When I was in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, I followed a private cooking lesson, and tried several local restaurants. A dish that featured on the menu of local restaurants that serve Northern Thai food was “hors d’oeuvres”, an assortment of various raw and steamed vegetables, sausage, hard-boiled egg, and pork crackling with “dips”. The third and final recipe for such a dip that I am sharing with you is Nam Phrik Kapi, also written as Nam Prik Gapi. It was featured in my cooking class, but I did not get this at any of the restaurants where I ordered the hord d’oeuvres. This is probably because this dip has the most ‘challenging’ taste of the three dips. It is not only spicy, but it is also quite salty and has a strong taste of fermented shrimp. We especially enjoyed this with boiled egg or with Thai deep-fried eggplant.

To prepare the deep-fried eggplant, simply dip slices of Thai eggplant in beaten egg and deep fry them in oil at 180C/350F until golden.

When you would like to serve Northern Thai hors d’oeuvres, it is nice to serve at least two or even three different dips. You can find the pork and tomato dip and the green chili dip in my previous posts.

Ingredients

Makes about 125 ml (1/2 cup)

• 15 grams dried shrimp
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 or 2 small red Thai chillies, chopped
• 20 grams minced palm sugar
• 2 Tbsp Thai shrimp paste
• 2-3 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1-2 tsp fish sauce
• 2-3 Tbsp water

Instructions

Place 15 grams of dried shrimp in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to soak and cool off for about 10 minutes.

Drain the shrimp and discard the soaking water (do not use this for the dip, because that would make it too salty).

Place the soaked shrimp in a mortar…

…and pound with a pestle until fluffy.

Add 2 garlic cloves and Thai small red chillies to taste.

Pound until only small pieces of chili are visible, then add 2 tablespoons of shrimp paste.

Pound until incorporated.

Add 20 grams of minced palm sugar, and pound until incorporated.

Add 2 tablespoons of lime juice and 1 teaspoon of fish sauce. Stir with a spoon.

Taste and add more palm sugar, fish sauce, or lime juice as needed to get the balance between flavors that you like. Take into account that the dip by itself is quite intense.

Serve with a selection of:

• deep-fried eggplant
• steamed squash
• steamed eggplant (various types)
• steamed cabbage
• raw Napa cabage
• raw cucumber
• steamed longbeans
• raw winged beans
• hard-boiled egg
• Thai sausage
• pork crackling

It is nice to serve with one or two additional dips, as mentioned in the introduction.