Nam Prik Ong--Thai pork and tomato dip

Inspired by the terrific version at Rosded at themeal that BR recently organized, I decided to make nam prik ong for dinner the other night. I'm a sucker for the Thai dips/condiments/nam priks/lons. I used the recipe from McDang's cookbook (though I doubled the amount of pork--which made it more substantial but less saucy/dip-like).

Paste in process:
Galanga, cherry tomatoes, the last of Jefe's excellent balachaung from the condiment exchange, chiles, shallots and garlic, fermented soybean sauce (dao jiao). The recipe calls for a type of fermented bean cake called tua nao, that is apparently hard to find here (I honestly didn't look--I had all the other ingredients in the pantry); I subbed the dao jiao and balachaung for this).



I mixed the pork and paste in a bowl (McDang recommends pounding the pork with the paste in a mortar but I was loathe to send uncooked pork flying around the kitchen), then stir fried with with some garlic, simmered it with a little veal stock (recipe called for "stock or water" and added some fish sauce and scallions, then sprinkled with chopped cilantro.

Finished dip/veggies






Pretty easy/tasty dinner...