What My Grandmother Made

I remember being in Bangkok during one Thai New Year’s and watching a poor Western woman get completely drenched — groceries and loaf of bread and all — in a tuk tuk that slowed down just enough so that revelers could pour an entire wastebasket’s worth of water on her head. After witnessing this silent moment of complicity between the tuk tuk driver and the water-splasher, I vowed to never get caught in the streets of Bangkok during Songkran again. Which is why I’m here, now, cowering on my couch, riding the holiday out until the last water gun has been emptied and consigned to a storage bin for next year.

Since this couch is my home for the next two or three days, my thoughts have been turning to my family, currently in Nakhon Nayok, where they are hosting my mother’s entourage of friends (like a rapper, she rolls 10 deep). These ladies, from my parents’ university days, enjoy 1. remarking on how much weight we have gained or lost, and 2. warbling traditional Thai songs on karaoke. So it may not come as much of a surprise when I admit that I am happy right where I am, right here in this couch in Bangkok.

If only someone would cook for me.

I was shocked a few months ago when my mother, during one of her rare reminiscences of her childhood, talked about her mother’s cooking. I had never heard of my grandmother cooking before. In fact, my grandmother NOT cooking was a major reason given for why my mother did not cook. And yet here we were, with stories about my grandmother cooking. Now, I love my grandma, and visit her every time I’m in Chiang Mai (I get really bad dreams if I don’t). All the same, I was sad to have missed her food. Although my grandmother lived to be 102 years old, she never cooked for me.

You see, my grandma was from Chiang Mai, but married a Central Thai man and moved to Bangkok, where they frequently had Central Thai food. Occasionally, when my grandma was tired of all the palm sugar and coconut milk, she would seek comfort in the dishes of her homeland, with flavors that were straight and true. My mother told me about a prik nam pla that was Northern-style, made with grilled, peeled and deseeded banana peppers doused in fish sauce seasoned with garlic and lime juice. She also told me about a pork dish cooked only for Northern Thai aristocracy called moo hoon, or pork with lots of turmeric and lemongrass (a recipe that will be in our upcoming cookbook!)

And then my mother said she would make her own nam prik kee ga (crow’s poo chili dip), which I believed to be Central Thai until the moment when my mother told me this story. My grandma would make it with prik chee fah, or goat/spur chilies, raw garlic, and salt, pounding it herself and eating it with sticky rice, alone. These were the only dishes she made.

So, stuck in my house as the water wars raged outside, I sought to follow in my grandma’s footsteps and make some crow’s poo of my own. First, I had to get some chee fah chilies, which I bought a few days before Songkran in preparation for this very moment.

I lined a baking tray with aluminum foil, turned my oven grill up to full power, placed a handful of spur chilies of each color on the tray and slid them in when the oven had heated. Then I readied my work station for the only workout I was ready to do that day:

I pounded three cloves of raw garlic with a teaspoon of sea salt in readiness for my chilies. It took them about 15 minutes to get properly softened and lightly charred, and then I peeled them while they were still hot, grimacing and flailing like a serial groper on a Tokyo commuter train during rush hour.

Once peeled, they looked pathetically meager, about 3 Tablespoons worth of chili “meat” — just enough for lunch.

So I stuck them in the mortar and pounded, and, really, it was incredibly easy. The chilies, by now thoroughly depressed by the direction in which their lives had taken, simply gave up after a few loud thumps, and the chili dip was ready in seconds.

I tasted it and found it just salty enough (though my housekeeper Tai, ever the critic, complained it was too salty). We ate it for lunch with just-boiled eggs, stir-fried snow peas, kak moo (pork bits left over after rendering pork lard, stir-fried in roasted chili paste) and, of course, freshly steamed rice. My Central Thai husband said it was good.