Rouxbe

Why on earth would you not use Thai Hom Mali Jasmine rice? I don't get it using Basmati rice with Thai food.

not impressed, we make awesome dungeness crabcakes with togarashi kaffir etc, on a bed of chipotle hollandaise. Sorry this is boring.

I know Thai cuisine quite well, as I am the Thai food editor on bellaonline.com and have been to The kingdom 30+ times during the last 20 years. The amount of water required for Jasmine depends on if it is new crop or not. I usually use Thai Hom Mali Jasmine.

We also love Broken Jasmine Rice which is a special treat and also njoyed in Vietnam and Laos for special dishes.

I make a similiar type shrimp dish but fry the chile paste in the thick part of the coconut milk to develop the flavour and aroma, and I do not use tomatoes, but a touch of lime juice and of course fresh tender young Kaffir/bai magroot.

Try soaking the shrimp in an ice bath of water and 1 tsp of salt for 20 minutes refreshes their from the sea taste.

I grow 3 types of Thai basil, several Thai chiles, lemon grass, and have 7 Kaffir Lime trees in my yard here in California.

I agree that you don't need crab legs or claw meat, we just shell out the fresh Dungeness and use the body meat.

If you try a little togarashi and kaffir lime leaf you will be surprised at how it takes these up a few noches. We place in forms and fry in grapeseed oil or rice bran oil or ghee.

Chipotle Hollandaise is amazing, but we are into complex subtle flavours all in balance.

Our recipe is not unlike yours just has a little tist with bai magroot and togarashi.

Bon Appetite

There is a traditional Thai dish that is similiar called Gai Pad Med Mamuang Himaphan. Of course the taste is different as you use Thai Oyster Sauce which has no msg and has a richer less salty taste.

Garnished with fresh mango shredds and served with steamed Thai Hom Mali Jasmine rice it is a perfect quick dinner.

This is sometimes served over just steamed spinach or water vegetable which is common in SE Asia and China.

Yellow bean sauce is also great!

Serranos ripe and Thai Dragons and Bird Eye chiles are some of my favs. I have about 40 varieties this year in the garden. Red Savinas are fun too minced in honey.

Thai cooking is not difficult. Just prep and some easy stir-fry techniques in most recipes. I love Thai cuisine, as it is sort of the Italian of Asia/SE Asia in that you use so many fresh ingredients-garlic-chiles-basil-seafood or chicken are very common plus some good quality fish sauce, kaffir lime, lemongrass, date palm sugar, lime juice, etc. Small ingredient list.

Thai is a balance of hot-sweet-salty-sour and sometimes bitter as in Isaan cuisine, so that not one element is over-powering the others.

Mary-Anne, Thai Food Editor
http://www.bellaonline.com/site/ThaiFood

Monica, I chuckled as well, perhaps he should just call it properly bai Magroot/magrood Galangal has a perfumey fragrance and certainly nothing like ginger.

Then there Krachai (Chinese keys) love it with seafood dishes.

I am also in the SF Bay area and have 7 Bai Magroot trees, lemongrass, many phrik kee nu and phrik chee fa growing in my garden which I will pot up to over winter inside.

I love using caramelized onions in meatballs and meatloaf. I often also add some roasted garlic at the same time. Nice round mellow but there flavours play in the background in a supporting roll to the "hero" ingredient.

Tip: For those watching their intake of fat cut back on the butter and add some hot water, cover and caramelize.

Panang has a nice mellow flavour with potatoes, carrots and or kabocha squash (also known as Japanese squash in SE Asia and Oz) for veggie meals.

If the quality of your dried shrimp is large/plump and moist they really add to the flavour of Pad Thai and are not fishy at all.

Actually it is not about the size! t is about the shell and legs.

Crustaceans are Arthropods that have an ecoskeleton (like a permanent suit of armour). It's not water tight however, which differentiates them
from insects. Crustaceans also have gills and a special aquatic larval stage.

Dividing Crustaceans up gives us 6 classes. Basically, these groups cover:

* Copepods (planktonic swimmies)
* Ostrocods (small marine swimmies)
* Branchiopods (brine shrimp and Daphnia)
* Barnacles
* Branchiurans (parastic)
* Malacostracans (lobster, crabs, woodlice etc.)

It's the Malaconstracans you've asked about, so they divide even further (a very diverse group!)

Here we have Isopods, Amphipods and Decapods. It's the Decapods (meaning 10 legs) that contain all the lobsters, crabs, shrimp and prawns.

So, Mantis shrimp, king prawns, and snapping shrimp are all Decapods (think of that classic "prawn" body plan - long slender body with lots of legs and the head at the front with all the antennae). They're all quite closely related - at least with respect to their "order". After "order", we divide organisms up into "family", then "genus" and "species".

I hope this quickly explains the Phylum Crustacea...to answer your question in one statement:

Prawns and shrimp are very closely related - belonging to the same order (Decapoda). Both can occur in marine, estuarine and freshwater environments, depending in the species in question.

If you look carefully and examine them you can see the difference if it matters to you.

Me- I prefer the sweet flavour of fresh water prawn-just had them barbecued in Bangkok-gorgeous and yummy with loads of garlic. But for Tom Yum smaller shrimp in the shell works perfectly.

I use cardamon, pepper, lemongrass, culantro, gin and Mekong amongst other things-simply amazing-weighted and aged for a few weeks. Steelhead is also lovely as Gravlaxx.

Piri-piri are wonderful Portugese peppers, not hot perhaps a 30,000 to 50,000 scoville units, but have a wonderful flavour.