Holy Basil Pork

One Straw Farm has been bringing shiny, red Thai chilies and highly fragrant Thai basil to the market lately, and this inspired me to find some sort of simple Thai recipe to prepare. I pulled Austin chef and restaurateur Jam Sanitchat’s cookbook Thai Fresh from my bookshelf and found just what I wanted – a recipe for Holy Basil Pork (Pad Ka Prow in the Thai language).

Sanitchat says this dish is a school cafeteria staple in Thailand, where school food includes curries, stir-fries, and soups, all freshly prepared and with varying degrees of spiciness.  I like spicy food, and used four Thai chilies. She notes that this dish can be made with less meat and instead with such vegetables as green beans, onions, or mushrooms. She likes topping the finished dish with a fried egg, which sounds good but didn’t appeal to me at the moment. Maybe next time.

Ingredients 

• 2 garlic cloves
• Pinch salt
• 1 T chopped shallot
• 2-4 fresh Thai chilies, or more to taste
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 8 oz. ground pork
• 1-2 T. fish cause
• Pinch Sugar
• 1 c. holy basil leaves, or substitute Thai basil leaves, which is what I did.
• Cooked jasmine rice

Preparation

Make a paste by pounding together the garlic, salt, shallot and chilies using a mortar and pestle. Alternatively, you can mince all the ingredients by hand and combine. Heat a wok or a deep saute pan over medium-high heat. When hot, turn down the heat a little, add the oil and fry the paste for about 20 seconds. Add the pork and continue to stir-fry for a few minutes. Add the fish sauce and sugar, taste, then adjust the seasonings, if necessary. Add the holy basil leaves and stir-fry until the basil is soft – about 20 seconds. Remove from the heat, serve over jasmine rice and top with a fried egg.