Fancy words! Foreign words! In my kitchen again at last hehe. Now once and for all I'm starting to feel like I'm home, cooking the things I like and experimenting with new recipes. Near where I was staying in Virginia was a fantastic little Thai restaurant/delivery place called Burapa Thai. No Thai food I'd ever eaten tasted so phenominal. My favorite dish there was a dish called simply "Seafood Kaprow", a delicious stir-fry of mixed seafood, onions, and peppers. But it was so much more than that. After my first try I quickly learned to dump my rice into the spicy brown sauce and let it soak up the firey mix. I began to distinguish the subtle blend of exotic spices therein and relish every bite. And every bite was an adventure in itself, for the shrimp & scallops were tender, the onions and bell peppers crisp, the mussels soft and tangy, and the scallops...well, they just melted in my mouth like hot, creamy pieces of heaven.

Yep, I was a goner.

When I got back to California (after eating 2 entire orders of Kaprow the night before) I made it my buisiness not just to find out where I could find another Thai place that served it, but also to find out how to make it. After much research, including questionings of some very amused Thai restaurateurs and cooks (Can we say language barrier?) I found out this much: "Kaprow" means basil, and not just any basil, but Holy Basil. Holy? Hrm. Apparently Holy basil (Ocimum Sanctum), like the sweet basil used in cooking, comes from India where it is revered as a sacred herb. The Egyptians burned a mixture of basil and myrrh to appease their gods. Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum) was introduced in Europe years later as a seasoning for food. It also has a lot of medicinal properties. I guess that's why the Indians & Egyptians kept it in their lands, keeping the heretics away from their holiest herb....

The spelling of it gave me no end of trouble in finding recipes, because the name was always different! It is also spelled bai kaprao (bai graprow, bai ka phrao)....argh. In any case, I tracked down several and looked at the ingredient breakdown. Some recipes called for chicken, some beef, oddly none with seafood. I discovered what those indistinguishablely savory seasonings were at this point. Of course I could taste and see the garlic, and I knew the 'secret' ingredient was Holy Basil (how the devil was I gonna make basil holy, have it blessed?), but what made the sauce brown...
Fish Oil! And Oyster Sauce! Errrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmm.

Those of you that know me will know that I was undaunted. I contrived a recipe and went off to the local asian market, which is inanely called 99 Ranch Market. Bought me some loverly fresh mixed seafood, which I found conveniently packaged together and ready to go; some nam man hoi (oyster sauce), and phrik ki nu (Thai chiles, another discovery). They didn't have the special basil, but they had normal basil far cheaper than I could have got it in a domestic store, and as I couldn't find a monk I was prepared to make my apologies to Buddha for not having the Holiness in my squid. Oddly enough, I'd found some nam bplah (fish sauce) in my pantry a day or so before. Where did it come from? The world may never know.

Lo, I had my stuffs. I was gonna cook that night! Never mind Jeff giving me the Hairy Eyeball at the telltale tenticles in my shopping cart. Brace yourselves, recipe incoming...

After a word of advice. You make a dish like this, you make it in a wok. Why? Buddha like. ^_~
Seriously though. High heat is integral to these kinds of dishes, it preserves the textures and seasonings up unto the moment you slide the meal onto your plate. If you don't HAVE a wok (some sad, misguided people do not) use a...big pan, I guess. Know that I will be weeping for you over here in Sherman Oaks however...