At 17:31 +0100 25/4/03, Ozzie wrote:

>Hi Richard - found your post below most informative, and being an
>Aussie myself, I also love Asian-style cooking (I've noticed we
>Aussies tend to be among the most Asian-food-oriented Caucasians in
>the world!!)

Probably because there are so many Asian restaurants here. Although
I know a few Aussies who won't eat Asian. Strictly steak and
three-veg.



>BUT the recipes I know are more Chinese than Thai, i.e.
>they require soy sauce, sugar & cornflour & sherry & oyster sauce
>which I assume is all non-paleo

Well, those ingredients certainly couldn't be gathered if you were
naked with a sharp stick. Taking them in turn:

Soy sauce and oyster sauce I don't use. They are called for mainly
in Chinese cooking and I don't do much of that. I much prefer the
Thai or Vietnamese flavours - and these styles are much more paleo!

I use palm sugar if a recipe calls for sugar and I think it can't
really be left out. Palm sugar is much less refined than even "raw"
sugar made from sugar cane. This is used mainly in Thai cooking to
balance the sourness of lime and the saltiness of fish sauce.

Cornflour is a thickening agent. That's what gives Chinese cooking
that disgusting gelatinous texture. There's a Chinese take-away near
here which doesn't use any thickening agents (at least not in any of
the dishes I have tried). The flavours from the sauces are all
cooked into the ingredients then mostly poured off leaving only a
small amount of liquid in the dish. Their meals are not as richly
flavoured as some, so I add a liberal sprinkling of chilli when I
get home :)

You can also avoid having to thicken a sauce by simmering it down
to the point where it starts to stick to the food by itself.

If I really stuff up a recipe I will save the day with a couple
of teaspoons of rice flour. Not paleo, but still healthier than
stressing about a ruined meal (IMHO).

Sherry is a strange ingredient I often see in my '70s cook books
I just skip over it and I don't think my cooking suffers!


Here's a great collection of Thai recipes:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/thai/

Nam pla is fish sauce, readily available at Asian groceries.
It's very salty... I keep meaning to try to find a less salty
one so I can use less palm sugar.

The only trick I know with Thai cooking is to use fresh ingredients
whenever possible. I guess we're a little spoilt here in Australia
because it's so easy to find fresh Asian herbs and vegetables and
even fresh galangal and tumeric!

 ...Richard.