BINGO! More Good News From the Farmer's Market

Sam and I have a great passion for Thia food. We loved it before it was trendy. We could tell you where the best place is to eat it in Wurzberg, Germany and many other cities for that matter. We don't eat out much, but the local Thai owner knows us by name. It was the first place we stopped at when we picked Sam up from the airport on his two week visit from Iraqi. Our favorite dishes are Tom Kha Gia, a coconut chicken soup, and coconut curries.

Not only do we love Thai food, we love to cook Thia food. I have been able to locate the ingredients almost everywhere we have lived. I can find kiffir lime leaves, lemon grass, fish sauce, even galagal, but it has been very hard to find cilantro root. Thia curry uses all parts of the cilantro plant; the leaves, the seeds and the roots. I have from time to time grown my own cilantro roots, but have never been able to find any to buy, until now. When I purchased my cilantro at the Bentonville Farmers Market they had left the roots intacted! Several of the venders were of oriental decent, so it must be that they knew the little treasures at the end of the cilantro plants and just cleaned them off instead of chopping them off.

That inspired me to make Thai chicken curry with eggplant. Yummy is a total understatement on this one. We even made the coconut milk from fresh coconut not cans, a big thank you to my hubby for doing the muscle work on that one. You can find almost all the ingredients for Thia curry at the little oriental market right off Hwy 71 business at 702 W Cypress St.

Thai Red Curry
1 tsp coriander seeds

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

12 red chillies, seeded and coursely chopped

4 shallots, coarsly chopped

2 Clove garlic -- minced

1 tbsp fresh galangal

2 lemon grass stalks, chopped

3 kiffer lime leaves chopped

4 fresh coriander roots

10 Black peppercorns

pinch of ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp shimp paste

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp vegetable oil