Kathy and I love Thai food, and eat it often. There are quite a number of Thai restaurants in San Antonio that are very good but San Antonio is 60 miles from here, so we have learned to make a number of Thai dishes ourselves.When I worked in Chicago, there was a Thai restaurant near the office that served a dish call Kao Soi that I ate every chance I got. Kao Soi, also known as Chiang Mai Noodles, is a delicious combination of soft and crispy noodles with chicken in a coconut curry broth. We have found no Thai restaurant in San Antonio that serves it, so I did some research and developed this Kao Soi recipe.
If you go to most Thai restaurants in the U.S., you will get food from the southern part of Thailand. If you are lucky, though, you may find this dish, which comes from the northern Chiang Mai province that stretches from Myanmar (Burma) to Laos. The food in this region, and Kao Soi in particular, has influences from the south (coconut milk, red curry paste, chicken), India and Myanmar (curry powders, including a hint of turmeric), and China (the wheat noodles).
It is pretty straightforward to find the ingredients in Chicago or Houston, but not so much in places like Kerrville or Bangor. It is worth the trouble to search, though, and if you can't find what you need locally, you should remember that the internet can solve a lot of problems. We have even been known to buy some of the ingredients from Amazon.com. I think you will like Kao Soi enough that these ingredients will become pantry staples.
Don't be afraid to substitute if you can't find what the recipe calls for. If you can't find tamarind, just add some more lime juice to taste. If you click on the photo above, you will find Kim Chee, a pungent Korean cabbage pickle, which substitutes as a garnish for the pickled Chinese cabbage. Palm sugar is best, but use turbinado or even plain white sugar if you must. (No - scratch the white sugar....) And in the first picture above, you will see that we use crispy La Choy chow mein noodles for a garnish - totally wrong, but it tastes great, and saves the mess of frying your own.
