Home cook Thai for my friends

I moved into a new apartment in May this year, although it has a tiny kitchen, I have a balcony and an awesome view of English Bay and the North Shore mountains. I even have a view of the ocean and the mountains from my kitchen. Being in this environment has inspired me to cook some amazing meals for my friends.

I cooked a very lavish thai dinner for 7 of my friends not too long ago. I bought most of the asian ingredients from T&T and went to Granville Island for the freshest meat and vegetables. In all, I think I spent well over $300 on this meal, which was worth every penny. I love watching my friends enjoy the fruits of my labour, it's a love I share with my mum.

Here's what I prepared:

Appies:
1. Home made spring rolls, wrapped in lettuce, with rice noodles, bean spouts, cucumber, mint and coriander, with a dipping sauce, made with palm sugar/ fish sauce/vinegar and peanuts.

2.Smoked salmon with Namh Jim on Betal Leaves served with Fish Roe. Betal leaves is very hard to come by in vancouver, I fnally found them in in a little store in Chinatown, thanks to google.

3.Almond coated tempura king prawns, served with sweet thai chili sauce.

4.Chickan Satay, served with peanut sauce.

Mains (served with steam rice):
1.Coriander Eye-fillet. This was the most diffiult dish to prepare, and my favourite dish. The sauce is amazingly aromatic because of the galangal.

2.Stir fry chicken with thai basil. I would have preferred to use holy basil, which is far more aromatic than the normal thai basil and has a sweeter flavour, but I have not been able to find them here in vancouver.

3. Seared halibut with yellow curry. When you buy the freshest ingredients, it's amazing what a difference it makes to the meal. The halibut practically melted in your mouth.

I did not prepare dessert, everyone was too full to eat dessert. Besides, I am not very good at cooking desserts, I'm more of a savoury person than a sweets person.

A few weeks later, I cooked another thai meal for a different group of friends, only this time the meal was not as lavish. For appies I only made chicken satay,  for mains I made green chicken curry, ling cod with yellow curry and pad thai. It was the very first time I cooked pad thai, and was very surprisingly pleased with the outcome.

On both occassions my kitchen was a mess, but the dinners were a success, everyone went home very merry and very drunk! There is nothing like a good meal shared with good friends :).

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