Category Archives: Thailand

Scraping the plate clean: the remnants of a “gra moo” (pork crackling stir-fried with herbs)

Whenever a group of people talk about the nature of Thai food, talk inevitably alights on how Thai food is “spicy” and “wild” and whatever other adjective suggests something is “too much” for foreigners. I don’t have to tell you that this drives me up the freaking wall, but I’m going to do it anyway — and tell you twice, and maybe three times. This drives me up the wall. Almost as much as when someone eats rice and curry with a fork or chopsticks (how do you keep the sauce on the rice? Drive me up the wall x2), or when someone orders something like stir-fried morning glory or thom kha gai (coconut lemongrass chicken soup), and then proceeds to bogart the entire thing themselves (it’s meant for the entire table. Drive me up the wall x3).

But one rant at a time. The origins of the myth that Thai food is too challenging for Western palates are murky, but believing in it is still considered as Thai as, well, cherishing the right to take to the streets in protest: equivalent to the French fondness for going on strike. Thai food — much like the Thai political situation itself — is too difficult, too complicated and nuanced for foreigners to understand. And, let’s face it, it’s just too spicy. Hence the need for a gatekeeper to explain it to them, to tame those culinary zigs and zags that Thais take for granted, to turn them to those neutered bowls of green curry and plates of pad Thai, things that are tailored to welcome foreigners to the bosom of Thai food instead of pushing them away. Because ultimately, Thai food — as deemed by Thais themselves — is too strange, and too “other”.

Hence the creation of parallel menus in Thai restaurants abroad, and, in essence, an entire parallel cuisine. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to a Thai restaurant in, say, Ardmore, and had a menu taken away from me by a Thai waiter, proclaiming it “not what I’m used to”, followed by a promise that they will get me something cooked for the staff. Another gatekeeper: this time in the reverse direction. But why the need for guarding Thai food like a bouncer at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District? I used to think it was a form of self-hatred, that the feeling that Thai food was too “weird” was akin to masking one’s own quirks in order to keep from scaring off a blind date. But now I think it’s something else. Real Thai food is ours, and you can’t have it. It’s too complicated and challenging because we are special snowflakes incapable of being really understood by a bunch of outsiders (aka dumbasses). To be honest, I cannot really count myself among those special snowflakes, because I have been tainted by my long stay in the West. Maybe I am being paid off by an Isaan som tum purveyor.

So the next time someone says Thai food is too “spicy” or “difficult” for foreigners, I want to ask them why the diner can’t make the decision for himself or herself? I feel like Thai food is so wide-ranging, with so many great regional variations of incredible complexity, that it’s a shame it’s being parceled up into these foreigner-friendly packages when it doesn’t need to be. I certainly haven’t had the experience of a Brazilian dissuading me from trying acaraje or a Japanese person telling me to avoid natto because it’s grody to the max. In fact, they are quite happy to let me shove fish sperm or fermented squid guts down my throat without any warning whatsoever (maybe this is just the kind of crowd I am running with). Maybe Thais — many of whom are grossed out by pla rah (fermented Thai anchovy) and sometimes even eschew fish sauce (my husband) — could cede culinary control in a similar way. It could win Thai food — a cuisine that is indeed nuanced, and varying, and detail-oriented, and special — even more fans than it already has.

“Golden bags” at the market

Occasionally, I am invited to make the odd television appearance, usually for an afternoon or so where I natter on about street food and show the host a vendor or two. These are usually fun for me because I get to eat free food. Sometimes, I get to find new places I would never have gotten the chance to see otherwise.

So when a very knowledgeable and well-respected food personality asked me to appear on a round table about Thai food, I said sure, even though it was a day after returning from New Zealand, where I spent an entire week waking up at midnight after two hours of sleep, reading books and watching the ceiling until the birds started singing. On an empty stomach, I started chugging beers. By the time the actual shooting rolled around, I was utterly, irrevocably trashed. My ensuing evening went a little something like this:

I LOVE LAMP

So it wasn’t great. But it did give me the chance to explore the Thalad Baan Mai (New House Market) at Chachoengsao, and sample the many delights hidden in plain sight just an hour’s drive (!) from Bangkok.

New House Market

There are countless steamed and rolled desserts made from palm sugar and coconut milk, killer coconut ice cream topped with shavings of fresh young coconut meat, Chinese-style dumplings stuffed with garlic chives, and maybe best of all, hor mok (fish mousse) wrapped in banana leaves and grilled instead of the usual steamed.

Grilled fish mousse

Another first: a taste of the makwit, a croquet-ball-sized round fruit that appears hard and impenetrable on the outside, and, once past its formidable shell, like an alien brain within.

The Thai fruit makwit

Thais wait for the fruit to drop from the trees, when it is almost immediately eaten before the flesh becomes pulpy and muddied by a gloopy, white film. In other words, before it gets like this:

The inside of an overripe makwit

The flavor is reminiscent of tamarind, but the texture is slippery and a bit slimy. It’s not my cup of tea. But gourmands with a taste of sweet, ripe-smelling tropical fruits would probably love this.

Close to the makwit vendor and the excellent iced coffee stand, three elderly sisters (the eldest of whom is 84) continue to cook up aharn tham sung (made-to-order) lunchtime favorites like ped pullo (stewed duck in Chinese five-spice broth) and grapao moo (stir-fried holy basil pork). And only a few meters down from them, next to the river, Raan Pa Nu (038-511-006, open 10-22) draws the most customers of everyone in the market. In a no-frills open-air dining room that extends out onto a wooden pier set over the riverside, diners get local specialties like lard na pla (stir-fried noodles in fish gravy), nam prik kai pu (crab egg chili paste dip), yum pak kood (river cress salad) and sour seafood curry (gaeng som), dotted with squares of deep-fried egg studded with tannic bitter greens.

Everything has its silver lining.

Sour curry with cha om