Gourmet Vegetarian Kitchen

Healthy Vegetarian & Plant-Based Foods

Thai Food

enjoy it with somtam and teriyaki tempeh!

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!…

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enjoy it with a bowl of rice, or even better with fermented whole rice!

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:

  1. 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. 2 cloves of garlic.
  3. 2 TBSP (30 ml) of soy sauce, and 2 TBSP (30 ml) of water.
  4. 1 TBSP (15 ml) of coconut oil.
  5. About 2 TSP (5ml) of sugar. I use whole, unrefined sugar.

    ingredients for vegan sweet and sour vegetables

    ingredients for vegan sweet and sour vegetables

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thai green curry tempeh--gourmetvegetariankitchen.com

Thai green curry is one of the most desired curries. It’s a great mix of balanced flavor with spicy, savory, sweet, and aromatic, all with the taste of different vegetables in a creamy coconut-based soup. When I want to eat something filling and flavorful, Thai green curry is high on my list.

Growing up in Thailand, green curry was one of many tasty Thai dishes I often chose. However, most green curry in Thailand is made with either beef or chicken. When I decided to stop eating meat altogether, I started to substitute either tofu, tempeh or sometimes just plain vegetables!

Talking about cooking curry dishes can be intimidating–for me too.  With curry paste on hand it is very simple though. Making curry paste from scratch is much more difficult, but fortunately there are so many companies selling ready-to-use curry pastes, and some with very healthy ingredients. However, most of them use shrimp paste. So, make sure to read the ingredients carefully. There is one company I usually buy my curry paste from without shrimp paste (not affiliated with GVK).

As long as you have the right curry paste on hand, you can get the Thai green curry done in no time. Are you ready to make it with me?…

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fried bananas

Fried bananas is a street dessert available everywhere in Thailand. If you want something to satisfy your sweet tooth right that minute, voila, there’s a vendor frying bananas. They are crispy with a perfect amount of sweetness from the bananas themselves, and you can finish a whole lot before you know it!

When I was young, I often stopped by a vendor I was familiar with for Fried Bananas on the way home from school. Then one day, my mom talked to me about how the oil vendors use can harm your health. I wasn’t happy to hear that my favorite snack might be bad for me, but I immediately took action. I started to look at the oil before I bought the Fried Bananas. If the oil looked dark, it meant the vendors had used it too long and it could be harmful, so I wouldn’t buy it.

The info about bad oil really turned me away from buying and eating Fried Bananas. As they are not common in the US, I kind of forgot about it when I moved there. I really wanted to eat them more often without being afraid they are deep fried in bad oil, and the idea of making my own finally occurred to me. So, here I am again, reinterpreting a traditional food I like to eat….

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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….

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Vegan Miang Kham

Miang Kham

The Thai appetizer, Miang Kham, is one of the healthiest snacks. It’s a perfect mix of savory, sweet, and tangy, along with healthy raw vegetables. It’s actually an appetizer, but we often eat it for dinner!  

However, the original Minag Kham recipe from Thailand has fish sauce, shrimp paste, and dried shrimp, all of which we don’t eat. It also requires a lot of palm sugar to make the sauce thick, but I find it too sweet, and substitute a lesser amount of regular, unrefined cane sugar, that is always easy to find. To thicken the sauce, I use shallots or red onions with toasted coconut flakes, and minced crispy tofu instead. I substitute soy sauce for the fish sauce, and replace the shrimp paste with nutritional yeast. It turns out just the way I like, and I enjoy the flavor very much. It actually tastes as great as the authentic dish, but it feels even healthier and is easier to make!…

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