My favourite lunch time food when I was in Bangkok was “Khaokaeng” or “khao rat kaeng”, meaning “curry-on-rice”. This is a traditional type of ready-made fast food in Thailand. The popularity of the places in Bangkok that sell these foods as a quick lunchtime meal is in decline.

 Khao is rice and kaeng is curry, however the foods that are available at khao kaeng restaurants, as they are called, include so much more than just curries. There are different stir fried dishes, salads, deep fried chicken and pork, boiled eggs, fried eggs, soups and so much more.

Here I am going to show you how to make my first choice dish, if it is available, at a Khao kaeng restaurant, Pad prik khing moo krob (Stir fried curry paste with crispy pork belly and green beans). The dish is now served in many Thai restaurants in Australia, and it is many people’s favourite. Making the dish is not hard at all. Let me show you how!

Ingredients

• ~200 g Pork belly
  
• ~1.5 tbsp. Prik khing curry paste, homemade or store bought
  
• ½ tsp shrimp paste
  
• 2 pieces of kafir lime rind (if available)
  
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
  
• 200 g Long green beans
  
• 1 tbsp. dried Shrimps, pound the shrimp until fluffy.
  
• 1.5 tbsp Palm sugar, to taste
  
• ½ tbsp Fish sauce, to taste (Take care as the pork skin and curry paste already has saltiness on them)
  
• Sliced Red chilli
  
• Sliced Kafir lime leaves

Method
1. Pound the dried shrimp until fluffy and set aside. This will give texture to the dish.
2. Pound the kafir lime rind and add curry paste before mixing well. Add shrimp paste and again mix together.
3. In a fry pan add cooking oil and chilli paste and fry until fragrant.
4. Add the crushed dried shrimp and keep frying.
5. Add pork belly to the pan then add a little bit of water.
6. Add long beans and seasoning with sugar and fish sauce.
7. Add sliced red chilli and kafir lime leaves.

Note:
1. Original crispy pork belly in Thailand entails cooking the pork by deep-frying, but I cooked mine using an Air fryer.
2. Commonly we use Snake beans/long beans for this dish. If these are not available green beans can be substituted or if handy find sugar snaps peas or snow peas, which also work well.