RECIPE: Pad Kra Pao

Pork and holy basil stir-fry

Two weeks away (I’m still here) and my ADHD brain feels newly on display. Travel, I’ve realised, strips away the systems that keep things together at home. And being away with a very neuro-typical friend (whom I’ve just had to text for the hotel Wi-Fi because I’ve already lost the little slip of paper from reception) does make me feel slightly exposed.

At home, my keys live on a little shelf on the landing beside a plastic wind-up dancing man I bought from a street seller in Mexico City. When I see him he seems to say, “Leave your keys with me, Mills,” and I don’t want to disappoint him, so I do. In hotels, however, the wheels come off. My Key card disappeared into the pages of the book in my bag this morning, my phone battery hovers permanently in the red because the charger isn’t anchored to a wall, and the sheer abundance of a new city, too many restaurants, streets, possibilities, feels overwhelming.

I travel very differently when I’m alone, which, as it happens, is how I travel most of the time. There’s a freedom in knowing that any chaos I generate will only affect me and not who I’m with.

The first time I came to Thailand was nine years ago. I didn’t know I had ADHD then, but in retrospect it explains quite a lot. I remember travelling with a friend and finding it unexpectedly difficult. We’d found what should have been the perfect place. A beach on an island with a yoga school, excellent food, and sunsets so ridiculously beautiful.

Objectively, it was paradise.

And yet I was bored.

My feet were in the sand but my brain was elsewhere, hunting for its next hit of stimulation. During one particular sunset of feeling consumed by this urge, I did what, at the time, felt perfectly logical: I left my content friend on the island and flew to Malaysia the next day. I could probably write an entire Substack about that decision alone. But the clearest memory I have of that beach in Thailand isn’t the leaving.

It’s the breakfast.

A plate of Pad Kra Pao.

Yesterday’s breakfast in Koh Kood (but with chicken)

I returned home to cook it obsessively. The ADHD girlies on Instagram have a term for this now: the hyper-fixation meal. A dish you eat on repeat until the spell breaks.

Ask me my favourite carb and the Japanese in me answers before the British instincts can intervene: rice. Rice with buttery soy sauce vegetables/pickles is my eternal go-to. Rice topped with a big, puffed, blistered fried egg, lacy edges, yolk runny enough to bind everything together? Textural heaven. My love for this dish felt inevitable.

I’ve written this recipe the way I remember eating it all those years ago: deep and rich, sweet and savoury, fresh but funky, spicy and a little bit addictive.

On this trip we’ve eaten three or four versions that are much lighter, where I haven’t detected any dark soy at all. They feel closer, perhaps, to the way the dish first appeared in cookbooks in the 1970s, minced meat marinated in liquor, then seasoned simply with fish sauce and palm sugar. I like both versions. But nostalgia, and that big hit of flavour, means this one wins. It’s thought to be adapted from the Chinese classic xiangcai chao niurou (stir-fried beef with coriander) and of course you can make this dish with whichever meat you like.

I hope you make it. It takes all of 15 minutes and delivers enormously on flavour, and fun.

I bought this holy basil in the supermarket, and you’ll find it in bigger bunches in Asian shops, but in all honesty, I used to cook it with just regular basil and it still delivers!

Restock! The brands I use and love.

Recipe

Serves 2

• 4 garlic cloves

• 2-3 Thai red / birds eye chillies

• 45mls of vegetable oil

• 2 eggs

• 400g Minced pork (or beef, chicken, veggie mince)

• 1tbsp oyster sauce

• 1tbsp dark soy sauce

• 2tsp fish sauce

• 1 tsp white sugar

• White pepper

• 20-30g Thai holy basil (or normal basil)

• Jasmine rice to serve

Method

You can, of course, fry your egg in a small frying pan, but I prefer using a small wok so there’s enough depth of oil for it to puff and blister properly.

This particular wok is one I bought in India and used constantly for years. Since moving house and losing the luxury of a gas hob, I now cook on a portable gas stove when I want that proper heat, hence the slightly rogue setup here.

Like any stir fry, it is SO important to have all your ingredients ready, prepped and to hand so you’re not faffing and burning anything.

1. Cook your rice in a saucepan or rice cooker and keep warm until the pork is ready.

2. In a pestle and mortar, bash up the garlic cloves and chillies until you have a rough paste, set aside.

3. In a small frying pan or wok, heat the oil until properly hot. Crack in the eggs and let them bubble and puff up. Once the edges are crisp and lacy, remove the eggs and set them aside on a plate, leaving the oil in the pan to cook the mince.

   

4. Add the chilli and garlic paste to the oil and give it a quick stir for 10 seconds before adding the mince. Break up the mince and keep turning it in the oil for a few minutes.

5. Add the oyster sauce and stir through, follow with the fish sauce and sugar.

   

6. Add a sprinkle of white pepper (or black pepper if you’re using beef), turn off the heat and throw in the basil leaves and give everything a good toss. Check for seasoning and you’re ready to serve alongside some rice and the fried eggs.

I filmed this recipe so I’ll edit a video and pop it up on instagram shortly @millitaylor