Passport & Plate - Thai Pad Kra Prao (Stir fried basil with chicken)
Thailand | Monday, March 2, 2015 | 
flickr photos
Ingredients
2 tbsp cooking oil
4 chili peppers (to taste: I like this dish spicy, use fewer chilies and remove the seeds if you don’t)
3-4 cloves of garlic
About 150 g chicken thigh, with bones and skin removed (or ground chicken)
About 1/3 of a red onion
3 handfuls of vegetables of your choice (e.g. long beans, green beans, asparagus, carrot, bell pepper)
3 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar; use palm sugar if you can find it (Note the 3 : 2 : 1 ratio for oyster sauce : fish sauce : sugar for making larger quantities)
2-3 tbsp water, if needed
1 handful of Thai holy (hot) basil (you can sub Thai sweet basil, which is easier to find)
Fried egg (optional)
How to prepare this recipeWash and cut all your ingredients before you start cooking -- Thai stir fries don't need much time on the heat.
Shred the garlic with a microplane or finely chop it. Finely chop the chili peppers.
Cut the onion and other vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Remove the stems from the basil, just keeping the leaves.
Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces.
Measure out the sugar, fish and oyster sauces into a cup and give them a quick stir.
In a wok or large skillet over medium heat, heat the oil. Add garlic and chilies. Cook, stirring, until fragrant (just a minute or two).
Turn the heat up a little. Add the chicken and stirfry until almost all pink has disappeared. Add vegetables (except the basil) and stirfry until chicken is fully cooked.
Add the sugar, fish and oyster sauces and stir for a minute to distribute. If it looks a little dry for your liking, add water, a tablespoon at a time, until it has the consistency you want.
Add the basil, stir, and turn off the heat.
Spoon rice onto plates, and then spoon on the pad kra prao. Add a fried egg if you'd like extra protein. Traditionally a Thai stir fry is put beside, not on top of, the rice; but I like the rice to soak up as much flavour as possible, so I buck tradition (even so -- no chopsticks!)
As with all stir fries, ingredient amounts are approximate and to taste. If you like more veg, use more veg; if you like shrimp instead of chicken, switch it; adjust everything to how you like it.
My only advice is not to skimp on the garlic, oyster sauce, fish sauce or basil, and, if you can handle it, the chilies. These are giving you the flavour of your dish, and Thai food is all about flavour.
This recipe is adapted from www.AsiaScenic.com. It serves two people, with basmati or sticky rice.
The story behind this recipe"In Thailand," she sniffed, looking disdainfully at me, "we don't use [insert long pause of disgust] chopsticks."
Oops.
I'd been dating a Chinese guy, and was annoyed with all the Chinese restaurants giving him chopsticks and me a fork. I was in my first Thai restaurant, and thought it was happening again. I'd politely asked for sticks to eat #11 (I had no idea how to pronounce pad kra prao at that point).
Oops.
Turns out not using chopsticks is a point of pride for Thais. In the 19th century, King Mongkut decided to make Siam so civilized that European powers wouldn't even think to invade. This included adopting the fork and spoon. He succeeded -- Thailand is the only country in the region never colonized by Europe (though I'm not sure we can give the fork all the credit).
Despite my inadvertent insult to the server, I fell in love in my first Thai restaurant (no, not the boyfriend, he's long gone). I fell in love with pad kra prao. I'd never before tasted that intensity of flavour ... the basil, garlic and chili ... complex, yet clean and not muddy. Just enough kick to make you proud of yourself for being able to finish. While chicken (gai) is ubiquitous, it is delicious with any protein, and can be found in the best Thai restaurants, on the street, and in every kitchen in between.
Twenty two years later, pad kra prao is still my favourite dish. And last year, at the Asia Scenic cooking school in Chiang Mai, I finally learned to make it myself.
Pad kra prao is what Thais cook or order when they don't know what they feel like eating. It is a simple dish that can be cooked quickly, with ingredients that are on hand (with the exception Thai basil, you'll likely have them on hand too).
I've ordered it so many times I've perfected my accent (even the flat drawn out "kaaaa" politesse at the end of a sentence). Servers reply in Thai, knowing I want it spicy, but inquiring if I want a fried egg too. And I know not to ask for chopsticks.
