I falling love with Thai food flavour, it is quite similar with Indonesian food but, from what I notice, there is strong different, that Thai food is intriguing because of sharpness, spiciness, the married of sweet, sour, spicy, salty were really good combine. When I having Thai food, I just shut my eyes, and enjoy every bit layer of tastiness *food fetish alert

This opinion was just raising this morning, after I have a plate of beautiful “Gado-gado” inspired dishes, just beautiful breakfast full of vibrant veggies. I am thinking, that plant based food can be so much interesting, teasing and tempting or makes salivating you named it, as long as we can play with the flavour and seasoning *healthy seasoning. Oooooh I can’t compare anymore between plant based food and meaty based food, for the intriguing flavour, vibrant colour *we eat through eyes, definitely I would choose the plant based food (I was bloody steak fans before, so I think I can compare enough hehe), because I rather to choose to have party in mouth with bunch of benefit.

Well, I can’t said that this recipe is authentic Gai Pad Krapow, since the key ingredient of the recipe is Thai Basil, I still don’t find any Thai Basil here in Madrid, and I can’t used European basil, because it taste different, from my opinion Thai basil is more spicy and have different fragrance. So I just took some inspiration from the Gai Pad Krapaw, with herb that I can associate with Thai flavour, such as lemon grass, lime leaf, galangal (you can omit galangal, if maybe you have difficulties to find it in your Asian store, but this galangal will be add some fresh flavour and smell so fragrance). I also put a lot of vegetable to replace any meat ingredient such as broccolini, meaty fat Shiitake mushroom and adding my personal touch of ginger torch ( it is wild ginger flower bud), because I really love this pinkish delicious flower bud, it taste sour and really fragrance, adding some dimension into the dishes.

You can enjoy this dishes with noodle, I suggest buckwheat noodle or rice noodle or just eat it as it is, completely delicious.

And here is all you need

GAI PAD KRAPOW INSPIRED SAUTÉED VEGETABLE

Serve 1 generous bowl

Ingredient

• 2 big size clove of garlic, mince it roughly
• 1 medium size French shallot, slice it just as your preference
• 2-3 cm ginger, slice or mince it roughly
• 1-2 red chilli, seed out if you don’t like spicy food
• 2-3 kaffir lime leaves, torn and squeeze it, by do that you release the lime fragrance
• 2 lemon grass, slice only the white part of it, the yellow/green part of lemon grass are quite tough
• 3-4 thinly slice of galangal, if you have it in abundant, put 1 thumb size and crush it
• 1 ginger torch bud, slice it. This is only optional, since I know this ingredient is quite hard to get
• 10-12 stem of broccolini, half it if the broccolini is too big, it suppose to be one size bite
• 5 fresh juicy Shiitake, slice it
• 1 tbs vegetable oil to fried the spices
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1 cucumber slice it so thin to serve, you can used carrot peeler to make it paper thin slice
• 1 lime, half it to serve

HOW TO

1. In hot pan, under medium heat, put inside -the vegetable oil, garlic, shallot, ginger, chilli, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass and galangal, stir fried the spices until the shallot are translucent and releasing fragrance aroma. Put inside the slice ginger torch if you have it in hand.
2. After the spices are releasing fragrance aroma, put inside the shiitake mushroom and broccolini. Sautéed them until soft but still fresh and crunchy, estimably 5-6 minute, season with salt and sugar. The saltiness of this dishes are really depend on your preference, you can correcting the amount of salt you are going to used, I used sugar for balancing the flavour, and brown sugar giving the savoury nuances to the dishes.
3. Serve them with thin slice of cucumber and squeeze of fresh lemon juices
4. Enjoyy 😉