We have a Thai friend in Hanoi – Sarawut. But he has a Vietnamese name so we all like to call him Minh. Today Minh spent all his morning preparing and cooking for us. It was all original Thai cuisine and from yesterday I was really looking forward to tasting it. And if you’re a big fan of Thai food, you know what I feel. Thai by a Thai? I don’t think it could get any better than that.
From what I observed it took more time to prep for the food than to actually cook and finish, Minh was making all his ingredients from crash. He even bought the fresh coconut from the market and grind it in a blender, fill it with water and strain the mixture to get fresh coconut milk. It would have been so much easier to just buy canned coconut milk from the market, so I was pretty impressed by what he did. Today Minh was nervous to cater for a group of 24 people, but we couldn’t be thankful enough for all his delicious traditional foods and his efforts to perform such a great job. I was too busy eating I didn’t even snap any photos at all. It explains the lack of photos here. My bad!
I was helping Minh with the Thai beef salad. The way they do it in Thailand is to grill the marinated beef, but since we didn’t have the grilling function set up so we quickly fried the beef at medium rare and then cut it into strips. Then add strips of onions, coriander and herbs to the bowl. Add a dressing combined of fish sauce, water, lime juice, sugar, slices of chili, and voila! It was perfect! Or at least you can see how beautiful it was! I love the combination of the soft and juicy beef with the crispiness of the onion, blending with those flavorful herbs, the spiciness, sweetness and sourness from the dressing, very Thai! That’s all I could say!
The menu we had today was tom yum goong, chicken green curry (my favourite), Thai beef salad and mango with sticky rice. I again apologize for the lack of behind the scene photos as I was too excitedly busy with helping and then eating all those goodies. You know you can’t blame me!
Xox.
H.
*Photos credit by a friend of mine.
Thai Beef Salad
Chicken Green Curry
Tom Yum Goong
Mango Sticky Rice
Eating off the MAP 
mmmmm, this looks so good! I also love thai food! I would love for you to come by and link this or another project/recipe at my link party!! http://domesticsuperhero.com/2013/05/16/sharing-with-domestic-superhero-link-party-11/ Hope to see you!
Thank you arzea!! I would love to be featured in your link party, will read more of that over the weekend to know how to.
This all looks so good. Thai food is my favorite food in the world. The flavours are so fresh and light. We have 3 good thai restaurants on the island I live on. All very popular. My favorite dish is green papaya salad…lovely post.
Laura Lynn, always happy to see your comment. if only I could cook you some Thai, and mainly Vietnamese ! Be well!
Whoa – makes my mouth water reading this! Sounds like the real deal!