 20 minutes. Just all drama happening here. Now strain your broth. This is what you should be looking at right now. I mean it's perfectly golden and beautiful. I'm congratulating myself right now. I'm so happy. So we have broth. We have yentafo sauce. There are some other very essential... I'm loathe to call them garnishes. But they're garnishes. But they really do make the soup. Take some wonton wrappers and fry them in some oil until they're nice and crispy. The other necessity here is garlic oil. You will not find a noodle soup joint in Thailand that doesn't have garlic oil. Just add some chopped garlic to some hot oil. Sizzle until golden. Pour that out into a bowl. And it's as simple as that. Now we're cooking noodles. I'm using these wide rice noodles. Into some boiling water. Straight into your serving bowl. Now here's a really nice selection of the kinds of things you would get at a street cart to put in your yentafo soup. I always like to go with the puffed tofu. There's various types of fish cakes and fish balls here. I've got some prawns too. Just heat that through in the boiling water. When the prawns are cooked, put all of that into your bowl as well. The traditional vegetable here is pak boong. That's what we call it in Thai. It's also known as water spinach or kangkong. You just need to trim the ends and then cut the stems into batons. We sort of mainly use the stems for this soup. So you can use the leaves for a stir fry. Pop that into boiling water and then again into your bowl. And then here comes the magic part. Your yentafo sauce goes on top. Hot soup on top of that. Everything turns magically pink. Final little touches. Our crispy wonton and garlic oil. Lots of those little crispy bits of garlic too. And there you go. How exciting is that? I mean even I'm excited. It's so cool to recreate something that you love to eat like street side in Bangkok at home. All right. Let's get in here. Have a look at the colour of this broth. So good. This is why you need to be making this noodle soup at home. It's like no other flavour. It's porky and salty but it has like this funky tang to it. I really love it. I love it so much.