Sunday, August 2, 2009

Oishi!

Last night I went over to Jeb & Gum's place for dinner. The Japanese teacher (let's call her Wasabi- she has quite a spicy side) from Jeb's other school wanted to learn to cook, so she and I both hung out in the kitchen with Gum.



I'm not sure I actually learned how to cook anything. Mostly I did a lot of chopping of herbs. I tried to jot down some notes about how to cook everything but that was futile. For the Panang Curry my notes say "oil, prik-gang panang, fry chili paste, add coconut milk, thicken, add beef - cook, add coconut milk, add basil leaves - pork soup flavoring, brown sugar, salt-kem, ahjinimoto (a Japanese seasoning of some sort), brown sugar, mancoot leaves, sweet peppers"... I have a feeling that's not quite going to get the job done when I get home. =P


Gum was just doing what most cooks do in the kitchen. Throw in a bit of this and that, taste, a little more of this... there's no recipe, no measuring cups, she just knows how to do it. I'm more of a baker than a cook, but I'll do some experimenting when I get home.


I will say that I was AMAZED by her ability to make a Thai feast using a fairly modest amount of counter space and one electric wok. She even timed it out well, first chop all the ingredients, then cook the meat for the pork salad (moo yam) and let it cool before starting the curry. Mix together the ingredients for the omelet (kai jeaow) while the curry is cooking. Plate the curry & start the omelet, then mix together the salad. It took a few minutes to get everything on the table.. but it was well worth the wait.



The reason men come to Thailand.


We had a lot of fun, it was so hilarious... three girls with three different native languages all cooking together. Through the basic Thanglish being used, I learned the Thai words for "salty" "sweet" and "garbage" and was pleased that I could understand when Wasabi kept saying "I'm hungry, I want to eat!!!". My favorite expression of the evening (and new diet motto) was something Gum kept saying ... I'll never get it right but something like "Gin gadai, you die, gin mai di."- "Eat whatever, when you're dead - you can't eat." My second favorite expression of the evening was "Oishi" (Japanese for 'delicious') which we all exclaimed repeatedly.




kai jeaow goong
I had intended to get a nice picture of the table all set, but completely forgot in my eagerness to start chowing down. There were six of us (the boys, naturally, stayed upstairs drinking while the girls cooked) and the meal was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Oishi!
TAG: Code Sweet Chili Sauce




7 comments:

Yankee in England said...

I am with you after mainly baking for so long it was hard to get use to cooking and just kind of throwing in this and that. My husband is a chef and loves to cook asian food, when I asked about how much stuff he was putting in and how long he was doing each stage I got answers like however much I had in the fridge and until it is done. Definelty make a go of it though he was right as long and you don't put a whole bottle of fish sauce in you really can't go wrong and you get better the more you try. I can now make an edible stir fry and am thinking of moving on to a thai curry of some sort.

Bezzie said...

Freakin' yum!!! I love the saying--they shoud put that on a t-shirt!

Michael5000 said...

"mancoot leaves"?

Rebel said...

Yankee - yeah I will have fun experimenting

Bezzie - It probably is, but it's also probably in Thai, so I wouldn't know it. ;)

M5K - I swear she said "bai mai mancoot" (mangosteen leaves), but I just did some google-fu and really they were keffir lime leaves (I'd thought so - but that's not what she called them).

Rebel said...

Yankee - yeah I will have fun experimenting

Bezzie - It probably is, but it's also probably in Thai, so I wouldn't know it. ;)

M5K - I swear she said "bai mai mancoot" (mangosteen leaves), but I just did some google-fu and really they were keffir lime leaves (I'd thought so - but that's not what she called them).

Sarah Nopp said...

when you come back you will have to look up the spice store in downtown Olympia :) Buck's 5th Avenue... She has a website somewhere 'round here... I even blogged it once upon a time.

Jonathan said...

Just a heads up - Ajinomoto (or however it is spelt) is a seasoning they have in North America,too. We just call it MSG!!