Instructions: Optionally you can add a medium "Spanish" onion, cut into rings, quartered and separated. Or you can use sliced green onions, or a combination.

Method:
My wife chops the chicken with a pair of cleavers, and I cant bear to watch.

You can of course use a meat grinder or a food processor).

The garlic, shallots, peppers and peppercorns are ground together in a mortar & pestle or a food processor. In a hot wok, with a little cooking oil, briefly stir fry this paste to bring out the flavor and aroma. add the remaining ingredients and continue to stir until the chicken is cooked through.

Serving:
For luncheon pad bai gaprao can be served over plain rice, or over a fried egg or egg crepe, placed on the rice. For dinner it goes well with the hot and sour tom yum soups, as well as curries and other Thai food.

Add the usual Thai condiments (chilies in fish sauce (prik nam pla), ground chilies (prik phom) and sugar), as well, perhaps as ground black pepper.

Variants:
It can be made with chopped pork, or even a chopped beef base, though of course the flavors are quite different. You can also experiment with replacing the meat with hard tofu marinated in a mixture of sweet soy, fish sauce and ground ginger, say, or a vegetable mix of your choice (I like to mix broccoli and cauliflower florets, with julienned carrots and wing beans), to make a vegetarian pad bai-gaprao. Serve with rice and the usual Thai table condiments

(prik dong [chilies in vinegar], prik pom [ground red chilies] and sugar).

This is a quick and easy dish to make. The holy basil has a "hot peppery"

taste, but if you cant get it then the standard European basil is a reasonable substitute, though you should add a little freshly ground black pepper in this case.

Prik chi fa - called the Thai jalapeno is the best chili to use, but if you cant get it standard Mexican jalapenos will do very well as a substitute.

Canned jalapenos are comparatively bland however.

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