Here’s a few scenes from a big weekend in Bangkok for the Courageous Kitchen team. For the first time, we’re popping up to serve a menu all of our own creation in a local restaurant. The menu is a testament to healthy eating, sustainability, and rustic Thai food. We couldn’t be more proud to have our student leaders participating and to share this event with you.
Our special plant based menu is being served at Err for a short time, during the Thai Vegetarian Festival.
The Courageous Kitchen leadership program gives students opportunities to grow as cooks and as well balanced young people. Although the coronavirus has limited our activities this year, this month has been busy. With the Thai vegetarian festival happening, we took our young leaders into the combonation restaurant of Bolan and Err, to serve our own plant based menu.
During the pandemic we have been taking our healthy cooking to the next level, even launching a delivery service for plant based vegan food. So were please to be able to collaborate with the rustic cooking of the team behind Bolan and Err. The invitation from Chef Bo and Dylan gives our students a unique opportunity to see behinds the scenes, in not one, but two restaurants. In addition to having a hand in making dishes from Err, which specializes in elevated Thai drinking food, our students all get their first peek at fine dining dishes from Bolan.
The Courageous Kitchen team prepping ingredients for their restaurant debut.
In addition to our menu, students were able to participate in the preparation of Bolan’s fine dining dishes as well.
The collab features two plant based set menus, one from Central Thailand and the other from Southern Thailand. Both sets feature our homemade soybean products, tempeh and tofu.
“The guests really loved your fried tempeh dish, now I want to taste!” remarked one of the waiters from Err. The dish they’re referring to is a special Phuket style fried curry paste and crispies piled on top of battered tempeh. The dish is called ‘tempeh tod kreung’ and the crunchy tempeh is a good match for the spicy and sweet paste.
Grilled eggplant salad with fried tempeh batons.
Fried tempeh buried in crispy, pulverized tofu bits or ‘tempeh tod kreung’
The most popular dish from the Central Thailand set is the red curry or ‘gaeng daeng tempeh’. While you can experience a Thai red curry at any Thai restaurant, this dish is special because of the curry paste is handmade, and the ingredients in the curry are representative of Thai biodiversity.
“When we talk about plant based food, many enthusiasts do make a point to eat locally and in season. This is similar to many of the teachings we hear from Chef Bo, whether in the restaurant or on her television show, she always uses her food to highlight the diversity of ingredients in Thai cuisine.”
In addition to the tempeh in the curry, there’s a trio of pea aubergines, winter melon and snake gourd. The latter two especially are often overlooked by restaurants, even though people at home in the provinces still grow and use these ingredients commonly in their cooking. Each of these ingredients are abundant during the rainy season, and because they all have a different texture, keep your tongue guessing with each bite of the curry.
The Central Thai menu set featured a special chili dip cooked in coconut milk and served with seasonal vegetables.
We’re relishing the experience to serve our supporters in Bangkok this weekend and learn from great chefs. We hope to take what we’ve learned into future endeavors, whether in our cooking classes or other training aspects of our leadership program. Never before has the overlap between food and health been so important, and we hope to shepherd our communities here and online towards better wellness as we grow.
Special thanks to the the Bolan and Err chefs and staff, and we look forward to collaborating on special events with them again in the future.
We’re excited to share that our new veggie burger patties are now available for sale in Bangkok. The patties are the result of a lot of hard work and testing, as well as feedback from our healthy eating supporters. Consider them as a healthy and filling meal, that is also part of our efforts to encourage everyone to eat better and reduce food waste.
Our veggie patties have come a long way from the early versions we tested!
Veggie burger patties perfect for vegan, vegetarians, or anyone eating healthy.
The patties we’ve created aren’t like the ones you’re seeing swapped for beef at fast food restaurants. Instead of an imitation meat, they’re homemade patties created using a special blend of vegetables and herbs. The main ingredient for the burgers is okara, the leftover soy pulp from making tofu. We blend the pulp with mushroom, spring onion, and dried spices before hand making each patty.
Courageous Kitchen youth and volunteer chefs baking okara cookies together.
Before the pandemic hit, our tofu making class had been generating a buzz with healthy eating expats and visiting tourists in Bangkok. When the lockdown happened, although our classes had to stop, we continued making tofu at home and supplying a few local restaurants. To make tofu you need to squeeze the moisture out of the soybeans, leaving the fibrous part of the bean behind. While it may seem like a worthless byproduct bound for the trashcan, okara still has plenty of nutritional value.
To avoid food waste, we’ve been experimenting with using the leftover okara in different recipes. We’ve made a variety of spreads, pastes, and even cookies. However, the most popular of our creations have been the veggie burger patties. The soy pulp allows them to be dense and pliable, while still being soft on the palate and enjoyable to eat. That’s not bad for a leftover food product that might seem worthless at first glance.
After a few months of testing, our veggie burgers are finally ready to arrive in buns around Bangkok.
You can buy your vegan and vegetarian burger patties through our partner Farmtastic. The company also carries our tofu and tempeh products, and a lot of other interesting food items. We hope to make them available in more places soon, and we appreciate your support while we navigate new sources of fundraising during this pandemic.
For more info on all of our current items for sale, find the full list on our new Food Products page.
Hey friends around the world, we hope you are healthy and getting back to ‘normal’ where-ever you are. The new normal, however, is being honest about the challenges we’re facing during the covid-19 epidemic and sharing high quality advice whenever possible. Whatever stage of lock down or quarantine your country is in, here are some tips to help you stay safe.
1) Don’t neglect the basics.
Wear a mask
Wash hands
Avoid touching your face
Avoid activities causing unnecessary exposure
Limit interaction with people at risk
Remember you can spread the virus without being sick
Exercise and eat healthy
We’ve got songs for washing our hands now. Masks are becoming more readily available, and you’ve learned to keep hand sanitizer with you wherever you go. During this time we have even seen people going to extremes by wearing hazmats suits in grocery stores. This is evidence that we are learning to be better together, but we shouldn’t let our guard down as we return to work, school, and other activities. Please keep your hygiene practices up to maintain the basic level of protection for everyone.
Distributing reusable masks by going door to door in vulnerable communities.
Many of us have to interact with others during this period for crisis response, work, and other necessities. When possible avoid confined spaces, especially where air can be trapped or is unfiltered. Although many places have restricted gathering in public parks, take advantage of any outdoor or open air areas which can allow people to meet while facilitating social distancing.
For example, instead of distributing aid to people in need in groups, we bring the items door to door. Of course this is more work, but we have to adapt to the challenges of doing aid under such conditions. Aid organizations, governments, and volunteers have a responsibility to provide aid safely, while ensuring efforts to help are not unintentionally spreading the disease to vulnerable groups.
3) Briefly Journal Interactions
One quick tip you can employ right at this moment is to begin journaling your interactions. In the face of disease that can be transmitted without symptoms we have to take new precautions and this is a simple, free task most anyone can perform.
“Until a vaccine is available, the more we return to normal, the greater our responsibility to society becomes.”
Did you meet anyone unexpectedly today?
Were you in close proximity to that person?
Did you cough more than normal today or experience any other symptoms?
Did you go somewhere high risk? Or interact with someone who may become sick easily?
Make a note on your phone or in a notebook of symptoms, interactions, and abnormal risk. Hopefully, you will never need to use this information, but in an emergency, this tiny task can quickly become invaluable to you and your family.
Finally, as soon as I begin showing symptoms of any infection, remember you are responsible for notifying people you may have exposed. This is a big, scary task. Having a journal of interactions, including brief occurrences will help us notify people more quickly of their exposure, and may even help us to identify how we became infected.
4) Have A ‘Coming Home’ Routine
Typically doctors, nurses, and medical staff are the ones who shoulder the responsibility of creating daily routines to prevent disease spread. For healthy people who are still working or in the community providing aid, this is now becoming part of our daily life. Thinking ahead to create a routine for arriving home can keep you from bringing infectious germs into your home.
Keep in mind your routine may be unique to you and your circumstances. For some this may be as simple as washing hands and cleaning personal items before coming in the house (keys, mobile phones, and things in your pockets). The proactive activity could happen in your front yard, garage, or some condos and apartment building may provide soap or hand sanitizer in the lobby.
Making these practices a habit can help everyone prevent the spread of the disease to our loved ones.
5) Be Considerate of the Most Vulnerable
Healthy people who have the ability to return to work and leisure activities must also spare concern and consideration for those who may never have any semblance of normal in the coming years. The most vulnerable people are groups such as the elderly, pregnant mothers and newborns, and immunocompromised. However, in this group we need to also consider people who are vulnerable due to their socioeconomic status. This may because of lack of resources, information, or living in crowded conditions where social distancing is made impossible. For example we have seen countries where the disease had been somewhat contained, only to ravage through crowded dorms and detention centers holding migrant workers and refugees.
Courageous Kitchen staff giving instructions on wearing and washing masks (left), and a mom helps her son put on his reusable mask correctly (right).
Social distancing has changed our lives. We’ve begun doing more via video calls and online communication than we ever thought possible. However, as we return to gathering socially with family and friends, we should maintain a certain level of caution. This includes distancing or limiting interaction with people who don’t maintain the same level of concern about the virus. We have no way of knowing where someone has been, or their level of exposure to possible infection, our best protection is to be cautious or avoid meeting people in the early days of quarantine ending altogether.
“I was at the pharmacy today and someone was having a coughing fit. I know we were supposed to meet tomorrow, but let’s talk online instead to be safe.” – A Responsible Friend
This does not mean we need to publicly shame people who aren’t following guidelines to our liking. However, we do want to limit interaction with people being casual about virus prevention, irresponsible with their hygiene, or spreading misinformation about the disease. To prevent this from causing friction in the workplace, school, and in social groups, don’t wait until face to face meetings to bring up topics about safety.
7) Enjoy Lunch Alone
One of the things we consider being the most social, may put us in danger — our coveted time eating together at our table. Whenever the time to eat comes around, people should be ready to carve out their own personal space. This is important because when eating you may let your guard down by removing masks and gloves, and relaxing social distancing.
When working or in public, try to maintain your distance from others while eating. For those who can, arrange meetings or work tasks in way that you can eat at home or the car. Other suggestions may be packing snacks or quick meals for work, while saving more substantial meals for home.
Until a vaccine is available, the more we return to normal, the greater our responsibility to society becomes. If we understand this, stay compassionate, and plan accordingly we can help save lives together.
Thank you for reading and if you have other great suggestions during these unprecedented times, please share. We hope you are healthy, stay safe, and appreciate your support of Courageous Kitchen.
Hey parents! Welcome to the Courageous Kitchen, we’ve got a fun recipe to share with you today. If you haven’t been on our site before, we’re a charity helping marginalized youth in Bangkok, and funded by guests taking our cooking classes and tours. Today we’re taking Thailand’s iconic pad thai recipe from our classes, keeping the dish’s Thainess intact, while making it fun for kids (and easy for parents).
When you book our cooking class, it funds fun, educational learning and food supplies for those in need.
One of the classes we offer is a cooking class for kids and families, and pad thai is often a favorite of our visitors. However if we want everyone to enjoy their own plate of pad thai, we’ll usually have the parents making a traditional pad thai recipe, but do a simplified version for the kids using instant noodles. So today’s recipe has been battle tested both with the refugee kids we serve as a charity, and with many of you who stop by during your travels in Bangkok to support us.
Why is Cooking Pad Thai so Difficult?
We make a lot of pad thai with our guests, so you can be sure we’ve tested and retested this recipe!
For those unfamiliar, pad thai is the iconic Thai dish most famous as the ambassador of Thai food to countries in the west. For example in the US, newcomers to the cuisine often make this steamy hot plate of noodles their first stop. The sticky noodles are delicious when hot, eye pleasing, especially when decorated with shrimp, and unlike some Thai dishes, not going to burn you with spice.
Pad Thai recently made our list of Thailand’s best noodle dishes, but we must admit recreating a delicious version at home is a challenge. This is largely because of ingredients that are hard to find, or misunderstood. When you search the internet you also have a barrage of recipes, many of which look and taste nothing like the delicious plates you may have tried in Thailand.
For newcomers to Thai food, pad thai can be a friendly landing spot, because the dish combines well with seafood, and isn’t too spicy.
Today we want to offer you an easy pad thai recipe, that’s appropriate for kids and really tasty. To make it we’ve omitted much of the long list of ingredients, including components like the toasted peanut garnish, which many children may have an allergy to anyway.
Your focus, instead of giant shopping list of exotic ingredients, is instead on making a delicious sauce. If you can master the sauce below, that’s half the victory already claimed! Later we’ll stir fry it with instant noodles, but if you keep some of your soon-to-be-famous pad thai sauce stocked, it can be an easy dish to whip up in a pinch.
Kid’s Pad Thai Sauce Recipe
Enjoy this easy pad thai recipe, suitable for kids and adults alike. We recommend cooking it as a family!
Ingredients
This sauce recipe is enough for 4-5 portions of noodles. If you’re happy with the first round, make it in a larger batch and keep refrigerated for whenever pad thai cravings may strike.
1 cup tomato ketchup
Tip: Unlike sour tamarind juice, this is likely already available in your fridge!
1 cup water
1/4 cup white sugar
Tip: If you’re using another type of sugar such as palm, agave, or natural sugar, simply add to taste.
1/4 cup fish sauce
Tip: Go meatless and substitute in high quality salt or soy sauce to taste.
1/3 cup vinegar
1 tsp paprika
Instructions
Grab a non-stick pan and put it on low heat.
Add all of your ingredients, mix, and reduce on low for 30 minutes.
Remember to stir as it reduces, and when ready, it should be thick enough to easily coat any type of noodles you use.
Allow to cool and store in the fridge. If refrigerated, this easy pad thai sauce should last a few weeks.
Tip: Use the sauce for other things! If you’re happy with the sauce and the kids like it, use it for whatever suits you. Dip chicken nuggets, use to flavor your kid’s fried rice, or instead of plain ketchup on french fries.
Kid’s Pad Thai Recipe
This kid’s pad thai recipe was built for a tested with kids. Typical pad thai can be heavy on seafood, peanuts, and other ingredients children may have allergies to eating.
Ingredients
1 pack of instant noodles
Tip: The size of the noodle packs may vary by brand, but typically they are 60-80g per pack. That’s filling portion for kids 9 and up, so adjust as necessary.
100g chicken
50g tofu, chopped into small squares
1 egg
1 handful of blanched Chinese kale, broccoli, or the veg of your choice
Small handful of bean sprouts
2 tbsp of pad thai sauce
1 tbsp of oil for stir frying
1 lime
Tip: Our kids don’t like lime. Do yours? If so, make this an optional garnish, along with a few more bean sprouts on your child’s plate!
Using instant noodles instead of rice noodles isn’t a mistake! The instant noodles cook fast, are less sticky, and are easier for children to gather on their forks. Remember to cut or chop them even smaller for young kids.
Instructions
Blanch any vegetables you want to add by dipping into boiling water for a few minutes (for Chinese kale this usually takes about one minute in boiling water).
Remove from the boiling water and add to ice water to stop the vegetables from cooking, and preserve the fresh color.
Use the same boiling water now to quickly boil your noodles. Most instant noodles will only take 1-2 minutes to become soft. Set aside.
Add oil to your wok or non stick pan. Follow with your chicken and cook until the color changes.
Add your vegetables to your cooked chicken, along with tofu. Stir quickly to heat the vegetables up.
Now add your cooked instant noodles and mix well.
Add bean sprouts and your pad thai sauce.
Mix everything and push to the side of the pan, away from the heat. In the hot portion of the pan crack and scramble your egg, stirring vigorously until cooked.
Once the egg is cooked, mix with all of the other ingredients and turn off the heat.
The same way we simplified the recipe for kids, you can easily upgrade with a squeeze of lime, sauteed shrimp, chili flakes, or another protein of your choice.
Now that you’ve mastered the sauce, you’re ready to get to the stir frying. Once your ingredients are prepared, this should go rather quickly. Follow the instructions below, and remember not to feel as though you can’t improvise the recipe to slip in more veggies, or even to omit meat in the dish entirely.
Thanks for trying out the Courageous Kitchen recipe for kid’s pad thai. We hope you have an opportunity to cook it together as a family, and enjoy a taste of Thailand wherever you are around the world. Please take a moment to get to know us better, by following our food and charitable adventures on facebook and instagram. As always, happy cooking!
Most of you know Alina as your favorite Thai cooking teacher who’s greeted you, and taken you to the market in our Bangkok cooking class. In the nearly 3 years she’s worked with us, we’ve seen her transition from shy rice farmer, to a fiery force in the kitchen.
Here are 10 quick questions to help you get to know this ambitious young woman, who we believe is a natural born leader.
Alina loves teaching guests and friends the traditional way to make Thai curry paste.
What’s your favorite dish to eat?
Cheeseburgers and tom yum goong, but it depends on the cheese. I like the fake kind!
What’s your favorite dish to make?
Thai curries I think. Because I like making the curry paste from scratch.
What’s the best part of working at Courageous Kitchen?
Teaching tourists how to cook Thai food. It helps me improve my English, meet new people, and gain cool opportunities.
I met my idol, Chef Ian Kittichai, and cooked Massaman curry with him. I learned new techniques that I use to make my curry now.
What are you most proud of?
I like discovering new recipes and creating cooking videos to teach kids. I can’t believe I can make my own videos, it’s really hard!
Alina (left) and Panisha pose with Chef Ian Kittichai at a special event in Bangkok.
When you’re not cooking, what do you like to do?
I like to garden, go out to eat, and love going to the movies!
If you could travel anywhere where would it be?
New York City. I’ve always heard about it, and it looks beautiful.
What do you like to teach?
I like to teach cooking. My passion is cooking so it makes me happy every time I share my recipes.
What is your superpower?
Being tough.
Alina beaming with her teammate, after having an opportunity to cook at the US Ambassador’s residence in Bangkok.
What does courage mean to you?
To be beautiful, to have confidence, and to fight for your life.
Lastly, do you think you’re courageous?
Yeah, I am. I have no choice.
Thanks Alina, for letting us pick your brain!
If you haven’t had a chance to meet her, catch her in our new Thai noodle making class, and occasionally hosting our street food tours. Our team feels privileged to watch her grow with any new challenge, and learn to teach others along the way.
Alina proudly hoists her pomelo salad for all to see.
Thanks for reading. If you’ve met Alina, be sure to leave a note of encouragement below!
