My hometown favorite food

I'm from Northern part of Thailand, the city call 'Lamphun', where is located nearby Chiang Mai Province. During my life in Thailand, I pretty much lived and go to college around the city, never had a chance to travel so far. I personally don't like Bangkok, it is too tight and crazy busy with many people, cars and noisy.

When I was at home and I would like to have some foods that easier to just go out and buy on the street a la cart or at the fresh market. One of my favorite dish that had to drive about 45 minutes to get it is "Kao Soy", actually there are so many place selling it but I only like this restaurant because it tasted so good and always busy.

Kao Soy or Thai northern curry noodle, is prepared from homemade noodle and pour over top with thick and rich flavor curry sauce, before serving they garnish with crispy noodle, cabbage pickled, sliced shallots and slice of lime. If you like more spicy, they also have toasted hot pepper paste for you to add on. When you mix all these ingredient together, it gives an incredible aroma smell of curry and lime and when it goes to your mouth it gives crispy texture of fried noodle and spicy of curry but there is balancing taste of coconut milk in the curry sauce that would not make this dish too powerful taste.

I never cooked this dish before when I lived in Thailand. One day I were talking with my friend in Thailand and she told me that she was going to have Kao Soy, that moment made me want to try to make it on my own here and share to someone here that has been far away from home. So I emailed her to ask if she could give me an idea how can I start. What she actually did, she called her mom and cooked this dish to try out before send the recipe to me. Right after I got the recipe, I went to the Asian store and got every ingredient to prepare this dish. I used beef in curry sauce because it go well together with the curry sauce however, you can substitute with chicken, I would prefer to use dark meat with bone in would give the sauce a good flavor.

Let's see how I prepared this dish;

Thai Northern Beef Curry Noodle (Kao Soy Nuer)

Tip;  I used beef in curry sauce because it go well together with the curry sauce however, you can substitute with chicken, I would prefer to use dark meat with bone in would give the sauce a good flavor.

Ingredient; make 4 serving

1/2 lbs of beef, thinly sliced
200 ml Coconut milk
150 ml water or unsalted chicken stock
2  tbsp yellow curry paste
1 tbsp red curry paste
1 tsp curry powder
3 tbsp cooking oil
2 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp sugar + 2 tbsp for cabbage pickle
1/4 cup/person egg or flat noodle * plus extra for deep fried noodle*
cabbage pickle
Hot pepper flake stir in oil white sesame seed
sliced shallot and lime for side dish

Direction; 

1. marinated beef with 1/4 cup of coconut milk and 1 tbsp each yellow and red curry paste, at least 4-8 hours

2. Prepare side dish, wash cabbage pickle under running water, squeeze the juice out as much and dry the water access with paper towel, cut into small pieces, in the bowl, add 2 tbsp sugar and mix well, set aside.

3. Separate the noodle from each other and shake off the flour access, deep fried in hot oil for 30 second for each side. Be careful not put too much noodle at once, make sure it separate and golden color all sides, scoop it out and place in paper towel, and let cool completely.

4. In deep pot with medium low heat, add cooking oil and 1 tbsp yellow curry and curry powder, cook until get the aroma smell or the paste get yellow brown color then add marinated beef and cook in the medium high heat, alternately add coconut milk and stir well. let it boil for about 5 minutes then add water or chicken stock, cook for about 20 minutes.

5. Give it a taste with adding sugar and fish sauce. Check if the beef is tender then turn the heat off.

6. In hot boiling water, shake off access flour in fresh noodle and cook in the hot water until the noodle cook through, about 2 minutes, then drained the water and place the noodle in deep bowl. Pour over Beef curry sauce and crispy noodle. Placing side dish with Cabbage pickle and slice shallot

Side dish; Cabbage pickle, lime, shallot and hot pepper in oil

Oktoberfest

Falls is pretty much everyone favorite season. I love Falls personally since we don't have this season in Thailand. It's kind of beautiful tree changing their color and the orangy color make me feel warm and missing my family. What would you want to do most in Fall? Umhh I would say, apple picking, go hiking and camping. We probably skip camping this year because there is no spot left in the camp site we want to go to. However, I went to apple picking and learn a lot of cooking with fruit and veggetable in this time of the year!

You could find apple in the grocery store all year long, but why people like to make apple pie or cooking with apple product this time of the year. First of all, I think it's because you can find it fresh right in the farm and the apple this time of the year tend to be more juicier which is good to produce apply cider, one of my favorite drink now. And, I love Apple cider vinergar. It is go good with my quicky salad dressing with cucumber and spring mix lectuce.

This blog I will bring the menu I love to have at least once a month and this family love to have when it is getting cold outside. They want to get home, fire up the fireplace and have a good stew which will lead to have hot apple cider with cinnamon stick.

Apple Cider Beef Stew with Veggetable

Ingredient;

1 lbs Stew Beef, cubed
3 1/2 cups of Apple Cider
3 tsp of Apple cider vinegar
2 Carrots, chopped 1 inch size
2 stalks celery,chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3 potatoes, chopped 1 inch size
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup water
3 tbsp cooking oil
salt and black pepper
* Option; Cauliflower, Green beans, cut in big size *

Direction;

1. In Dutch oven pot (if don't have one just use regular pot but careful of the heat), heat up the pot to medium heat, add oil and brown the beef, when it's browned, put it aside. If there is too much oil in the pot, spoon off and leave some for cooking onion, celery and carrot just for tender, add the cook beef back with thyme, apple cider, vinegar, salt and pepper, bring it to boil and low the heat to shimmer, cover the lid and let it cook for about 1 and an half hour.
2. Mix flour in water and check the beef  in the stew just for tender then add potato and optional vegetables if needed then let it cook for about 30 minutes or the potato is cooked, high the heat to medium high, stir in flour mixture to thicken it up. Serve with biscuit or corn bread would be very good too.

Baking Vol.1

Apple Pie

When I was in Thailand, there was only one pie I love about, Blueberry pie. When I lived in the state, I wasn't crazy much about pie, I remembered. It was more about Chocolate, cookies, cake and brownie. I was totally forgetting about pie for a period of time.

When I am here in Canada, a lot of people around me love baking, well I would say they can Baked! How about me?? I want to know how to bake from scratch not from the premixed box in grocery store. As soon as I got the cookbook and baking book back from Chicago. I started to read and learn how to bake simple recipe, such as; cookies, cupcakes, icing, biscuits and cheesecakes. My favorite and everyone favorite is Non-baked Cheesecake. It's so simple and easy. All of my friends, family here love it so much! We have to carry the ingredient almost all the time, until I learned to bake other stuff beside the cheesecake.

I got to bake so many baked good, I experiment my own recipe and all the ingredient they put in the recipe. I love this part I felt like I am using what I have studied in my college degree, Biotechnology! I did at least 3 batch with different key ingredient or sometime temperature. It was fun actually and I got to know my ingredient and technique on my own.

Baking is more about Science acknowledge and practical also. It can be really complicate for someone especially all my Thai friends here, they don't really know how to bake from scratch much. I have been teaching them once in a while, we got together on weekend at someones condo or their employer's home. Everyone said I should open a restaurant or bake shop!! I would love too, that could be another dream to accomplish, however, I want to focus what I love doing right now everyday.

This Fall season arrived with a lot of good things, it is beautiful and colorful. I am fall in love with Fall Season here very much. I was laying down under different shade of red, yellow, orange color of trees! I personally love Maple leaves since I was in Chicago. Beside the color of Fall, there is upcoming event that is all about cooking and baking, Thanksgiving. I have invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with Hume's Family. I know it's not as nervous since I have known them well enough, however they are expecting me to bring some of my baking. So to honor their festival and traditional, I'm going to bake Pies, not one Pie though. It's gonna be a lot of his family and relatives because they are going to have a Wedding in couple days after Thanksgiving also.

What am I doing now is experiment how to make my own recipe of Pastry, that I believe can make it different than other store bought! I did bake 4 apple pies in 2 days, my family I lived with and my bf are overwhelming about it! The boys love apple pie, so does Robert. He asked me many times to bake him apple pie because he know I will make it differently than what he used to have from his store. So I asked the boys' grandmother to teach me how she make her own pastry. She gave me all she has and it actually taste so good! I love crispy pie an outside and softy chunk of apple inside.

In this Blog, I am not going to put the recipe in yet just because I am still experiment how to make the pastry for the one that I love. I will just show the picture that I did make my very first Apple pie and pastry.

my first pastry that I did from scratch and rolled up

My apple pie is ready to sit in the hot oven

I love cinnamon so I put more than I supposed to but it's great for me :p