I rarely follow recipe nor measure the ingredients for daily cooking. Of course there are food preparation that requires precise proportions - such as sausage making and baking in general. So here is my simple recipe for basil pork.
Cut Asian long bean into consistent bits of about 3/8 inch (10mm) long and put it is a shallow dish. There is a very good reason for this. This bit size allow the bean and the minced pork to be evenly distributed, so each bite give you consistent ratio of the ingredients.
Take about five kaffir lime leaves a slice them as thin as you are capable. You must have kaffir leaves to prepare this dish. Without them the dish smells dull. You can find kaffir lime leaves (often confuse as lemon or lime leaves) sold frozen in well stocked Asian grocery store. You do have to ask as they are hard to spot. Often they are sold in tiny plastic bags frozen and they keep for months frozen.
Set the thinly sliced karffir lime leaves in a small dish that you will stage the chopped garlic.
Pinch off the thicker stems lower down of the Thai (or Taiwanese) basil and discard. Do keep the more tender stems and all the leaves and the flower buds. Slice the leaves and stems into about 3/8" (10mm) strips across the length of the leaves. This promote the release of the herb essences.
Chop about 1/2 of a red onion into small bits. The precise shape is not important.
Chop a few gloves of fresh garlic. I like a lot of garlic. Place the chop garlic into the same dish with sliced kaffir leaves but keep them separate. I do this to ease cleaning.
Chop a few Thai peppers. The amount is highly personal depends upon your tolerance to (pepper) heat. I now switch to dried Thai pepper powder as I got tired of wasting fresh ones because I can never use them all up. They go moldy very fast.
For the minced pork, the best is to use pork shoulder. Pork shoulder has just the right amount of fat for this dish. For a very long time I was afraid of consuming animal fat but now I am more concern of consuming common vegetable oil (except the ones that are cold pressed). You can buy the pork pre-ground. I prefer to grind them myself with a medium size die in a meat grinder. I dislike grinding them in a food processor as you get a range of bit sizes. I recommend between 1:1 to about 1:2 of pork to long bean by volume.
For the seasoning you will need oyster sauce, light (color) soy sauce, Thai fish sauce, and sugar. Because I never measure mine I recommend you do so by trail and error. Just go easy with all especially the sugar. Cooking Thai food is all about achieve a balance of taste and only you can do it better than anyone else if you put in the time to find them.
My key to the distillation of the preparation is use fewest utensils, and for this I only use a wok, and without needing to wash it during the preparation.
Heat the wok in medium flame and put in about 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil. Stir in the chopped beans. In a minute or two add a small amount of water to help cook the beans evenly.
Heat the wok in high flame and add a small amount of cooking oil. Stir in the ground pork and give them a chance to brown before stirring. If you do this right the pork fat will keep them from sticking to the wok, and become loose bits of pork. When fat begins to release from the pork stir in all the chop garlic, followed with the red onion and about half of the basil. Keep the other half of the basil for just before plating.
When the pork is close to fully cook, stir in all the beans. Add the seasoning starting with oyster sauce, follow with fish sauce, soy sauce, and lastly sprinkle in a bit of sugar. You have to do this very quickly.
A few stirs to evenly distribute the seasoning the dish is close to plating. Now stir in the other half of the basil and plate immediately.
if you do this right, it should be almost fluffy and evenly distributed bits with consistent tasty bites
The best way to accompany this dish is a good bowl of plain Thai Jasmine rice.
this very curious Douglas squirrel got very close to check me out
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