Bangkok Glutton

Some people go through life with certainty and purpose, their upheavals mere blips in the grand scheme of things. Others live their lives in search of the same certainty, only to realize that they have been ants scurrying on a sidewalk all this time, mere fodder for a big old foot that has descended down upon them from out of nowhere. I recently came to encounter this big old foot myself, and as tempting as it’s been to wallow in the “why?”, I find it far more useful to figure out a way into the “how?”

Part of the “how?” A trip to America that I can no longer afford! At the very least, I could gorge myself on fattening American foods, revel in the summertime bounty of Western tomatoes and corn, and ferment on foreign couches while watching heretofore-unheard-of reality TV shows. There was also the lure of the Pine Tree State — I’m talking about Maine, of course — land of L.L. Bean, abundant lobster, and improbably cold lake water in the height of summer.

Chronic Maine summer-er Gen invited friends Trude, Felice and me to an impeccably planned tour of what she called the “three sides of Maine”: the “big city”, aka twee, charming Portland (what you would get if Wes Anderson and a seagull had a baby); the islands further north along the coast close to Acadia National Park; and the deep Northern woods close to New Hampshire and Canada. After this, we would know Maine as well as anyone can possibly expect to, after only a week there.

But first, Portland. As touristy as it is, it also harbors (get that?) a great dining scene, full of earnest waiters in suspenders and tasteful lighting with wood-burning ovens. After a lobster tour where we snacked on an “afternoon tea” of $10 lobsters, we enjoyed elaborate cocktails al fresco before heading to Fore Street for dinner, when a game of “fuck, marry, kill” over rice, pasta or bread became unexpectedly heated. The next morning, we broke our fasts at a place where everyone in Portland, be they tourist or local, inevitably ends up: Becky’s, home of the lobster benedict and mammoth blueberry pancakes.

Next stop, further north along the coast, we enjoyed yet more lobster near Bar Harbour at Archie’s, where my credit card was declined:

Much is made of Maine lobster, but it is in fact not hyperbole. Unlike Canada’s attempt to claim maple syrup and Singapore’s attempt to claim all fried noodles ever made, Maine truly is awash in lobsters at summertime, when the water stays cold (believe me) and the rocky seabed and kelp keep the crustaceans well-fed and hidden from would-be predators. Even better, summertime is when these guys shed their usual carapaces for their version of “white summertime capris”, by which I mean larger and softer shells, making them easier to crack to enjoy the sweetness within. We ate them with drawn butter, but the Thai seafood sauce I had brought with me (Dek Somboon brand) was too sweet for my tastes.

That night, instead of enjoying our rented cabin’s fire-pit for which I risked my life by darting across a highway for $5 firewood, we watched “Fifty Shades Darker”, a movie that moved Trude to tears because she “couldn’t believe anyone would watch this unironically.” Needless to say, we did not do justice to Acadia National Park.

On to the next cabin, this time in Rangeley, set next to a sparkling, clear lake carved out by a glacier millions of years ago. We did not have wifi or television. How did I survive, you ask? Well, I napped, snoring my afternoons away while the others went paddle-boarding, fishing (I wasted $25 on getting a fishing license), and shriek-swimming, a novel way of navigating the icy waters and slippery rocks of Rangeley Lake.

We roasted lamb shanks and sausages, downed more ridiculously sweet corn, drank whisky like pirates and even made som tum out of a semi-green papaya obtained at Whole Foods. We cooked home fries and more pancakes for breakfast, dotted with an ample supply of the wild Maine blueberries which grow naturally in the mountains and are far sweeter than the blueberries found in Thai markets.

In the end, did I forget that I had been squashed by an anonymous giant foot from on high? No, of course not. But I did enjoy some bit of what must have served as ant heaven, at least before returning once more to reality back in Bangkok.

This recipe is my husband’s family’s cherished green curry recipe. It is served at every family gathering and more than a few funerals — indeed, at Grandma Nang’s funeral, it was seasoned with the “ganja” that relatives found in her purse and everyone had a nice, mellow time after the cremation. All of which is to say, this might be a lot different from your family’s green curry recipe. It might even look different. My chef friend Dylan refers to the ideal color of curry as “sexy green”, a lovely celadon hue that some curries boast when they are brought to the table, usually in a fancy restaurant. However, this not a “sexy green” curry. It is what Chef Andy Ricker would call a “khaki” green. To be honest, I don’t trust “sexy green” curries. They are like men who are overly groomed and wax their body hair. Why so much focus on appearance? 

You might say to yourself, “Whoa, all these words for green curry!” but the truth is, this recipe has been my own White Whale, cavorting in deep and choppy ocean waves just out of reach, only to occasionally ram me port-side unawares. Which is all to say, I have struggled with this recipe. Until I discovered the secret of the house.

Part of the curry paste is store-bought.

Yes! It’s true! There are two chili pastes in this green curry: a homemade paste and a store-bought paste. So you can say that this paste is doctored, just like how I used to doctor a jar of Ragu with extra onions, garlic, vegetables and spices and call it my own when I was 12. Except this curry is way, way more complicated (and delicious) than that spaghetti sauce.

There are three components to the curry paste: the dried spice mix, the homemade chili paste, and the store-bought chili paste. You can use any store-bought chili paste. You don’t need to worry about that part. All you need to know is that you need 2 kg of it (we’re feeding 20, you might want to adjust accordingly.)

Green curry (Gaeng Kiew Waan)

Serves 10-20 (depending on how big your eaters are)

Prep time: 5-8 hours                                  Cooking time: 45 minutes

The night before or early in the morning of:

• 2 kg beef shank, sliced against the grain
• 1.5 L coconut milk “tail” (or UHT coconut milk thinned with a little water)
• Fish sauce to taste
• Palm sugar, broken up in a mortar and pestle, to taste

In coconut milk “tail”, stew beef shank until very tender over low heat in a big pot. This could take anywhere between 5 to 8 hours. Skim fat off of the surface from time to time. Towards the end of the stewing process, season with a little fish sauce and palm sugar. Try a Tablespoon of each. When done, turn off heat and keep on the stove (or counter) next to the wok where you will be frying your chili paste.

For the spice mix:

• 2 Tablespoons coriander seeds
• 3 Tablespoons cumin seeds
• 1 Tablespoon white peppercorns (black should be fine)
• 2 nutmeg pods (or about 9 g nutmeg powder)
• 3 mace blades (or about 4 g ground mace)

While your beef is stewing, toast all ingredients in a dry pan until fragrant, then grind finely in a spice grinder. Set aside.

For the curry paste:

• 2 kg store-bought green curry paste (set aside in its own bowl)
• 5 coriander (cilantro) roots, chopped
• 3 big lemongrass bulbs, sliced
• 2 inch piece of galangal, peeled and chopped
• Rind from 1 makrut lime, sliced
• 200 g Thai shallots, peeled (or 100 g banana shallots)
• 200 g Thai garlic, peeled (or 100 g Western garlic)
• 10 green chee fah (or goat or spur) chilies, sliced
• 10 green bird’s eye chilies, stemmed

While your beef is stewing, make homemade paste. Starting with cilantro roots, pound in a mortar and pestle into a paste before add adding the next thing, one by one, continuing down the list until you get to the bird’s eye chilies. Set aside next to green curry paste. 

For finishing curry (the “cooking” process):

• 500 mL coconut cream (“hua kati”)
• 2 Tablespoons palm sugar, broken up in a mortar and pestle
• 2 Tablespoons fish sauce
• 100 g bird’s eye chilies (for garnish)
• 6 makrut lime leaves, torn (for garnish)
• 20 Thai sweet basil leaves (for garnish)

In an already hot wok over medium-low heat, add 4 ladlefuls of coconut milk from the pot of beef stewed in coconut tail next to the wok. Add both curry pastes, homemade and store-bought, to the coconut milk and stir to incorporate. Then add the spice mix and stir. As the paste dries and bubbles, continue adding more coconut milk, ladleful by ladleful, like you’re making a risotto. You continue to stir, adding a ladleful of coconut milk at a time, until the paste is “fragrant” (ie. gets up your nose). This is probably the most intuitive (ie. difficult) part of the curry-making process. You want the paste to have expanded to about 1/4 of the wok, but you don’t want too much oil separation. Stir continuously so that the paste doesn’t burn.

If your beef isn’t on a burner, put it on a burner now and turn on its heat to medium-low. Add paste to the beef and stir to incorporate. In the wok, add about half a cup of water to “clean” it out and add that to the beef as well. We don’t want to waste anything! Turn off the heat under the wok.

Now we season the curry. Add 2 Tablespoons of fish sauce and 2 Tablespoons of palm sugar, and taste for seasoning. If you like the flavor, bring the curry to a boil and add coconut cream.

Lower heat back to low. Taste for seasoning again. Then add your garnishes — chilies, lime leaves, basil — stir and turn up the heat to bring to a boil again. Then turn off the heat and you are done!

Serve with rice, kanom jeen (fermented rice noodles) and/or roti with nam pla prik (fish sauce with chilies), hard-boiled eggs, fresh bird’s eye chilies for spiceheads and maybe a cut-up lime (some people like a little squeeze for freshness).

For years, I have been dining on pork laap (it finally happened, I am spelling it differently now, because I’m seeing it more on menus and this is the only way to get me to change anything) made by Chef Surat at his wildly popular eatery Laap Ton Koi in Chiang Mai and not realizing it. It is merely a hop, skip and jump away from my parents’ house, so it is our “local”, for lack of a better word. I only realized that our local was considered the best Northern Thai-style laap in the country after watching a documentary on laap which features Chef Rat prominently, turning a plateful of raw buffalo leap upside-down to show its awesome stickiness and gooeyness (these are good traits for raw Northern Thai laap). In that same documentary, Chef Black Bulsuwan of Blackitch Artisan Kitchen tells us that the buffalos that we are dining on — entirely free-range, free of industrial hormones and chemicals — subsist on the very greens on the table that accompany our laap. In essence, a plate of laap and its accompanying greens are a “snapshot” of the health of the local forest, something that still blows my mind to this very day. You want farm to table? We can do better. How about jungle to table?

There is a certain breed of “Thai food bro” that is quick to point out and make fun of people who confuse aspects of Thai cuisine; mistaking Northern Thai-style laap and the Isan-style one is an error that is common. I am not here to do that. Indeed, there are some similarities between the laap of the Northeast and the laap of the North. They are both wildly economical and inventive, utilizing every part of the animal that they can. They demonstrate the prowess of the chef, who is responsible not only for making the laap delicious, but of butchering the animal himself. They both require a lot of heavy chopping and knife work which is tiring and strenuous. And because it requires a lot of butchering and chopping, many laap chefs are men, and the women work on the side dishes. Both are always eaten with sticky rice and a good plate of fresh greens.

Most importantly, to eat laap means that you are celebrating. It’s a time for feasting, for having fun, for getting together with your friends and family and maybe having a glass of moonshine or two. There’s a reason why all laap places, both in the North and Northeast, serve Saeng Som. Laap is an excuse for a party, even if it’s 11 in the morning.

The similarities between the two regional styles end there, however. The Isan style is bright and lighter, with bits of mint and nuttiness from roasted ground rice kernels. It can also be made up in minutes. The Northern Thai one, alas, requires more chopping (a mousse-like mince is ideal) and incorporates a lot more ingredients, including a spice mix that differs from chef to chef and is frequently (but not in Chef Rat’s case) a closely-guarded secret. This makes the laap darker (there’s also the requisite splashes of blood and the addition of innards) and more ponderous, some would even say more bitter. Some diners, not so bloodthirsty as the typical Northerner, might ask for the intestines, tripe, and other bits to be left out, but that is akin to asking the same thing of your typical hotdog sausage. In other words, it would be impossible.

Having partaken of Chef Rat’s artistry at home, my dad and I were eager to finally try it in person. We were wary of reports that people would line up for as long as three hours, but a little after 11, we found a table easily and settled in. Then we realized why people vied to be the first diners there.

Chef Rat makes every order a la minute and according to the order in which tables’ slips come in. That means the earlier you are, the quicker you get your food. It’s a system similar to what I remember Jay Fai doing (I can no longer get a table there so don’t know if that has changed), which causes a lot of consternation and envy from people who pay attention to that sort of thing (who am I kidding, that is me when I am hungry). Dining at Laap Ton Koi requires patience — not in line, but at the table.

Which makes the fried pork at the beverage vendor next door so integral to the laap experience. I don’t know which genius thought of it first, but there is nothing better than a nice 50THB plate of fried fatty pork to tide you over while you are waiting an hour for your order to arrive. It’s even better when you order two. This is the biggest tip I can give you for the dining-in experience at Laap Ton Koi.

Another tip I can give is to order two of everything. Portions are small-ish, so you can basically budget for one plate per person. The Northern Thai-style gang om that Chef Rat’s wife makes also warrants ordering two of; it is absolutely delicious and a paragon of its type.

If you are able to make it through the hour, it’s worth it. Pork laap takes longer than the buffalo version, but both go really well with the pickled makhwaen (Northern Thai peppercorns) at every table. I have to admit I became enamored with this and ate maybe half of the jar.

Yet another tip: Chef Rat’s own spice mix — makhwaen, star anise, lemongrass, galangal, cloves, small guinea peppers, long Indian peppers, nutmeg, cumin and coriander seeds — not only goes well with his own food, but with the fried pork from the beverage vendor. Trust me.

And finally, try the greens. They all do different things: the wrinkly ones make the laap sweeter; the tree-like sweet leaves tone down the spice; the pennywort-like ones amplify the flavor; the pak pai (soapy Vietnamese ones) make the flavor brighter. It’s really fun going through all the different ways these leaves affect your tastebuds, and also fun to imagine yourself as a buffalo (going through all the different ways these leaves affect your tastebuds).

All in all, the two of us had two laaps, two gang oms, two fried porks, and three (!) sticky rice orders, and considered ourselves well-fed for the kingly sum of 140 THB (not counting beverages and the fried pork). And here is where I leave you with maybe my best tip of all: at 12:30, the first rush is mostly gone and the second one is free to take their seats, so if you are not an early riser, this might be your preferred time slot to eat (like) a buffalo.