June marks the beginning of summer for many of us, but it also marks the start of another significant event for the Courageous Kitchen and many refugee communities across the globe. Every year in mid-June, several organizations host what has been declared as ‘Refugee Week’, with June 20th serving as the week’s capstone — this year will commemorate the 20th Annual World Refugee Day! As we join in the double-decade long celebration, we urge you to also join us by honoring the resilience and contributions of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide by taking action in the following ways:
1) Listen – All over the world events are happening for world refugee day. Be sure you find a local event and show your support by attending and listening to the stories of struggle and triumph. Events range from food tasting parties to discussion panels, join or start a conversation near you!
3) Cook/Eat – This may come as no surprise, but we believe the kitchen is one of the best places to learn about someone new, and connect with their culture. In diverse places in the west, we may take for granted how someone, or their ancestors, made harrowing journeys and sacrifices. World Refugee Day gives us an excuse to ask people about their heritage, culture, and an opportunity to celebrate these differences over something that binds us all, food!
4) Share – In today’s political climate it can be unpopular to show your support publicly for refugees. Refugees are used as a political tool in some countries to propel xenophobic campaigns and policies. Wherever we are in the world, we can show our support for refugees and insist people recognize their human rights. If you join in the celebrations, document them by using the hashtags #RefugeeWeek2018 and #WithRefugees.
5) Give Back – When you connect with your local refugee organizations find a way to donate, volunteer, or give back another way. These organizations are often underfunded and understaffed (speaking from experience), so if you can find a way to donate funds or time consistently for a few months, you can really make a difference for people in need and small organizations serving them. We’re asking people interested in supporting our mission to help by sponsoring a family.
Photo: Courageous Kitchen’s pre-teen students pose with Canadian chef Cameron Stauch.
Doing anything special this World Refugee Day? Please reach out and let us know!
Today we’d like to share a simple and delicious recipe with all of our supporters. If you watch the video below you catch our students making a big pot of the spicy, satisfying tom yum soup with chicken. Then continue to read below for all the details on how to make this recipe at home. We’ve even included a few frequently asked questions at the bottom, to be sure you’re confident when cooking this homestyle soup for your friends and family.
This recipe serves 1-2 people, but if you have all your aromatics on hand, it’s easy to make a much larger pot like the one seen in recipe video above. Preparation time is typically 15-20 minutes, while your cooking time can be as quick as 10 minutes.
Seasoning: 2-3 Tbsp of fish sauce Juice from 1 lime 2-3 Tsp of palm sugar 1-2 Tbsp of Thai chili jam
Other Ingredients: 500ml of Water 4-6 Oyster Mushrooms 2-3 Bird’s eye chili 1/2 Plum tomato quartered 1/4 of a roughly chopped white onion 100g of sliced chicken breast 5-6 Cilantro leaves for garnish
Preparation:
1. Prepare your aromatics. Smack your kaffir lime and tear it, being carful not to remove the leaves from the stem. Pound your lemongrass stalk and tie it in a knot. Cut your galangal root into large slices. For the best final result you want to keep these aromatics large and easily visible (avoid chopping small), because although they are used for their aroma and flavor, they are not typically consumed with the rest of the soup.
2. Roughly chop 2-3 chilies for an average level of spice. You can chop the chili more finely or add more if you prefer your soup extra spicy.
3. Cut your lime in sections by moving your knife around the core. This will help you remove the seeds more easily. You can also tilt your knife down into a bowl and use the blunt side of your knife for squeezing the lime without making it too messy.
Cooking Instructions:
1. Bring your water to a boil in small pot and immediately add your aromatics. Cook a few minutes until fragrant. 2. Add your chicken breast and after it cooks, your onion, tomato, chili, and mushrooms. 3. Let the soup lightly boil uncovered as the vegetables soften, while adding your fish sauce, chili jam, and palm sugar. 4. Taste your soup for saltiness and sweetness. 5. If you are satisfied, remove from heat and add lime juice (remember adding lime too soon can cause the juice to become bitter). 6. Serve in a bowl and garnish with cilantro leaves. 7. Remember you can remove the hard to eat aromatics (galangal slices, lemongrass, and kaffir leaves) before serving or remind guests not to eat them.
Frequently Asked Tom Yum Recipe Questions:
1. Why don’t you add coconut milk to your tom yum soup?
CK: Tom yum has a sibling soup called ‘tom kha’ which is made with coconut milk. The creamy coconut milk is a good match for the spice and a better menu option for people sensitive to the heat from Thai chilies. The confusion comes because some restaurants do a version of tom yum called ‘nam khon’ where they top the soup of with evaporated milk. This is especially common in Bangkok and at wester restaurants abroad. The milk adds a creaminess to the soup without changing the flavor like the coconut milk can, however, many people mistake this for coconut milk.
2. Can I use other mushrooms or forego the chicken altogether?
CK: If you would prefer to make a vegetarian version of this dish you can! The meaty, buttery mushrooms work best. For example, we often mix oyster mushroom with straw, shimeji, and even the small stringy enoki mushrooms. In general most mushrooms will work, however, you may want to limit your portion if you’re using really bulky mushrooms, such as portobello. To completely make this recipe vegetarian you should substitute white salt for fish sauce, and buy or make a vegetarian chili jam.
3. What is the Thai chili jam (nam prik pow) used in the recipe?
CK: An essential ingredient in tom yum, Thai chili jam is not an ingredient many people are familiar with using. The jam is typically made by reducing dried chili with fish sauce, palm sugar, and shallots. A litany of other ingredients are added in homemade recipes and they tend to be more intensely spicy, and less sweet than the ones commonly sold in Asian supermarkets. We often make our own veg and vegan versions for our cooking class guests with special dietary needs.
Just a quick message to all of our customers stateside. Because of the impact of the recent wildfires, we have been forced to reschedule this month’s classes. Our team is safe, but located in an area not far from where people have lost their homes and livelihoods.
Thank you for your patience as we’ve had to reschedule our cooking classes for the month. We will return to our regular schedule in the new year and pray you all a swift recovery.
Note: If you missed the announcement that we had launched our cooking classes in San Diego, we’d gladly welcome you to try our classes in 2018. You can even book the class on airbnb!
We’re happy to share some photos with you from a recent Courageous Kitchen activity. A few of our students were invited to setup a fruit smoothie bar in the Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) headquarters in downtown Bangkok. The students woke up early and traveled more than an hour to get to the hotel. There the staff welcomed us into their office, where they planned to have a special lunch to kickoff the IHG Foundation Week, which aims to promote charities in the region and get their staff around the world thinking about giving back.
For our students, many of whom have never eaten in a restaurant or stayed in a hotel, this was a special experience. The staff welcomed them with new t-shirts, notebooks, and a quick briefing on the day’s plans. They were tasked with setting up a smoothie bar in the office’s break room area overlooking Bangkok. They quickly organized themselves into two stations, with specific tasks like collecting money, running the blenders, or asking their “customers” which fruit they preferred to have in their drinks.
The smoothie bar was a fun challenge for the students and since everyone who had a smoothie gave a small donation, they also raised some funds too. However, that wasn’t all IHG had planned for them. Led by two of the staff, Ben and Elena, the students then filed in to travel back to the hotel lobby where someone special was waiting. When the group exited the elevators into the grand lobby, they were met by Executive Chef Rolando. Chef Rolando is in charge of all of the kitchen for both the Intercontinental Hotel and next door sister hotel, Holiday Inn.
After a quick introduction, we followed the chef first into the room service area of the kitchen. The look behind the scenes wowed the students and the size of the production was massive. From room service we entered another area responsible for catering for up to 1000 or more guests at one time. To put this in context, Chef Rolando walked the students into one of the behemoth banquet rooms and talked about the giant numbers of staff and things we take for granted like eggs that the hotel uses in one day.
From the chocolate statues in the buffet line, to breathtaking views on the 37th floor, and the exclusive areas of their fine dining restaurants, the students loved their kitchen tour. In the end we visited about 5 kitchens, looking both in the dining area and behind the scenes. The experience was enthralling for our students and we believed will help them to imagine a grand future for themselves in the kitchen or doing food related services.
Thank you to everyone who supports us, allowing us to do inspirational activities like this one. A special thank you to Ben, Elena, and Bangkok’s IHG office.
If you’re new to Courageous Kitchen, you can help by giving a small monthly donation so we can continue to serve youth in Bangkok and give them them skills and inspiration to last a lifetime!
All photos courtesy of volunteer photographer Kelly Miller.
We love the people we get to meet in our Bangkok cooking classes. We limit the class size to less than 6, so over a few hours the personalities of all of our visitors start to come out, as do ours. While we welcome many newcomers to Thailand, we also occasionally have guests who are returning visitors, or looking for a cooking class in Bangkok that will allow them to pick and choose a custom set of recipes to try. Sometimes the recipes are Thai dishes our guests love to eat, but often the requests are a special dish to challenge their cooking skills, or knowledge of Thai cuisine.
All of the food tasted surprisingly great considering the simplicity of the dishes. They were also very accommodating of our recipe requests, and in most cases, added a little bit of a twist to our request in a way that allowed us to experience a new dimension of Thai food. Highly recommend!
– Brian, Courageous Kitchen Guest
In a recent class we were joined by two spice loving guests, Brian and Min. The couple of Thai food lovers requested a spicy seafood curry, so our team quickly began to brainstorm what would be best to teach them. The day before their class we experimented with a Thai dish called ‘gaeng kua‘ in our kitchen for the first time. The name may not be very well known, but if you’ve ever had a Thai red curry with pineapple, then you’ve likely had a variation of this dish. The most popular version of this in the US, is often served with large chunks of barbecued duck.
Fortunately, the dish is much easier to make than pronounce. You need to make or buy a quality red curry paste for the best result, but beyond the typical Thai seasonings, the recipe below does not require many exotic ingredients. Try your hand at making this noticeable spicy seafood curry. We love it with squid, mussels, and shrimp, but encourage you to try it with the protein of your choice.
Pineapple and Seafood Red Curry Recipe
Pronounced Gaeng Kua Sapparot Talay in Thai or แกงคั่วสับปะรดทะเล
This recipe serves 1-2 people.
Erin shows off her finished pineapple fried rice, a variation of this recipe with seafood and red curry paste.
Ingredients:
400ml Coconut Milk
1 tbsp Red curry paste
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Palm Sugar
1 tbsp Tamarind juice
100g Seafood (squid, shrimp, or mussels)
50g-100g Pineapple (Sliced thin and about 3-5 cm long)
Garnish:
1 large mild chili (Serrano or similar)
1 small handful Thai sweet basil leaves
This Thai curry is delicious with shrimp, but you can add any or all of your favorite seafood to this delicious curry.
Directions: 1. Heat up the wok and add coconut milk over medium heat. 2. When the coconut milk bubbles, add your curry paste. Stir until it mixes well. 3. Add pineapple, cook 2-3 minutes. 4. Now taste for the sweetness/sourness of the pineapple. Add your seasoning to taste. (Note: You can leave out the tamarind if the pineapple is already very sour.) 5. After adjusting the flavor, add your seafood and additional coconut milk if needed. 6. Remove from heat after your seafood is cooked, garnish with Thai sweet basil, and slices of large mild chili.
Thanks for reading! If you found this recipe useful, download more of our Courageous Recipes!
