Thai Food Menu

Best Thai Food Menu

I wrote a weekly food blog at thai-blogs.com detailing the street food that we ate in the Paknam Web offices. The idea was to show that food bought from street hawkers is not only cheap but also very attractive and delicious. I think we proved that we could make a meal for 3-4 people for only about US$4. The same meal in restaurants would cost you three or four times as much.

Chicken and Bamboo Shoot in Yellow Curry Every Friday from now onwards I will be working in the Paknam Web office instead of the school. So I thought I would share with you what we eat at lunchtime every week! Well, at least some pictures. I have had so many letters from people asking whether I would restart my Thai food blogs again. So, hopefully this will be the first of a regular series of food blogs. The first dish on the table was a variation of my favourite. I like chicken and bamboo shoots in green curry a lot. However this is a yellow version using turmeric powder.     Snake Head Fish with Fried Black Pepper You can use just about any fish in this dish. as well as the fried black pepper, there is red chili and onions. You can also use red and green peppers.     Stir Fried Vegetable with Prawn Always a good idea to have a dish of stir-fried vegetables. This one comes with fresh shrimp. So many variations. To get the bright colours, a good tip is to dip into boiling water for one minute before stir frying.     Fried Mushroom with Bean curd The final dish is vegetarian and is a mixture of bean curd and mushrooms. There are several stir fried dishes that use bean curd and they are quite easy to cook yourself. A very delicious meal. Now, I wonder what we will buy for our lunch next Friday. If you want to know, then just visit thai-blogs.com next Friday to see!

Lunchtime Thai Menu 02

Red Curry with Pork (gaeng pet mooo)   This is the continuation of my weekly Lunchtime Thai Menu. Every Friday I will be bringing you pictures of what we are eating in the Paknam Web office. My main purpose here, apart from trying to make you feel hungry, is to show what splendid meals you can have on the side of the road. Yes, that is correct, all of the dishes so far have been bought at stalls by the side of the road. Our budget for four people is about 100 baht which works out at about 75 cents each. As you can see, I am very generous when it comes to splashing out on food for the office staff! Last week we came in under budget at only 80 baht for the entire meal which was about $2.40 for four people.

The first dish is one of my all time favourites. I always like to have a coconut based curry in my meals. This one is red curry with pork. You can also choose, beef, chicken or fish. However, I really love with roast duck which is more expensive. This version also has plum tomatoes and pineapple. Unfortunately it is doubtful you will find this one for 20 baht by the side of the road.

Fried Mackerel with Shrimp Paste Sauce (nam prik kapi pla too)

 

This is a favourtie dish of Thai people. I live in a fishing town so it is readily available. The fish is pre-cooked and you just choose which vegetables you want and also the kind of sauce to go with it. Personally I am not too keen on fish and so this is not a favourite. I know plenty of Thai people who will eat just this for a meal.

Tom Yum with Banana Flower and Snake Head Fish

 

This is a variation of the popular tom yum spicy soup. I had Tom Yum with shrimp last night which is my absolute favourite. This is a different recipe. This has a bit of coconut milk though not as much as say tom kha gai. At first I thought the white pieces was shiitake mushrooms that had been sliced up. But this dish uses the banana blossom. In addition there is snake head fish. To be honest I didn't care for it much, but the others liked it.

Fried Mushroom and Pork in Oyster Sauce

 

This is quite a plain and easy dish to make that contains fried pork, button mushrooms and carrot and cooked in oyster sauce. There are so many variations of this dish. Do you like the sun rays affect with the shredded carrot? The staff are really getting into the swing of this food blog. Even though the food is ready made, we take a long time preparing the dishes for display and then photographing before we can even think about sitting down to eat! Good job there isn't much washing up to do at the end!

Omelette

 

The final one was an extra dish of omelette. For today's menu we actually went over budget as we had one extra guest visiting. So we broke the bank a little and spent a whopping $4.25 for the five of us. But, that is a considerable saving when you compare to how much a similar meal costs in a restaurant. Last night I went with some friends to a restaurant at "Bangsaen 2" by the Gulf of Thailand here in Samut Prakan.

There was four of us and with four dishes, fried rice and beer it cost me 890 baht or $26. Obviously I don't want to spend that kind of money too often. And living in Thailand, you really don't need to spend a fortune to eat a King's meal. Just eat by the side of the road for some of the cheapest and most delicious meals in the Kingdom.
Come back next Friday to see what we will eat for our weekly Thai lunch!

Lunchtime Thai Menu

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup (tom yum gai) This is now our third week of the Friday Lunchtime Thai Menu blog. Every Friday, we will be bringing you pictures of our meal in the Paknam Web office. Our budget is around 100 baht which is about $3 for all of us. The first dish was tom yum gai. This is a hot and sour soup with chicken. The famous one is with shrimp which I often order when taking guests to restaurants. The recipe is also similar to another of my favourite soups, tom kha gai. Though the one today doesn't have any galangal (kha). Basically, you bring some chicken stock to the boil and add lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves. Then add the chicken and mushrooms. You season to taste with fish sauce, sugar and lime juice. At the end, add cherry tomatoes and the chilies. When you order tom yum at restaurants, you need to say what kind you want. The choice is either "nam sai" which is transparent soup or "nam kon" which is thick soup. I prefer the latter because they add coconut milk to thicken the soup. That is the version we had today. Very delicious and one of my favourites. At the roadside foodstall near my house, this cost only 20 baht. Down the market it might be 30-35 baht. Deep Fried Spring Rolls (por pia tod) This next one is really an appetizer. It cost only 20 baht for six rolls. The dip you can see is one of my favourites. It is hot and sweet and is the same one we use for fried chicken. There are so many dips (nam jim) that you have to be careful that you use the right one. The spring rolls we ate today had minced pork, shredded cabbage, shredded carrot, mushroom and mun bean noodle (woon sen). Glutinous Rice Fingers (khanom niaw) Our dessert today was sticky rice flour with shredded coconut. It is sweet as it has palm sugar and caramel. The topping is popped rice. Som Tam Fruit Salad (som tam polamai) I have saved the best for last. Off all the varieties of som tam, this is most definitely my favourite after som tam tai. Most som tam stalls will make this for you as long as they have fruit. Actually, I am not sure why they call it "tam" as it is not pounded in the bowl like its cousin. Anyway, this one contains apple, guava, rose apple, shredded unripe mango, shredded carrot and cherry tomato. And whole roasted peanuts. When you do takeaway, they put the fruit in one bag and the sauce in another. Then you just mix together when ready. This cost 50 baht which is more expensive than the regular som tam. The sauce was very sweet but sour at the same time. It contains, water, sugar, lime, salt, garlic and chili. Normally I find one chili is enough for fruit salad. This sauce also had some dried shrimp. I love this very much. It can be a meal in itself. You can either eat it by itself or with sticky rice. So, what should we eat next week? We could go back to the som tam shop as they have 15 different versions. We could almost do one per week for the next few months! If you are in Paknam, go to "Som Tam Dontree". They have two branches. One opposite the courthouse and the other on Sailuad Road near Krungthep Bank. Both are very large shops with several floors. They are good for variety. However, I like my som tam seller at the top of my soi for eating som tam thai. We have three sellers in our soi but he is the best. If you have any suggetions for next week's lunchtime menu, then please post them as a comment. If y

Lunchtime Thai Menu 04

Crispy Catfish Salad(yum pla duk foo) This is the continuation of our weekly Friday Lunchtime Thai Menu. Every week I will be bringing you pictures of what we eat at lunchtime in the Paknam Web office. The budget for all of us is about 100 baht ($3) though I think we blew that budget this week. Everything you see here is Thai street food which surprises many people. Quite often, restaurants sell the same food, though at inflated prices. A lot of street food in Thailand is single dishes. For example, noodles, fried rice and Chinese chicken. However, most of the food that we have been buying is the kind that you share between your friends. This makes it more economical. We will try and give you some single dishes in the future. The first one today is a favourite of mine in the local restaurants. It is a green mango salad with crispy fried cat fish. It also has peanuts, chopped red shallots and chillies on a lettuce base. The secret ingredient is the sauce and not everyone makes it the same way. A common one would be lemon juice, fish sauce and palm sugar. This dish is called "yum" in Thai which means salad. However, if they used garlic instead of shallots then it would be a "som tam" dish. This dish cost 25 baht from the night market in Paknam. It was good but I have had better. Fried Coconut Palm shoot with Shrimp The next one is a simple dish that uses the young coconut flesh and fries it with shrimp. The dish only cost 25 baht. So, at that price they didn't give many shrimps. So we bought some fresh shrimp ourselves and fried these up for this dish and the other one further down this page. In Thai this dish is called "pad yod mapao on kung". Pork Belly with Five Spices and Boiled Eggs (kai pa loh) This is a dish that you often see in food markets though in my mind it doesn't look appetizing. However, I sometimes buy it for two reasons. Firstly it is not hot and spicy and so goes well when mixing with meals that contains curry's. It also lasts several days so you don't need to eat it all in one day. There seems to be two versions. Sometimes you see them in big enamel pots with mainly pork and tofu with a few hard boiled eggs. This one is the opposite and the main ingredient is the eggs hence the alternative name "kai pa loh". The other version would be "moo pa loh". The taste of the soup is very distinctive and probably the reason that I like eating it. It is also quite nice cold. To make it, the pork is fried in golden garlic together with cilantro root and five-spice powder. Once cooked, chicken stock is then poured in and to this is added soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar. The hardboiled eggs are added last. One bag of this was only 20 baht. Seafood Tom Yum (tom yum talay) This is the famous hot and sour soup called "tom yum" in Thai which I have written about before. I normally eat with shrimp or chicken. But this is a seafood version which, to be honest, I am not so keen on. This dish cost less than $1 but we cheated a little and added a few of our own shrimps. You will find that although street food is often cheap, there isn't always a lot of meat. Sometimes, when we only have curry or soup left over, I will cook up some more meat the following day to add to whatever is left over. Thai Dessert We splashed out on dessert today though it was really worth it. This variety of sticky rice desserts was 40 baht from the market. It was topped with some coconut cream. I am sure I have talked about these deserts before in previous Thai food blogs. So, I won't go into any details now. But, I will do a special blog on Thai desserts in the near future as it is a popular subject. I just hope that I don't gain too much weight during the research! The things I have to do for thai-blogs.com! Before I forget, this meal cost a whopping 140 baht which is about  $4. We will try and keep within budget next time. Please post as comments any suggestions that you have for street food we could buy for next week's meal. If you have any questions, then please post them in our popular Thai Food Forums over at ThailandQA.com. We will be running a competition there soon to win a Thai cook book. This will be only for members so make sure you go and sign up today if you don't want to miss out on this competition.