Known for its tireless testing of recipes, America’s Test Kitchen is both a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston and a fabulous weekly television show that brings the test kitchen’s findings to the American public. With all of this season’s shows and recipes available online, americastestkitchen.com is a wonderful resource for the home cook.
This season, the test kitchen was experimenting with tweaking traditional Asian recipes so that they would be easier for the home cook to prepare with the ingredients available in the average American supermarket. Thai-Style Chicken with Basil, a stir-fried, chopped chicken dish that does not require a wok, is filled with spice from Thai chiles and flavor from lots of fresh basil.
Though America’s Test Kitchen advises viewers to use Italian basil on the grounds that Thai Basil can be hard to find, Shenandoah Growers is changing all that. Shenandoah Growers’ line of summer basils includes Thai basil so that you can serve this dish the way it was meant to be served. Simply follow the recipe, substituting Thai for Italian basil, and see what a difference the fresh anise-flavor of Thai basil can make in your Thai cooking.
