This month we’re launching a new delivery menu for plant based food for our customers in Bangkok. The menu combines Thai dishes we love to make in our cooking classes with our favorite homemade meals. The menu is geared towards busy families who want to save time in the kitchen without compromising their diets.
Thai mushroom stir fry (aka krapow) with holy basil and chili.
The new menu is an opportunity to extend interest in healthy cooking to people who haven’t had a chance to join our cooking classes. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm about plant based eating in the Thai community right now,” says Panisha Chanwilai, our vegan cooking teacher.
“But when people look for plant based recipes online, they might assume it’s all salads and pasta. I want Thais to be proud of our own cuisine, which can easily be made into healthy meals.”
For instance, this month one of the featured dishes is tom kha soup. Thai food fans may recognize this dish as the calmer little sister of spicy tom yum soup. The dish is a soup is composed of coconut milk, made fragrant with classic Thai aromatics like kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, and galangal.
Besides the ingredients that make the dish tom kha, there’s a lot of flexibility to decide what else we would like to include. These variations are common to see from one Thai household to the next. One family may choose to include banana blossom, another prefers the soup with a variety of local mushroom, while still another adds extra chili jam to add heat and color.
Our version is made without any meat products, nor fish sauce. We also no longer use white sugar, and try to exclude oil in our recipes whenever possible. This addresses many of the common criticisms of trends in Thai food the last few decades, which can be oily, overly sweet, and scant on vegetables. However, when you have homemade Thai food, this isn’t always the case.
In addition to food, you can order our organic tempeh, tofu, and other food products as well.
Ready to try food from Courageous Kitchen? In addition to the meals, customers can order our homemade tofu, tempeh, and other food products. Orders are placed by Thursday each week, and the food is delivered to people’s homes every Sunday in a refrigerated truck. As always, proceeds from the sales will help us continue our mission to feed and educate during these uncertain times.
To order and receive the new menu each month, message us via our delivery order form.
Tom Yum lovers will be excited to learn you can enjoy the popular soup in a variety of ways. One of our favorite renditions is in the form of fried rice. This is similar to what you would order at a street food stall with a wok station. If you can find fragrant herbs to add, this recipe will be a great way to spice up your usual homemade fried rice!
Aromatics & Cooking Method
If you’re new to tom yum, the flavors come from a combination of aromatic herbs popular in Thai cooking. Those herbs are lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaf. If you’ve ever had them in a Thai restaurant you may remember them because they’re the bits in the soup you can’t eat comfortably. Although all of them are edible, each is so coarse they would be really tough to chew.
To make the fried rice version, you’ll need to find your local asian grocer and prep the ingredients. Unlike the soup where the herbs will boil together, this recipe requires the elbow grease to pound them in a mortar and pestle. This is a big job, and is best done in a traditional stone mortar and pestle, so that each of the ingredients is properly smashed.
Homemade Thai chili jam is best (see our recipe), and you can use the excess oil for cooking your fried rice.
Can you put the items in a food processor or blender? Sure you can. However, often when we’re using the mortar and pestle, blending is not the most important function for using this traditional kitchen equipment. What we really desire are the essential oils from the ingredients that will make a paste that will remind your eyes, nose, and mouth of your favorite tom yum soup!
Finally, we should add some details about the moisture content of the fried rice. If you’re not cooking over high heat, or using leftover rice that is drier than rice freshly steamed, you may find the final product too soggy. If you know you prefer the drier, more crusty fried rice— be prepared with a heavy duty wok or pan to use. That way you can stir fry you rice longer, and scrape the stuck rice at the center of the wok to free the toastiest bits before they burn (not the best use of your non stick pan). Don’t be surprised to find cooks who love their fried rice this style, even throwing the wok or skillet of fried rice into the oven for a crispy finish.
Tom Yum Fried Rice
Gather, wash, and prep all of your Thai ingredients for this recipe, along with the protein of your choice.
Equipment: mortar and pestle (preferably stone), wok
Ingredients
1 cup of rice
70-100g of protein (we used tofu)
1 tbsp of oil
30g mushroom
30g tomato (plum or less watery tomatoes work better)
20g onion
2 kaffir lime leaves
2 tbsp of soy sauce
2 tbsp of sweet chili jam (nam prik pow)
Optional: Lime to squeeze on top and spring onion for garnish
Tom Yum Paste Ingredients:
1 tbsp of minced galangal
1 tbsp of thin sliced lemongrass
2 chili (optional)
Directions
Prep all your ingredients. In mortar and pestle, pound lemongrass, galangal and chili together. Set aside.
Chop your proteins bite sized or smaller.
In a wok over medium heat, add a tbsp of cooking oil.
Add your proteins (If using tender meats like shrimp, you can set aside after cooking) and stir until mostly cooked.
Then add your paste and allow to become aromatic. Followed closely by your onions.
When your proteins are cooked and other ingredients smell nice, add your mushrooms and tomato.
Now you’re ready to add your rice. Mix with everything and add soy sauce and chili paste.
Stir fry until ingredients are well incorporated, or you have achieved the desired texture (give it an extra few minutes if you prefer a dry fried rice).
Plate and garnish, reminding your guests to squeeze their lime wedge over the top before enjoying.
The combination of classic Thai aromatics makes this a spicy choice no matter what meat, seafood, or plant based alternative you choose for your recipe.
A special invite has our US based team hanging out in the Bay area recently, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share how we brought Courageous Kitchen vibes to employees at Airbnb headquarters!
Courageous Kitchen larb and papaya salad stations in the kitchen at Airbnb Headquarters.
One of the most important ways we raise funds is by hosting tourists for food related experiences in Bangkok and San Diego. Much of this entrepreneurial arm of our charity is possible because of programs like Airbnb Experiences, where Courageous Kitchen is featured as a Social Impact activity. The designation refers to recognized charities who host on the platform to bolster their causes, and has all commission fees waived by Airbnb. Not only is Courageous Kitchen one of only 400 such experiences worldwide, we are the first and only social impact experience in Bangkok.
We’re proud to be working with Airbnb, and most recently Christy was invited to teach a Thai food workshop at their renowned headquarters in San Francisco’s hip SoMa district. Along with longtime volunteer, Beatriz, they taught members of the Airbnb Experiences team how to make traditional Thai iced tea, papaya salad (aka somtam), and a Lao style minced meat salad full of herbs and chilies (aka larb). If you’re unfamiliar with these dishes, lovers of Thai food can tell you that along with some sticky rice, they quickly become one of the most sought after meals you can get in Thailand.
Christy greeting Airbnb employees with a traditional “wai.” A polite Thai gesture when you meet or part from one another.
To start off their class, Beatriz showed the group of nearly 30 guests how to make their own Thai tea. She then shared her story of how she became involved with Courageous Kitchen, stemming mostly from her own familial ties to refugees. Her grandparents were spies for the United States Army, and fled Indonesia sometime in the 1950s to avoid being caught by the local government. Next, Christy demonstrated two of her favorite Thai and Lao salads which are staples in her Laotian household. Christy’s background not only provides the cultural context to work with our students, but her own story resonates with theirs deeply. Her parents, who escaped Laos in the early 1980’s lived and worked in a refugee camp in Thailand before resettling to the US where she was born.
The narratives of the people behind the food, are just as important as the food we serve, in helping others understand our mission and vision. By sharing our personal stories with our guests, we realize just how much our own paths are connected with those of our Courageous Kitchen families as well. As Social Impact hosts on Airbnb, we want the customers in our cooking classes and street food tours to understand where their dollars are being spent, and be able to walk away with both satisfied bellies and hearts, knowing they helped a noble cause.
In our short time taking over the jumbo kitchen in Airbnb Headquarters, we attempted to give employees who visited, a mini taste of what we offer each and every guest. That’s a quick serving of friendship paired with cold drinks, spicy bites, and a bold brand of courage that leads us to fight for the most marginalized.
Stephanie, Beatriz, and Christy pose with some of the Airbnb staff
Our team is grateful for the continued support from Airbnb and the entire Experiences community. We’ve met and partnered with some amazing entrepreneurs in California and hope to forge more friendships with likeminded organizations in the future.
We look forward to sharing our story in a kitchen near you!
Special Thanks and hugs to Stephanie H. of Airbnb, for the invite and support every step of the way!
Today’s shared plate is fresh out of the wok, and we’re ready to enjoy it with the latest episode of The Bangkok Podcast! Feast your eyes on our beloved pad see ew, and listen to the podcast on spotify or youtube. This drunken noodle dish from Thailand is often featured in our morning market cooking class, but today we wanted to share a version with a slight twist.
This isn’t just any pad see ew, it’s made with a little extra TLC, by taking the time to make our own rice noodles. For those who love pad see ew, you can probably imagine why this is special. Pad see ew is normally a milder Thai dish, but if you prefer the noodles a little spicy, you can dash a bit of our homemade sriracha on top (or alternatively you can make pad kee mow drunken noodles instead). Beyond a spicy sriracha sauce, we’re pairing this special plate of noodles with an episode of The Bangkok Podcast, whose hosts Greg and Ed, decided to feature Courageous Kitchen. We hope you will take the time to listen and share!
After a lot of testing, we’re finally ready to teach you how to make fresh rice noodles.
Homemade ‘Sen Yai’ Rice Noodles
The process has been tricky, but we have been testing recipes to create our own wide rice noodle on our own. One of the factors that makes pad see ew in Thailand, more outstanding than versions you can have in restaurants abroad, is that street vendors in Thailand can usually grab fresh rice noodles from the market. The noodles are factory made in giant batches each day, and delivered to the markets where a local vendor can purchase them, and slice them to the thickness that customers dictate. Best of all, you can buy a kilo of fresh rice noodles for much less than a dollar.
Getting the noodles the proper thickness and texture is a challenge, and sometimes a matter of personal preference.
The local market version is sliced precisely, and dirt cheap, so why would you make your own?
We simply love the nuance of hand cut noodles and the ability to customize them to your preference. If you prefer them melty, bouncy, super long, or some combination of those characteristics, you can adjust the amount of rice flour and a tapioca starch you add into the recipe. In a city that thrives on street food, this is a lost art in most Bangkok homes, but we’re happy to guide you through the process of making your own rice noodles.
As we make our stir fry sauce for pad see ew, we add a little color to our hand cut noodles with a teaspoon of black soy sauce.
You can find the dish made with other types of noodles, but there’s something special about freshly made, wide rice noodles or ‘sen yai’. The texture is extremely soft and pliable, unlike most of the dried, pre-packaged noodles you find in Thailand’s supermarkets. Admittedly though, they can be a pain to cook. The noodles tend to get so gooey in a hot wok, that if you’re not quick enough when stirring, they begin to melt and glue the entire dish to the bottom of the wok.
Many cooks, especially Thailand’s beloved street chefs, solve this problem by cooking the noodles quickly with high heat. When you spot vendors doing this, you’re really peering into the impact of centuries of Chinese migration on Thailand’s food culture. When the pad see ew noodles pour out of those high pressure gas or charcoal heated woks, the entire dish has absorbed the smoke and the stir fry sauce has been charred through the lightning quick process. This is the same wok hei style cooking that gives us dishes like Malaysia’s ‘char kway teeo‘, a sibling dish which Malaysians love as much as Thais adore pad see ew.
A delicious, hot plate of pad see ew with homemade rice noodles.
We’ve just launched a new class to teach you to make these noodles, please check it out! We hope guests will have fun going a little deeper with their pad see ew, and take noodle making knowledge home to places where good rice noodles for pad see ew and other dishes are a rarity. As in the podcast, we also hope to share Courageous Kitchen’s message of how food has the power to transform communities with everyone who visits for this tasty meal.
Happy listening, and thanks for stopping by to snack with us.
Special thanks to The Bangkok Podcast. If you have any trouble listening, you can also find them on youtube. We recommend listening to their latest episodes with a sharing plate nearby!
Last December, we had a special guest in the kitchen who has not only made a tremendous impact on our young women, but on many of her peers across the globe. Sixteen year old Lara Cortes, who was traveling Southeast Asia for the first time with her parents, stopped by for a market tour and Thai cooking class!
Holding the 2018 title of Miss Teen Puerto Rico, Lara is an accomplished athlete, artist, and musician. She loves swimming, and is often found snorkeling in her beach hometown of Isabela, PR. Here we ask her what her favorite part of hanging in the Courageous Kitchen was and how she enjoys giving back to her community in Isabela.
CK: Did you have any expectations of Bangkok before your arrival?
LC: Not really, once I found out I was going to Thailand I was just ecstatic to travel and broaden my horizons. I wanted to fill my mind with experiences and stories to learn and tell to others.
CK: How did it live up to that?
LC: Thailand surpassed my expectations, everything was just amazing and so filled with culture, beautiful sights to see and especially amazing, friendly people.
CK: Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with Courageous Kitchen?
LC: It was an amazing experience meeting the girls who run the class. I believe they are capable of amazing things if they keep working as hard as they do.
Lara learned to make mango and sticky rice in our cooking class in Bangkok.
I also enjoyed going to the market and learning about the vegetables and fruit we were going to cook with in the class. My favorite dishes to make were Tom Yum and Mango Sticky Rice.
CK: What was your favorite memory from your trip?
LC: My favorite memory of the trip would be when we went to Chiang Mai and spent the whole day at the elephant sanctuary, feeding them, walking with them and of course bathing them.
Lara at Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai
CK: Any advice for first time young travelers to Bangkok?
LC: The best advice I can give any young traveler like myself is do your research and have fun! Things will inevitably go wrong, but if you’ve done your research, it’s easier to keep your cool and focus on getting past big obstacles young travelers face like homesickness, fatigue, and culture shock.
CK: What’s the best part of holding the ‘Miss Teen Puerto Rico’ title?
LC: The best part of holding the title is being able to use it to inspire others while giving a helping hand to those in need. I give back to my community by visiting children with down syndrome and I encourage other teens like myself to give back by helping the less fortunate.
Family Cooking Class with Teacher Alina
The best part of holding the title is being able to use it to inspire others while giving a helping hand to those in need…
We want to thank Lara and her parents for taking our cooking class and volunteering with our young women. We appreciate Lara’s courageous spirit, and are confident that if she continues to be so passionate about giving back, great things await in her future!
