Description and preparation

Recipe: Thai khao soi gai from Chiang Mai

“Kao Soi Gai is one of the famous Thai dishes from the Northern part of Thailand. It has a perfect flavor combination of salty, creamy, spicy and a touch of sour from Thai lime. Kao soi originated in Chiang Mai, a city in the North of Thailand. It’s a kind of dish that everyone who visits the city must eat. However, the dish wasn’t first created by Thai people. It came from Muslim Chinese people from Yunnan province. In Thailand they call them Hong Chinese.

A century ago, Hong Chinese came to South East Asia to trade fabric, spices, and animal products. On the way back, they would carry Thai products back to their country. When the trade grew bigger, three main trading routes were built and Chiang Mai was on one of them. Later, the Hong Chinese decided to migrate to Thailand, build a village and live there. That is when the Northern Thai food started to have influences from Hong Chinese People.”

This recipe is a collaboration with Thai chef Napa. You can view her original, more detailed blogpost, as well as many more recipes and tips about Thai cuisine on her website.

Instructions

Curry paste

Start by making the curry paste. The first thing to do is to chop the dried chilies, remove the seeds and toast the chilies in a pan until lightly brown and fragrant. You will smell it. It's very nice but can also make you cough. After toasted, put the chilies in a bowl and soak in fresh water for 1 hour or until soft. Toast the rest of the spices and herbs in the curry paste ingredient list, in the same pan, over low heat until fragrant and lightly brown.

When the chilies are soft, we can now start pounding the curry paste in a mortar and pestle. Start with the spices. Grind all of the spices well and put them back into a bowl. 

Drain out the water from the chilies and squeeze the chilies to take out as much of the water as possible. Grind chilies with salt into a fine paste before adding herbs. Grind the herbs with the chilies until well blend and fine texture. Add shallots and pound until all of the ingredient form into a fine paste. Keep the curry paste refrigerated for up to 1 week or put it into your freezer for up to 3 months.

To make the dish
Cook the chicken drumsticks or your preferred part in skimmed coconut cream until soft and tender. It will take around 45 minutes to an hour. Depended on how soft you like your chicken to be. When the chicken is cooked, we’re gonna start to make kao soi curry.

Slice 3 shallots, chop coriander, slice pickle vegetable for garnish. Heat a layer of cooking oil in a wok, enough to deep-fry the noodles. Fry a handful of egg noodles.

Start with cracking coconut cream. Add 125 milliliters of coconut cream into a pot, over medium heat. Add 4 tablespoons of curry paste and stir until well blended into the coconut cream. Consistently stir until coconut cream is boiling, be careful not to burn bottom. It will take around 10 minutes to crack the cream. It will take longer if you are using canned coconut. You will notice when you stop briefly and see yellow oil floating on the top.

Once the coconut cream is cracked, add the rest of the coconut cream and milk, then and chicken and juices. Keep your curry at a low simmer while you prepare the noodles.

Prepare a bowl of room temperature water, a pot of boiling water, a strainer and chopsticks. 

Boil water in a big pot and cook egg noodles in boiling water for 1 minute. Constantly moving the noodles by using chopsticks or your preferred tools. Don't overcrowd the noodles. Work in batches if necessary. 

When the noodles are cooked, place them into the bowl of room temperature water briefly before straining them and put them into a serving bowl.

Add curry and chicken over the noodles and garnish with sliced shallots, coriander, chili oil, a wedge of lime and pickled vegetable. Serve individually with extra garnishes as sides on the table.

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