Monita Sun was born in Baoji, grew up in Shanghai, lived in Bangkok, and is now a OneTable host in New York. She is the co-founder of Happy Tummy Asia.
When I first started to welcome Shabbat with my then-boyfriend (now, husband) Josh in Bangkok, we loved to build on traditional Shabbat food with some of our favorite Asian flavors. With the opportunity to host my first OneTable Shabbat, I knew that I had a new way to Friday.
Taking a few Asian low-carb recipes, I designed our menu to reflect a traditional Ashkenazi Shabbat meal – salads, salmon, soup, mains, and dessert.
Like most first times, everything did not go perfectly according to plan. Some ingredients went missing, our guests came in the middle of a mess cooking. Yet everyone enjoyed, offered 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!
Read on for recipes to cook for your own Shabbat dinner.
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.