Cooking at home with Sara Tong-Ngork

Sarinthra (Sara) Tong-Ngork has logged more than 20 years in local restaurants. Her resume includes stints at Lemon Grass, Bangkok Thai, Alfa Bar and Dining Room, the Century Club and Bellevue Country Club, among others.  Come fall, she will venture out on her own as one of eight merchants at Salt City Market, the food hall scheduled to open at 484 Salina St., across from the Marriott Syracuse Downtown. 

 

Sara's stand, Firecracker Thai Kitchen, will feature Bangkok-style "street food:" soups, curries, noodle dishes, salads and more. Her menu is in development and she has been going through the steps of writing a business plan.

 

Sara, 45, grew up in Syracuse and attended local schools, including SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. After college, she decided to pursue cooking as a profession. "I started in 1997 at Lemon Grass as a prep cook and never looked back,'' she says.  She has worked with and learned from some of the best chefs and cooks in Central New York, including chef Eamon Lee, her boss and mentor at The Century Club. "I leaned from him for over a decade. ... Better than any culinary school education I could have gotten.''

 

Sara's parents are from Thailand and she has spent much of her coronavirus-mandated stay home time cooking with them and for them.  She's looking forward to life resuming a sense of normalcy and to feeding CNY's "Thai tribe'' at Salt City Market.

 

How did you learn how to cook? I’ve been cooking since I was a little kid, maybe 7. My sisters and I would come home from school and I’d make us a snack while we waited for our parents to come home. Eventually I’d help my parents with dinner. They were both excellent cooks and I think that’s why I love food so much. 

 

How would you describe your style of cooking: I gravitate towards simplicity and letting the natural flavors shine. I like to highlight freshness and balance sweet, salty, sour and spicy, which is the key to Thai cooking. I don’t like to measure and I don’t like a dish with a million ingredients. It's pretty rare for me to spend more than an hour making something, unless it’s simmering or braising away.

Do you have a signature dish? My signature dish is Spicy Chicken and Thai Basil. It was a dish the cooks would make for family meal (the staff meal before service) at Lemon Grass. After almost four years of working there, it was the only dish I could still eat every day.  My version is different, not quite as bright, but equally crave worthy. I’ve run some version of it everywhere I’ve cooked.

Favorite cookbook or cooking show? My favorite cookbook is one that Eamon (Lee) introduced me to, "The Best Recipe" (America's Test Kitchen). I love how it incorporates food science and tells you the "why" of a recipe. TV show -- I was a huge fan of "Ready...Set...Cook!" back in the infant years of the Food Network. After school, other kids would be playing outside and I’d run downstairs to catch that and "Great Chefs." 

What have you been cooking during "stay at home life”? I’m quarantined with my parents. We’ve been cooking a lot of Thai comfort food --  noodles, soups and Thai-style congee are family favorites. We had to keep it pretty simple for a while because we couldn’t get Asian ingredients as most of the Asian grocers buy stock from New York City.
 
Favorite place to shop: My favorite place to shop is the Central New York Regional Market and I wish I could get there more often than I do.  That food has been taken care of. Someone took the time and energy to nurture those ingredients. You can taste that in the product. A misshapen, locally grown donut peach with a blemish, enjoyed mid-summer at peak ripeness, will always taste better than the biggest, most perfect looking one from the grocery store. With a lot of produce,  just because something is available year-round, doesn’t mean it’s good year-round.

 

Any advice for people who are new to cooking? Invest in proper tools - you don’t need to spend a lot. I use a sharp knife I got from Amazon for $20.

• Start simple: Make scrambled eggs and figure out how much salt and pepper to add to them to make them taste good. This will help you learn how to season food.

• Don’t give up. Even the most talented chefs have cooked something only to throw it right in the trash.

 

 

Thai Omelet

From Sara Tong-Ngork

 

Sara says: The omelet is often served alongside other Thai dishes, as Thai food is almost always family style. It’s also found at many food stalls and almost every restaurant. For me, it’s comfort food. This recipe serves two as an entrée and four as a side dish to quell any spicy dishes. The optional condiment adds a little extra salt, spice and brightness to the dish.

 

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1/4 cup onion, 1⁄4-inch slices or diced

2 tablespoons scallion, rough chop

1 tablespoon cilantro, rough chop (optional)

1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic (garlic powder)

1 1/4 teaspoon fish sauce or 1 teaspoon soy sauce (to keep it vegetarian)

Freshly cracked white or black pepper (3 to 4 twists of the pepper mill)

2 tablespoons rice bran or grapeseed oil (high smoke point)

Cooked jasmine rice (2 to 4 servings)

For the optional condiment:

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

1 garlic clove, minced

1 Thai chili pepper, minced

 

In a bowl, beat eggs, onion, scallions, cilantro, garlic powder, fish sauce/soy sauce and pepper  together until mixed. Heat up a non-stick skillet on medium- high heat. Wait until the pan is hot, then add the oil. Gently pour egg mixture into pan and

reduce heat to medium. As the egg cooks, pull the sides of the omelet towards the center and allow the uncooked egg to run underneath it. Do this all around the omelet until there’s no more runny liquid (the top will still be uncooked). Check underneath the omelet for a golden brown color, then carefully flip it, using plates if necessary. Continue cooking until the bottom is golden brown as well. You may need to add a few more drops of oil if it becomes too dry or it will burn.

 

Serve the omelet immediately with hot jasmine rice and optional condiment. Makes 2 to 4 servings.

 

Optional condiment: Combine all ingredients and serve with omelet.