So You Wanna Make Pad Thai?

Happy Friday, my friends! Woohoo! You ready for the weekend? I have a feeling you need an incredibly awesome recipe for the weekend, right? How about a pad thai recipe straight from Thailand?

Oh yeah, that's right. Today I'm sharing the pad thai recipe from the cooking class that Chris and I took in Thailand.

Here are the super yummy ingredients. Most of these are pretty common, but a few things you might need to look for in a specialty grocery store. I'm not a chef, and this is not a recipe I made up-- I'm just reiterating what we did, so I don't really know any good substitutes for the weird stuff. If you do, shout it out in the comments!

If you are ever in Pattaya, Thailand, you must go to the Happy Home Thai Cooking School. Sheri will take great care of you!

This recipe was so easy, simple and quick! We made it in about five minutes, literally, guys. After trying many times to make pad thai in our own kitchen, we were so excited to finally have made something that didn't make us quickly gulp down a glass of water! Delicious and simple-- what more could you ask for? I'm excited to try out hand at this recipe with Chris here at home once he gets home SOON! ;)

Sheri's Pad Thai!

150 grams rice noodles
100 grams chicken, shrimp, or fried tofu
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup chopped green onion
4 tablespoons palm sugar
6 tablespoons fish sauce (or lightly-salted soy sauce)
2 eggs
1 cup bean sprouts or cabbage
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
1 cup sliced fried tofu
4 tablespoons tamarind paste
2 tablespoons preserved turnip
Fresh cabbage, bean sprout, green onion, cilantro and lime wedges for garnish

Makes 4 servings

*Kelly kindly told me that I had my scallions and shallots mixed up when I labeled the picture before. Scallions are the green thingies, shallots are the small red onions. This is why I reiterate that I'm not a chef, just repeating our recipe. ;) 

1. Soak the noodles in lukewarm water for 10-15 minutes or until soft. 

2. Heat the vegetable oil over low heat and then fry the garlic and shallot until fragrant. 

3. Add the chicken (or tofu or shrimp) and stir until cooked. 

4. Break the eggs into the pan/wok/skillet and mix with your chicken/tofu/shrimp. 

5. Add noodles, fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind paste, preserved turnip. Stir until noodles are tender. 

6. Add the bean sprouts and green onions while stirring constantly. 

7. Place on a pretty plate and top with garnish. Top with ground roasted peanuts and ground dried chilies.

Enjoy! :) 

I'd love to know if you try this recipe! 

I have some new paintings in the shop-- they are the first of several paintings I have in mind, inspired by Thailand! 

These Bloom paintings are inspired by a pattern on our placemat that fascinated me during our cooking class. I love finding inspiration in the everyday and was excited to translate that placemat pattern into these vibrant pieces for my shop. 

Hope you love them! 

'Bloom' in Bright Green

Bloom in Blush Pink

Have a beautiful weekend! 

Thailand Tastes Ohhhh So Good!

You might as well get a napkin right now, because you are going to be drooling by the end of this blog post. Today I'm blogging about our cooking classes that we took in Thailand and all the amazing food we ate while there. 

First of all, I'd like you to meet Sheri. She is the talented chef behind the Happy Home Thai Cooking School, where Chris and I celebrated his birthday by learning to cook amazing, flavorful Thai meals. We love Sheri. 

Say hello to our ingredients. So many fresh and exotic ingredients including kaffir limes, marble eggplants, young peppercorn, tiny dried shrimp, turnip, and of course cilantro, garlic, shallots, and lots of chili peppers. Yowza!

We made four dishes-- panang curry, tom yom kung (hot and sour soup), pad thai and spicy papaya salad. Each one was bold in flavor and surprisingly simple to make. 

For each dish, Sheri would have the ingredients ready on a plate, would explain each one and walk us through the steps. Chris and I made every dish ourselves, at our own cooking station. After each dish, we sat down at our table to chow down. We were stuffed by the time we came to the last one! 

 Our favorite by far was the panang curry.

I seriously want to make a point to take more cooking classes in the places we visit from now on. I loved 'meeting' new ingredients and while cooking alone is not my favorite thing, cooking along side Chris is. 

Here's a compilation of the rest of the delicious foods we consumed last week. From a 5 star buffet at the Hilton (where Chris ate until he literally was in pain... boys...), raspberry and mango sherbet with dried mangos and kiwis, naan and Indian butter chicken, lobster tempura, and much more. 

Are you hungry yet?? I might just share one of our recipes with you next week. ;)

PS. I added a few new paintings to the shop yesterday. One has to do with today's post -- check them out! 

[over the weekend] Chowing Down at Opal's

 

I drove up to the North Shore with my friend, Krynn, last week to meet our buds, Dahlia and her hubby, Evan at Opal's food truck. We sunk our chopsticks into a round of the best samplings of Thai food on the island. Oh my goodness, it was heavenly delicious. I can't believe I've been here almost two years and that was my first time eating there. (And second soon after, I went back up on Saturday and ate there again!) 

The owner's young son, Leo, was hilarious and we had fun quizzing him on the continents and oceans as he brought us our green papaya salad, shrimp pad thai and fresh cranberry lemonade. 

Don't you love awesome times with good friends and tasty food?  And... well, being in Hawaii doesn't hurt. 

Did you do anything fun over the weekend? How was your Easter? 

Oh hey, I've been listing some new paintings in the shop the past few days. Go check them out! 

(I'm still on schedule to go see Chris in Southeast Asia in May! Thanks to each of my really awesome customers for supporting my trip to see my beloved hubs!) 

Pop 'Em Like They're Hot

Thought I'd share a simple little recipe for homemade jalapeño poppers that I borrowed from a friend here on the island. They are super yummy and were especially a big hit with the guys when I made them on Christmas and then again on New Year's Eve.

You will need a can of Pillsbury Crescent dough, cream cheese, 2-3 fresh jalapeños, and bacon (if you want... I always want bacon.) Oven pre-heated to 350 degrees F. 

Chop the jalapeños into small pieces. Clean out the seeds. Don't stick your fingers in your eyes or mouth for the rest of the day.

Cut the bacon into pieces and then cook it up. I usually cut it up first cuz then you have nice, neat pieces and it doesn't get too crumbly. Just watch it so it doesn't burn. Unless you like burnt bacon. But that's weird.

Roll out your dough. It's perforated into triangles, but I cut each triangle in half with a pizza cutter and do one popper on each half. Does that make sense? Sorry I didn't take pictures of that part. You can do it without cutting the crescents in half, and they'll just be a little bigger than bite size. 

Layer a small dollop of cream cheese, a piece or two of jalapeño, and bacon. 

Bring the corners of the dough together and twist them together at the top. Press the edges of the dough together so the insides don't gush out.

Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 and munch away! 

PS. I sort of apologize for the title of this post. But not really...

A Delicious + Simple Recipe For You

Oh twitter, you never fail me. I was hesitant to join but now I'm really glad I did. Got this recipe from Melanie after she tweeted about some baking she was doing and I coerced asked her for her recipe for apple crisp. After I made it last weekend, my taste buds fell in love. And she so generously allowed me to share it with you, so here we go people. The most amazing, simple apple crisp you'll ever eat. 

FIVE ingredients! FIVE! 

1 cup flour

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup of butter (usually equals 1 stick)

2-3 big apples (I'm biased towards Honeycrisp. Basically, they're the best.)

ground cinnamon (I added this to the recipe because I'm a cinnamon fanatic)

Peel your apples, and cut them into the bite size pieces. Layer them in a buttered casserole dish. 

Sprinkle cinnamon over them. As soon as you do this, the most delicious apple-cinnamon aroma will waft into your nostrils and you'll probably do a little dance. I do. 

Combine flour, brown sugar and butter into a pretty bowl of your choosing. 

Cut in butter with pastry tool (or Mr. Egg Mashy-Masher) until well mixed. There will be little crumbies when you're done. (I threw some more cinnamon in here too....cuz I'm a cinnamon fanatic.)

Pour dry mixture yumminess over the apples. 

Put in the oven at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until nice and golden brown. 

Let cool for as long as you can stand it (but not too long. It's gotta be warm still!) 

Spoon a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and try NOT to moan in ecstasy as you eat your first bite. 

Happy happy Friday to you! Hope your weekend is filled with lots of yumminess. Any fun plans? 

PS. Chris and I made my sawhorse table yesterday. It's AWESOME and I love it and I can't wait to share it with you next week! :) 

PPS. I decided to do another Aisle to Aloha Studio giveaway when I reach 250 blog followers! :) So if you like my blog and haven't started following, do it today! 

 

Buff Chix

Ok, weird post title, I know, but that's what Chris calls them. Back when he was at the Naval Academy, his favorite days were Buff Chix Tuesdays.

We tried our hand at creating the perfect Buffalo Chicken sandwich last week and the results were gooooood.

We ended up having to hunt for Frank's hot sauce for this recipe and when our neighborhood minimart didn't have any, we decided to ride our bikes across the highway to Foodland. 

Remember my sweet beach cruiser I told you about? Yeah, that baby is slow. You should have seen me pumping the pedals across Kam Highway. 

I think you would have laughed. 

Velvety blue cheese, crisp cold lettuce, a little kick of the buffalo sauce.

  Yumm-alicious.

***edit*** Here's how we threw it together--

The sauce is 3/4 Ranch dressing (or you could use blue cheese dressing) and 1/4 (ish) Frank's Original Buffalo sauce. Obviously, adjust to your own taste buds.

We breaded the chicken breasts in flour and bread crumbs and fried them up in peanut oil. The peanut oil adds a lot of flavor. If you're allergic to peanuts, don't use it (duh). 

And I forgot to mention that we enjoyed our Buff Chix with homemade frozen Piña Coladas--that just pushed the yum factor over the edge. 

Enjoy!