Starter

Pork Stuff Onions ( Horm Yay Yad Sine )

Onions are often overlooked as a vegetable. Here we have a wonderful dish of stuffed onions, all the flavour of the red onions is kept in the dish and the onion served to keep the stuffing moist. Serve either as a starter or as a side dish with soup.

Ingredients
5 Large Onions
40 gms Pork Mince
2 Tablespoons Chopped Onion
2 Tablespoons Chopped Carrots
3 Garlic Cloves
1/4 White Pepper
4 Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Salt
1/3 Tespoons Sugar
1 Tablespoon Ketchup
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Scoop out the centre of the onion to make a hollow bowl shape. Leave two or three layers of onion on the outside.
2. Place the hollow onions in boiling water and boil for 3 minutes.
3. Mix the pork mince with the carrot, onion, white pepper, salt, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, garlic, sugar and ketchup.
4. Fry the mixture until cooked.
5. Stuff the onions with the cooked filling mixture and place in a hot oven for 10 minutes to brown them off.

Mushroom Pork Houses ( Had Huom Nuing Tow Hu )

These little mushroom 'houses' are three layers made with tofu, a ball of pork mince and capped with a roof made from a mushroom. Normally in the sauce I use the shoots of garlic, these look like spring onions, but grow from garlic bulbs instead of onion bulbs and have a strong garlic flavour. If you can't find them, you can use spring onions, but it's better to find the garlic shoots if you can.

Ingredients
100 gms Tofu
4 Shitake Mushrooms
50 gms Pork Mince
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Corn Flour
130 ml Water
1 Teaspoon Fish Stock Cube
1 Tablespoon Chopped Garlic Shoots

Preparation
1. Soak the shitake mushrooms for 30 minutes if they are dried.
2. Cut the tofu into 5x5 cm squares, 4 pieces, one piece for each mushroom.
3. Mix the pork mince with the light soy sauce and sugar, then roll into 4 balls.
4. Put a ball of pork onto each of the tofu squares, cap them with a shitake mushroom.
5. Steam them for 10 minutes then put into the plate.
6. Make the sauce by adding fish stock to water and boil to form a simple soup.
7. When the soup is boiling add chopped green garlic shoots.
8. Dissolve the corn flour in 20 ml cold water, add to the soup and stir until it thickens.
9. Pour the sauce over the mushroom houses to serve.

3 Tastes Platter ( Gung Nieng Mara nam Prick Guy )

This makes a nice starter setting up the flavours of a coming meal. The main three flavours are seafood, a bitter taste from the melon and spicy chicken. I find it's nicer to present it with the prawns coiled up into the melon slices.

Ingredients
40 gms Bitter Melon
7-8 Prawns
30 gms Chicken
2 Garlic Cloves
20 gms Chopped Onion
20 gms Dried Flaked Chillies
1 Tablespoon Chilli Paste
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Clean and slice the bitter melon. You should remove the inner seeds as they are too bitter to eat. Arrange them on a plate small enough to fit in your steamer.
2. Clean, shell, and take out the black thread of the prawns, leave the tail on for presentation. Coil the prawns into the slices of melon as in the photograph.
3. Place the plate in the steamer and steam the prawns and melon for 5 minutes.
4. For the centre we will make Nam Prick (spicy chicken sauce).
5. In a blender, mix the chicken with the garlic, onion, flaked chillies, chilli paste, salt, sugar, lemon juice and fish sauce.
6. Blend to form a course mince.
7. Preheat a little oil in a frying pan and fry the mix until the chicken is cooked through. Spoon this into the middle of the prawn plate and serve.

Crab Stick Rolls ( Pu Aut Hur Sar Lhia )

Crab sticks are those cheap sticks of white fish with a pink strip painted on them. They may not be a top quality cut of fish, but their shape makes them ideal for making this steamed starter.

Ingredients
10 Crab Sticks
200 gms Fish Mince
3-4 Garlic Cloves
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper
1-2 Coriander Roots
1-2 Carrots
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
Seaweed Paper

Preparation
1. Peel the carrots, coriander root and garlic. Chop them finely.
2. Then mix the fish mince (the minced flesh of any white meat fish), chopped carrot, garlic, white pepper, coriander root, oyster sauce, and light soy sauce together and mix well.
3. Take the seaweed paper, lay it down on a flat cloth or sushi mat, spread some of the mixture thinly over the seaweed paper, place a line of crab sticks along one edge and roll up the paper into a roll.
4. Cut the roll into 4cm lengths.
5. Steam for 10 minutes to cook.

Shrimp Dim Sum ( Kanoom Jib Goung )

The shrimp tail is the give away on this dim-sum dish. Inside the parcel is a shelled shrimp, surrounded by pork mince and seasonings. The tail of the shrimp gives a nice handle to pick it up with.

Ingredients
100 gms Pork Mince
10 gns Pork Fat
100 gms Shrimp
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper
3-4 Garlic Cloves
2 Coriander Roots
Wonton Skins (Pastry square, available from an Asian grocers)

Preparation
1. Mix the pork mince, pork fat, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, white pepper, garlic, and coriander root together in a blender and blend to a smooth mixture.
2. Take a wonton skin, spread the pork mixture over it, evenly.
3. Shell and clean a shrimp, leave the tail part of the shell on for decoration.
4. Place a shrimp in the middle and bring the edges of the pastry up around the shrimp tail so that the tail pokes out of the top.
5. Steam in a Chinese steamer until cooked, (approximately 10 minutes or so).

Thai Appetizers (Kratong Tong)

In our house we eat this as a 'gop-gam' dish (a snack dish to eat at the end of the day with beer or whiskey), but usually they're made smaller and eaten as an appetizer. The pastry is a basic shortcrust pastry that is baked separately into cup shapes. The fillings are made later with Thai flavours, curries and spicy fish etc.. In the photograph above you can see two sizes, in the 3 flavours we made, but feel free to experiment.

Ingredients for Pastry (Makes 18+ Large or 25+ Small Cups)
150 gms Flour
60 gms Butter
1 Egg Yolk
Water
A baking tray with cup shaped impressions

Preparation for Pastry Cups
1. Place the flour and butter in a large mixing bowl.
2. Rub the butter into the flour using your finger tips. Once you've finished you should end up with a fine breadcrumb like mixture.
3. Add the egg yolk and just enough water to form a pastry dough.
4. Flour the baking tray so that the cups don't stick.
5. Roll the pastry onto a floured surface, cut out circles and place them into the baking tray.
6. Bake for 10 minutes at 190 degrees celsius until just brown and cooked.

Spicy Sardine Filling
This filling is shredded sardines with a Thai spicy sauce, for Kratong Tong that bite back! There is approximately enough filling to fill 6 larger cups with these ingredients.

Ingredients for Spicy Sardine Filling
1 Can Sardines in Tomato Sauce (Approx 90gms)
2 Red Chillies
1 Teaspoon Sliced Lemongrass
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Chopped Coriander Leaves

Preparation for Spicy Sardine Filling
1. Slice the chillies, lemongrass and coriander leaves.
2. Mix with the sardines and sauce from the can and salt.
3. Drain off excess liquid.
4. Spoon into the pastry cups.

Pork Curry Filling
This filling is pork & potato filling and the main taste is curry. The ingredients are enough to fill 6 large pastry cups.

Ingredients for Pork Curry Filling
50 gms Minced Pork
1 Clove Garlic
Pinch Pepper & Salt
1 Small Onion
1 Teaspoon Curry Powder
1 Tablespoon Oil
200 gms Potato

Preparation for Pork Curry Filling
1. Boil the potato until its cooked, dice it into small cubes.
2. Pound or chop the garlic until it is fine.
3. Cut the onion into fine pieces.
4. In a frying pan, add the oil, the mince, the onion and the garlic and fry until the pork is cooked (3-5 minutes).
5. Drain off excess oil.
6. Add the curry powder, salt and pepper, mix into the other ingredients and fry for a further minute.
7. Take off the heat, and mix in the chopped potato, its now ready to use as a filling.

Other Filling Ideas
You can use western ingredients too, in the photograph, for example, we also made a vegetarian filling with mashed potato, carrot and sweet corn. Or perhaps tuna and sweetcorn, or potato and shrimp are more to your liking.