Kaosarn, Brixton Village Market, London

First stop on my London day of eating, Brixton. Brixton Village Market, formerly known as Granville Arcade, was mostly vacant until a couple of years ago. A regeneration project is seeing it gradually fill up with a variety of interesting eateries, which are generally getting very positive feedback - see here for more information.

One of the latest openings is Kaosarn, a small Thai cafe located at the Coldharbour Lane end of the arcade. I was lured in by the thought of some decent Thai food after the abomination I had the other week. I ordered chicken stir fried with rice, chilli, holy basil and a fried egg (Kao pad kra pao or somethingorother in Thai), and water. Iced tap water was supplied without question or suggestion of the bottled stuff.

I enjoyed eating this. Sweet, salty and hot, with added richness from the runny egg yolk and texture from the crispy bits of egg white. The chicken wasn't overcooked and the rice was just right. My only criticism was that it needed a bit more chilli and a bit more basil. In summary, nothing mind blowing just good well cooked food, just what the doctor ordered on a damp, miserable day.

The staff are also worth a mention, as they were lovely. The waitress looked worried on delivery of my food, and explained that the fried egg was the Thai style of serving it. She seemed to be concerned I wouldn't like the look of it. I proved my satisfaction by eating the plateful in about five minutes. The older guy doing the cooking also left the stove when I was leaving to ask if I'd enjoyed the food and if it was too hot. I told him a bit hotter would be great and he was almost apologetic. I reassured him that I'd enjoyed it anyway and he seemed genuinely pleased.

I hope this place is a resounding success. The food is good, it's reasonably priced (stir-fry was £6.90 plus tip), and the people running the place are genuinely keen to impress.


7.5/10 (bonus 0.5 for being so nice!)

Kaosarn
Brixton Village Market
Brixton
London
SW9 8PR

Kaosarn, Brixton Village Market, London

First stop on my London day of eating, Brixton. Brixton Village Market, formerly known as Granville Arcade, was mostly vacant until a couple of years ago. A regeneration project is seeing it gradually fill up with a variety of interesting eateries, which are generally getting very positive feedback - see here for more information.

One of the latest openings is Kaosarn, a small Thai cafe located at the Coldharbour Lane end of the arcade. I was lured in by the thought of some decent Thai food after the abomination I had the other week. I ordered chicken stir fried with rice, chilli, holy basil and a fried egg (Kao pad kra pao or somethingorother in Thai), and water. Iced tap water was supplied without question or suggestion of the bottled stuff.

I enjoyed eating this. Sweet, salty and hot, with added richness from the runny egg yolk and texture from the crispy bits of egg white. The chicken wasn't overcooked and the rice was just right. My only criticism was that it needed a bit more chilli and a bit more basil. In summary, nothing mind blowing just good well cooked food, just what the doctor ordered on a damp, miserable day.

The staff are also worth a mention, as they were lovely. The waitress looked worried on delivery of my food, and explained that the fried egg was the Thai style of serving it. She seemed to be concerned I wouldn't like the look of it. I proved my satisfaction by eating the plateful in about five minutes. The older guy doing the cooking also left the stove when I was leaving to ask if I'd enjoyed the food and if it was too hot. I told him a bit hotter would be great and he was almost apologetic. I reassured him that I'd enjoyed it anyway and he seemed genuinely pleased.

I hope this place is a resounding success. The food is good, it's reasonably priced (stir-fry was £6.90 plus tip), and the people running the place are genuinely keen to impress.


7.5/10 (bonus 0.5 for being so nice!)

Kaosarn
Brixton Village Market
Brixton
London
SW9 8PR

Lotus of Siam (Las Vegas, NV)

Lotus of Siam has been touted as the best Thai restaurant in America, thanks to Jonathan Gold's review in Gourmet Magazine, although some blog reviews say that it does not live up to the hype. By chance, Gastronomy Blog reviewed the restaurant right before my trip to Vegas with friends, and it sounded so good that we decided to go there for dinner and see for myself.

The restaurant looked small and sketchy from the outside but was actually big. We did have to wait half an hour for a table even though there were about half a dozen empty tables. Well, once we got seated things moved along smoothly.

Lotus of Siam has an extensive menu with some pretty unusual specialties and hard-to-find Northern Thai dishes, so we had a hard time choosing even with the six of us. With popular vote, we first settled with the Nam Kao Tod ($7.95)
Crispy rice mixed with minced sour sausage, green onion, fresh chili, ginger, peanuts, and lime juice

A nice mix of flavors and textures makes it a great light appetizer. Crispy and crunchy, tangy and spicy.

Tom Kah Kai ($13.95)
chicken, coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass, lime juice

I like tom kah kai better than tom yum because of the richness that coconut milk adds.

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Night+Market: Thai Street Food on Sunset

The palace and the streets are separated by a mere gate. In Los Angeles, Talesai which serves royal palace-style (or close to it) Thai cuisine, is conjoined by Night+Market, serving street food from North to Southern Thailand.

Kua Gling (border beef)
beef tendertail, wok-fried with mortar pounded southern chile paste

To say that they're neighbors is an understatement. Talesai and Night+Market actually shares a kitchen and 28 year old Chef Kris Yenbamroong, the son of the Talesai proprietors.

Fooddigger recently organized a tasting dinner for bloggers (as a disclosure, while the dinner was not free, the price was heavily subsidized) and we got to try a selection of dishes - some we've seen before, and others completely new, like the Isaan sour pork sausage, made in-house.

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Rice, Manchester

Rice is a Manchester based mini-chain serving a wide variety of rice and rice noodle based dishes. I thought it might be worth a try for an early dinner as I fancied something vaguely oriental.

The Piccadilly Gardens branch is canteen style; you order at one end of the counter and collect your food dished up in takeaway containers at the other. The menu is a bit of a mish-mash covering pretty much every corner of the globe (Argentina, Russia, Spain amongst others), the only apparent connection being the presence of rice (or at least rice noodles).

On ordering a pad thai I was informed that there was a special offer on today, a free starter with every main meal ordered. A bit of a marketing ploy this, as what they actually meant was that filling in a scratchcard with your e-mail address and phone number would get you a free starter. I duly obliged anyway (real e-mail address, fake telno, I can't be doing with spam texts) as I'm not one to turn down free food without good reason. I chose prawn katsu from a choice of that or spring rolls.

The prawn katsu was more akin to a couple of frozen scampi fried some hours earlier, and was served up alongside some manky looking iceberg. Yum. Oh well it was free, what did I expect.

Unfortunately the pad thai wasn't a whole lot better. First the plus points; - a good generous portion and a nice smoky flavour (wok-hei I think this is called) to the noodles suggesting it had been stir-fried properly over a high heat. That's about it unfortunately so let's move onto the minus points; - the noodles were overcooked and had gone gluey, there was a solid mass of them about the size of my fist right in the middle of the pot. The chicken was dry and tasteless. The prawns didn't taste very fresh and were chewy. There were no beansprouts in it. No garnishes were available other than soy sauce, salt and pepper meaning the whole thing was pretty bland. I ate less than half of it before giving up out of boredom.

In summary it was poor, and not cheap either (£7 for the pad thai), but perhaps I chose unwisely and some of the other dishes are better. I'll maybe give them another try in future as they certainly seem popular (not that that's always a good sign, every branch of Wagamama is always rammed full and I think it's overpriced and boring). In the same area any one of the curry cafes up the road will feed you better for less money (£4-5), as will Baekdu for about the same amount of money. If chain places are your thing I reckon Tampopo is probably a better bet, and at least they stick to Asian food and don't try and shoehorn every cuisine of the world onto the menu.


4/10

Rice Piccadilly
Piccadilly Gardens
Manchester
M1 1RG
http://www.ricebars.com/

Rice, Manchester

Rice is a Manchester based mini-chain serving a wide variety of rice and rice noodle based dishes. I thought it might be worth a try for an early dinner as I fancied something vaguely oriental.

The Piccadilly Gardens branch is canteen style; you order at one end of the counter and collect your food dished up in takeaway containers at the other. The menu is a bit of a mish-mash covering pretty much every corner of the globe (Argentina, Russia, Spain amongst others), the only apparent connection being the presence of rice (or at least rice noodles).

On ordering a pad thai I was informed that there was a special offer on today, a free starter with every main meal ordered. A bit of a marketing ploy this, as what they actually meant was that filling in a scratchcard with your e-mail address and phone number would get you a free starter. I duly obliged anyway (real e-mail address, fake telno, I can't be doing with spam texts) as I'm not one to turn down free food without good reason. I chose prawn katsu from a choice of that or spring rolls.

The prawn katsu was more akin to a couple of frozen scampi fried some hours earlier, and was served up alongside some manky looking iceberg. Yum. Oh well it was free, what did I expect.

Unfortunately the pad thai wasn't a whole lot better. First the plus points; - a good generous portion and a nice smoky flavour (wok-hei I think this is called) to the noodles suggesting it had been stir-fried properly over a high heat. That's about it unfortunately so let's move onto the minus points; - the noodles were overcooked and had gone gluey, there was a solid mass of them about the size of my fist right in the middle of the pot. The chicken was dry and tasteless. The prawns didn't taste very fresh and were chewy. There were no beansprouts in it. No garnishes were available other than soy sauce, salt and pepper meaning the whole thing was pretty bland. I ate less than half of it before giving up out of boredom.

In summary it was poor, and not cheap either (£7 for the pad thai), but perhaps I chose unwisely and some of the other dishes are better. I'll maybe give them another try in future as they certainly seem popular (not that that's always a good sign, every branch of Wagamama is always rammed full and I think it's overpriced and boring). In the same area any one of the curry cafes up the road will feed you better for less money (£4-5), as will Baekdu for about the same amount of money. If chain places are your thing I reckon Tampopo is probably a better bet, and at least they stick to Asian food and don't try and shoehorn every cuisine of the world onto the menu.


4/10

Rice Piccadilly
Piccadilly Gardens
Manchester
M1 1RG
http://www.ricebars.com/

Catfish Flakes and the Giant Mussels

I've been hearing so much about Jitlada, a Thai restaurant on Sunset. It's a bit far (waa~y past the Sunset Strip), so I haven't been. But we've recently made the drive to try it out.
Jitlada sits in a small strip mall (like many, many other good restaurants in LA ... what is it with strip malls in LA ..) that, most definitely, lacks parking spaces. We drove around but couldn't find parking or street parking, so we ended up parking across the street at the 99c Store (I think that's what it was). Psst ... don't tell please ...

We ordered a pad thai - standard and safe.The pad thai is pretty good and I thought it was definitely one of the better ones in LA. Not much for me to say here though, it's really pretty standard? And I've been getting bored of this sweet dish. Moving on to the more interesting items! :)

I've been hearing a lot about the catfish and green mango salad, so I got that also.
I've read the reviews so I've been expecting this. The fried catfish is, well, really looks nothing like a catfish! It looks like fried flakes ... only when you eat it does it taste fishy, although the texture is again not really what you would expect out of a 'catfish'.

The crispy-but-slightly-soggy flakes, the sourness of the green mango, and the flavorful crunchiness of the peanuts make this dish great. The first bites were a bit of a surprise regardless and seems weird, but it really grew on me. By lunchtime the next day (leftovers) I was chowing this down and craving more ...

Lastly, we ordered what Jonathan Gold proclaimed as one of the "Best Dishes of 2007", the New Zealand Green Mussels! (How can you not try it??)
What came were possibly the biggest mussels I've ever seen:
I mean, usually, the meat of the mussels occupy only 1/3 of the space the shells provide, but these mussels .... these fat, juicy mussels, fill up the shells like they're pregnant!
The slightly spicy broth were excellent but not overpowering. Just right.

Jitlada is definitely a great Thai restaurant. I do wish it was a bit closer to me so I can go more often! I'd definitely be back whenever I can find someone to drag all the way over here for Thai food ... (not like it's close to anything else either :/ )
Those mussels are definitely, definitely, worth the trip over and over again ...

Jitlada Thai Restaurant
5233 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 663-3104

Makeover for East Colorado?

The part of Colorado Blvd east of Lake is considerably boring compared to the Old Town area west of it, but relatively recently a new neighborhood favorite has popped up.

Daisy Mint is a small, cute Thai restaurant that may seem out of place among the neighboring mattress stores, etc. The inside of the restaurant is decorated somewhat eclectically. A dark (but gorgeous) painting of sumo wrestlers, mirrors, and empty picture frames and bird cages - which some thought to be rather creepy, but cute and quaint nonetheless.Compared to its typical Thai restaurant counterparts, Daisy Mint's menu is relatively limited. It only fills up one sheet of paper, front and back, but includes salads, soups, noodles, curries, and a small variety of other dishes. However, they also lean on the healthier side and use better quality ingredients.

Daisy Mint also offers selection of teas - some more uncommon than others. On my first visit I ordered the roasted nuts tea.

I'm not really sure what it is exactly, but it looks and tastes like almond+sesame milk to me ... plus perhaps other types of nuts. It tastes pretty bland, actually.

I've been there twice and on both visits forgot my regular camera :( since I usually just run off there from school while starving. So you'll have to bear with my phone camera instead.

I got the green curry the first time. The taste was not as 'bold' than your typical curry dish, but very comforting. I love the eggplants.

The next time around I ordered the 'Daisy Noodles'. The only thing missing from this dish (for me) is some meat ...
It is glass noddles in red curry sauce served with lettuce (salad lettuce), bean sprouts, and peanuts. It is an interesting combination and I like the slightly spicy curry sauce.

Thought I have yet to find a dish that blows my mind here, I like the quaintness of the place and thought that the food was good and rather creative. I'm sure I will be back many many times (walking tiredly from school)!

Daisy Mint
1218 E Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA
(626) 792-2999‎

Thai Red Curry Chicken

When Steven said he didn't like curries, I suggested that he try a Thai curry. Unlike Indian curries that are spice based, Thai curries are made with a paste of aromatics and fresh ingredients and cooked in coconut milk. I made a chicken red curry and at first he was skeptical but after tasting it, he loved it! Hooray! He even told me he liked it more than his mom's curry. Score! +1 point for me. I'm usually not a competitive person, except with cooking, and it made me feel so special when he said that. :D

Thai curry paste contains a bunch of ingredients including: chilies, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, ginger, galangal, coriander root, etc. Red curries are made with red chilies, green curries are made with green chilies, and yellow curry are includes spices like turmeric and cumin. Although it seems counterintuitive, green curries are actually hotter than red curries. For convenience sake, I use a store-bought curry paste (Mae Ploy brand) because it's a lot of trouble making your own curry paste since some of the ingredients are difficult to find. Using a premade paste cuts down the ingredient list by half and makes things a whole lot easier. I like using dark meat so I can slowly simmer the curry without overcooking the chicken. The end result is delicious, flavorful, and reheats beautifully, in fact, it tastes even better the next day.

Thai Red Curry (Chicken)
3 pounds of chicken drumsticks
1 onion, chopped
1 14oz. can of coconut milk (my fav is Chaokoh)
1/4 C Thai red curry paste
Fish sauce (I like Three Crabs)
1 Tbsp palm sugar or brown sugar
Lime/Rice vinegar
Handful of Thai basil leaves

Optional step: Use a large cleaver and cut the chicken drumsticks in half, first cut through the flesh to the bone, then try your best to hit that spot with a strong whack. Sometimes you won't hit the first cut you made spot on, but it will be enough to break the bone. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, skip this step. Please don't hurt yourself doing this. After cutting the drumsticks in half, rinse the exposed bone area under some running water to loosen any bone shards. Do this over a sieve to catch the bone shards so they don't mess up your disposal. This step is completely optional, I just think it makes the curry more presentable and easier to eat.

Do not shake the can of coconut milk. Open the can and skim off the "cream" on top (roughly the top 1/3 of the can) and add it to a Dutch oven or large pan.

The first step is to "fry" the curry paste in the coconut cream. Add the paste to the coconut cream in the pan, stir and cook this over medium heat until the oils separate from the paste. First, the mixture will look soupy and very messy. Slowly, it will begin to cook down into a thick paste, then finally the aromatic oils will begin to separate from the paste. After you see the oil, add the chopped onion and cook the onion for about 1 minute.

Add the chicken and the remainder of the can of coconut milk. Bring this to a boil then lower to a bare simmer. Season with fish sauce to taste, a tablespoon at a time. Add a tablespoon of brown sugar. Cover the pot and simmer gently for about 40 min to an hour, or until the chicken is tender (the meat will start to retract from the bone). When the chicken has finished cooking, stir in the juice of half a lime to start with, taste, and if it needs more tang, add more lime juice. If you don't have a lime you can use rice vinegar. Add more brown sugar if it needs more sweetness (the sweetness should be subtle and not overwhelming). Stir in a big handful of Thai basil leaves that are torn in half. It's important to balance the salty, sour, sweet, and spicy with Thai food. Don't tear the leaves in advance or they will turn black.

Serve with rice.

Pim's Pad Thai

Pad thai is my favorite food ever and I almost always order it at Thai restaurants. I can never get enough the fresh-from-the-wok noodles coated in lightly caramelized sauce perfectly balanced with the classic Thai flavor combination of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy. I've tried various disappointing recipes at home resulting in one miserable attempt after another. One reason is because I used ketchup and that is my dirty shameful pad thai past. (I hope you don't read this Pim because I am so embarrassed.) Now that I've tried tamarind in my sauce, I know there is absolutely NO substitute for it because the flavor is irreplaceable and ketchup will never touch my rice noodles ever again.

Finding tamarind was a bit tricky. On my first try, I asked several employees of my local Asiam market where I could find this magical ingredient. Each led me to the different aisle (6, no 9, try 11?, maybe 4!) until finally one employee said the store didn't carry it. Though skeptical, I went home defeated. I bet it would have helped if I had known what it was called in Chinese. The next time, I returned absolutely determined on finding the ever elusive tamarind. I checked every aisle looking up and down the shelves until finally I saw a plastic container that had a picture of the brown knobbly fruit on it. Ah Hah! I found you! I scan the container for English and it says "Sour Fruit Soup Mix." "Hmm... maybe this is the wrong thing," I wondered. I checked the ingredients, which said "Sour Fruit" and water. I took a chance and crossed my fingers that it would be tamarind and not hot and sour soup mix when I opened it. Though I really wanted to find a brick of tamarind paste, this was the best I could do. Thankfully it was the right thing.

As for the recipe? Look no further than Pim's blog because this is the absolute best pad thai recipe ever!

Notes:
- You need the tamarind, no ketchup! Don't make the same mistake I did.
- For the sauce, like Pim says, the sourness of your tamarind, the saltiness of your fish sauce, and sweetness of your palm sugar will vary. Start with this base amount and adjust as you go. It should be salty, then sour, sweet, and spicy at the end. I find that Filipino and Thai fish sauces are saltier than Vietnamese fish sauce.
- If you have tamarind paste and need to reconstitute it, look at Pim's notes at the bottom of the recipe here
- You can replace the garlic chives with the green part of scallions/green onions if you can't find the chives.
- Use as much chives/green onions and bean sprouts as you like. I like a lot of both when I use chives and sprouts, I would use less green onions if I had to make the substitute. (pst veggies are good for you)
- If you can't find the preserved turnip and dried shrimp, it's okay since they're optional.
- It's best to make this portion by portion like Pim says. But I don't have a wok so I made the whole thing in a skillet and it turned out great but I bet it'll be even better in a wok made in a smaller portion.

Chez Pim's Pad Thai aka Best Pad Thai Ever (take that Cook's Illustrated)
Serves 2 - 3

Master Sauce
1/2 C tamarind concentrate
1/2 C fish sauce
1/3 C brown sugar (or 1/2 C palm sugar)
Thai chili powder/cayenne to taste

8 oz. rice noodles/sticks
Shrimp (peeled and deveined), chopped extra-firm or pressed tofu, or sliced chicken breast (I used about 8 oz. of shrimp and 4 oz. of tofu)
1 - 2 eggs depending on how much egg you like
2 C of chopped Chinese garlic chives (or green part of green onions but use less)
2 C bean sprouts (mung bean sprouts not soy bean sprouts)
4 Tbsp ground peanuts (minced or grind in a food processor)
Vegetable oil

Optional:
2 Tbsp minced pickled/preserved/salted turnip
2 Tbsp minced dried shrimp or pounded until fluffly with a mortar and pestle
A few cloves of minced or pressed garlic



Start by soaking your rice noodles in warm water if they're the dried kind. You'll only want to soak your noodles until they're pliable not completely soft. If you're using fresh noodles, give them a quick rinse and let them drain.

I also like to soak my dried shrimp in hot water for a few minutes then rinse them off.

Combine all the ingredients for the sauce and simmer until everything is dissolved. The fish sauce will smell sooooo bad (oh-my-goodness-feet-sauce-did-you-turn-on-the-vent bad) when it simmers but it tastes oh so good. Taste and adjust the seasoning of the sauce till you like it. I still haven't gotten it down quite right but the pad thai is still excellent. This will likely make enough sauce for plenty more portions of pad thai. You can keep it in your fridge or freezer (it doesn't freeze in the freezer).

Begin by heating 2 tablespoons of oil in your skillet or wok. Add your tofu and pan fry until golden brown. Then add your shrimp or chicken and cook and stir fry for a bit. Then add a few spoonfuls of your sauce and take out of the wok just before it is cooked through and set aside.

Drain your noodles before cooking. Add some more oil to your wok/skillet (2 tbsp to 1/4C) be generous since you don't want the noodles to stick. Add your noodles, turnip, shrimp, and garlic if using. Then add about 1/4 C (or 1/2 C of sauce if you're making the whole thing at once) and stir fry until the noodles are the edible. If the pan is getting too dry, add some water. Cook until the noodles are edible.

Add your eggs in the middle of the wok or skillet and let it set a bit before tossing it with the noodles.

Add your bean sprouts, garlic chives or green onions, and your protein. Keep on stir frying until the protein is fully cooked and warmed through.

Sprinkle with ground peanuts before serving. Serve with slices of lime and more chili powder.


(Yup I can pretty much eat this whole thing myself)

Thai-Style Chile Beef

I love stir fries with basil so when I saw this recipe on America's Test Kitchen I was almost sold. Almost because rather than using traditional Thai basil in Thai cooking (shocker isn't it?), Cook's Illustrated substituted mint and cilantro because the two were much easier to find in the supermarket. Steven hates cilantro with a passion (he picks out every tiny piece from his pho) and I wasn't terribly keen about the mint-cilantro combo myself but luckily I have some Thai basil conveniently growing on the back porch so I was able to substitute that in a jiffy. Traditional Asian ingredients may be hard to come by so with that in mind, CI used brown sugar instead of palm sugar and jalapenos or serranos instead of Thai bird eye chilies (now these I don't have growing on the porch so I'm okay with this substitution). Even with the many departures from traditional Thai cooking, I was nevertheless happy with the recipe because it was very tasty and could be made in under 30 minutes, which is definitely a plus for a weeknight dinner.

Thai-Style Chile Beef
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

Marinade
3/4 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp white pepper
2 tsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp fish sauce
2 lbs blade steak, trimmed and cut into 1/4 in strips (or substitute with 1 3/4 lb flank steak)

Sauce
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar (I used a combination of vinegar and lime juice)
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp Asian chili paste (or sub red pepper flakes)
3 - 4 cloves of garlic minced or pressed

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 - 4 jalapenos/serranos, ribs and seeds removed, cut crosswise into 1/8 in pieces
3 medium shallots, roughly quartered
1 C Thai basil leaves
1/3 C roughly chopped peanuts
Lime wedges for serving

Here's a good picture of what blade steak looks like: Click for Wikipedia entry

First trim the blade steak. There is a bit of silverskin along the outside of the blade steak that will need to be trimmed away. You'll also see in the picture that there is also a line of gristle that runs down the center of the steak. Cut the steak in half lengthwise to cut out the gristle. Then cut the meat against the grain into 1/4 in strips.

Sprinkle the coriander, white pepper, brown sugar, and fish sauce over the beef and toss to combine, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the ribs and seeds from the jalapenos and cut crosswise into 1/4 in pieces and roughly quarter the shallots.

Mix fish sauce, rice vinegar, water, brown sugar, and chili paste in a small bowl.

Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet or wok over high heat. Add a third of the beef and quickly distribute the strips in an even layer in the skillet. Cook until the beef is browned on the first side, about 2 minutes, without stirring then flip the pieces to the second side and cook until browned, about 30 seconds to a minute. Transfer the beef to a bowl. Add 2 more teaspoons of oil to the skillet and repeat the browning process twice more to cook the rest of the beef.

After the beef is cooked, reduce the heat to medium, and add 2 more teaspoons of oil to the skillet. Add the jalapenos and shallots and cook, stirring frequently until they begin to soften, about 3 - 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 10 - 15 seconds. Add the sauce to the skillet and increase the heat to medium high until the sauce is thickened. Add the beef and any juices back to the skillet and toss in the sauce. Take off the heat and stir in the Thai basil leaves.

Serve over rice with chopped peanuts on top and lime wedges on the side.