The Nation

		This will be my last column of the year and before I start I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. May the New Year bring you all good health, both physical and emotional, wealth and most important of all happiness and peace of mind. I have been writing for the past few years for the Nation and it has been a privilege to have this opportunity to review restaurants for you to go and try. This coming year I have asked the editor of the Nation if I could branch out on my own and write about something that is close to my heart and would be useful for the readers.
The Finished soup, Gang Leang.

Thai food! I want to give you all recipes for Thai food and the background information necessary for you to understand our food culture as well as giving you tips on the technicalities of cooking Thai. Instead of selecting the recipes from the many main ingredients such as pork, chicken or fish, I will select recipes according to the cooking techniques such as boiling, grilling, salads, dips, steaming, frying, stir-frying and so forth. In this way I can give you all a basic understanding of the principal of Thai cooking. I will also have recipes that uses cooking techniques that are not in the Thai repertoire, so that I can show case some new fusion recipes which basically use Thai ingredients but the way you cook it is not Thai.

Today I will use the cooking technique which, our for-fathers have been using since the early days of Thai history, that is, boiling. We did not have metal pots to cook with in the olden days, only clay pots. I am going to make a very old recipe using the boiling technique called Gang Leang. Gang means soup and leang in Thai means putting things in order. You see this soup has lots of vegetables and you can use all kinds of vegetables in this soup but you need to remember to put those vegetables that cook longest into the boiling soup first, consequently the name leang. This soup is very healthy and delicious. For those of you that suffer from a cold this soup is a Thai version of the Western chicken soup.
		Grilled Snakehead fish

GANG LEANG 4 servings

Ingredients:

Meat if grilled snakehead fish, can also use any white flesh fish 1 cup

Rib gourd, peeled and cut into bite size 2-3 cups

Tum Lueng leaves, or Chayote tips as needed

Maeng Luk, Thai mint basil leaves 1 cup

Shallots 4 heads

Shrimp paste 1 Tbsp.

Dry white peppercorns 1 Tbsp.

Ground Dry shrimps 1 Tbsp.

Fish sauce to taste

Water 500 ML.


Bai Maeng Luk, Thai Mint Basil	Ground shrimp, Shrimp paste (Kapi), Shallots and white peppercorns	Bai Tum Lueng

		Directions: 1. Wrap the shrimp paste in banana leaves and grill it until fragrant. Once cooked, unwrap it and pound it together with shallots, peppercorns and fish meat until a paste is achieved. 2. Put water in a pot and bring to boil on the stove. Once boiling, add the paste and stir; do not allow the paste to lump up. The paste will form the base of the soup. The fish meat will give body to the soup. 3. Add the gourd and ground shrimp and cover. Bring the soup back to a boil and season the soup with fish sauce. It should taste slightly salty and very fragrant. Add the rest of the vegetables that are quick to cook. Place the lid back on and take the pot off heat. Serve the soup with a little ground white pepper sprinkled over the soup. Tips: 1. If you cannot find fish meat or are allergic to fish, just make the paste without the fish meat and add fresh shrimps to the soup at the same time as you add the easily cooked vegetables.
Rib Gourd

2. It is up to you what kinds of vegetables you would like to use in this soup but just remember that you have to add the vegetables that takes longer to cook to the pot first. 3. Shrimp paste, vary in quality. Good shrimp paste should not be too dark nor too salty and it should smell good not like rotten salted fish. Consult you maid or buy it at seaside resorts where they have them on sale in the market. Ask for Kapi Dee Dee.
Pounding shrimp paste (kapi), shallots and peppercorns before adding the fish meat.