Rock Out With Your Wok Out, and Other Thai Flavours

By Julia Sunday July 19, 2009

For our very first Featured Flavours here at iatebrisbane.com, we decided to select a theme that tickled all our palettes, but in terms of culinary skills, was pretty unfamiliar to us — beyond a jar of supermarket curry paste.

Enter Thai, and a world of delectable satays, fish cakes, stir fried noodles, a gamut of spices, relatively unknown sweets and desserts, and one big unknown: the wok.

And what better way to kick off our foray into Thai cooking than to head on down to Chinatown to gather the ingredients for a Thai feast!

So on Saturday we three iatebrisbane girls packed our baskets and green bags and made our way to Chinatown in Fortitude Valley. On the menu was Tung Tong (Money Bags), Pad Sieu (Sweet Soy Fried Noodles), and a Pandan Pannacotta.

I absolutely love exploring Chinatown. The massive variety of smells and flavours, combined with the delightful overload of colours and languages makes for a thoroughly exciting shopping trip. I also get a giddy thrill from the inevitable language barriers — that 3% doubt as to whether you’ve actually purchased the ingredient you’re meant to – and what the effect will be if you haven’t! – throws a delightful element of uncertainty into your cooking.

With shopping lists in hand, our first stop was A & J Trading, on Brunswick St. I always start with A & J, as it’s generally great value for money, and has a pretty thorough range. With very tight aisles, it can be a little intimidating on your first visit, but it’s well worth heading along – just make sure you’re not in a rush, as it’s easy to spend more than an hour exploring the wares.

A & J features a huge mix of pan-asian flavours: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai (amongst others!). There are sauces, spices, pastes, noodles, fresh veg and seafood, and an array of cooking implements. We walked away with the majority of our ingredients, and I with my first wok (15″, carbon steel, for the great price of $14!).

The next stop was Burlington Supermarket, in Duncan St. I’m not sure if it’s the wider ailes (which make for a much calmer shopping experience!), but Burlington always seems to have any odds and ends that you can’t find in A & J. With similarly diverse offerings, it was Burlington that delivered the Pandan Essence for the pannacotta that had evaded us thus far.

Last on the list were our fresh meats and herbs. There’s an absolutely sensational butcher’s in the McWhirters Building that does fresh meats for very reasonable prices, and an equally brilliant fruit & veg shop that sells massive bunches of fresh herbs for $2 a pop, along with other great specials.

Our baskets and bags heavily laden with fresh produce and an array of sauces and oils, and oodles of noodles (oh, yes!), we headed home to commence our Thai Feast.

We will continue to experiment with Thai flavours over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for updates on our very first theme of Thai Tastes.

We would love you to post your own ideas and recipes in the comments too! Feel free to cook along at home!

Thai Tastes – July / August 2009