Thailand Part Two: The Food Bazar, Fried Pork and Ping Pong,
- kirsty richardson
- Jun 1, 2016
- 4 min read
Includes recipe for Fried Pork in Garlic and Black Pepper.
After a few days relaxing by the pool, we decided to take a trip into Phuket City. This is a mad and bustling place, with most businesses specifically aimed at cashing in on the tourists. Streets are lined with bars, souvenir shops and other evening entertainment. No sooner had we stepped out of the taxi and tried to get our bearings, we were approached by a lady trying to get us to go and see a ping-pong show. One of my friends, Lyndsey, before we left had said when in Thailand you must go and see a ping-pong show, they are hilarious. Every few yards there was somebody else touting for business with flyers, promising ludicrous things such as live frog show and live mouse show. If you don't know what a ping-pong show is here is a link to wiki's description. We'd had lunch late that day and had planned to look for some street food later on. Go on then, we thought, we're in Thailand it would be rude not to go see this spectacle.
We entered the bar and the show had already started. I'm not easily embarrassed any more after years of nursing i've seen and heard it all, really it was all a bit tame. I expected it to be a bit saucy but it was just funny really. The highlight of my evening was that two extravert lady boys took a liking to Lio and we had a bit of a laugh with them outside while they tried to wangle tips off us.
After leaving the show we went on the hunt for a street food market. Luckily we stumbled across a food bazar with Karaoke.
We didn't bother with the Karaoke. It was fun to watch but we were there for the food. I wanted everything as usual. There were lots of great stalls with kebabs, soups, noodles, marinated pork and duck.
It was the fresh fish counter that really caught my eye. They had all kinds of fish really fresh which you could have cooked in many different ways. I started with the fresh coconut juice followed by clams with chilli and stir fried crab. Lio had the fried pork in garlic and black pepper a dish he liked to eat every day. It's quite a dry dish but full of garlic that's been fried until it's golden. It is cooked until just before it gets to that burnt and bitter taste that any of you who've got distracted and burnt garlic before, like myself, will know. Lio loves this dish, particularly because it has no chilli in it and he ordered it nearly every day. Here is the recipe.
RECIPE FOR THAI PORK IN GARLIC AND BLACK PEPPER
INGREDIENTS
500g of Pork leg steaks
1 whole bulb of garlic
1 tablespoon of kepac manis/oyster sauce
1/2 a handful of chopped fresh coriander
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon of coarse salt
2 tablespoons of coconut/groundnut/ricebran oil (vegetable oil if these not available)
1 tablespoon of black peppercorns
METHOD
1) Trim the pork leg steaks of any fat and put them between two sheets of clingfilm, as pictured below. Using the side of a rolling pin bash the steaks until they are thinner.
2) Chop the pork into pieces and put into a bowl.
3) In a pestle and mortar grind the peppercorns and put onto the pork
4) Then add 4 cloves of garlic, the coriander and salt to the pestle and mortar bash until it forms a paste, the salt helps crush it down.
5) Add the garlic paste to the pork plus all of the other ingredients except the rest of the garlic from the bulb and the oil which is to be saved for frying.
6) Mix well, cover and leave to refrigerate for at least one hour no more than 8 hours.
7) When you're ready to cook the pork start to steam some rice.
8) Add the coconut oil to the pan and heat your pan to very hot. When it's smoking add the pork and stir fry until its cooked through, just past pink when you cut it but still juicy. Depends on the thickness of your meat and how hot your pan is but I would say about 5 minutes.
9) While the pork is cooking peel the rest of the garlic. If you're good with a knife chop the garlic finely. If you're like me and hopeless at chopping just bash it up roughly in the pestle and mortar.
10) Fry the garlic in a medium to hot pan (I had my dial on 3/4) until it's golden, around a minute depending how hot your pan is.
11) Finally add your pork back to the pan along with any juices on the plate stir fry for a couple of minutes and serve with the rice.
A really good accompaniment to this dish is a mango salad. See my recipe in thailand part 3, coming next.
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