Phat khing

Young ginger in matchsticks as a vegetable rather than a seasoning, barely cooked.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, fish sauce, oyster sauce.

Ingredients

• 150 g young ginger, in fine matchsticks
• 500 g chicken thighs, in thin slices
• 60 g wood ear mushrooms, soaked and torn
• 1 onion, in wedges
• 4 spring onions, in lengths
• 2 long red chillies, sliced
• 2 tablespoons fermented soybean paste
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 4 tablespoons water

Method

1. GINGER AS A VEGETABLE, NOT A SEASONING. 150 g in matchsticks, and it should be the thing you are eating rather than the thing seasoning what you are eating. Every other stir fry here uses a spoonful; this one is built on a pile of it.
2. YOUNG GINGER IF YOU CAN GET IT -- pale, thin-skinned, with pink tips. It is mild and juicy and can be eaten in quantity. Old ginger is fibrous and fierce, and 150 g of it is inedible.
3. If only old ginger is available, use half the weight, slice it finer, and soak the matchsticks in cold water 20 minutes to draw some of the heat out.
4. Cut along the grain into matchsticks, not across into coins. Coins are too strong in one bite.
5. Mix the soybean paste, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar and water in a bowl first.
6. Hot pan, oil, chicken in and seared 2 minutes without moving it much, until it has colour.
7. Onion and wood ear in, 1 minute.
8. GINGER IN LAST OF THE SOLIDS and given 90 seconds only. Cooked long it goes soft and loses the clean bite that is the entire point.
9. Sauce down the side of the pan, tossed through 30 seconds.
10. Spring onion and chilli off the heat. It should taste savoury and salty with the ginger sharp and still crisp.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes