Monday Free Lunch II

The second free lunch in my office arrived. We really love this idea and we are always wondering what will be on the menu when Monday arrives. The special on this Monday was khanom jeen.


Khanom jeen has its origins from Isaan (northeastern region of Thailand), an area that has some influence from Laos. The base for Khanom jeen is fermented rice noodles (Chinese spaghetti). Then you choose from many curry sauces to cover the noodles (like there are many types of spaghetti sauces). Then you top the dish with fresh vegetables & herbs to add extra flavours, colours and textures.


















The first sauce was tomato, blood, & pork rib curry. Not my favourite because I do not like the blood cubes. But the curry did have a nice taste, the pork ribs were very tender and fell off the bone, and the tomatoes added a nice acidity to the dish.


The second sauce was chicken green curry. You can tell from the chillies that this curry was very spicy. I love green curry so this was one of my favourite sauces. The curry was very thick with coconut cream, the chicken was good & tender. The curry had a nice sweet & spicy combination.





















The third sauce was yellow curry fish ball. Another creamy curry with coconut milk but the yellow curry is not as spicy as the green. The fish balls had nice texture (not too chewy).





















The next sauce was nam prik. It is the sweetest curry sauce from the others. It is made of sweet chili paste, peanuts, shallots, cloves, garlic, shrimp paste, galangal, tamarine juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and coriander. A lot of wonderful ingredients in tasty curry.


The vegetables you top the khanom jeen with were; bean sprouts, green beans, cucumbers, cabbage, banana leaf, Thai herbs and pickled vegetables.















Another dish that was on offer was fried rice with salty fish. I really like fried rice with salty fish. I know it is it not good for my waist line. But I cannot resist. This fried rice was tasty due to the salty fish but a bit too oily.










To accompany the fried rice, was braised pork, tofu and hard boiled egg in 5 spice & soy sauce. I really like this dish. I normally prefer this dish with plain rice because the sauce for the pork, tofu & egg dish is very tasty. The rice soaks the sauce and makes the rice taste good.


Here are the photos of everyone enjoying the Free Monday Lunch.