Nam Manmakok Glin Horapa
Serves NA Cooks in NA Difficulty Easy
Over the last few months I have been growing different Thai herbs and a few vegetables here at my Thai cooking class in Khao Lak. As the market is closed for my afternoon classes I thought it could be useful to have some of the key ingredients for Thai cooking growing in my garden.
Thai sweet basil is really easy to grow. You can buy some sprigs from the market, use the leaves and then stick the leftover stalks in some soil. Most of the time it grows again. So I now have many Thai basil plants growing here and as we’re heading into the rainy season the plants are flowering.
Thai sweet basil flowers are small and very pretty. They are also very fragrant which got me thinking they are probably also very tasty. So I was thinking of what I could do with the flowers. I found some inspiration after going out for some pizza. I love the chilli olive oil that you can drizzle on pizzas and I wondered if I could do the same with Thai sweet basil flowers and olive oil.
As it turns out you can. I infused some Thai sweet basil flowers in olive oil for a month and now I have lovely, fragrant Thai basil olive oil. I am currently working on some salad dressings using my new oil and I will post some here when I have them perfected.
In the meantime, if you have some Thai basil flowers here’s how I made the oil. If you can not source the flowers you could use the leaves instead, you would just need to blanch the leaves for a minute in boiling water.
Ingredients
- Lots of Thai sweet basil flowers
- 250ml olive oil
Method
- Wash the Thai sweet basil flowers and then pat them with some kitchen roll to remove any excess water.
- Clean your jar or container with hot soapy water and dry.
- Add the flowers into the jar and pour in the olive oil.
- Leave for 3-4 weeks.
- Strain with a sieve.
To Serve
Use as a salad dressing or drizzle on food to add a subtle Thai flavour.
Hope you enjoy my Nam Manmakok Glin Horapa by Apple 🍎 Riverside Thai Cooking in Khao Lak.
Thai sweet basil flowers. 
Let the flavours infuse for 4 weeks. 
My finished olive oil.