Po Pad Peung Kurrie

Thai food. Is amazing. Curries that are out of this world, noodle soups, grilled meat with peanut sauce, sauteed veggies with chicken or pork, noodle soups, spicy minced meat, and copious amounts of rice.
I could elaborate on all of it (and I probably will in the future) but I wanted to show the play-by-play of the making one of my absolute favorite dishes here so far. Po Pad Peung Kurrie (that's probably not spelled right...), or crab in yellow curry. It can be made with other types of meat besides crab, but every Thai person agrees that crab is the best. After we'd eaten this dish for the first time, we had it about three times a week until Phil's host sister taught us how to make it. So here you go! Feel free to try this at home, but at your own risk... You'll find that the quantities aren't exactly precise.

Start out with about 2 kilos of crab. Wash 'em, clean 'em, gut 'em and chop them into pieces (a big machete works best for that part). You'll wind up with a nice bowl-o-crab like this:
Then, prepare:
2 yellow onions, sliced
4 mild chili peppers, sliced
green onions and parsley, chopped together
a lot of mushrooms, sliced
a couple tomatoes, quartered
You'll get a nice little pile like this:

Now start the cooking. Put oil in a pan (a wok works great). Saute the garlic. Then add the onions and saute for a bit. Then add the chili peppers. Then add the crab! At this point add a little water and about two packets of curry powder. This kind:

an example of a potentially difficult ingredient to find... Cooking with P'Poi. Their kitchen juts out from the second floor of their house and, like a lot of houses in the country, has only a roof and no walls or windows. It's a great place to cook, see what's going on with the neighbors, discover new species of bees, etc.

Cook it for a little while, stirring occasionally. Add sugar (maybe about 3 tablespoons), salt (maybe about 1 tablespoon), pork seasoning (about 1 tablespoon).

The pork seasoning that they put in just about everything for guaranteed deliciousness.

Cook for a little longer. Then add the mushrooms and tomatoes. Then a little soybean sauce (they call it Formula 1) then soy sauce. MSG is usually added at this point, but you can always add extra salt if you don't have any MSG lying around your house. Then, cook until the crab is done, should be cooked about 20 minutes total.

Phil demonstrating proper sautéing technique

Next, scramble 3 eggs in a bowl and pour over everything. Let set up for a minute before stirring into the crab. At this point, taste and add anything else you deem necessary for absolute deliciousness (fish sauce, oyster sauce, more Formula One, sugar, MSG).

Finally, add the green onion and parsley. Then, serve it up with steamed or sticky rice. Oh man. It is amazing. The fruit of our labors:

Lam day day!

Po Pad Peung Kurrie (restaurant style) near our apartment