Last week I made the Thai-Style Beef with Basil and Fish Sauce recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

No new-to-me ingredients for this recipe, but Lopez-Alt did continue with his standard meat prep (wash, drain and strain, massage, and marinate), which I haven’t seen before with Thai cooking. The recipe called for “soy sauce” in the marinade and “light soy sauce or shoyu” for the sauce. For the Chinese recipes I’ve been using a Chinese light soy sauce, but for this recipe I used a Thai thin soy sauce since I have that on hand anyways.

The dish also called for “store-bought or homemade fried shallots.” I made the cookbook’s Fried Shallots recipe for this.

The dish came out delicious and distinctively Thai. I wonder how much of that is the use of basil which I don’t think I‘ve come across in Chinese dishes. Of course the fish sauce is very Thai. My wife enjoyed it and claimed a portion of the leftovers for herself, too. I fried a couple of eggs for the kids since the beef would have some heat from the Thai chilies, but I also had a bit of beef leftover that I cooked up without seasoning. My son ate some of the plain beef and tried a bite of the seasoned beef; he went back for seconds of the seasoned beef so that’s the stamp of approval from him. My daughter did not try the dish, sticking to the rice and fried egg.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.