by | 01/03/2014 · 2:59 pm

My boyfriend

I haven’t told my husband yet, but I have a boyfriend. If he knew, he would be more bewildered than anything else. Actually, the boyfriend would be pretty bewildered too. Because he doesn’t know he’s my boyfriend.

I have never met the man. I have never even been in the same room with him. He plays the guitar. He is American. He is male. That is as far as I can get before I become embarrassed and can’t talk about him anymore. But I listen to him every day, while I’m running on the treadmill. That is our time.

You probably think I’m talking about John Mayer, because he is a big American guitarist who also happens to be male. No. I would rather gouge my eardrums out with rusty scissors than listen to that man on my beloved treadmill. John Mayer is greasy stir-fry left to cool on a dirty countertop while the waitress picks her toes. Sorry, if you are a John Mayer fan. Yes, I know you think he is talented.

I’m talking about this guy:

Jack White

(I did not add the photo directly to the post because Karen says that’s stealing. So you have to click on the link. Sorry).

I look through photos of him sometimes to calm me, when I am procrastinating from doing something vitally important. My editor is really pleased about that. Jack White is probably the reason why my book will never be published. That is OK with me. I have several “favorite” photos. One is my absolute favorite because he is staring at the camera with the same skeptical expression I imagine he would use if he ever actually met me. Like he is a heartbeat away from calling security.

But my friends do not share this love for Jack White. When I show Karen a particularly fetching one of him holding a red umbrella, I get this reply via text:

KAREN: He looks like he’s on his period.

Oh, Karen. Maybe it’s a good thing we have vastly different tastes on these matters. She is an aberration, an outlier. But then I show my friend Patrick a photo over dinner, because I am back to being 11 years old and boring my friends at the lunch table about Duran Duran.

Patrick puts on his best Miss Marple voice: “After my womyn’s studies seminar I’ll go pick up Lily in the Subaru and head to the kd lang concert,” he says. This is utterly baffling. Last time I checked, Jack White seemed very male. In fact, his complete lack of enthusiasm for wearing underwear is one of the things that bothers me about him, if for no other reason than the fact that we all now know that he dresses to the left (does that mean he is a liberal?)

I feel like we are in an Alice in Wonderland world where Justin Bieber is a real catch and Adam Levine is a major league heartthrob who is not creepy in the slightest. What is going on? Why are people going on about things that are obvious and completely, utterly simplified, the tom yum noodle versions of humanity? There is no subtlety in a bowl of tom yum noodles. It doesn’t really require a lot of extra work to do well. Sometimes, all you need are the tom yum seasonings from a pack of instant noodles added to a bit of pork broth, and there you have it. Britney Spears in a bowl.

For my money, when I go anywhere, it’s all about yen ta fo. If you read here regularly, you already know about my fondness for them, but they really are my favorite soup noodles in the world — more than snoretastic pho, more than tired old ramen, and don’t even get me started on those poseur minced pork noodles, the Fall Out Boy of street food. Yen ta fo is hard to describe: plain rice noodles dressed up in a pork broth-based sauce liberally touched with red fermented tofu and chilies, pork and fish meatballs, bits of squid and congealed pig’s blood, and a whole handful of blanched morning glories. The very best bowls have deep-fried bits of pork crackling and garlic as garnishes. Through some strange culinary alchemy, these ingredients should all combine into a melange that is somehow spicy-tart-salty, and only a little bit sweet. Every bite shows something different, depending on what you get. It’s not always perfect or even good, but then again it’s not about making choices that are easy or simple.

Yet this all gets described on most menus as “red seafood noodles” or “pink noodles in sauce.”

An exemplary bowl of yen ta fo

An exemplary bowl of yen ta fo

 

The best bowl, the one I go to the most frequently when I want this dish, is Guaythiew Pik Gai Sai Nampung on Sukhumvit 20/1 (the alleyway between Sukhumvit Sois 20 and 18). This place is actually known for its chicken wing noodles, which can be too salty for some (present-day Eddie Van Halen). I prefer the “red seafood”, which may not, at first glance, look like what you’ve been waiting for, like that thing that will see you through an hour and change on the treadmill every day. But that just means that there’s more for me.

 

7 Comments

Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, food stalls, noodles

by | 12/20/2013 · 2:52 pm

Markets: Thalad Baan Mai in Chachoengsao

"Golden bags" at the market

“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

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

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

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

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 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

Sour curry with cha om

 

 

9 Comments

Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, Thailand

by | 12/06/2013 · 3:38 pm

Fantasy noodles

Clear broth fish noodles at Raan Lao Sa

Clear broth fish noodles at Raan Lao Sa

I have been even more useless than usual for the past week, because I am three years behind everyone else and have just started to get curious about this “erotic” book series where the romantic leads are an emotionally distant, manipulative weirdo and the needy, nondescript girl who worships him. No, not that one. The other one. The 50 Shades one. Mind you, I am not reading the book. I refuse to spend a single red satang on a book that is actually based on the other book but no one wants to admit it or even say it out loud. That is like having lunch in a crowded restaurant where someone at the table keeps farting and everybody still resolutely shoves food into their mouth-holes, even though farting at the table is absolutely disgusting. This is the best analogy I can muster for this book’s denial of that other book.

No, I am reading the recaps of the book, because this is the kind of world we live in now, where I can be completely immersed in the recaps of a book instead of in the actual book itself. The recaps I’m referring to are written by author Jenny Trout, and they are freaking brilliant, and have saved me from more than a couple of rage-strokes, as well as around $21 (not including shipping). Thank you, Jenny Trout.

My favorite observation of hers is when she notes the guy’s obsession with making sure the heroine cleans her plate every time they eat, going so far as to order everything for her himself. Of course, this isn’t interpreted as horrifyingly-creepy-borderline-serial-killer behavior at all. This man is just so full of concern for her, yinz guys. Why doesn’t a manly man who obviously knows better order my food for me? Oh yeah, because then I would be having my mug shot taken at the police station, having slammed his face into the tabletop 1,000 times. Seriously, don’t $%&* with my food. Which leads me to the next point: this dude is all about getting his lady to eat. Eat, eat, eat. Eat more! Just eat. They even have fights about it, where she’s all, nah, I’m a lady, so I never feel like eating, even though I’m hungry, and he’s all, this is for your own good, you’ve lost too much weight, eat it now. This is where the fantasy part comes in — because ladeez never be eatin’ enough, amirite? Ladeez always bein’ too skinny and shit. Get some meat on your bones, ladies! That’s all society wants! No wonder people read these books.

There is room in everyone’s life for some fantasy, but it’s still fantasy. Such as, say, television that will make you smarter. Or a billionaire 27-year-old into BDSM who is waiting to be healed by the love of a good woman. Or … fish noodles with plenty of flavor (segueway time). Because as lovely as fish noodles can be, the flavor they leave you with is most usually described as “subtle” or “delicate”, the kind of flavors that don’t necessarily blow you away, but leave you — if you’re lucky — comfortably sated and slightly smug, because you’ve just crammed your maw with lovely light fish instead of yucky, fat-laden beef or pork. As you might be able to tell, I’m not really crazy about fish noodles. I’ll eat them if they’re there but I won’t go out of my way for them. I guess I’d eat them if Christian Grey ordered them for me and I didn’t have the energy to murder him.

But at Raan Lao Sa, these noodles are good. Like, really good. As in, don’t-have-to-add-anything-to-the-broth good. Like every other Thai person on earth, I think I have the power to make a dish magically better by adding my own special blend of sugar, chilies and peanuts that is somehow better than everyone else’s and elevates that lowly bowl of noodles to the next level. So if I don’t add anything to a bowl, it’s a big deal.

Lao Sa is on the corner of Sunthon Kosa Road, at the Na Ranong intersection, next to the Klong Toey market and the big Rama IV-New Rachadapisek intersection. The sign is a big red and white one  that looks like this:

photo-271

Bowls go for 30-40 baht, depending on size, and the number of different permutations is considerable; you can mix and match between noodles (thick, little, vermicelli, giem ee or Chinese-style spaetzle, Shanghai or green mung bean noodles, or sen pla, noodles made entirely from fish), meatballs (white fish, rugby-sized fish, fried fish, shrimp, fish wontons, crispy wontons, and euaguay, flat slices of meatball that are either steamed or fried), and broth (sai or clear, tom yum, yen ta fo, or a beguiling mix of tom yum and yen ta fo).

I had clear fish broth with thin noodles and mixed meatballs, and unable to stop myself, fishmeat noodles in a tom yum or spicy lemongrass broth. They were both delicious, and even mitigated the fact I stomped full-on into a puddle of stanky water on the way there. Watch where you step! And clean your plate.

8 Comments

Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, food stalls, Thailand