Okay first of all, to be accurate, this dish should be called pad pak boong fai daeng. Pad is stir-fried. Pak boong is water spinach aka Chinese morning glory aka kang kong. And fai daeng is fire red, referring to the blazing flame under the wok. But because so many Thai dish names are colloquial, it is usually shortened to remove the pad. The boong is also not really a long oo sound but a cross between oo and u, if that makes sense.
Anyway, I digress! Probably because there is not much to say about this dish. This is a perfectly simple way to cook kang kong. I prefer this over sambal kang kong or adobong kang kong because it retains the fresh flavour of the water spinach. It is also reminiscent of the Teochew influence in Thai cuisine, because it uses fermented yellow bean paste. This dish is often called stir-fried morning glory in Thailand, although this vegetable is seldom called that anywhere else.
There is a common Southeast Asian superstition that if you eat too much kang kong, you will suffer from leg cramps. A reason may be the TCM principle where kang kong is considered a cooling vegetable. So, eating too much of it might make you chilly and more prone to cramps. Luckily, Filipinos don’t seem to suffer from this ailment. They basically eat kang kong for free because it grows prolifically on river banks. Pak boong fai daeng is a fantastically cheap dish that costs me less than US$1 to make. I think the garlic was the most expensive ingredient!
Love kang kong? Check out Lemongrass Tofu with Kangkong!
Ingredients
- Sauce Ingredients