What I've learned so far: It's all in the prep. My first attempt was a pork fried rice. Here we go:
Clockwise from the top: Brown Jasmine rice, chopped pork, chilis soaking in fish sauce, shallots, green onion, garlic, eggs, cucumber, lime, cilantro, and a combination of soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and white pepper. The soy sauce is something called "thin" soy sauce. There's like three or four kinds of soy sauce in Thai food, apparently.
So, you've got everything prepped. Here we go. Oil in wok.
Eggs in oil. They fry up in a way I've never seen before. It takes all of ten seconds before you have to flip it. Seriously, Tracy was taking these pictures as I scrambled to get these things in the wok.
Push the egg up the side of the wok, and add the shallots and garlic. Move the aromatics around so they don't burn.
Add the pork, stir and flip. Might I mention that the gas burner is as hot as it goes? This stove, in every other capacity, pumps out more heat than I need, but for this, I'm kind of wishing for more. Thai food is hardcore. As you stir and flip, you can bring the egg back into it, and chop it up into the meat mixture.
Get the rice in there. You know the routine.
Add the soy and fish sauce mixture. OK, word of warning: You may think that a few teaspoons of this stuff won't flavor all this food, but watch it. It can get incredibly salty really quickly.
Looking good.
Add green onions.
So, that took all of five minutes. Not kidding. Anyway, that's a lot of starch and meat. Here's some vegetables. Raw shredded Brussels sprouts, with a soy, lime, and kimchee dressing.
Serve family style, with sliced cucumber, limes, cilantro, and some more green onions. The chilis in fish sauce are served on the side as a funky/spicy sauce.
I'm going to try the more ambitious dishes as time passes. The ingredients are the real killer, if I want to make it "authentic". I kind of do, as half-assed Thai food tastes, well... not all that special. You really need to make an effort to get it to where it needs to be.
