Thai Made Easy

Thai Made Easy cooking class with Yui Miles Friday 12th September 2025

• Fish sauce - they bury the anchovies in the ground to ferment them. She went to the Squid brand fish sauce factory when she was in Thailand - they show you the anchovies they use and how they make the fish sauce.
• Shrimp paste - made up of really small prawns.
• Thailand - like India, they have limes rather than lemons. You can get lemons for the 10x the price of limes as they are imported. Believe that the climate is too humid or not humid enough [forgot which] for lemons to grow.
• Building a table - just one type of curry, a stir fried dish, a salad, rice, and a soup. Thai people like to be generous with food and so the idea is to make one more dish than the number of people you’ve invited. So if there are four of you at the table, make 5 dishes.
• Favourite Thai desserts - Thai people don’t tend to have desserts, usually we have fruit. But she likes mango with sticky rice, and her favourite is coconut ice cream. As well as the banana in coconut milk I mentioned.

Massaman curry paste

• Red thai curry paste comes from Central Thailand - Bangkok. You see the change as it moves through the country. For example, as you go North, the chillies go from red to yellow, and turmeric is added, giving yellow curry. As you go South, the influence from India and Malaysia begins to come in, so spices like cinnamon, star anise and cloves get involved.
• Why does Massaman curry have potatoes when these aren’t common in the rest of Thai cuisine? It originates from the South where all the trading took place, so there was a supply of potatoes.
• If she uses a premade curry paste at home - it is Mae Ploy which you can get from Tesco etc - or anything starting with “Mae” as it means mother. Alternatively Lobo which you can get small packages containing 4 portions.

Massaman curry paste technique

• Use a pestle and mortar. If you don’t have one you can use a spice chopper machine like the one I have at home.If a stone one is too heavy for you, you can get a wooden pestle and mortar.
• Begin with your mise en place of finely chopped ingredients. The following:
  • Chopped [makrut] lime peel
  • Shallot
  • Chilli
  • Garlic
  • Lemongrass
  • Galangal
  • Coriander roots
• Pound the ingredients together, adding a bit at a time and getting the paste to the point where the chilli isn’t visible as individual flecks.
• When the paste has mostly come together, add two big pinches of salt and continue to pound the mixture. This will help the paste come together.
• Mix in the shrimp paste and then the spices.
• It is good practice to taste the mix once you have added the shrimp paste and spices
• You can prep curry paste ahead and freeze in ice cube trays. One ice cube of curry paste per person you’re making the curry paste for.
• The technique you use to pound the paste is to hit it quickly - about 4-5 beats per second or 300 bpm. And then scrap the sides of the bowl with a spoon. You can hold your hand over one side of the bowl to prevent chilli juice etc from leaking out.
• When Yui was young, the Thai tradition her mother told her is if you don’t pound the paste fast, you won’t get a husband. This comes from the tradition of women being at home doing the cooking, the idea was when the man comes home from work if he hears you pounding the paste languidly and slowly he won’t marry you.

Cooking the curry

• Get a saucepan over a medium high heat and heat the pan. Add the “cream” of the coconut milk. When it is right it will smell like Thai coconut with bananas.
  • Weightwatchers - don’t use low fat coconut milk, just use less. Yui has tested low fat coconut milk and it doesn’t taste right.
  • Use a brand like Aroy D coconut milk. It’s great if the fat has separated out at the top - Thai people tend to cook with this first.
• Add a heftily heaped tablespoon of curry paste - most of a chinese tea cup.
• Add the chicken
• Add the cubed potatoes and then the remainder of the coconut milk/water
• Good time to add the whole spices e.g. cinnamon stick and star anise.
• 5 minutes for the potatoes to simmer (maybe more, let’s be real, potatoes can take 10-20 minutes to cook total)
• Then add the chopped onion and red pepper

Pork and egg stir fried flat noodles

• Chinese origin
  • Thinly sliced pork or chicken
  • 1-2 eggs
  • Garlic
  • Kale - can use Chinese kale or the typical kale you see in the UK
  • Fresh flat noodles -
  • Healthy Boy Sweet Soy
  • Fish sauce
  • GF oyster sauce
  • Amoy Dark Soy Sauce
  • White sugar
  • Serve with pickled chilli or chilli flakes to garnish
• Use fresh flat noodles separated out and mix in some sweet soy to prevent it separating. Or you can use kecap manis which is similar.
• Add a generous amount of oil to the wok and get it really hot on a high heat
• Add the smashed then finely chopped garlic and stir fry it until crispy and fragrant
• Add the thinly sliced pork belly
• Stir fry - not until brown interestingly but until sealed i.e. it’s lost its raw colour
• Add the noodles and quickly stir fry in
• Stir fry technique is to scoop under with the spatula, then stir
• Add a generous tablespoon each of:
  • Healthy Boy Sweet Soy
  • Fish sauce
  • GF oyster sauce
  • Amoy Dark Soy Sauce
  • Sugar
• Put in the sugar, then mix
• Add the kale and stir fry in, quickly until kale wilts
• Ground black pepper
• Make room on the side of the pan for the egg. It kind of sticks, scramble till cooked 60-70%. Give it some time to cook up before scrambling it, or the egg will disappear in the dish.
• Deglaze with enough water
• Take off the heat and add white pepper
• Taste it, if it’s lacking something it’s probably the Healthy Boy Sweet Sauce - that is what really gives the dish its flavour.

Thai corn salad

• This is very similar to som tam. Tam means pounded salad. There are lots of salads like this in Thai food
• Dressing consists of garlic, chilli, fish sauce, and palm sugar
• You actually pound the salad up with the dressing to mix it.
• This recipe uses corn on the cob - cut it off the cob with a bread knife was my station partner’s tip.