I’ve been buying Cook’s Illustrated at our local health food store for years. Not until about a year ago did I realize that it is the magazine version of a PBS series called America’s Test Kitchen. We don’t get cable (gasp!) so to find a good cooking show on network TV is a crazy jackpot for me.

The fabulous thing about this magazine (and show) is that they try technique after technique to come up with the easiest and tastiest way to cook any dish, or type of dish that they’re discussing. They then present not only the ‘how-to’ but also the ‘how-not-to.’ This is particularly good for me because I have a tendency to try to cut corners if I think I can get away with it. Although I’m not sure how the February Cook’s Illustrated ended up on the top of my magazine pile this week, I was excited to find a recipe for Thai chicken that didn’t contain soy, or so I thought. Turns out (of course) that oyster sauce has soy in it. As I had already purchased everything for the recipe I went ahead and made the dish replacing the oyster sauce with coconut aminos. Not the same by any stretch of the imagination but the final result was authentic tasting and delicious. Good enough for me.

I was about to link to the recipe with discussion but it’s subscription only so I’ll post what I did, which is of course, different than the actual recipe (I’m like that). The subscription is $35/year and would be worth it if you’re looking to gain some basic cooking skill or hone basic cooking skills. You can get a 24 hour free pass to the website so if you want to read the actual recipe or the details about why they use certain techniques.

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh basil tightly packed
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 medium jalapeño pepper
• 2 TBSP thai fish sauce (Thai kitchen brand has one with no additives, etc.)
• 1 T coconut aminos
• 2 tsp white vinegar
• 2 tsp raw sugar or agave
• 1.25 lb free range or organic chicken thigh meat cut into 2-3 inch pieces
• 5 large shallots
• 2 TBSP high heat stable oil

Directions

1. Put 1 cup of the basil leaves, the garlic and the chiles in the food processor. Pulse until finely chopped, scraping down if needed.
2. Take out 1 T of the mixture, place in small bowl, and stir in 1 T fish sauce, liquid aminos, vinegar, and sugar, set aside. Put the rest of the mixture in a large skillet or sauté pan.
3. Without cleaning food processor, add the meat and the rest of the fish sauce and pulse until it is in small pieces, about 1/4″. Put this in the refrigerator until you’re done with step 4.
4. Add oil and shallots to mixture in pan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring regularly until the shallots are starting to turn light golden brown. Cooking slowly here, according to the cookbook author, is imperative. The recipe called for 5-8 minutes but it took about 12 minutes on my stove before they started turning color. The smell in the kitchen at this point should be making your mouth water.
5. Add the chicken, turn up to medium heat and cook until the chicken is just translucent. Now add the sauce you put aside in step 2.
6. Continue to stir until the chicken is cooked then add the rest of the basil until it wilts into the dish. WAIT on this step if you are cooking for another day (I think this dish would be ideally served hot off of the burner but on our menu this week it’s Tuesday’s dinner…)

The original recipe calls for serving the dish with extra fish sauce, sugar, red pepper flakes and vinegar in separate side dishes so people can adjust to their own taste. I’m pretty sure I won’t bother with all that…but I will put a bottle of vinegar and some hot pepper flakes on the table.

At this point my plan will be to serve it over black or brown rice with sauteéd broccoli and garlic. I bet it would also be good wrapped in rice paper and dipped in more of the sauce. I’ll try that next time.

Enjoy!

-Dr Samantha