Paula Goes East

I got a man that loves Thai food

He adores it. I'm going to be starting off in the kitchen with pad Thai with succulent pork

And then it's a delicious coconut soup with lime. And for something sweet, y'all, I'm going to be cooking up coconut flan and Thai fried bananas

It's sure to melt in your mouth. So grab your man, because today it's Thai for my guy

So I've got my wok. I'm gonna make pork pad thai today

We're gonna get that fire up for this. Now, I'm gonna start by putting a little peanut oil in my wok

Peanut oil is normally what they use. Now, over here, I've taken a pork loin that I've sliced thin

I'm gonna make a little sauce to cook my pork in. I'm going to start by mixing one tablespoon of cornstarch

with one tablespoon of sesame oil. You can buy it at any Asian market

In fact, you might can even find it in the regular grocery store. So I've mixed those two ingredients together

Oh, and I love, I love sesame oil. It has a tremendous punch to it

Now I'm going to take our pork, and I'm just gonna toss it around in that cornstarch

and that sesame oil. Now, over here in my sink, I've got a six-ounce package of rice noodles

that I had sitting in water about 30, 45 minutes, so those have drained

I'm gonna give my hands a quick wash. After touching that pork

I'm just gonna put my noodles back in my sink so they can continue to drain

So, all right, so you can see our wok's nice and hot

And because I've sliced this so nice and thin, it's not going to take long at all

We don't want to overcook our pork because when we're done, we want our pork to still be moist

Whoop! Man overboard. Pig overboard. Okay. And I'm gonna transfer my pork to this platter

That looks good enough to eat just like that. There we go

Looks good, doesn't it? All right. Now let's come on over here

And I've got some green onions. And I'm gonna use three or four tablespoons

So into the wok that goes, and we want to keep that temperature up

I have four cloves of garlic minced. This is going to have a wonderful garlic flavor

Now I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Now while that's cooking away, I'm going to come here and I'm going to make our sauce

I'm going to use three tablespoons of sugar. I'm going to use a fourth of a cup of lemon juice

and a fourth of a cup of fish sauce. All right, so a fourth of a cup of fish sauce

And fish sauce, it has a flavor like you won't believe. All right, now I've got a fourth of a cup of my sauce

We're going to use a fourth of a cup of fresh lemon juice

In Asia, they make fish sauce by taking anchovies and mixing them with some water

and putting them out in the sun and letting them ferment in the sun

And it adds such a fabulous flavor to Asian dishes. Okay, so I've got..

Between my fish sauce and my lemon juice, I've got a half a cup

Now, I'm just gonna pour that into my sugar. and let my cans catch the seeds

There we go. Now over here, I have three eggs. And give them a light little beat

because we're going to use these like you would a scrambled egg

And I'm gonna pour in our eggs. I'm gonna kinda just pour them around the hot pot

just like that, up on those hot sides. And then just kinda bring them down

Just like that There we go Ooh I gonna score some points with this one y

When Michael comes in and finds out that we're gonna have pad thai

but we're gonna have it at home. It's gonna be beautiful. All right, so in goes my pork

In goes my sauce. I'm going to give that a quick stir to dissolve that sugar

All right, I'm going to turn up my wok a little bit higher

And there we go. I'm going to toss them together. I'm going to go ahead and throw in my noodles that have been draining

And our pad thai is coming together. just that quickly. Ooh, and it smells so good

But when we get back, I'm gonna show you all the toppings that we're gonna put on this

to make Michael think he is in Thailand. And to go along with my pad thai, y'all

I'm gonna be making a coconut soup. And later, it's coconut flan

Hey, y'all. Welcome back. Today is all about Thai food. The dish I'm finishing up with is Pad Thai with pork

Let's go ahead and get this plated up. You can see our eggs in there and our pieces of pork

All right, let's bring it over here. And we're going to sprinkle it now with some peanuts

You know, I like a double dose. I'll usually ask for extra peanuts

A few of the bean sprouts. And, of course, lime squeezed on top

And I like to serve it along with a little extra. We need just a little cilantro to go on top of this

The cilantro gives it that wonderful little final flavor. Looks great. I can't hardly wait to dig in

Now, I'll tell you, Michael has given me so many lessons on chopsticks

but I can't quite get it down. But, you know, it's a great way to diet

because I lose half my food. Mmm. Oh, it's so good. I think Michael's going to like it

All right, well, let's get started on our next dish. I'm gonna be making a coconut soup

All right, now, in my saucepan, I'm gonna pour in four cups of chicken broth

And I've got some aromatics here. Ginger, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves

And I want y'all to see this beautiful plant. If you can't find it or you don't want to fool with ordering it

you can substitute lime zest for this. They smell just fabulous. All right, so I'm going to start by taking our ginger

and I'm just going to slice this just about that thick. And I do love ginger

So I'm going to drop our ginger. down in our chicken broth

And I'm going to take our kefir leaves, and I'm just going to kind of break them up into our broth

Breaking them will help release the flavor from our leaves. All right

Now, the lemongrass, you can probably find it at some of your Asian market

And we're going to cut this into, like, one-inch pieces. Now, before I put our lemongrass into our pot

I'm gonna just give it a smash. All right. To help release that flavor in our pot

Now, we're gonna let this cook for about 10 minutes, and then we're gonna strain that

I'm gonna come over here, and I'm gonna drain one can of straw mushrooms

So there we go. And I'll be working on our Asian green chilies

Now, don't get scared, y'all. The doctor said this wouldn't hurt a bit, y'all

Actually, I'm using this because the Asian green chilies are so hot y that I don want to touch them and then put my finger to my nose or my eyes All right so I just going to dice these up

Okay, there we go. All right, so our chilies are done. All right, so let's come over here

We're going to take our pot. So we're going to take out all the rough pieces, leaving us just the broth

Now to our wonderful broth that we have here, I'm going to throw in our chilies

Now I've got one pound of chicken Nice lean, boneless, skinless chicken

That I've cut into strips for us Alright, now I'm going to take off my gloves

Those worked out well because I was handling the chicken too Alright, I'm going to add our drained straw mushrooms

all right and then we're going to come over here and we're going to get our lime juice

my fourth of a cup of lime juice i'm going to add one can of coconut milk now you can find this

i think usually i find this in the baking section of the grocery stores

all right i'm going to add two tablespoons of sugar I'm gonna add four tablespoons of our fish sauce

One, two, three, four. All right, now I'm gonna cover this

and we're gonna let it simmer about ten minutes. So don't go anywhere

I'm going to be putting us together a coconut flan. And later, Michael stops by for a sweet Thai dessert

Welcome back, y'all. In case you're just catching the end here with us

it's all about today, Thai for my guy. You know, I'm married to a man that loves Thai food

So everything I've made today is Thai. And while y'all were gone, I've started the ingredients to make wonderful coconut flan today

All I did was take a third of a cup of sugar, put it in my saucepan, and I just caramelized it

And that takes, you know, four or five minutes, not long at all. Okay, and that's ready

And you can see that hardly took any time at all. Now I'm just gonna pour this into the dish that I'm cooking my flan in

And try to distribute it. I'm just kind of rolling that around to distribute that caramelized sugar a little bit

All right, I've got three eggs. Oops, I let a little bit of the shell get in there

We want some texture in our flan, but we want it to be with coconut, not with eggshells

Okay, the second egg. And now for the third egg. All right, now I'm just going to whisk up our three eggs

All right, to our eggs, I'm going to add one can of sweetened condensed milk

and I could just pure drink that, y'all. It's so good. I probably have drank it on occasion

All right, that's great. And then we're going to add one and a half cups of coconut milk

There we go. Going to add our coconut milk. You can see how simple our ingredients are for our flan

but it's going to produce a fabulous, fabulous taste. All right, now a fourth of a cup of shredded coconut

and then a teaspoon or two of vanilla. I really like this vanilla

so I'm going to put two teaspoons in there. Okay, so just that easily, we've got our flan together

So all we're going to do is just pour this into our dish over our caramelized sugar

because when we invert our flan, it's going to have that nice caramelly bottom to it

There we go Now I going to take it over to another dish a bacon dish and I gonna set this in my dish

and then I'm gonna cook this in a water bath. So I'm gonna take some water, some hot water

so it'll have a head start in the oven, and I'm gonna pour my hot water

about two-thirds of a way up my dish. Now I've preheated our oven to 325 degrees

And I'm gonna go ahead and open this door because this is gonna be heavy

So here we go and y'all it's heavy as a piece of concrete

There we go. In 60 minutes, we are gonna have the most wonderful flan

wonderful flan that you've ever put in your mouth. Now come on down here and let's taste our soup

Look at that. Doesn't that look good? Oh, and I love those little straw mushrooms

I love everything about it. Now I've got some cilantro, y'all. I'm just gonna float some on top

just crushing it just a little bit to help release that wonderful cilantro flavor

Oh, that cilantro is like jumped up and just slapped me. Mmm

It's so good. It's got a really hot kick. And it's not time for y'all to go anywhere yet, though

because I'm gonna be cooking up some Thai fried bananas. Welcome back, y'all

I've truly saved the easiest and I think maybe the best for last

Thai fried bananas. And they're going to be delicious next to our flan

Now I'm going to turn on my wok and I'm going to put in about two tablespoons of butter

I think my tablespoons may be a little bit more generous, but that's all right

All right, our butter's melting up. It's starting to sizzle. All right, I'm going to toss in our bananas, four bananas

Now you can kind of slice these up any way you want to. This reminds me so much of bananas foster

Now I'm going to toss in our fourth of a cup of sugar

Add my sugar. I'm going to add the juice of one lime

There we go. And now I've got one last thing that's really going to make the Asian statement

I'm going to add one teaspoon of black sesame seeds. That looks so good

I absolutely am a huge fan of sesame seeds. And for some reason, I love the black ones

I guess because I can just see them better. I'm going to get all that butter and brown sugar

and sesame seeds out of that wok. All right. Looks delicious, doesn't it

All right, now let's work on our flan. Now I'm going to take our knife and just run around our dish

Now, our flan has come. Yummy. Oh, hey, you made it home

Hey. Perfect timing. What's cooking? I made some coconut flan. I'm just hoping and a praying that my flan comes out

You need some help? All right, grab a hold. Okay. You got to flip it quick, baby, because there you go

Pull it out. I knew when it came to a dessert, you weren't going to let that thing screw up

Look at that flan. It's coconut, Michael. Now, I'm going to sprinkle it with some coconut

so that you can just at a glance see what kind of flan it is

Now, I'm just going to cut this. There's your flan. Yummy

And wait, now wait. I'm not done yet. Fried bananas. I'm going to give you some fried bananas

You know how I feel about your vegetables. I want to make sure you've got your vegetables

So there's your dairy, and here's your veggies. My salad. All right, dig in, baby

I'm going to get my own. Oh, it's delicious. I've had such a good time being with y'all today

Until next time. Best dishes in love, y'all. Mmm! You can tie me up anytime, baby