From My Kitchen

Sawadee ka! I first ate this dish as a fresh-faced 22yo while teaching English in Thailand, and holy moly I love it. It’s ubiquitous in Thailand, pretty much the national dish, and can be made with minced chicken (gai) pork (moo), beef (nuea), or I’m sure you could use tofu or soya mince. This particular recipe is from an old work colleague and it’s easy peasy – simply a case of prepping the sauce ingredients then everything happens in one pan, ish. I like to double up the recipe (scaling up the sauce by half) because I’ve yet to meet leftovers that I don’t like, but its also the kind of meal you can serve to friends and they’ll be very happy indeed. Serves 4ish, depending on how hungry everyone is.

Method:

1. Stir together the sugar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and fish sauce and put to one side.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan, then add in the chillies to flavour the oil. They’ll spit and jump around.
3. After a minute or so add in the garlic but don’t let it brown so keep it moving.
4. Turn up the heat, add in the chicken and break it down into small pieces. You want it to brown a bit to add more flavour, then add in any veg you’re using (not traditional, but hey greenery is important).
5. Pour in the sauce, give it a mix on a high heat and let it bubble away – the sauce should evaporate completely.
6. Add in some chicken stock and bubble that off too until you have a not-too-saucy jumble of mince, then fling in the basil and let it wilt.
7. In a separate pan fry up some eggs – you want the whites to get nice and crispy but the yolks still runny.
8. Serve on steamed rice with your fried egg on top. Yum.