Thursday, November 20, 2008

Salad and Steak Moong Yor

Today was my first official cooking class at school. Actually, it wasn't official, I just dropped in at the room and said "I'm studying with your class this period." Everyone was super friendly though - the class was M3/8 [grade 9's] and they taught me to write out the recipe in THAI!
That's exciting. First we made salad dressing:

1. Beat together 10 eggs with an electric beater.
2. Over medium heat, simmer together in a saucepan:
3 1/2 cups of sugar
1 cup of vinegar
1 tablespoon of salt
1/2 glass of water
Once you have simmered this for a while and it has mixed together, you can beat it in with the eggs using the electric beater.
3. Slowly add 1 L of vegetable oil in with your sauce, while still mixing with the electric beater. The sauce should start to thicken and look more like a salad dressing. Then, add a whole can of condensed milk.
4. Finally, add 2 tablespoons of mustard and a cup of mayonnaise in with your sauce.

We served the salad dressing over a mixed fruit dish, but you can serve it over anything. Some ideas for your salad:
Lettuce, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Carrot, Dragonfruit, Apple, Guava, Pineapple, Beans, Nuts, Chicken, Pork, Jellies, Radish, Orange etc.

Thai people put EVERYTHING in their salads.
Next, we made "Steak moong yor" > there is no English translation but I would describe it as a pork meatball, battered and deepfried. It also tastes good with the salad dressing.
To make the meatballs we used two different kinds of pork - I don't know what kind because, again, there is no English translation as pork is not prepared this way in Canada. However, any kind of pork would do.
1. Pound the meat until it has a similar texture to ground beef.
2. Depending on your personal taste, add in the following:
Diced onions
Soya sauce
Pepper
3. Next, prepare your batter. Whisk together in a bowl:
1 cup of all purpose flour
2 tablespoons of oil
1/2 cup of cold water
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
4. Heat up a wok over medium heat and fill it with enough oil to cover the patties.
5. Take handfuls of your meat mixture, form them into circular, flat patties and cover them them in the batter. Thenslowly and carefully drop them in the oil. Keep the patties from sticking to each other and when they are a golden brown you can remove them with a hand strainer and let them cool on a rack over a grease tray.
6. If you want to be SLIGHTLY healthier [not that this is much of a diet recipe to begin with] you can skip battering the patties and fry them the way they are.
Again, You can eat Steak Moong Yor with the salad dressing recipe from above, and they are also good with soya sauce. I also assume that you could eat it with rice [everything is eaten with rice in Thailand].