Ingredients
Pork cut into little strips
2 cloves of garlic
1 chili pepper
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon oyster sause
Green beans (or Chinese long beans if you have them)
Thai basil
Method
In terms of quantities it’s pretty simple: take equal measures of meat and green beans (in terms of volume, not weight) and twice as much thai basil, and then as much chilli and garlic as suits your taste.
This is best served with steamed rice, so if you have a rice cooker put some Jasmine rice in it and kick it off before you start preparing the rest of the meal, that way by the time you’ve chopped your ingredients and thrown them all together in the wok the rice will be done.
Heat the oil in your wok, throw in the chopped garlic and the chillies (chop the chillies into 1 cm pieces – ie not too finely) and heat for 10-20 secs (just to brown the garlic a tad) before adding the meat and about a third of the thai basil. Keep the heat about medium. If it gets too hot you can add a tiny splash of water too cool it down, this also gives some nice sauce. At this point you should also add some fish sauce and some oyster sauce. Go easy on the fish sauce and add about twice as much oyster sauce as fish sauce. Leave it to cook for about one minute, stirring now and then (as you do in a stir fry), then add the green beans and the rest of the thai basil. Cook for another minute or two and it should be done!
You can usually find Thai basil at any Chinese or Thai supermarket, as well as chinese long beans. Do not substitute the Thai basil with European basil as they are completely different in taste!! I tend to use red chillis in this dish just because it gives a nice colour contrast to the green beans.
