This pork and Thai basil stir-fry is one of Thailand’s most popular street foods and can be on the table in around 20 minutes.
It’s a spicy dish of flavoursome minced pork served over rice and topped with a fried egg.
One of the main ingredients of the dish is Thai basil. This has quite a different flavour to the sweet basil that we use in Europe, Thai basil being slightly spicy with tones of aniseed. If it is difficult to find you can substitute a bay leaf and a small piece of star anise or a little pinch of five spice when cooking the pork and finish the dish by stirring through some sweet basil just before serving.
PAD KA PRAO
Serves 2
INGREDIENTS:
400 g minced pork
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 birds eye chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
olive oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon kecap manis
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
5 sprigs Thai basil leaves
2 eggs
180 g basmati rice
Nam pla prik sauce to serve (opt)
METHOD:
Place the rice in saucepan with 360 ml of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the water has completely absorbed. Cover with a lid and remove from heat. Set aside for a minimum of 15 minutes.
Place the garlic, chillies and onion in a food processor or a pestle and mortar and grind down to make a paste, alternatively just chop down as fine as possible.
Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a non-stick fry pan or wok on a medium to high heat. Fry the paste for 2 minutes; stirring to ensure it does not stick to the bottom of the pan.
Add the pork to the pan and stir-fry with the paste until it is almost cooked through, breaking up any lumps as it cooks.
Stir in the fish sauce, soy sauce, kecap manis and oyster sauce. Add the bay leaf and star anise or five spice if using.
Once the meat is cooked through and sauces have reduced, stir through the Thai basil leaves and remove from the heat. If using ordinary sweet basil do not add until ready to serve as it will wilt.
While the pork is cooking, fry the eggs in a little olive oil, until the yolk is cooked and the base of the eggs is nice and crisp.
To serve, pile generous portions of rice into individual serving dishes. Scoop some pork over the top and finish with a fried egg. Garnish with a few chopped basil leaves.
