In hot weather I start to crave the food of hot climates, especially Thai food. Since I eat as few carbohydrates as possible, much of what I cook is pseudo-Thai, but it can still be delicious. Having some good condiments on hand can be a shortcut on an evening when I worked late, and my favorite Thai condiment is nam prik pao. Once I made my own according to the complex directions in David Thompson’s authoritative and addictive cookbook Thai Food, and it was the best I ever had, but it is quite an undertaking and involves deep frying a succession of ingredients before grinding them together, and deep frying is not my favorite cooking modality. Too messy. So except for special occasions, I use the fairly good bottled one from Mae Pranom. Just as a warning, this excellent Thai company makes several different condiments that all say “Thai chili paste” on the label, and are only fully and accurately labeled in Thai. So my recommendation would be to order through Importfood.com, a very good US purveyor of Thai ingredients, and get the one that they say is nam prik pao. While you’re at it, order some Shark brand Thai sriracha sauce, which is different from the Vietnamese style and can be hard to find.
Besides the nam prik pao, you will need a pound of good ground meat. I used wild boar because I had some in the freezer, but ground goat, ground pork, or plain old ground beef would all be fine. The vegetable component was a pound of Oregon Giant snow peas. Any good snow pea or sugar snap pea will do. Lettuce leaves are needed for serving, and I used leaves of the hot climate celtuse-type lettuce Balady Aswan, but romaine is fine if you don’t grow your own. Other needed ingredients are a small knob of ginger, two cloves of garlic, one large or three small green onions, fish sauce, coconut cream (unsweetened) or coconut oil for cooking, sweetener of your choice, and a large handful of chopped fresh mint.
Blanch the snow peas or sugar peas in boiling water for two minutes, drain and cool in ice water, and slice diagonally. Slice the scallions diagonally, and chop the ginger, garlic, and mint. Now you’re ready to cook.
Heat a skillet or wok over high heat and boil the coconut cream hard for a minute or melt coconut oil. Stir-fry in the chopped ginger and garlic for a minute, then add 1/4 cup of nam prik pao and fry until it looks like the picture. Add your ground meat now and continue to stir-fry over high heat. When it’s about half cooked, add the sliced green onions, sweetener to taste, and fish sauce to taste. I used a quick squirt of liquid sucralose and about 3 tablespoons of fish sauce. If you’re being authentic and using palm sugar, I would guess that about two tablespoons would do it. Go easy if you’re not sure, because you can adjust later. Stir-fry until the meat is completely cooked, add the blanched snow or snap peas, and cook over high heat another minute or two until they are heated through. Taste and correct the seasoning if needed.
I should add that I was using my large perennial green onions, and in the hot weather this time of year they take a bit of cooking to become tender and pleasant to eat. If you are using the store-bought kind, you can add them closer to the end of the process. Know your ingredients and adapt your methods to get the best out of them.
Top with chopped fresh mint just before serving and serve with stacks of lettuce leaves. I like to add a sweet-hot dipping sauce made with equal parts fish sauce and rice vinegar, artificial sweetener added until it’s pretty sweet, and sambal oelek or sriracha added until it’s pretty hot.
Once you have the basic formula, the dish is endlessly accommodating. Use whatever ground meat you have, and I speculate that ground chicken or salmon might work well too. If snap or sugar peas aren’t in season, consider green beans ( be sure to blanch until tender) or greens of almost any kind. Collards could be delicious, especially if preblanched for a minute to improve tenderness. Even slightly bitter greens are worth considering, although I would reduce the quantity and not use anything more than slightly bitter. But the coconut fat and sweetening does a lot to ameliorate a small amount of bitterness. Broccoli would be delicious if blanched and then cut in small cubes to fit into the general texture of the dish. Mushrooms are another excellent possibility, and dried soaked shiitakes cut in cubes would be good but mushrooms that you grow yourself might be even better. Some mushrooms such as oysters are pretty juicy and it is worth dry sautéing them in a separate pan to get excess liquid out before adding them to the mixture.
Other herbs are worth considering. Thai basil is a natural, and Italian basil is something that I would consider if I did not have Thai basil or mint handy. It just occurred to me that the licorice-sweet leaves of sweet cecily might be really good in this context, so I will be trying that.
Personally I get very annoyed with finding most Thai food in America smothered in chopped peanuts, but I admit they’re delicious and they do add a good texture. If you want to explore other texture additions, a little chopped jicama or maybe even raw Jerusalem artichokes would add a sweet crunch.
The hallmark of a good basic recipe is that you rapidly learn how to make it come together easily and adapt to your whim of the day and what is available in your garden. I always keep ginger, garlic, fish sauce, and some basic Thai condiments in the house, but ultimately your supply of basics may be different. If you want to announce your food as authentic Thai, then by all means read David Thompson’s cookbook and follow his lengthy and exacting directions. But if what you want is to have delicious food on your table that suits your needs and what is available in your garden, then be imaginative and don’t worry yourself overmuch about authenticity. Just pay attention to the basic logic of the flavors.
My urban homestead 