by | 03/06/2014 · 5:47 pm

Touring the Old Town

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Chin’s pomelo salad

(Photo courtesy of Chili Paste Tours)

I don’t often give street food tours. Don’t get me wrong — I like getting out and about and meeting people — but if I do go with someone, it’s more of a walk-a-long to somewhere I’m trying out anyway, because I’m not sure I’m a very good guide. The thought of charging for an experience that may or may not be useful to someone is very fraught for me. I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED, OKAY?

So when I went on my own Bangkok food tour, it was an interesting change of pace for me. Recommended by the talented Anne Faber, Chili Paste Tour (www.chilipastetour.com) is a name that frequently springs to mind when people ask me for street food tour recommendations. Because I have mentioned them a couple of times, Chin — the tiny powerhouse behind Chili Paste — generously offered to take me to her favorite food stops. This was an incredible windfall for me, since these stops fall in my favorite part of town: the loop from Pra Arthit Road bypassing Rachadamnern Avenue, up through the Chinese Swing, and onto Tanao Road.

Now, I like to think I have fairly delineated tastes, meaning very few things are neutral to me. I like to think that I can be picky, but fair. I also like to think that I’m nice and that if I don’t like something, it doesn’t show, but my husband has just told me that I’m an abject failure at that. In other words, I can be a raging bitch. But Chin, while managing to veer nowhere near Bitchtown, is even more exacting, and really knows her food: she frequently spends entire afternoons sampling the offerings of vendors in nearby towns, trying to find a suitable place to take her charges. A famous som tum place is dismissed for being too “sweet”; a widely lauded Thai lunch spot is “bland”. Almost everyone is guilty of too much MSG. So when Chin likes a place, I feel like it must really be good.

First up: Chin’s favorite restaurant, Krua Sam Hom at Praeng Puthon Square. This road may sound familiar to you because of the perennial tourist favorite, Chote Chitr, which is close to the entrance from Tanao Road. Krua Sam Hom is a little further in, on the right hand side, directly across from the “park” that forms the square.  It is, like most of the places in that neighborhood, surprisingly empty. But that ends up being a blessing, since Chin commandeers the kitchen (she takes a lot of people here), gathering ingredients for a spicy pomelo salad, the recipe for which she has loaned below. She is a whirlwind of instructions and information: the best pomelos come from Samut Songkhram and Nakhon Pathom; good nam prik pao (roasted chili paste) can be bought at Aor Thor Kor; she adds fresh orange segments from a particularly tart type found only in Samut Songkhram. And other stuff: how many modern Thai stir-fry cooks rely on margarine to add color and sheen to their creations, at the expense of aroma; to always have pomegranate juice vendors squeeze their juice in front of you, because many bulk up their bottles with cheaper watermelon juice.

We also get a beautiful plah goong, a prawn salad blanketed in minced lemongrass, mint, shallots and kaffir lime leaves and a stir-fry of morning glory and chilies. There is also a gaeng som (sour soup) with more prawns and squares of acacia leaves battered in egg, its rich red color courtesy of polished red chilies hand-picked by the chef, who keeps the discards in a plastic bag by the stairs.

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Krua Sam Hom’s gaeng som

Now, being a Glutton is my thing and all, and I really thought I might end up going home hungry, but that was foolish. After lunch, a stop at what is probably still Bangkok’s most famous ice cream shop, Nuttaporn: mango and coconut were especially recommended. Then, an iced coffee at the corner with the possibility of 12 baht pork noodles on Dinsor Road looming on the horizon and … I was stuffed. Stuffed like an 18-course meal at Eleven Madison Park (where I was convinced they were trying to kill us) stuffed. What can I say? We all have our limits.

Chin’s pomelo salad (for two)

– 5 pomelo segments

– 1/2 som kaew (glass oranges from Samut Songkhram)

– 1 Tbs roasted chili paste

– 1 Tbs peanut powder

– 1 Tbs dried coconut

– 3 Tbs palm sugar mixed with tamarind juice

– 1 Tb fish sauce (more to taste)

– 1/2 lime (more to taste)

– 5-6 dried chilies

– 1 Tbs roasted peanuts

– 1 Tbs fried shallots

– 4 cooked shrimp

– 3 fresh bird’s eye chilies

– 3 Tbs lemongrass, minced

– 2 tsp granulated sugar (to taste)

1. Mix roasted chili paste, peanut powder, palm sugar/tamarind juice, fish sauce, lime, fresh chilies, lemongrass and granulated sugar to form dressing.

2. Add citrus segments, squeezing them a bit to add juice to the dressing.

3. Garnish with shrimp, coconut, shallots, dried chilies and whole peanuts.

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Mango and coconut ice creams at Nuttaporn

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by | 02/24/2014 · 2:47 pm

Isaan foodie haven

Fish grilled in a salt crust at Jay Dang

Fish grilled in a salt crust at Jay Dang

It’s official: I’m in worry for my second book, which threatens to be stillborn in Singapore. It’s hard for me to point fingers, since it is supposedly all my fault. Remember that time when I thought signing a book contract and handing over control meant I could sit back and let other people do the work? Remember that? That was foolish, me. At least there is my non-existent writing career to fall back on. Silver linings!

Let’s look at more silver linings. Such as: a movie like Pompeii 3D exists. My lack of social life means I can finally grow a beard, just like I always dreamed of. And that there are still little pockets of unique, special foodie-dom in Bangkok, existing in spite of jams and disturbances and disorders. Hanging in there until the commotion dies down. In some cases, thriving.

Example: the Isaan neighborhood on Petchburi Road, next to Ratchathewi intersection and across the street from the mosque on Soi 7. Dwight Turner of bkkfatty.com told me about this place first; later, the very talented Isaan artist Maitree Siriboon took me here when I asked him where he ate when he got homesick. By day, it’s a grimy, slightly down-at-heel working class neighborhood where you’d expect to see a lot of hubcaps sold. At night, though, the strip suddenly lights up and the people come out like Isaan food-loving vampires, basking in the dusk and the neon lighting of the restaurant signs as they are switched on: Jay Orn, Jay Goy, Jay Dang. There may be a Loong (or “Uncle”) sandwiched in there somewhere.

But the aunties are the big ones, the favorites of the diners here — either transplanted Isaaners like Khun Maitree, or chili-seeking junkies like me. In that respect, this place doesn’t disappoint: hot, hot grated papaya salads peppered with pickled crab and sprinkled with fermented Thai anchovy juice; steaming vats of soup sporting an abundance of chicken feet, bright orange in its toxicity and nicknamed thom super (“super soup”). There are strips of pork liver and minced pork or chicken meat dressed in a spicy-tart dressing and a shower of mint leaves. And, if spice isn’t really your thing, there are old favorites like grilled chicken, sliced pork collar, and snakehead fish cooked over an open flame, stuffed with lemongrass stalks and kaffir lime leaves and coated in a salt crust so that when the skin is split open, the flesh stays wonderfully fragrant and tender. There is nothing like this dish when it is done right.

A shame about the dancing shrimp: live baby shrimp that are drizzled in a tart-spicy Isaan-style dressing and served to you, as is. It is baab (a sin) to eat them, as you are causing the suffering of untold little animals, but the experience — while horrifying — is unparalleled by anything else in Thai food. When I asked about this dish last week, and the tanks that used to be at every cooking station, they all said the protests had made bringing fresh live shrimp to Petchburi impossible. Good or bad? As with everything else, my feelings are mixed.

 

 

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by | 02/14/2014 · 3:01 pm

Glutton Abroad: Soup’s on

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei in Tokyo

Fetishizing food is encouraged in Japan. Much like how having an opinion on the best chicken rice or egg noodle in Bangkok lends you social currency among a certain set in Bangkok, the genuine appreciation of a certain dish or ingredient — in the right season, of course — is considered cultured, even necessary. Knowing about this stuff seems to be part of what being Japanese is all about.

So it’s not surprising that I always enjoy my trips to Japan … even though I almost always end up committing some horrible faux pas on some poor unsuspecting Japanese person (people). Once, as a guest in a holiday house with its own onsen bath, I was offered the opportunity to bathe first. Now, I’m not a total idiot: I knew I would have to sit on a teeny tiny stool and clean myself out in the cold before actually going into the bath, which was very hot and the size of a baby pool. But maybe pulling the plug after I got out wasn’t such a great idea. They had to fill it all back up again with new water after I left the room. To this day, they have never mentioned the appalling thing I did (and I’ve never mentioned it either. Call it a game of embarrassment chicken). That level of politeness also seems to form a part of being Japanese.

One of my favorite dishes to search out when I go to Tokyo is ochazuke, which is rice served with whatever topping you feel like (raw fish, pickles, or fish eggs are common) and broth on the side. You yourself decide how soup-y (or mushy) you want your porridge (I don’t like too much broth). Rice porridge doesn’t sound like it would set many hearts a-flutter, and not many people order it outside of Japan, but to me there is no better lunch (if you are wondering, Aoi in Bangkok serves versions topped with pickled plum, salmon, baby sardines or spicy fish roe). I could eat it every day: with a different topping for each day of the week, of course.

It’s not a hard dish to get right, but it’s a difficult dish to really excel at. Which is why I think the taichazuke (sea bream porridge) at Chikuyotei (5-8-3 Ginza, across the street from Mitsukoshi and next to Nissan) is so exceptional. The morsels of fish are freshly sliced and then left to “marinate” for a bit on a tangy sesame sauce spiked liberally with sesame seeds and strips of nori seaweed. There is a big bowl of rice and pickles, and the all-important kettle of broth. It’s simple but deceptively disarming. I blame the sesame sauce.

A pity I’ve been eating it wrong all these years. Apparently, you are supposed to “savor” the delicate taste of the fish in the sauce with the dry rice before drowning all those poor rice grains in fish broth and your grody drool drops and then pouring that mishmash down your open face hole. Oh well. The long-suffering ladies who serve here must deal with this kind of stuff all the time (not really. I never see any gaijin there).  They also serve a raw tuna version that is less good, but more substantial, for those days when you really want to pig out without looking like you are pigging out (or you can just suck it up and order oomori, or a large-sized portion). Really, these triumphs in the art of rice porridge cookery are not bad for a restaurant that supposedly specializes in unagi (eel). Yay, porridge!

A great surprise, then, that the culinary wasteland known as Narita Airport also boasts its own ochazuke restaurant, in the “mall” adjacent to the check-out counters — a place I never go to normally because I am usually so late getting to the airport. Wasting your entire day at Narita might be worth it, if only for the 15 minutes that it takes to find Dashi Chazuke En, order your porridge at the counter (they also have their own raw tuna and sea bream versions, as well as fish eggs, pickles, and a cold version topped with thinly sliced pickled cucumber), and slurp that whole shebang down your throat before your waitress even knows what’s up. Sure, it’s the “poor man’s” chazuke, the Joan Collins to Chikuyotei’s Liz Taylor, but who on earth is choosy at the airport?

Dashi Chazuke En's raw tuna porridge

Dashi Chazuke En’s raw tuna porridge

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Filed under Asia, food, Japan, porridge