Finding harmony the Thai way: Het Fang Sai Khaai

Okay, so I’m not a big international cook. I love to eat most any dish from around the world (well, no eel, brain or tripe please) but beyond stir fry and occasionally paella and trying to do curry once or twice, tacos and lasagna is about as exotic as my cooking gets on a regular basis.

But I was pleased to help test recipes for a new edition of Extending the Table cookbook for Herald Press/MennoMedia (disclosure, which also puts food on my table in the form of a 90 percent time salary). Extending the Table, originally by Joetta Handrich Schlabach with editor Kristina Mast Burnett, is one of three cookbooks in the classic and bestselling World Community Cookbooks series from Herald Press. (Read more about the project here.)

The new book is scheduled for publication sometime in 2014 and it will have photos and new recipes, although fewer recipes (to make room for the photos and new stuff) and the delightful editorial hand of Valerie Weaver-Zercher who is pulling it together. (I’m also reading her wide-sweeping examination of Amish-themed fiction, Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels, John Hopkins Press, 2013) right now, which I hope to write about here soon.)

Valerie assigned to me a recipe for Het Fang Sai Khaai, a dish I’d never heard of, but it turns out to be simply Mushrooms with Eggs. Not so exotic I thought, that’s one of my favorite omelets. Only this is a LOT of mushrooms with a few eggs in a pungently Asian-flavored sauce.

Turns out that not even Google or Wikipedia could come up with a common recipe for it, but then maybe the particular ordering (or rendering of English spelling) of the words in the recipe name might be to blame for that. Confessing a great deal of ignorance here. Please let me know if you find another form of this recipe online!

The best part is that this was relatively easy to make and my recipe testers gave it two thumbs up.

Be watching for the new edition of Extending the Table—which has already extended MY table. I don’t know yet whether this recipe will make it into the book nor do I know the name of the contributor of this particular dish, but I’m happy to add it to my list of options when wanting a twist on something that turns out not to be so different after all. It’s nice to find common ground half way around the world: a love for eggs and mushrooms.

Het Fang Sai Khaai
Mushrooms with Eggs

Ingredients:
1 lb fresh mushrooms (cut into slices or quarters; white mushrooms are fine)
⅛ cup oil
5 cloves minced garlic
3 eggs
2-3 Tb pork, beef or chicken bouillon (I used beef, low-sodium)
1 ½ Tb sugar
¼ cup oyster sauce (could also use fish sauce or something similar)

Fresh cilantro and green onion, chopped

Directions:

Recipe contributor’s directions: “The Thai way of cooking happens pretty quickly so have all the ingredients ready to go and once your start cooking, add ingredients one right after the other until it’s done.”

Heat oil and sauté garlic for 1 minute. Add 2 eggs and whisk. Add mushrooms and stir. Add bouillon, sugar, oyster sauce, and 3^rd egg and stir continuously until the egg is fully cooked. (Total cooking time, not more than 10 minutes. Have rice ready to serve.)

Top with fresh cilantro and green onion and serve over rice.

***

I told the editor that the cilantro and green onion really “made” this dish in my opinion and luckily I had fresh cuttings of both of these in my garden right now.

Find a recipe for a similar but even easier dish in my cookbook, Whatever Happened to Dinner, called “Dave Schrock’s Tuna/Egg Skillet Dinner” or ask me to email that recipe to you.

Last summer I wrote a series of four Another Way columns focusing on Mennonite cookbooks, the first of which is here.