Witty Wednesday: Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Sawassdeekrub! How are you guys? TUFFguy is here for Witty Wednesday! Today I have another interesting Thai dish for you!

The weather is getting a bit chilly lately (well, even in Thailand!) so I thought it would be great to bring some warm dish to you all.
Here is Thai Coconut Chicken Soup (recipe adapted from http://foodgawker.com/)

(Image from foodgawker.com)

Ingredients
8 oz boneless and skinless chicken (breast or thighs, cut into strips)
20 canned straw mushrooms
1 1/2 cup coconut milk
1 cup water
1 stalk lemongrass (cut into 3-inch lengths and pounded)
6 kaffir lime leaves (lightly bruised to release the flavor)
6 slices galangal
8 bird’s eye chilies (lightly pounded)
3 tablespoon fish sauce
2 1/2 tablespoon lime juice (or to taste)
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

How to cook
1.     Add coconut milk, water, lemongrass, galangal, chilies, kaffir lime leaves into a pot and bring it to boil.
2.     Add straw mushrooms and chicken and boil it on medium heat for a few minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.
3.     Add lime juice and fish sauce to taste.
4.     Add chopped cilantro before serving.

Nutrition Facts
Recipe Serves 4 people
Amount per Serving
    * Calories 350 Calories from Fat 191
% Daily Value *
    * Total Fat 20.99g                            32%
    * Saturated Fat 16.84g                     84%
    * Monounsaturated Fat 2.15g 
    * Polyunsaturated Fat 0.94g 
    * Cholesterol 37mg                           12%
    * Potassium 708.69mg                      20%
    * Total Carbohydrate 9.44g                3%
    * Dietary Fiber 1.72g                          7%
    * Sugars 3.81g 
    * Protein 18.28g                               37%
    * Vitamin A0.13
    * Vitamin C11.94
    * Calcium29.5
    * Iron15.38
    * Vitamin E0.59
    * Thiamin (B1)0.03
    * Riboflavin (B2)0.11
    * Niacin (B3)6.76
    * Vitamin B619.86
    * Vitamin B1211.83
    * Phosphorus228.13
    * Magnesium41.56
    * Panthothenic Acid0.29
    * Zinc7.6
    * Manganese1.21
Est. Percent of Calories from:
Fat 54.0% Carbs 10.8% Protein 20.9%

We hope this will become one of your favorite soup!

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Fun Friday: Road trip tomorrow!

Sawassdeekrub!  

We're going on a road trip tomorrow. Where? See the photos below...

1. Bangkok Chinatown: Yaowarat

2. Bangkok Grand Palace

3. Dusit Zoo

4. Benchamabophit Dusitvanaram Temple

5. Leng Noei Yi Temple

6. Phra Sri Maha Umathewi Temple

 

(All images from Wikipedia)

We bet you're curious why we 're going there... Stay tune for the answer next week! In the mean time, enjoy your upcoming weekend!

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Witty Wednesday: Thai Basil Chicken

Sawassdeekrub! How are you guys? TUFFguy is here for Witty Wednesday! This time I'm gonna be a chef and introduce you to our Thai food recipes...

We all know that as a fighter, the right kind of food is essential to get your body to function accordingly. That means junk food is not encouraged before you train and work out in order to get maximized outcome.

Thai food is becoming more popular as it is both tasty and healthy. As a Thai, I will proudly present you some of the recipes that the majority of Thai food fans find delicious. Please feel free to suggest any Thai dishes you are interested to cook!

Here is Thai Basil Chicken (recipe adapted from http://foodgawker.com/)

 

(Image from foodgawker.com)

The dish starts out by processing 1 cup of fresh basil (or fresh Thai basil) with garlic cloves and chili garlic sauce. I chose to use chili garlic sauce since I didn't want the dish to be spicy at all. Using only 1/2 teaspoon of the chili garlic sauce gave just a subtle heat which was perfect for me. If you like the spice and heat of Thai cuisine, feel free to add more chili garlic sauce or use Thai or Serrano peppers instead. A tablespoon of this basil/garlic mixture is placed in a skillet while the remaining mixture is set aside to use later. Next, the ground chicken is mixed with a little fish sauce and chilled for a few minutes before sautéing in the skillet with the basil/garlic mixture. Once the chicken is fully cooked and no pink is visible, the basil/garlic mixture that was previously set aside is added to the skillet to flavor the chicken. Just before serving, more fresh basil is added to the skillet and allowed to wilt. Then, it's ready to serve! We liked this over steamed jasmine rice.

Ingredients
2 cups basil leaves, packed (Thai preferred)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1 1/2 lbs ground chicken
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped

How to cook
1.Place garlic, 1 cup fresh basil leaves and the chili garlic sauce in a food processor. Pulse until finely chopped, scraping bowl one time. Transfer 1 tablespoon of this mixture to a small bowl with the 1 tablespoon fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and vinegar. Stir and set aside.

2.Place the remaining garlic/basil mixture into a cold 12" skillet and set aside.
Place the ground chicken in a bowl with the remaining 1 tablespoon fish sauce and refrigerate for 5-10 minutes.

3.In the cold skillet with the garlic/basil mixture, add 2 tablespoons olive oil and onions to the pan. Sauté over medium low heat and allow herbs and onion to soften.

4.Once onion is softened, add the chilled ground chicken, and stirring constantly, brake chicken up as it cooks. Continue stirring until chicken is no longer pink.

5.Add garlic/basil sauce mixture that you made previously. Cook about 1 min.

6.Meanwhile, chiffonade the remaining cup of basil leaves and add to the pan to cook 1 additional minute or so, until the basil wilts. Serve over rice

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup (100 g)
    * Calories 368 Calories from Fat 227
% Daily Value *
    * Total Fat 25.2g                       39%
    * Saturated Fat 12.8g                 64%
    * Monounsaturated Fat 4.1g 
    * Polyunsaturated Fat 2.8g 
    * Cholesterol 84.2mg                 28%
    * Sodium 2174mg                     91%
    * Potassium 430.9mg                12%
    * Total Carbohydrate 11.4g         4%
    * Dietary Fiber 1.5g                    6%
    * Sugars 7.8g 
    * Protein 25g                           50%
    * Vitamin A12.                          1%
    * Vitamin C6.                            7%
Est. Percent of Calories from:
Fat 61.6% Carbs 12.4% Protein 27.2%

We hope this will become one of your favorite dishes! Tell us how it goes! We'll be thrilled to hear from you. Bon appetit!

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Martial Monday: Introduction to MMA

Sawassdeekrub! How's yr week so far? TUFFguy is here for Martial Monday!
You know that my specialty is Muaythai, but MMA has been becoming more popular so in this post, I would like to introduce MMA to those who are not familiar with it yet...

MMA is a short form of Mixed Martial Art, one of the most popular combat sports. MMA is becoming popular for the first time in the USA in 1993. The general rues of MMA is that the contestants are allowed to use any kind of martial arts and all of fighting techniques to fight, so this makes MMA the combat sport that has the format very much similar to real combat situation. This allows anyone who has different kind of martial art backgrounds to fight without boundaries and due to this reason, it was quickly becoming more and more popular...

In the USA, MMA was first introduced by the organization called Ultimate Fighting Championship.(UFC) At that time it was first introduced, there were quite minimum rules so the contestants could fight freely without any measure to protect their safety. However, in later stage, many rules of MMA were introduced with the major purpose of safety and an increase of the excitement of the competition.

The development of MMA rules can be divided into 2 different stages; pre-modern and modern MMA. We will not talk too much about the pre-modern rules as there was a big change up until now, but, as mentioned earlier, there were not many rules in the pre-modern MMA.

For the modern MMA, new rules have been applied. This includes the name of competition itself which was no longer an MMA fight, but at present time known as Ultimate Fighting Championship (follow the name of UFC, the organization that first introduced and formally promoted this kind of combat sport). However, people are still aware that it is MMA. In fact, there are some other organizations that organize and promote MMA as a formal combat sport competition in other regions such as Korean "FMC" (Fighting Mania Championship), Brass Knuckles Promotions MMA promotion which were held in the northwestern United States, and so on.

 

As a result of rapid growth in MMA competition in both the USA and all other countries worldwide, there are millions of people who love MMA and are real fans of it. There are also a lot of communities and forums as well as information about MMA along with thousands of competitions organized all around the world. It could be said that now MMA is also one of the top combat sports among others such as Muay Thai, and Kick boxing competitions. It is also very exciting for me to get to know about it because while I am the real fan of Muay Thai and looking for good Muay Thai and K-1 fighters, on the other side of the world of combat sports, there is MMA which seems to be very interesting also.

Website review

www.ufc.com

This is the website of Ultimate Fighting Championship or UFC. One of the most famous MMA combat sport organization. It could be said that it is the most popular and well known among Americans and many of MMA fans around the world. The website, of course, contains all information that you want to know about UFC and MMA. I could not tell which section I love the most because they all seems to be interesting. However, I would like to comment that the design and layout of the website may be a little confusing to find out what I want, perhaps it’s because of loads of information in there.

Youtube

I have no specific issue of this video. Just bring up any video of MMA fight to see what it is like and also to get to know more about it. I picked this video because I think there are some interesting aspects. As I am really new to MMA (may be like many of you who are reading this review) so I still wonder why competitors are very much focusing on hugging, throwing and punching, even though they are allowed to use some other techniques. However, it is just an introduction and there will be more interesting fights coming up.

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Witty Wednesday: What kind of trainers do you prefer?

Sawassdeekrub! How's yr week so far? TUFFguy is here for Witty Wednesday!

What kind of trainers do you prefer? Yes, I think I asked a correct question. It may be strange that this question is not generally asked but since there is actually some aspects that I would like to clarify. This is not polling, but if you guys are reading this article and you are also learners or fighters, grateful if you can share your honest answer. Also, by asking this question, it is not limited to only to ask in one or two specific sport martial arts, but I mean in general. No matter what you practice:  Muay Thai, boxing, Judo, MMA etc.

Sometime, students / trainees may have more confidence if they know that his/her teacher is a great fight who had excellent fight records and victories, so students can be sure that they learn from the best. At the same time, some students don’t really care about this as long as the trainer has good knowledge and can teach them well, ultimately, students get what they expected (what they paid for).

In my opinion,depends on what kind of learners you are. For the learners who want to learn martial arts for hobby/ exercise/ leisure time or even want to improve self-defend skills, this kind of learners may not worry so much about their teacher’s backgrounds. He does not have to be a great fighter, but knows the theory and teaches well, plus some real fight experience would be enough to deliver effective lesson.

For other group of learners, particularly martial artist sport players or professional fighters, their expectations may be different. This kind of learners seek for success in his sport martial arts career, so the extensive experience in real fights and competition is what they expect from their trainers. The knowledge here seems to be less important than experiences and special techniques the trainer gained form the fights he had. So, they may want to be trained with some kind of ex-champions.

However, a good player will not always be a good trainer. We have seen many of great professional sport players when they retired from the career and turned to be coaches but not very successful ones. On the other hand, we also have seen a lot of examples of a man who never has any real experience of the game but particularly focuses and studies on how to coach and finally becomes a good trainer.

I just would like to make a summary here that people have different expectation, but if the expectations are met, then your trainer’s background or ability is not important at all. Instead, full respect and believes in your trainer is much more appreciated.


What about you guys? What kind of trainers do you prefer?


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Martial Monday: John Wayne Parr and the Contender Asia

Sawassdeekrub!

How was your weekend? It's getting rainy here in Bangkok... For Martial Monday today we have a profile of The Contender Asia’s fighter: John Wayne Parr...the man below!

Btw, the tattoo on his chest says "Bunchoo" a name of his gym.

Parr started Muay Thai at 11. Even though at that time he began with other martial art, not Muay Thai (he started with Taekwondo), he started to learn martial art when the age even younger than many of Thai Muay Thai champions. He is a 32 years old Aussie from Queensland, Australia.

During his first start learning martial arts in his teenage years, he started to practice in his home town in Queensland with one of the top promoters Blair Moore. Then at the age of 20, Parr made very significant achievements: he got an Australian Title and a South Pacific Title

In the year 1995, Parr started learning Muay Thai when he moved to Thailand and joined several Muay Thai camps both in Bangkok and Pattaya for a few years where he also gained experienced with 30 fights and winning two world titles. Parr then moved back to Australia again to open his own gym. Apart from that, Parr is very well known as one of the best Muay Thai instructors for the camp Boonchu. He is also ranked in the top ten of WMC World ranking (World Muay Thai Council)

Here are all titles and awards of Parr's

•     2008 International Kickboxer Magazine Belt
•     2008 WKBA World Champion Defense
•     2008 WMC Contender Asia Runner up
•     2007 WMC Middleweight World Champion
•     2005 WKBA World Champion
•     2004 S-1 World Middleweight Tournament Champion
•     2001 Australian Boxing Middleweight Champion
•     2001 Kings Cup Champion
•     2000 IMF Kings Cup World Middleweight Champion
•     2000 ISKA World Middleweight Champion
•     1999 Winner Kings Cup
•     1999 WMC Australian Jr. Middleweight Champion
•     1997 Best Farang Fighter in Thailand.
•     1994 WKA South Pacific Super Lightweight Champion
•     1992 WKA Australian Super Lightweight Champion 

John Wayne Parr and the Contender Asia

Parr is probably one of the strongest fighters in this tournament. Since he is very skilled and experienced in Muay Thai for many years as well as being in a very healthy condition, his opponents will have a very difficult game when fighting with him. Also, the most interesting aspect of Parr is the leadership that we could see during the tournament, and this is a very good practice of being great a “fighter” and “teacher” (as he also teaches many of student in Boonchu gym in Australia). Even though he did not win the title in the Contender Asia, he is still one of the best Muay Thai fighters that many people could remember, especially in the aspect of Nak Muay Farang (Foreign Muay Thai fighter) who gets massive achievements in both Thailand and overseas.

Youtube Review




This fight is probably almost 10 years back but it is a very interesting fight. It is his fight with Orono Por Muang Ubon. Orono, at that time is one of the greatest fighters who is almost unbeatable. The exciting moments started from the first two rounds when Parr was gaining advantage and he made really effective punch attacks, mean while Orono seemed to lose his control in terms of both defense and strike back.

The last 3 rounds were more exciting when Orono tired to attack since he knew that he had to, otherwise he would lose. However, Parr even offered better “leg kicks” throughout and this is the key strategy for him to win this fight.
That's all we have for you today!


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The Brief History of Muaythai by TUFFguy

Sawassdeekrub! My name is TUFFguy. I'm one of the TUFFSPORTcrew. My specialty is Martial Arts and Muaythai in general. I have been told that I look quite like Sagat from Streetfighters... what do you say?

"Muaythai" is what we, Thai people, call our own martial art.

In the ancient times, no advanced weapons had been invented, so Thailand had to encounter and fight with various intruders to protect the land.

Muaythai is the art of using human's toughest organs such as head, fists, elbows, knees and feet (if you’re doing the math: it’s the art of 9 limbs) as weapons to injure enemies.
Not only tough guys like me can practise this self-defense art, everyone can learn Muaythai. The most important thing is how teachers or "Kru Muays" consider accepting someone to be a student.

Why? At that time, Thai soldiers were trained Muaythai to protect communities and defense themselves in the battle. Today, the goal of learning Muaythai is still the same, which is "to learn the self-defense". "Kru Muay" have to make sure that if someone want to learn Muaythai, they want to learn "the art of defense" not to bully others.

To tell you the truth, learning Muaythai is not only about learning the art of fighting, you have to learn our "cultures and norms” and concern about the "ritual" and "superstition" of Muaythai. And of course, I’m sure you know that any culture could not be taught and learnt simply just by reading books or watching videos.

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Here it is: Kaosarn Project!

Sawassdeekrub!

Check out the pics  below for our Khaosarn Project! Thks to everyone there, we had so much fun!

More photos plus the videos are coming up soon!

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Our Kaosarn Road marketing campaign revealed!

Sawassdeekrub!

How was your weekend? We had a blast on Friday: we went to Khaosarn Road and asked the lucky tourists there to model for us, they got one apparel: t-shirt or short for free!

Plus they got to take photos with our Muaythai fighters. Photos and videos are coming up soon!

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It's almost Friday!

Sawassdeekrub!

We hope you're doing well! Only a day before our Kaosarn Road trip! We're exicited! It's almost Friday so let's take a small break and get productive before the weekend...

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Teasers for our Kaosarn Road Project (continued)

Sawassdeekrub!

As mentioned earlier, we're going to Kaosarn Road this Friday for our marketing campaign. What's gonna happen there? It's still a surprise! But it involves some actions like these...

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