Author Archives: Bangkok Glutton

Getting ready for som tum

It’s nearing the end of my self-quarantine period, and I have yet to do anything constructive with my time, aside from rererewatching “Friends” on Thai Netflix. So the valuable hours I could have spent making tasty batches of jam (“Friends” season 3, episode 3), learning how to ballroom dance (season 4, episode 4), brushing up on my public speaking skills (season 6, episode 4), or getting divorced (any episode with Ross) have instead been spent scrutinizing all 10 seasons of a 20+year-old television show that I never watched back when it was actually on TV, because there was a time when I was actually cool.

But there are times when even *I* tire of seeing Ross throw a hissy fit over his half-eaten Thanksgiving sandwich. Those are the moments in which I threaten to actually do something. My friend from Malaysia, Eddie, braved my potential cooties long enough to come over to learn how to make a good batch of som tum (grated Isaac-style salad) with pla rah (fermented Thai anchovies) from our super-housekeeper, Somporn.

A Roi Et native, Somporn is actually a superlative cook of just about everything, but her number one dishes, in my humble opinion, are her deep-fried chicken wings and her som tum. The chicken wings I’ll save for another day, because I am afraid of heating up the whole vat of oil necessary to make the wings (it’s just so scary!) Som tum, however, just involves the potential cutting off of one’s fingers.

Grating the green papaya the right way

We live in a time of amazing technological innovations, like the julienne peeler, which allows you to cut the long, thin strands that make up som tum. The problem with this tool is that the strands are too thin to add the kind of heft to the salad that makes it really sing. You need to cut up the papaya (or any other vegetable, because som tum can be made from pretty much anything) by hand.

Tak-tak-tak-tak goes the knife into the papaya, scoring the side of the fruit with thin vertical cuts that are then peeled off of the papaya with the knife edge pointing outward. Anything else you choose to add: in our case, carrots, a bit of Thai eggplant, maybe even a bit of tomato skin like the time when Monica did that cooking demo and said she would julienne her tomatoes. Add some cut-up long beans and a bit of lime peel and you’ve got a great approximation of what you’d get from a very good food cart.

Some things to ponder as you are making this som tum:

1. Always do this with a mortar and pestle. Make the dressing first and add the salad ingredients after. Pound with intention like you are Rachel on a break, not gently like you are Phoebe with a massage client.
2. We use tamarind juice (mixed with a few teaspoonfuls of hot water) plus the lime juice because the salad lasts longer that way. When it’s just lime juice, it gets bland more quickly, just like Chandler’s personality in season 10.
3. If you are making this to go, always add the dressing at the last minute, like when Rachel shows up at Ross’s second wedding.

Foolproof Som Tum Pla Rah (the superior som tum, in my opinion)

Ingredients 

• juice of 1 lime
• 3 Tbsps of tamarind pulp, thinned out with a few teaspoons of hot water
• 2 Tbsps of pla rah (we buy bottled, made from boiled anchovies only)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/4 Tbsp of palm sugar to even out the flavors
• Fresh bird’s eye chilies (between 2, my standard family level, to 20, the level preferred by Chef Prin Polsuk at Samrub for Thai!!!)
• Salad ingredients: Anything crunchy and julienne-able, e.g. 1/3 of a small green papaya, half of a large carrot, 3-4 plum tomatoes, handful of cut-up long beans. (It actually doesn’t have to be julienne-able either. Corn kernels are popular, as are cut-up long beans on their own. They just have to be poundable.)

Mix all the dressing ingredients together in the mortar. Taste to adjust seasoning. Then add the salad ingredients and pound with the pestle hard enough to bruise the strands (in the papaya’s case, to release some of the sap into the dressing). Mix well. Upend onto your serving dish and eat as soon as you can.

A blurry photo of the som tum. I was in a hurry

Me waiting for the end of my meal

Having recently returned from Japan, I find myself with nothing to do, having succumbed to government directives to self-quarantine for 14 days. Even though I am bored and watching episodes of “Friends” over and over again (still on Thai Netflix!), I still cannot bring myself to update my blog. The effect of SSRIs on the creative drive is real, folks.

Being at home has given me plenty of time to ponder the important questions in life. Why do young women in the prime of their lives want to wear “Mom jeans”? How did beards become so ubiquitous? What is Shawn Mendes?

But if you think this time gives me the chance to, say, finally read “War and Peace”, catch up on an Akira Kurosawa film, or learn about economics, well, you will be disappointed. These things would ultimately be enriching to my life, no doubt. But why? Why would I do this? Do I really want to spend my time this way?

So I watch, for maybe the 15th time, Ross finding out that his sister is dating his best friend (SPOILER ALERT). It is enjoyable to me. It is a big fluffy blanket to drape over myself when I want some comfort in the world. It is listening to Haim in my kitchen when I’m preparing a meal. It is a big bowl of spaghetti Bolognese, don’t ever ever hold the cheese. Is life long enough that we can spend our time doing the stuff that gives us cool points in the eyes of others instead of what we really want? Will I ever stop writing rhetorical questions? Of course the answer is no.

I am thinking about this because I had a conversation with a friend who visited Chicago recently. She went to a famous restaurant there and had the menu with wine pairings. This was, of course, a once in a lifetime opportunity. But it was a slog, and towards the middle, she wanted to quit. At the end of the meal, she realized that she hadn’t enjoyed it at all. That realization ended up making her feel bad.

At the end of the day, isn’t enjoyment ultimately — Instagram and Facebook be damned — the point of going out for dinner? You know the answer to that.

For all restaurants with fine dining pretensions (Bangkok included), a set menu is par for the course. This is the vision of the chef, after all, and as long as you are not deathly allergic to something on the plate, the vision of the chef is what you will get. The wine and liquors that accompany the courses only enhance the experience.

But that experience can often be long. And when you are prepping for a restaurant like a runner before a marathon — maybe training your stomach and tolerance with more quantities than usual, fasting for hours ahead of time so you can get your money’s worth, wearing your stretchiest pair of pants so you’re not tempted to unbutton yourself at the table  — the onus falls on you to make the most of the experience that you yourself have paid for. You become the person who is responsible for carrying out the chef’s ultimate vision: the completion of the meal by the guest in a way that frames you as grateful and amazed. Failing that, you have become the disappointment, not the chef.

Me after a many-course meal

I’m not saying that every fine dining experience for me has been a slog. Believe me, I have had plenty of life-changing meals in fine dining restaurants with set menus. But I have occasionally fallen victim to these types of meals as well. After an 18-course meal in New York, my sister claimed the restaurant was actively trying to kill us. In Paris, another 18-courser, my husband chastised me for sighing when presented with an extra tart, “compliments of the chef”. These are wonderful restaurants, with enormously talented chefs and staff, world renowned for their food and hospitality. But they were also taxing experiences to go through. They were the equivalent of an Ingmar Bergman marathon, when all you really want to do is kick back and watch “Clueless” for the 20th time; listening to Sonic Youth and Television when Lizzo is right there in your playlist; reading Proust instead of JK Rowling. “Go on,” the world says. “It’s good for you.” It’s the spinach of the soul: edifying, no doubt, but such a chore.

This is my last rhetorical question of the day: is fine dining supposed to be this way? I thought the purpose of going out was to enjoy yourself. And I’m sure plenty of people do enjoy themselves; I’m not saying everyone is the same. But for me, and for my friend at least, there are times when the culinary fiesta becomes a food marathon, a Bintan death march for the senses. In the chef’s desire to showcase the kitchen’s prowess, the only thought for the diners is how to dazzle them, not how to make them comfortable.

There is a movie that I tried to watch that I still think of a lot: Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games”. It is about intruders who come to a house and terrorize all the inhabitants. It is a cruel movie, meant to make fun of people like me who actually enjoy horror movies. In the middle, I realized that the audience is just like the terrorized family, held captive to the filmmaker, like the family is to the intruders. Unlike the poor family, the audience actually has a choice. The audience can leave. Which is what I did.

Here is where I say that not all fine dining restaurants (#notallmen) offer these types of draconian choices to their diners. Places like Paste offer a la carte options; not everyone has to do the set menu. And some set menus, like 80/20’s new summer menu, are crafted with the weather in mind, made lighter to suit the oppressive climate. It’s these kinds of options that are the way forward for fine dining patrons who, frankly, can’t hack the entirety of the chef’s unique vision. And aren’t those kinds of choices what hospitality is all about?

I can relate to George R. R. Martin right now. Not because of the insane wealth or the fact that people actually read his books, but because sometimes, like right now, I don’t feel like writing either. If I were to wait until “inspiration struck”, as I usually do (lol), then I would not be writing for a very long time.

That is, I don’t feel like writing what I’m supposed to be writing about. I could easily write 2,000 words on how the real precursor to Fall Out Boy is not punk or even goth but Sisters of Mercy, the Poppy Years, an unnatural development which ended up blurring the boundaries between all three genres to such an extent that even the makers of South Park felt it was their duty to explain.

But this is not what we are here for. We are here to discuss food. Specifically, street food in Bangkok. To be honest, I don’t feel like discussing street food in Bangkok. It’s depressing and boring. Capitalism rules, screw everyone else. The end.

So here are some photos of restaurants abroad who serve street food. Specifically, Kin Len (“eat-play”) in Seattle, a new-ish restaurant specializing in obscure (for the US) street food dishes like goong ob woonsen (steamed shrimp and glass vermicelli), khao ka moo (pig trotters on rice) and satew lin wua (beef tongue stew on rice).

Pig trotter on rice

Thai-style fresh oysters

Kin Len welcomes you

Have I exhausted my cache of photos yet? No.

Fried chicken with grilled young chili dip

In case you were confused about where you were

But wait, there’s more. I was in Chiang Mai with my parents recently, shopping for food in Warorot Market (deep-fried pork schnitzel and nam prik num at Damrong, naem (fermented pork sausage) at Anchan) and getting into arguments with tourists at Doi Suthep. Exhausted from our day, we retreated to the comforting embrace of Tubtim Grob Jae Uan (193 15 Sridonai Road, 085 041 9419, open daily 10am-9.30pm), a shophouse institution where it’s not just the tubtim grob (sticky rice flour and water chestnut mini-dumplings in coconut milk and ice) that’s popular, but just about everything else.

The namesake dish

There are other dishes you should definitely try, say my parents, including the pad Thai, a dish I would never order, and you shouldn’t either, unless the middle-aged lady with the banana clip is overseeing the kitchen, my mom says.

She always orders this with a side of Thai-style som tum (papaya salad) — but only if the guy with the dyed orange hair is making it. (If either of these people changes their hairstyle, you are screwed.)

One visit to this place and the world seems all right again. It will not bring back your yen for writing, but it will remind you why people are still willing to venture out into the open air to eat food, and sometimes that is all you need.