Pad Kra Pao #1

Ingredients

• 500 g boneless skinless chicken thighs, pre-ground chicken works too
• 100 g shallots, rough chopped
• 15 g garlic, minced
• 15 g ginger, grated or minced
• 175 g green beans, cut into 2" or 5 cm pieces
• 1 bunch raw spinach, optional
• 20 g basil, fresh, chiffonade
• 2 eggs
• Oil, high smoke point like peanut, canola, grapeseed, etc
• Salt
• 1 pinch red chili flakes
• 25 g soy sauce
• 25 g fish sauce
• 50 g oyster sauce, or hoisin if you can’t find it
• 50 g +1 tsp chicken stock
• 25 g brown sugar

Instructions

Step 1

1. If grinding your own chicken, cut chicken into chunks
2. Place in an even layer on a small tray and freeze for 10 minutes.
3. Prep/cut veg and mix sauce sauce while you wait for chicken to freeze.

Step 2

1. To make the sauce, stir the following together until dissolved: soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, chicken stock, brown sugar.

Step 3

1. Add the 10-min frozen chicken to a food processor and process to break down into a coarse medium grind.
2. Preheat a large saute pan over high and add a glug/long squeeze of oil
3. Add cut green beans and a pinch of salt and stir to combine
4. Cook for 3-4 mins, stirring until they’re charred on the outside and slightly softened.
5. Remove green beans from the pan and set aside.

Step 4

1. Add another glug/squeeze of oil and add the chicken to the pan with a pinch of salt, breaking up the chicken while you cook for about 3 minutes until beginning to brown
2. Add chopped shallots and continue to cook for another 2 minutes
3. Add garlic, ginger, and pinch of chili flake.
4. Continue to cook for about 30 seconds.
5. Add back in cooked green beans and raw spinach. When spinach is wilted in, stir in sauce.
6. Cook for 20-30 seconds or until sauce has reduced a bit. Remove from heat and stir in basil.

Pad Kra Pao #2

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground pork / beef /chicken
• 7 large garlic cloves, peeled
• 7 bird’s eye chilies, or however many you can tolerate
• 1 large shallot, 20 g, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 Tb vegetable oil
• 1 Tb fish sauce
• 2 Tb thin/light soy sauce or seasoning sauce, such as Golden Mountain aka "the Green Cap" sauce"
• 1 Tb dark sweet soy sauce, kecap manis
• 1 Tb oyster sauce
• 1 C holy basil leaves, packed

Instructions

1. If you have a mortar, lb together the garlic, chilies, and shallot until you get a coarse paste
2. If no mortar, either chop them all up with a cleaver on a chopping block or pulse them into a coarse paste in a mini-chopper.
3. In a skillet, heat up the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add the paste to it and fry until fragrant.
4. Add the meat to the skillet and break it up with the spatula into small pieces.
5. Add the remaining ingredients (except the basil leaves), correcting seasoning as needed. [I don't like sugar in my Pad Ka-Prao; besides, the dark sweet soy sauce provides enough sweetness for me. But if you think you'd like it even sweeter, either add about a tsp of palm or brown sugar or double the amount of dark sweet soy sauce (which will also make the end product darker in color).
6. Once the meat is cooked through, check the amount of liquid in the skillet. If it’s too dry, add a little bit of water or sodium-free broth.
7. Before taking the skillet off the heat, add the basil leaves to the mixture and give it a couple of stirs
8. We only want to wilt the basil with the residual heat that is still in the pan so as not to mute the fragrance of the fresh holy basil leaves.
9. Serve over rice. A Thai-style crispy fried egg on top and a tiny bowl of nam-pla prik would be nice.