The Forumosan Recipe Thread

I think this is the main recipe I used the first couple of times I cooked it:

Nowadays I just kind of throw everything together though. Like @TT said, pretty much every restaurant in Northern Thailand seems to have their own recipe anyway, and it’s quite common to have things like green beans or baby corn in there.

I find it easier to food process the garlic, shallots, and onions first so I don’t have to do too much manual chopping, and then prepare a mixture of the various sauces and black pepper etc. that I can dump onto the chicken after it’s mostly cooked, followed by some chicken stock to deglaze the pan and finally a load of basil (I usually grow Thai basil at home for this each spring/summer, but the local basil from the market also works fine).

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There shouldn’t be a lot of runny sauce, right. It’s really just to deglaze the pan and give the basil something to wilt in. I usually let it continue cooking until the liquid has 90% evaporated.

Between the soy sauce, oyster sauce, and chicken stock though, it can end up too salty so need to be careful. Because of this I tend to use low-sodium soy sauce and not add any extra salt.

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And the fish sauce, also salty. Agree, have to be careful not to oversalt this one!

And i lived in central Thailand, tended to ride to the south

Yeah, me either. I’ll always happily spend an extra 15 baht on a fried egg in a restaurant, but can’t really be bothered in my tiny Taiwanese kitchen when I’ve already used my favorite pan for the main dish…

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Is that what I think it is? Is that a tamale?

Chai tea, the follow up pictures show some process and presentation with curry (Patak’s, from Carrefour not from scratch). Curry and chai, it’s like Thai food and lager or pasta and red wine for me, great combo

We’d been talking about ginger tea for @explant to have a flavorful and healthy caffeine free evening drink, and I make it with ginger

Would you like to know more?

Why’s the corn husk looking thing for?

That’s the last knuck of ginger sitting on a yellow net bag that it came in

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I see. I’ve been craving for tamales… but the process to make it is so complicated.

I’ve never lived in Latin America. That was actually my planned destination instead of Taiwan, but the beginning of covid was a bad time to look for uni jobs so this is where I ended up. But when it is time to leave Taiwan I’ll definitely be looking that way…

I don’t know about tamales but I’m making some tortillas later. A lot of corn flour to use :slight_smile:

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Ya post your ingredients if possible!

I love chai, but we make it with tea. sometimes I make a milk chai at night (sans tea leaf), or a turmeric milk when I want to sleep but have a nice drink :slight_smile: But I do prefer chai with tea base :smile:

this thread exploded with some drool worthy recipes. thanks for sharing them! the thai food looks friggen insane.

So when I say I don’t like the food in Taiwan, I don’t mean the cuisine or ingredients. I mean the thing they put in front of me that doesn’t live up to how “famous” the food was sold as on the lists of reasons to move to Taiwan. I learned to cook in China, added more dishes in Thailand, even picked up a few Vietnamese dishes in Canada. And in Taiwan I’ve gotten… practice!

The worst dish I’ve shared was the three cup inspired one. I should have thickened the sauce a lot more

Ya, now I get your wording. It was confusing before calling Thai food Taiwanese food lol.

But anyway, I was mentioning the recent recipe editions. the thai ones are right up our alley! Chinese food is a bit hit or miss with me. But everything at home can be adjusted to fit :slight_smile:

I always start with the black tea (just cheap whatever, Lipton right now), and cardamom pods, and fennel.

To this base i added here: cloves, cinnamon, ginger. Sometimes I add chili flakes, or tumeric, but not this time

I start by cracking open the spices. Whole spices hold the flavor better than powder, and are easier to filter out later. I like it strong, and use a lot of the spices

Toast the spices, when they get fragrant add the water and ginger slices. 1/2 mug of water per mug of final product. Boil that for a good while, lid on to prevent boil off. How long? I don’t know, i usually go and do something. 10 or 20 minutes?

Add the tea. 5 to 7 minutes, one bag per mug of final product. Don’t forget it, or it gets bitter. But more sweetener fixes that

Then, add the milk, as much as the water was added. DON’T WALK AWAY! Low fat milk doesn’t work great, but at some point the heat and fat content results in a billowing foam (there’s a photo). This boils up fast, when it comes, and the mess is not fun to clean up. When it starts to foam up just lift the pot off the heat and it falls back quickly, then put it back and let it foam, repeat this a few times (i don’t know why, that’s how my indian roommates did it, I guess because that’s how their moms did it)

Sweeten to taste. I use honey not white sugar because it should be very sweet, or it isn’t quite the same. I usually start sweeting while waiting for the milk to foam

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It was great in China, I haven’t had any good Chinese food in Taiwan. Probably one of the most noticeable cultural differences for me is the food

out of curiosity, what kind of honey do you use? I am not proud to admitthis, but I personally havent found a real one I like with chai. I prefer the fake syrups…:frowning:

the local honeys I have tried are just too strong. Any suggestions?

wife just handed me a cold chai milk. fantastic!

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Kirkland :face_with_peeking_eye:

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hehe, okay. we all have our secrets :slight_smile: probably better than the fake RT mart stuff I have used though :innocent:

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I like Kirkland for the price, and I figure the quality is probably going to be better because it is made for western markets as well. But yeah, honey can be trick

ok, don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I do add a bit of white sugar to my tea, not just 100% honey…
:shushing_face:

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