Time 20 minutes

Serving 2

• 1 pound of ground pork, beef, or chicken (You can do what I do here which is chop up 1 pound of skinless chicken breasts with a cleaver. You get better texture that way.)
• 7 (26g) large cloves of garlic, peeled
• 7 (16g) bird’s eye chilies (or however many you can tolerate)
• 1 large shallot (20g), peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons thin/light soy sauce or seasoning sauce (such as Golden Mountain aka “the Green Cap” sauce”)
• 1 tablespoon dark sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1 cup holy basil leaves, packed

Step 1
If you have a mortar, pound together the garlic, chilies, and shallot until you get a coarse paste. If no mortar, either chop them all up with a cleaver on a chopping block or pulse them into a coarse paste in a mini-chopper.

Step 2
In a skillet, heat up the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add the paste to it and fry until fragrant.

Step 3
Add the meat to the skillet and break it up with the spatula into small pieces.

Step 4
Add the remaining ingredients (except the basil leaves), correcting seasoning as needed.

Step 5
Once the meat is cooked through, check the amount of liquid in the skillet. If it’s too dry, add a little bit of water or sodium-free broth.

Step 6
Before taking the skillet off the heat, add the basil leaves to the mixture and give it a couple of stirs. We only want to wilt the basil with the residual heat that is still in the pan so as not to mute the fragrance of the fresh holy basil leaves.

Step 7
Serve over rice. A Thai-style crispy fried egg on top and a tiny bowl of nam-pla prik would be nice.