Kayelle you're such a tease not hinting what's in your recipe.
Tenspeed, that salmon sounds great! I love salmon so much I swear I could eat it raw! In fact Thursday night I did have raw salmon!
My trekking took me past one of our larger Vietnamese supermarkets and their sushi grade salmon looked too good to pass up. So I didn't.
I stopped by a Japanese take out place before returning home and got some spicy tuna roll. (Unfortunately I can make better tuna roll myself, live and learn.)
Tonight I wanted either Thai or Indian chicken, but having left over fresh Thai ingredients I opted for
Kai Yang: Thai barbecued chicken.
Kai or
gai means chicken,
yang or
yarng means grilled or barbecued; the Thai have a unique alphabet so Thai to English translation never results in reliable spelling of words. In any case this recipe is popular at street vendors and in restaurants in Thailand.
In my version of the recipe a marinade of coconut milk and tumeric is the basis, augmented by ground pepper, and sometimes salt although
nam pla (fish sauce) is commonly used in Thai cooking not only to add saltiness but also to add dimensionality to the flavor. It is the Asian equivalent of Worcestershire sauce in that it is in essence fermented anchovies.
Nam pla has fewer ingredients and commonly is a dark tea colored liquid, although Vietnamese fish sauce can be much darker and is often less filtered. Myself, I prefer all ingredients for my Thai cooking to be of Thai origin so I used my favorite Cock Brand (think "rooster") although the name maybe a bit tittering (oops there I go again!) but if you want to cook Thai food my advice is to use Thai ingredients produced in Thailand. (My Chaudoc coconut milk and Aroy-D coconut cream are also Thai products.)
So as I alluded, I was using up ingredients from a Thai curry I had (last night?) and
gai yang is a marinated chicken so my marinade was as follows:
I used up my coconut cream (the heavy top produced when coconut milk is processed) and mixed it with a lot of tumeric (8 oz. coconut milk/cream to 1 T. tumeric is a good start), maybe 2 t. pepper, and 4-5 cloves of minced garlic. I usually use 1 t. salt but decided to use
nam pla instead ... because I go with my instincts when cooking Thai. That's the usual recipe but as long as I'm off the road I decided to throw in some crab paste (another flavor dimension expander) and I minced a few
very hot[/u] Thai chili peppers, and some minced lemongrass. (To mince lemongrsss put a stalk between plastic wrap after peeling the tough outer layers, and smash the heck out of it with a mallet, then use scissors to process it into your recipe).
I have some Thai basil (it's not like our sweet basil, it's got reddish stems and sometimes reddish veins through the leaves, and has an almost licorice like taste) and I'm sure to garnish my gai yang with it before serving.
So it's been marinating an hour and I'm sure to start it out in my oven at 375F although I may finish it in the patio -- it's a bit rainy in Los Angeles and I may finish it under my convection broiler instead.
Gay yang is always served with a sweet dipping sauce and while I have my own dipping sauce recipe (PM me if you want my website) I find that a very nice equivalent -- and less work -- is made from about equal parts of Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce (yes, another Thai brand), a finely diced lime including the skin, and I'm undecided on whether to add a splash of nam pla.
So my two chicken leg/thigh (probably too much food) has been marinating about 2 hours and my convection oven is set for 375F and heating up, about ready to start really cooking. I'll serve it with the sauce and some left over fried rice. I like to take a cookie sheet or broiler pan and cover it with foil, then set a grill on top to keep the chicken out of the grease and also makes for quick clean up).
So that's what is cookin' here tonight: Thai style barbecued chicken, Thai dipping sauce, quasi-fried rice.
By the way I'll clue you to my secret ingredient in many savory recipes. Just squeeze some lime juice over the top. It's particularly effective if your guests didn't see you do it!
Lime, lime juice, lime rhind and chopped limes are such a great ingredient!