Monita Sun was born in Baoji, grew up in Shanghai, lived in Bangkok, and hosted her first OneTable Shabbat in NYC last week. You can learn more about her (and find these incredible recipes and plenty of others) on her food blog, Happy Tummy Asia, her Instagram, and her Facebook.

When I first started to welcome Shabbat with my then boyfriend (now, husband) in Bangkok, we loved to build on traditional Shabbat food with some of our favorite Asian flavors. So, with the opportunity to host my first OneTable Shabbat, I knew that I had a new way to Friday.

Taking a few recipes from my authentic Asian low-carb food blog, Happy Tummy Asia, I designed our menu to reflect a traditional Ashkenazi Shabbat meal – salads, salmon, soup, mains, and dessert. The salad highlight was the Thai fresh spring rolls ( ปอเปี๊ยะสด) – a quick, healthy, and super tasty snack.

This was accompanied by a tangy pomelo salad (ยำส้มโอ), a traditional green papaya salad (ส้มตำ), and a fusion sashimi salmon with Thai spicy laab sauce and mint I borrowed from the amazing PlaDib restaurant in Bangkok.

Matzo ball soup became a Thai clear soup style with ground chicken “matzo balls”, and the main courses were classic red curry with chicken (แกงเผ็ดไก่) and hearty green curry with chicken (แกงเขียวหวานไก่). We finished the whole dinner with water chestnuts in sweet coconut milk.

Like most first times, everything did not go perfectly according to plan. Some ingredients went missing, our guests came in the middle of mess cooking. Yet everyone enjoyed, offer to help, and asked all different questions about Thai cuisine. It was an amazing Shabbat, and I can’t wait to work with OneTable again to make a classic Chinese meal for a Chrismukkah Shabbat dinner!