Getting Real (aka What’s Cooking: Sukhothai Noodles)

I apologize to the person who reads these posts, because I haven’t been writing them lately. I have been busy on a project that is exceedingly difficult, mainly because the system they make us load our content into makes me want to shoot myself in the face. So I thought I would take a break from painstakingly inputting the latitude and longitude of every place I’ve ever mentioned to write a little ditty after reading a street food proposal paper that my friend sent me.

It rubbed me the wrong way, probably because, once again, it proposes to turn Bangkok into Singapore without making Bangkok as rich as Singapore. According to a quick Google search, the average monthly salary of a Singaporean is around US$5000. The average salary of a Bangkokian is between US$770-1,500. Now, I am one of those trash Asians™ that cannot do math, but I do know that those numbers are not the same (I am Asian so I can make this joke.)

The mention of authenticity in cuisine is also jarring to me. When people start to talk about “authenticity” in a policy paper about street food, it always puts me on alert that they may use it as a cudgel to portray other (cheaper, “lower-class”) food as “inauthentic”. Chef Num of Samuay & Sons (a chef I personally admire) once told me that authenticity was a Western concept, and I totally agree with him. I’d go one step further and say that it is a trap. Authenticity was born when Western people started eating other countries’ food and then wanted to gatekeep other Western people from pretending that they knew about said food. Because Thais are good at adopting everything, they adopted this idea, and now have started using it on themselves. Unfortunately, authenticity as performed on a cuisine like Thailand’s promotes a hegemonic ideal of what Thai food is supposed to be — an ideal that is typically Central Thai and upper-middle-class to upper-class. Because Thai food was invented in royal kitchens, “authentic” Thai food becomes whatever is associated with the aristocracy or people adjacent to the aristocracy. The mere fact that an “authentic” recipe can be looked up in an ancient cookbook means that it’s an aristocratic recipe, because those were the only people who could read and write. Guess what kind of food that leaves out?

The idea of Thai food as something learned at the knees of Thai grandmothers is sweet — it’s true lots of Thais passed on their recipes orally — but ultimately it’s not a shared experience for everyone. To suggest that (inadvertently?) cuts out all sorts of people’s experiences with Thai food. As for me, my one grandmother never cooked for me. and my other only knew how to cook French food. I am clearly a trash Thai™.

When considering the merits of street food — how many times can I say this — IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT THE FOOD. It’s about granting access to cheap food for everyone, and for everyone to get a chance to make money. It’s not about “glorifying it at the expense of everything else.” If I were to eat pad Thai made by Chef Bo at bo.lan (another chef I personally admire), she would no doubt make it with the best-quality Chanthaburi noodles, with artisanal fish sauce, hand-squeezed tamarind pulp and the best possible prawns Thailand has to offer. It would be way better than what I can get on the street. But it would also be way more expensive. The fact that price and accessibility is constantly left out of these debates is disingenuous at best. Vendors use what they can afford, and the fact that so many of them come up with good food on a daily basis is a freaking miracle.

All of which is to say … I may sound like I’m wearing a tin foil hat and raving about a secret push to impose Central Thai ideas of Thai-ness over the rest of the country. That the Thai grandmother thing is a way to gauge other people’s class, and to dismiss them accordingly. I could be turning full Mel Gibson in a couple of years, jumping out at people in parking garages, screaming “Your grandmother sucks at cooking!” (something that my friend Dylan prints on his tote bags).

Another conspiracy? That a popular street food dish, Sukhothai noodles, didn’t come from Sukhothai, and were either created at Sukhothai Palace (in Bangkok) or invented as a way to draw tourists to the city. Alas, when I emailed Chef McDang about this, he wrote me back:  “Chow, I doubt that it is true.  [My aunt at Sukhothai Palace] raised me and we never had Sukhothai noodles any time during tea time or anything.  I am so tired that everyone wants Thai food to be Royal Thai cuisine.  Normal regular Thai food which is so varied, interesting and delicious is so much better.”

Regardless of how Sukhothai noodles were created, the last time I went there, they were everywhere. And they are delicious. Alas, I don’t have them in Bangkok as often as I used to, after Somsong Pochana moved (I still haven’t gone to the new — like 10 years ago — location). So my friend Andrew adapted a recipe that I sent him to help me with my cookbook (yes, even Trash Thais™ are writing cookbooks. The state of the world today!). It’s really good, so here it is:

Andy’s Sukhothai Noodles

This is for 2 bowls.

• 150g ground pork (75g / bowl)
• for meat: 2 tsp fish sauce
• for meat:1/2 tsp sugar
• for meat:1/2 tsp white pepper
• 400ml water
• 400ml chicken stock
• 200g noodles (100g / bowl) 
• 15g green beans / long beans – blanched
• 1/2 lime
• 15g chopped peanuts
• 1 green onion stalk
• 3g cilantro leaves

GARNISHES – AMOUNTS PER SINGLE SERVE BOWL

• 2-4 tsp chili paste to taste – i did 3 tsp
• 1/2-1 tsp fish sauce to taste (didn’t use)
• 1/2-1 tsp sugar to taste (didn’t use)
• 1-3 tsp crispy fried garlic to taste – i did 2
• 1/2-2 tsp chili flakes to taste – i did 1 (but threw on a couple dried chilies for looks)

First, cook your noodles (rice noodles preferably but egg noodles also work) in accordance with package instructions. Season the meat with the above ingredients. Put water/chicken stock to boil and add meat. Boil until cooked through, skimming scum off the surface. Once the noodles and pork are done, you’re ready to assemble your bowls: noodles, broth, squeeze of lime, peanuts, beans, green onions and cilantro. Because this is Thai-style, you customize the bowl to your own flavor preferences: sugar, chili flakes, fish sauce, crispy garlic, chili paste. As an aside, another conspiracy theory I have is that the Thai attitude to noodles (I season my own way) is their attitude to everything, including driving laws.

Andy’s notes:

1. I seasoned the pork out of habit – so it doesn’t dry out and better slightly bouncy texture. Also for fun I shaped some of the pork into coins. 
2. I used half chicken stock but actually if you want this to be super simple it can just be water but will definitely need seasoning for each bowl before serving (which is what they do in the OR some salt for the broth.
3. Probably can cut the amount of pork – maybe people get bored eating 75g of ground pork (though stock won’t taste as good)
4. I used sticky (wet) pad thai noodles so if people use dry (more likely) the weight should come down to maybe 75g per bowl. 
5. The namprik pao I have in my fridge doesn’t have much oil (like most of the more commercial ones). But actually I think oily ones are nicer for this because it’s easier to mix into the soup and also droplets of oil look nice.
6. I used big seedless lime (which probably is similar to what people outside of thailand wll use)
7. Becuse I seasoned the meat & used chicken stock I didn’t need fish sauce or sugar at the end

(Photo by Andrew Hiransomboon)