Side Dishes

Wait! before going out to buy another bottle of hot sauce, try making this Sriracha Hot Sauce in your own kitchen. With only a few ingredients, It will open a whole new world of eating hot sauce!.

If you are a fan of hot sauce, I’m positive you know Sriracha Hot Sauce. Being Thai, I’ve known it my whole life. It became a very famous hot sauce as I see it in almost every country I have been to.

Even though it’s so easy to get one bottle from almost every store now, believe it or not, I never bought it–ever. While I was still living in Thailand, I never felt right buying anything in plastic bottles, not to mention something acidic that can leach the plastic into it–like hot sauce.…

enjoy them with minced garlic, olive oil & vinegar

White Asparagus is a famous appetizer in Spain. You can cook or buy them easily everywhere in the north. They are so pretty, tasty, and most of all very healthy!

I’m sure most of us know how healthy asparagus is, although green asparagus is more common for cooking than the white variety.

Living in spain, we cook White Asparagus more as it is available locally, especially from early April on when they come into season. Even though we eat them as an appetizer, they are very filling, and can end up being full before dinner–that’s actually nice and easy!

However, cooking White Asparagus requires more work as they are bigger, tougher, and the skin is more bitter than green asparagus. First, we have to peel the skin, then boil them ‘til they are soft. From there, we can either eat them plain with vinegar and olive oil, or use them in other dishes.

There is a special kind of a tall pot for cooking asparagus that most people have in Spain, but since we don’t, I use a regular pot I have, and it works fine.…

Vegan Fried Rice is an all-time Thai classic guaranteed to satisfy everyone–even picky eating kids who don’t like trying anything new.

I don’t usually make this dish as I feel like it’s too typical. Recently, I had a very frustrating experience eating fried rice from a Chinese restaurant on a trip, and want to prove that Thai Vegetarian Fried Rice, packed with yummy vegetables, is really easy to make.

With a perfect combination of simple ingredients, I also go the extra mile, fermenting the rice to make it even healthier, along with lots of vegetables.

Indeed, I can confirm after making it again that it’s both easy and satisfying….

Coconut Rice with Somtam (Thai Papaya Salad) and Teriyaki Tempeh is the best combination of aromatic, savory, tangy and sweet.

I remember that we were all so happy, when my mother made this Coconut Rice as a special treat for us. It’s especially tasty when she made it with Thai Jasmine white rice.

One day, when I was heating my leftover cooked rice, I used a little bit of coconut oil, fried the rice, and sprinkled a pinch of himalayan salt in. It turned out so good, and reminded me of my mother’s coconut rice–only easier and faster to make.

Ever since, I make this Coconut Rice dish very often, and have created new meals using it with som-tam and Teriyaki Tempeh. They go together incredibly well. To make it even more aromatic, I add a few leaves of mint in–imagine that!…

Vegan Sweet and Sour Vegetables are always the first choice when we order Chinese takeout as we are sure to get a generous amount of vegetables to enjoy with a bowl of warm rice.

Being Thai, I love Thai flavors better, although sometimes we don’t have many choices. The best Sweet and Sour we love is the one I make at home (of course!) It has all fresh vegetables, mixed with a few simple ingredients, and we simply enjoy this healthy dish.

Things you need to make Vegan Sweet and Sour Vegetables:

A plate of vegetables of your choice. I use a few florets of broccoli, 2 tomatoes, a little bit of red cabbage, red bell pepper, half an onion, 2 stems of green onion, a ¼ of a pineapple, and a few stems of cilantro.
2 cloves of garlic.
2 TBSP (30 ml) of soy sauce, and 2 TBSP (30 ml) of water.
1 TBSP (15 ml) of coconut oil.
About 2 TSP (5ml) of sugar. I use whole, unrefined sugar.
ingredients for vegan sweet and sour vegetables

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Fermented Bean Salsa ideas always come to mind when I want to make a quick and easy, yet healthy appetizer. It’s so good for when we crave Mexican-American type foods, and also great for entertaining guests before meals, or simply for taking to picnics and potlucks!

Why fermented beans you may wonder? In case you are not familiar with fermented beans, let me pass on some info I have learned in the past few years. All beans and legumes contain anti-nutrients that make it hard for our bodies to digest them. Fermenting and sprouting before consuming them are the best way to to reduce the anti-nutrients, and to make the beans more digestible, thus causing less gas.

Other benefits you get from cooking your own beans are staying away from the BPA in can linings, and helping to reduce container use.

If you want to know more reasons why I ferment beans (and whole grains) check out my post about why I ferment whole grains.

However, the process of fermenting and sprouting requires some time, and is probably the reason why most people and canned bean companies don’t do it. So, the best way is to do it by yourself. I found it’s hard at the beginning, but not once I got used to it. With some planning, I always have fermented beans on hand….

These Roasted Sweet Potatoes are both healthy and filling, and a little bit of good oil and salt make them taste great right from the stove top!

Sweet potatoes are high on hearty-healthy food lists. I like them because they are versatile, and can be used in many different dishes: from thanksgiving dinners and soups, to simple, healthy snacks such as Roasted Sweet Potatoes.

However, living abroad or somewhere without an oven in the kitchen can be challenging when you want to bake or roast sweet potatoes. I struggled with that and avoided making them for quite some time.

With some effort, I created Roasted Sweet Potatoes in a frying pan. It’s perfectly doable, and in fact it uses less energy when I want a small batch. I can do a small amount of them at a time on a burner instead of heating the entire oven. When I realized how easy it was, I started making it much more often.

If you’d like to try roasting sweet potatoes on a stove top, come along with me, and I’ll show you how….

Som Tam is a well known Thai salad made with raw papayas pounded in a terra cotta mortar–a unique way to make salad. It’s very healthy with a combination of sweet, tangy, savory and spicy flavors. In Thailand, Som Tam is everywhere from street venders to high-end restaurants and food courts. If you like Thai foods, I’m sure you will like or have already tried Som Tam before!

My family and I love eating Som Tam, and we can eat it almost every day, which we often do when we go to Thailand. However, it can be hard to make Som Tam the same way they do in Thailand if you can’t get raw papayas, or don’t have a terra cotta mortar. Where I live in the US, it’s easy to get everything I need to make Som Tam and other asian dishes. When I travel though, especially now in Spain, I can’t get raw papayas, and don’t have a mortar either.

To make Som Tum like we always do, I substitute carrots & cabbages for raw papayas. Sometimes, I add cucumbers too. These vegetables are more common and easy to find everywhere. For a mortar, I just use a regular salad bowl instead. The result is not exactly the same, but it’s healthy, and tasty in a different way.

Before we talk more about making Som Tam with cabbage, I would like to mention something about it first. Even though I grew up hearing that eating raw cabbage is not good for you, I never found out why. Instead, I avoided consuming it raw altogether.

However, a few years ago, I decided to look into the reasons. I read a few articles and found out that cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage should be cooked before being eaten as they contain chemicals that block the production of thyroid hormone in your body. Here is the link to the article I am talking about. You can use your own intuition whether to consume it raw. I still think eating it raw in moderation is ok, and I like it that way sometimes….

Spanish omelette (AKA Tortilla Patata) is one of the most famous and most common dishes in Spain. It was the first dish we ordered when we got here, and it’s a dish we often order when we eat out. It’s very filling, yet healthy. With both potatoes and eggs in it, we get protein and carbohydrates at the same time.

When I saw a Spanish omelette for the first time, I thought it must require an oven to make. It seems impossible to make anything look like that without baking, but soon I learned it doesn’t. However, there are two main things most people use to make it perfectly round and golden: a non-stick frying pan, and a lot of oil. Nonetheless, after watching our friends and others make it a few times, I knew I could make it my own way.

I experimented making it with a stainless steel frying pan, but it didn’t go well, and as a result, I burnt a few batches before getting it down. Finally, I have both the recipe and technique down to the point I’m comfortable to share it.

Like most dishes I cook, I adjust the original recipes to fit our way of living and eating better. For the Spanish omelette, I use a moderate amount of coconut oil, as well as adding some vegetables too. You can use any kind of vegetables you have on hand, but I often use spinach, broccoli and mushrooms. Even though most restaurants in Spain have plain tortilla patatas with only eggs and potatoes, some places offer various fixings like this too.

I use cooked potatoes instead of raw for making this, and it turns out better. To me, raw potatoes make it a little bit too starchy, and take longer to cook. I usually cook a lot of potatoes at a time, and have them ready to use in other dishes too. This is convenient, and fits my cooking routine well.

As far as other ingredients go, it’s hard to believe I only use salt to make it taste so good. The vegetables really enhance the flavor, especially with a few kinds together….

In southern Thailand where I was born, turmeric is very common, and I grew up eating turmeric as part of my daily diet. We put turmeric in almost every dish, and we even have one dish called “gaeng leang” or “yellow curry” because we use so much turmeric in it. Whenever I helped my mom in the kitchen, my fingers got stained for days!

When I first moved to the U.S, I found that turmeric was not so common, and that made me forgot about it for a while. Like everything, when it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind.

It came back to me when I happened to read an article about the benefits of turmeric. Some research says curacumin in turmeric has a powerful anti-inflammatory, which is a strong antioxidant that can fight or even cure some kinds of cancer. The article brought so many memories of eating turmeric back to me. How could I forget about that yellow root I didn’t like when it stained my hands?

I wanted to add turmeric back to my diet, so, I started to search for it again. To my happy surprise, it wasn’t hard at all to find turmeric powder. Sometimes, I can even buy fresh turmeric like we use in Thailand. As more people know about its benefits, it seems to be more popular nowadays.

One day, I was craving the salty taste of garlic and turmeric in my mother’s fish dishes so much. I decided to try making that dish, but replaced the fish with tofu. It turned out very similar to what I wanted, and satisfied my craving!

So, here is another way to add turmeric in your diet:…

The easiest dish I ever prepared was the dish for my daughter when she started to eat solid food. At the time, I didn’t have to do anything besides giving her plain steamed vegetables. I gave her one cooked vegetable at a time to observe her reactions with each type. I tasted everything before I fed her first, and was surprised they actually tasted good the way they were–plain. When I was finally sure that she wasn’t allergic to anything, I started to add some seasoning to her vegetables and thought she would love to eat them even more. Hmm. . . no, she didn’t like them any better than the plain ones. So, I adjusted how I cook vegetables to the way my daughter liked to eat, which was incredibly simple.

That made me realize that we are actually born to eat food close to its original form. Ever since, I have kept this idea in mind and tried to keep my food as simple as possible. I love how I can tell what each vegetable tastes like just by looking at it.

Here is one of my many plain vegetable dishes. With just broccoli, garlic & coconut oil, a pinch of salt, and lemon juice, it’s so plain yet very tasty:…

Things you need to make Vegan Sweet and Sour Vegetables:

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Things you need to make Vegan Sweet and Sour Vegetables:

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