Category Archives: Thailand

by | 05/03/2011 · 11:45 am

What’s Cooking: Nam prik platu

Chili pastes, or nam prik, form one of the main pillars of a Thai meal, and of Thai cooking in general. As dip-like condiments, or krueng jim, they incorporate easily portable protein and vegetables, and are frequently the main protein source for a Thai during the day. As the base for a dish, or nam prik gaeng, they build the foundation to a curry, soup or stir-fry; they also make great de facto salad dressings and marinades. In fact, there are few savory dishes that do not incorporate some form of chili paste.

This is the condiment kind, a well-known chili dip that is the main meal for many Thai families. It is also very nutritious, using Thai mackerel (omega-3!), fresh and blanched vegetables (fiber!) and very little, if any, oil.

Nam Prik Platu (for four)

-2 pla tu, or Thai mackerel*

-4-5 red and yellow prik chee fa, chopped

-4-5 prik yuak, sliced

-10 garlic cloves

-16 halved shallots

-6 small red chilies

For fresh vegetable garnish:

-1 cucumber, peeled and sliced

-handful of savoy cabbage leaves, washed and trimmed

-2 Tbsp winged beans, cut into 1-inch sections

-3 Thai eggplants (makuea proh)

-2 Tbsp long beans, cut into 4-inch sections

For blanched vegetable garnish:

-1/2 nam thao, or green gourd, blanched, peeled and sliced

-handful of blanched morning glory (pak boong)

-handful of blanched long beans

-1 head cabbage, chopped and blanched

-1/2 head savoy cabbage, chopped and blanched

-1/2 cup chicken stock

-2 Tbsps fish sauce (plus more to taste)

-juice from 1 lime

1. Make chilies, garlic and shallots fragrant by dry-frying them (the process is called kua) in a wok or deep frying pan. Continue until the flesh begins to take on a “blackened” appearance. Take the opportunity to practice your flipping so you can show off to your friends later on and they will think you are a really great cook. (You can also kua by skewering your chilies, garlic and shallots and placing them in an oven at full whack until the flesh blisters and blackens a bit).

Your chili mixture will look like this:


2. Deflesh your fish with your fingers, taking care to catch the tiny bones in the tail section. Set aside fish flesh. It should look like this:


3. Once your chilies are fragrant, pound them in a mortar and pestle, in batches if necessary. Add fish flesh as you go along until everything is incorporated (of course, you can also whizz in the food processor, but it only serves to slice the ingredients, not crush them into oblivion. Also, why not get a great biceps workout while you’re at it?) When you are finished, the paste will look like this:


4. Add your chicken stock and 2 Tbsp fish sauce. Taste for seasoning and add more fish sauce if needed.
Your finished chili paste will look like this:


5. Just before serving, add juice of 1 lime, but if keeping for later, make sure to refrigerate (duh). Reheat and add lime juice just before serving, accompanied by fresh and blanched vegetables and rice.

*The best store-bought pla tu apparently must have a short face, crooked neck and (obviously) thick belly.

Next up: nam prik kapi, Thailand’s traditional square meal.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, fish, food, seafood, Thailand

by | 04/27/2011 · 12:51 pm

Why Food

The unseasonably wet weather and ensuing traffic snarls have put me into a meditative mood. So indulge me for a moment as I blather on like your 84-year-old great-aunt, the one who doesn’t see people very often and puts SWAT-team-level preparation into “going out”.

Because that is how I feel nowadays. My Thai has never been the greatest — conversations frequently turn into an unwieldy catalogue of what has NOT been said, a litany of all that has NOT been communicated. I am literally two-dimensional; beyond initial remarks on the weather, what to eat and where to go, I am cashed out of words, making do by playing the role of the dim-witted auntie, a role I am getting unnervingly good at.

This is leeching into my English language communication, which is fast becoming a halting negotiation of what to express and what to leave out. Interaction is Thailand is an unspoken deal: say the expected things at the right time and you will have passed. Saying something different means you have not kept up your part of the bargain. This is something that has taken me years to learn, but is somehow understood by Thais who have grown up here — just like everyone knows you don’t eat durian with alcohol, or without mangosteen, or that you don’t transport it on the Skytrain because then people will look at you like you just took a baby, a kitten and a puppy and forced them to listen to the Black Eyed Peas’s latest album. All Thais somehow know these things.

So food is a wonderful oasis for me. When you are cramming your piehole with stuff, you don’t have to talk. When your table is groaning under the weight of tasty food, people around you are happy. When you venture to talk about this dish or that, people are invariably willing to discuss it — food is a fine, happy place, where everyone loves you, as long as your plate is still full.

It’s logical, then, that I would love Restaurants of Bangkok, which offers a nifty monthly program they call “Running Dinners”. Every course — appetizer, main, dessert — is offered at a different restaurant in the same area. Despite the logistical difficulties of herding up to 20 increasingly inebriated people to different places every hour or so, it’s surprisingly well-run, and a great way to feature restaurants that are new or easily overlooked. (In the interests of full disclosure: next month’s dinner includes dessert at Maduzi Hotel, which belongs to my husband’s family.)

Blurry photo of dessert course at Philippe, taken after fourth glass of wine

But I’m an equal-opportunity gobbler (uh, duh). I obviously like to go the opposite end of the spectrum too. Sometimes you need to work a little for your food fix, just sayin (don’t you hate it when people write “just sayin?” Like, didn’t you already just say it? I see it more and more frequently, and it is almost always preceded by something semi-obnoxious — “BLAH BLAH STUPID STUPID MOUTHFART MOUTHFART. JUST SAYIN.” Blech. Okay, rant over.)

So the beef noodles on Sukhumvit Soi 16, across from the Korean restaurant, are also a wonderful refuge for the socially impaired. Beloved by office workers and motorcycle taxi drivers alike, it is the “we are the world” food stall of that particular road, where people can set aside their various color allegiances or complete and total political apathy (I’m lookin at me, Bangkok Glutton) and jostle each other for bowls of delicious beef water instead.

Options are rice vermicelli (sen mee) or thick noodles (sen yai), or no noodles at all (gow low). Open 7am-1pm, closed on Sundays. Call 087-564-9469.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, beef, dessert, food, food stalls, French food, noodles, restaurant, Thailand

by | 04/25/2011 · 4:22 pm

What’s Cooking: Gaeng liang

I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say I was a total mess after giving birth the second time. Dazed, depressed and demoralized, I struggled with things I thought were so easy as a new mother a decade earlier — changing diapers, giving baths, getting up in the morning.

This spicy vegetable soup was one of the few constants in a maze of uncertainty (“Why is he crying? Is he sick? What does he want?”) Full of nutrients and flavor, it is real Thai health food: one of the things Thai people say new mothers must eat to bring their milk in and keep their strength up. So for me, gaeng liang is the soup of retreat and renewal. It is also one of the few things that can make me sound like a spa brochure.

I based this recipe on Chef McDang’s gaeng liang in his “Principles of Thai Cookery”, which calls for pumpkin, buab (sponge gourd), bai tum lung (ivy gourd leaves) and lemon basil leaves. I swapped water out for chicken stock, grilled serpenthead fish in favor of shrimp, and added nam thao, a sort of watery green gourd. Because this soup is so rich in vegetables, you can omit the seafood altogether, but the shrimp paste is essential.

Gaeng Liang (for 4)
-300 g chicken stock
-16 shallots
-7 small green chilies
-1 Tbsp kapi (shrimp paste)*
-1/2 Tbsp white peppercorns
-2 Tbsp fish sauce
-1 tsp sugar
-2 g pumpkin, peeled and cut
-2 g straw mushrooms
-1 buab (sponge gourd), peeled and cut**
-1/2 nam thao (green gourd), peeled and cut**

Mushrooms, pumpkin and gourds


-handful of lemon basil and ivy gourd leaves

Bai maeng rak and bai thum lung


-300 g white shrimp, cleaned

1. Set chicken stock to boil over high heat.
2. While chicken stock is heating, make your soup base. Pound shallots, chilies, shrimp paste and peppercorns with mortar and pestle until semi-smooth consistency is achieved. Your chili paste should look like this:

3. Once boil is reached, add chili paste. Brace yourself; the smell can go up your nose and set off a cascade of sneezes.
4. Once boil returns, add fish sauce, sugar and veggies except for pumpkin, which gets mushy if overcooked.
5. Once boil returns, add pumpkin. Your gaeng should now look like this:

Skim foam off surface periodically as veggies boil to cut down on shrimpy smell. Leave for about 5 minutes.
6. Add shrimp but do not overstir. Add herbs and, without stirring, cover. Lower heat to medium. Leave for another 3-5 minutes.
7. Taste and, if necessary, correct seasoning. Shut off flame and leave to “marinate”. Your gaeng should look like this:

You can leave this for a day (refrigerated overnight) before eating. The kapi-heavy nam prik you so painstakingly pounded will turn the broth into a mahogany-colored, shrimpy ambrosia. Lunch the next day:

Next up: we delve deeper into the wonderful world of nam prik (chili paste) — the foundation for all Thai dishes.

*You need good-quality kapi for this to work. Chef McDang says you can roast store-bought shrimp paste until fragrant, but you can also buy the type made from small shrimp (referred to as kuey in the southern Thai dialect), which needs no pre-roasting at all.

**You may not be able to secure sponge gourd or green gourd where you live. Just in case you come across them, they look like this in their natural state:

If you can’t find these, substitute zucchini and yellow squash for the gourds, and baby spinach for the ivy gourd leaves.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, seafood, Thailand