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>>Do you love Thai food?

I know I do.

Well, today on "Tassie's Table," we'll be making Thai shrimp vermicelli.

It's one of my favorite dishes, mostly because you get to cook a little and you get to create a little in the bowl.

So we're gonna start right now with a little oil in a hot pan, touch of olive oil.

Ah, and it's already starting to sizzle in there.

And how about a little bit of sesame oil?

You can't do Asian food without a little sesame oil.

And then I have a couple of Thai chilies.

Now, these are Thai bird chilies.

They're only about a half an inch long, and they are very, very potent.

So two of those will do this for sure.

All right, and then I'm going to add a half-pound of shrimp.

Now, these are small shrimp, about, oh, 30 to a pound.

And what you wanna make sure you do when you're adding any kind of protein, or actually anything to a hot oil, is to make sure it doesn't have a lot of water on it.

So I have a paper towel under my shrimp to catch all of that excess moisture.

Now, the key to these is to cook them quickly.

And when you're cooking shrimp, you really want them to end up looking more like a U than like an O. Once they get to that O stage, they start to go a little too far cooked.

All right, let's give 'em the stir and add just a touch of salt and pepper.

Now, the goal here is to get all of the shrimp really coated well with that Thai bird chili oil, and to make sure they are not gray anymore.

But again, not so tight that they're a really tight circle O. You're looking more for a little bit of a U-shape.

All right, before these get too overdone, I just want to go ahead and remove them from the heat, but I'm going to leave them in the pan so they have the opportunity to soak in a little more of that Thai seasoning.

And now let's build our bowl.

Like most Thai foods, we're gonna start with a little noodle.

I love rice vermicelli.

These come very, very hard, and you're going to soak them in a little hot water or hot chicken stock.

And I prefer chicken stock just to give a little more flavor.

But you can always use water, you can use vegetable stock, pretty much anything you'd like as long as it's nice, hot, hot, clear liquid.

All right, so we've got a little bit of that rice vermicelli in our bowl.

Now, let's start building a little bit of color.

I've chosen three main colors today: red, orange, and green.

And we're gonna start off with a little bit of green.

Ah, I love cucumbers, and they're just cut on a bias.

Now, let's take some shredded carrot, and I'm gonna just kind of put those on opposite sides of each other so they have the chance to kind of echo that color.

And then one of the ingredients that's optional in this is green onion, but I like to add that for sure.

And then let's come back in with some flavor, some Thai basil.

And I'm just going to sprinkle a little bit and some cilantro.

Now, if you don't like cilantro, and I understand a lot of people don't, but if you don't like cilantro, let's just add a little bit of mint, and that works great with this.

And then how about some red bell pepper?

We'll just put a little dollop right there in the center to give a nice pop of color.

And then I wanna finish up with some delicious peanuts and some sesame seeds.

And now let's get our shrimp.

So we have all these wonderful shrimp, and we're just gonna top kind of around that red pepper.

Just bring it in a nice circle around in our dish.

Now, you can also use things like bok choy in this.

That's really, really good.

You can use red cabbage or green cabbage.

You can use a Napa cabbage, that works really well.

But I just love to do this with the vegetables, whatever I have in my refrigerator.

I always have carrots, cucumbers, and peppers.

And I grow basil, so it's easy to do.

Now, let's give it a little sauce.

This is just a peanut sauce.

The recipe has all the ingredients.

If you want to make your own peanut sauce, you can, or you can just buy a peanut sauce in the grocery store.

So let's just give that a nice drizzle.

(lively music) And then let's finish it up with just a touch more peanut and just a touch more sesame seed.

Yum.

Like with any dish, let's give it a little garnish.

I have a little extra Thai basil just to pop that green right on top.

So I hope you've enjoyed this recipe.

For this one and a lot more, continue to join me right here on "Tassie's Table."

(lively music)