ga prow gai thai basil chicken

In hindsight, one of the benefits of working at the family restaurant when I was younger was the free meals that came with every shift. Request anything on the menu (and sometimes off the menu), and the cook would whip it up on the spot. Of course, being raised on Thai food my whole life meant I never really appreciated it, and just thought of it as 'food'. It was only when the restaurant closed down and my mum returned to Thailand did I then start to miss Thai food, and also realise that some of the other local Thai restaurants didn't really cut it for me.

It's been almost nine years since the restaurant closed, but I still remember the look the cook would give me every time I requested my meal: Khao Ga Prow Gai, hold the basil. With my limited Thai, I didn't realise what I was saying, and only on a recent trip to Thailand and talking to my mum, did it finally click.  I was asking for 'Basil chicken and rice' without the basil.

Those strange, judgemental looks I received finally make sense.


It was the texture of the leaves that made me request it without the basil, and getting what I had requested each time, I always wondered why it never smelled or tasted as good as when my mum made it with the basil. Fortunately, my anti-basil phase has passed, and with it, I finally found a good basil chicken recipe that's almost as good as my mum (and the judging cook) used to make.

It took me dozens of tries to realise that 'dark soy sauce' called for in the recipe wasn't the Japanese kind - it's a thick black sauce that has a sweetness to it, and is not at all salty like the Japanese kind. Apparently though, it can be made with regular soy sauce, but needs some palm sugar/brown sugar to sweeten it up. In Thailand, it doesn't normally call for capsicum and broccoli, but that's the way my mum made it, so for me, eating it without the vegetables doesn't seem right.

Ga Prow Gai - Basil Chicken and Rice
(adapted from SBS food's recipe)

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 5-6 chillis, sliced, a few extra for stir frying (if desired)
• 500 g chicken mince
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• pepper
• 1 onion, peeled and sliced
• 1 bunch of holy basil, leaves only
• 1 small red capsicum, sliced
• 1 small head of broccoli, cut into florets

1. Put the cloves of garlic and chilli in a mortar and pestle, and crush into a rough paste.
2. Heat a wok on high and add oil when wok is heated. Add chilli paste, and cook for 20 seconds until fragrant, and add the chicken mince.
3. Brown the chicken for 1 to 2 minutes, then add the oyster, dark soy, fish sauce, pepper, onion, capsicum and extra chilli (optional). Add broccoli, and continue to cook on high heat until broccoli has become brighter in colour. 
4. Add basil leaves, then turn off the heat, and continue to stir the leaves through. The residual heat will wilt the basil without making the leaves go brown. 
5. Serve with steamed rice, and top with a fried egg.