Bangkok Glutton

I remember my occasional visits to Thailand in the summers of my high school years. These were meant to be earnest explorations of my roots, but ultimately ended up as half-assed hijackings of my long-suffering relatives’ lives. One summer, the relatives saddled with my presence were the family of my father’s older sister, then head librarian at Chulalongkorn University. Every weekday, I would brave the traffic with my aunt, sitting down in a desk in front of her office to write abstracts on various books. This was the extent of my foray into “Thai culture”.

When I was not at the university with my aunt, I was in her home, eating dinners that were obviously made up of Thai food. Occasionally, my relatives would take pity on me and bring home pasta from a “farang” restaurant like 13 Coins or The Carlton. These pasta dishes were invariably based on the recipe for “pad macaroni”, even when they featured spaghetti.

Now, those were the days of restaurants like Paesano, with its famous salad of sliced tomatoes topped with Kraft cheese slices and a sprinkling of dried Italian seasoning, and the heyday of The Cup, home of the Caesar salad made with a clear, lime juice-based dressing. Pan Pan was but a twinkle in an Italian expat’s eye, and pasta was a no-brainer, made quite simply with “sauce makuea tet” — literally, “tomato sauce” but in real-life terms, “ketchup”. In fact, all pasta sauces at the time were based on ketchup mixed with margarine or butter, in which the protein of your choice — ham, seafood, minced meat, hot dogs — would be as generously coated as the chef’s chosen noodle. There was no carbonara, bolognese, alfredo; those things would arrive with the advent of Pan Pan. There was only “macaroni” or “spaghetti”.

Now, I have a lot of negative things to say about where I grew up, but none of them have to do with food. Specifically, Italian food. My hometown, New Castle, had long been known as the town with the most people of Italian descent per square mile outside of Italy. Restaurant and family tables were heaving with smelts, lasagne, cavatelli, braciole, pasta fagioli, and most deliciously, wedding soup, incomplete without an egg-and-cheese crust. So I thought I knew pasta. And these ketchup-coated monstrosities were not it.

I begged my aunt to take me to the grocery store, which in those days meant a trip to Villa, because most grocery stores did not have the ingredients that I deemed good enough for my spaghetti. I got imported pasta from Italy and expensive olive oil. I bought balsamic vinegar for no reason. I got Parmesan cheese — the shakey shakey kind that was the only kind available. I got basil (this was Thai). And I got tomatoes, onions, and garlic, because I was making this shit from scratch.

People, even now, like to complain about Thai tomatoes, charging Thais with not understanding them. It is true that real Thai-bred tomatoes are typically a different breed (literally, duh), tough and some would say rubbery on the outside, tart, watery and acidic within. When you make a sauce out of these tomatoes, they naturally pass those innate qualities on to the sauce. After forcing my cousins to a home-cooked spaghetti meal of “my pasta”, my cousin Boyd said, “This definitely does not taste like ketchup.” We finished the meal. I did not cook again that summer.

It took me almost 50 years to learn to appreciate Thai tomatoes. No, they are not the same kind that sprout up in the volcanic ash on Mt. Vesuvius, so sweet and juicy that no cooking is required to make a good sauce. They aren’t even the beefsteak tomatoes of an American summer, bursting when you bite into them like apples off the vine. They are plum tomatoes, a little oblong like San Marzanos, but that is where the resemblance ends. They are bred for yum salads, for som tum, as sour little punctuation marks in a fatty curry like gang phet ped yang, or as part of a flavor chorus in a soup like tom yum. As with all Thai ingredients that begin with the syllable “ma” (“manao”, or lime; “mamuang”, or mango; “magorg”, or water olive), their point is their acidity. They are not meant to coat pasta. Ketchup is.

Today, I appreciate the occasional ketchup pasta. Maybe this is because I’m sort of from Pittsburgh. Or maybe it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in Asia at this point, and I now understand (a little better) how people adapt their food to their surroundings. Ketchup is not the culinary equivalent of a gaudy golden toilet. It’s not even the Asian food equivalent of an American dousing his well-done steak in ketchup. It’s a piece of history, harkening back to the mid-1900s when post-war Asians began to learn about American food. It’s a tribute to a different time, when we were all younger and more innocent (or not even born). So when Chef McDang told us that he used to enjoy the occasional “pad macaroni” as a child at teatime in the palace, we got to thinking about pad macaroni again (as well as khao pad American, but that’s a different post).

I made it at home. I used leftover pasta, because that’s the point of this dish. I used whatever luncheon meat I had in my fridge at the time. I did buy a green bell pepper from the nearby Fuji though. I just can’t imagine pad macaroni without it.

Serves 2 (if a one-dish meal) to 4

Prep time: 10-20 minutes                        Cooking time: 5 minutes

• 4 oz (120 g) short pasta of your choice, cooked 2 minutes shy of package instructions (or leftover pasta)
• 2 Tablespoons unscented oil
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• ½ green pepper, chopped
• ½ white onion, roughly chopped
• 1 small carrot or ½ large carrot, peeled and chopped into pieces of roughly uniform size
• 1 tomato, cut into wedges
• 4 slices of luncheon meat of your choice, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 egg
• White pepper (optional)

For sauce:

• 3 Tablespoons ketchup
• 3 Tablespoons Sriracha (Thai, preferably. If making for children, omit this ingredient)
• 3 Tablespoons Maggi or Golden Mountain sauce

If not using leftover pasta, set a pot of salted water to boil and cook pasta according to package instructions, but stopping shy by 2 minutes of recommended cooking time (for most pasta, package instructions say 6-8 minutes, so that would be 4-6 minutes, the extent of the math that we will do for you).

In a small mixing bowl, combine ketchup, sriracha (if using) and Maggi or Golden Mountain sauce until well mixed.

When pasta is cooked, take out of the pot and drain well. In a big frying pan or wok (this is important), heat vegetable oil or other unscented oil and add your vegetables: green pepper and carrot or whatever, onion, and, to be really true to Chow’s memories of this dish, tomato wedges. The wedges are only cooked when the skin starts peeling off.

Add butter and garlic, mix well. Add luncheon meat and repeat the mixing procedure. Push everything off to one side and crack your egg; allow the whites to set a little bit, then scramble into the mixture until well incorporated.

Add your pasta and the sauce. Make sure everything is coated with the sauce. Once you’ve achieved this coating, you are finished. Find a plate that reminds you of your grandma (even if your grandma wouldn’t come within 10 feet of this dish) and decant onto the plate. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of white pepper if you like.

(All photos by Lauren Lulu Taylor)

I should probably be embarrassed to write this, but I had no idea that there was a travel advisory on the three southernmost provinces of Thailand. Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat have all experienced some sort of unrest since 1948, incidents which have grown more numerous since 2001. I even went down to the border to report on it, back when my then-employer was trying to make me feel better for having such a mind-numbingly boring job. But, 20 years later, I thought that things had simply “gotten better” somehow, because I was too ignorant and lazy to hear about anything bad happening since then. So this is what it feels like to be an undecided US voter, I think as I type this. They really do exist and aren’t lying just to get on CNN.

Blithely unaware, I recently dragged Lauren to Pattani during our research trip for our next cookbook, even though our government website urges us to “reconsider travel” there. OTOH, it’s only an hour and a half drive from Hat Yai, and it has great food. Hmm, I ponder. Great food, or possible danger?

After a mammoth road trip in which we are kept from eating for a full 90 minutes, we break our fast at Moksu Soup Chormalee (138 ถนนยะรัง Chabangtiko, Mueang Pattani District, Pattani 94000), a friendly open-air place that is filled with locals, all of whom look surprised to see us. We are with our Thai friends Frank and Oui, and I am frequently mistaken for a real Thai, but there is something about us that signals our outsider status (or maybe it’s just Lauren). In any case, we are treated warmly and order two large steaming bowls of tart and spicy oxtail soup, accompanied by a nice plate of kai yat sai, an omelette stuffed with minced chicken.

But wait, there’s still lunch to be had. Only a couple of hours later, we descend on the charming outdoor Roti de Forest (V6HX+F2W, Rusamilae, Mueang Pattani District, Pattani 94000), where all of the cooks and servers look to be my daughter’s age at most and the large video screen is playing a movie in which giant frogs are threatening to eat a small town.

The savory roti is delicious, tissue paper-thin and accompanied by a light-on-the-meat red curry that is still toothsome in spite of that.

But there’s also a HUGE selection of sweet roti — chocolate sauce, bananas, caramel, a mountain of whipped cream, sweet egg yolk floss, or just old-fashioned butter and sugar and a dash of condensed milk — whatever you can think of. This is our real cultural heritage; although many countries throughout Asia eat roti with curry, only Thailand douses it in whatever is sugary and calls it a day!

At the end, the meal comes to 400 baht total, including our Southern Thai-style “cha chak”s, poured for us by yet another amiable teenager.

All the same, dinner is what I’m most excited about, and rightly so — we had to actually make reservations! Kama Khao Yum Racha (ถนนนาเกลือ ซอย 3 Anoru, Mueang Pattani District, Pattani 94000) has actually received its fair share of national attention, thanks to its delicious grilled local fish, brushed with coconut milk and tamarind to a golden sheen; its lasae, thick fermented rice noodles accompanied by coconut milk, yeera blossoms, green beans and bean sprouts; its stir-fried pad mee noodles with shrimp; and of course, its namesake dish, khao yum, accompanied by a handy little basket of ingredients you can mix into it, like green peppercorn, boiled eggs and chilies.

The price after we’ve stuffed our bellies full of local goodies? 267 baht.

The evening ends as we imagine most evenings to end in Pattani, with more cha chak.

At the crack of dawn the next morning, we make one last stop before we swing north for a 4-hour drive to Khanom. Open at 6am, Nasi Dakae di Fathoni (073-312-646) specializes in, well, nasi dakae, rice seasoned with dried shrimp and coconut, paired with a thick slice of mackerel, boiled egg, banana pepper, and a side of red curry. This is a breakfast that can only be found in southernmost Thailand (although I’m told Usman on Sukhumvit 22 in Bangkok also serves it) and, if you’re in Pattani, it can only be bought before 8:30am, when they usually run out.

I’m not saying ignore your government’s travel advisories to run down south for this dish (don’t sue me!), but I would say, if you were ever to, like, find yourself in the vicinity of Hat Yai, a quick jaunt down south at the crack of dawn probably wouldn’t be the worst thing you could do. And if you were to, say, get a flat tire, necessitating a stay there for around 24 hours, there could be worse uses of your time.

Just saying, I type before calling my lawyer.

I like to say that Isan food is the Platonic ideal when it comes to cooking: big flavors coaxed out by fairly minimal effort. Well, I’m now here to tell you that this is all bullshit. When you are on the banks of the Mekong River and hauling your own water in buckets — not to mention all of the produce, chicken and fish that you’ve impulsively bought at the nearest market — you are exerting plenty of effort. There is a charcoal brazier to set up. There are plates to somehow rustle up out of thin air. There is sticky rice to steam. And of course, there are all those veggies to wash.

As for the plates, no worries: Chin of Chili Paste Tour has kindly purchased a stack of bai goong for us to eat on, anchored by great handfuls of sticky rice as Buddha intended.

We even have another “main” dish planned, as our friends from the riverside village of Woen Boek (roughly, “full of fish”) brought bagfuls of Mekong River fish of all persuasions, including tiny silver fish meant to be steamed inside of a bamboo container over an open flame with a chili paste and more herbs.

And, of course we have dessert covered, in the form of orange mangosteen-like fruits that Chin purchased at the spur of the moment on the side of the road. Have we ever tasted them before? Hell no! But we did learn that they were called bakyang.

Little did I know, there is a reason why gang om — the super-herbal soup made with pork or beef or chicken or, really, anything you can find — is a celebratory dish, served alongside larb (spicy minced meat salad) for village parties. It’s not that it’s particularly complicated, but it does require care and maybe even a little verve. There’s a chili paste to pound, herbs to layer, and protein to cook on the bone to ensure it doesn’t dry out. There’s slaving over a hot, steaming vat of goodness to make sure the flavors are all right, even after the Mekong River breezes dry up under the midday sun. There are curious cows to shoo away and rocks to pick out of your Birkenstocks. This is back-breaking work.

First, there’s the chili paste to pound. In this part of town, exactly where the Mekong River and Mun River meet, and where the two colors (the Mekong’s brown and the Mun’s dark blue) used to meet but not mix before a huge Chinese dam turned the Mekong the same shade of blue, bird’s eye chilies are not enough. Here, we use kalieng (Karen) chilies, bumpier and fatter than the bird’s eye, but also twice as hot. A handful of those go into a clay mortar along with a pinch of salt, and I am given a wooden, som tum-style pestle that is not really suited to pounding chili pastes, but here we are by the river and beggars can’t be choosers.

Here’s my one and only useful Thai food tip: when you are making chili paste and you need to really make it into a paste, pound it ingredient by ingredient. Make sure it’s a paste before you move on to the next ingredient. That way, you can ensure that everything is pulverized equally.

This is not the way the chili paste ingredients are presented to me. Everything — shallots, lemongrass, galangal, chilies and salt — has already been placed in the mortar, and lightly bruised as if we are at a spa and the ingredients are getting a foot massage. It’s up to me to mash everything, and so I set to it with serious intent. In fact, I am so serious about it that I break the mortar; only the bottom of the mortar, thank goodness, so that there’s a small hole at the bottom and only a little bit of the paste is lost.

This paste is meant to go into a pot of water, into which we also add the chicken, some cubed pumpkin, quartered Thai eggplants, chopped green onions, and halved bottle gourds (and their flowers). That will be set to stew along with the aromatics: dill, makrut lime leaves, pla rah (fermented fish sauce) and, mistakenly, some soy sauce. We leave this pot along for a little while. But my work isn’t done.

Breaking the mortar has convinced everyone that I am meant to be pounding chili pastes, for the rest of all eternity. Somehow, another clay mortar is produced, but sadly not a different pestle. I am given the same ingredients to pound (my way this time) for the fish in the bamboo container, and then a nam prik ki gaa (crow’s poo chili dip) to pound, this one with, of course, Karen chilies. We start with chilies and a little salt, add some shallots, some pla rah, a couple of dashes of fish sauce, and (gasp!) some brown sugar to fight the heat. I manage to keep the second mortar intact.

After about half an hour, the chicken is surely cooked through and the veggies are soft. We taste for seasoning and agree that it tastes great, even though I mistakenly added soy sauce. I am then asked to add more water as the level is too low, but not to adjust the seasoning (pro tip: adjust the seasoning). While we are doing this, our villager friends are grilling more river fish.

Finally, it is time for lunch, once the gang is deemed completely finished. We decant our stew into a another bamboo container, with the water at the perfect level for gathering up the goodness with a ball of sticky rice and a thumb. It’s herbal and fresh and (if we say so ourselves after cooking al fresco for a few hours), utterly satisfying.

We spend the rest of the day as we’re supposed to: on woven mats, dining on fish with stew and plenty of fresh greens and sticky rice. We don’t even turn (too much) of a stink eye on the bakyang, which do not taste like mangosteens, but like water olives that are very, very sour. It is a good, if somewhat tiring day. When we finally make it back to our hotel, having rebuffed attempts to lure us to a 2-hour hike, Lauren and I agree: this recipe is definitely going into the book.

Gang Om

• 4 chicken thighs/legs, cut into 2 pieces each to make 8 pieces
• 5-10 chilies
• 2 shallots, peeled and chopped
• 2 lemongrass bulbs, bruised
• 2 inches galangal, peeled and cubed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 green onions, chopped
• 2 small bottle gourds or 1 zucchini, chopped
• 3 Thai eggplants, quartered, or 2 handfuls of regular eggplant, chopped
• 2 cups of pumpkin or squash, peeled and cubed
• 1 handful of dill, stemmed
• 4-6 makrut lime leaves, central stems removed and torn
• 2 Tablespoons pla rah (fermented fish sauce) or regular fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• Water or chicken broth to cover ingredients (about 3-4 cups)
• 3 lemongrass bulbs, chopped
• 2-3 Tablespoons of khao kua (toasted rice kernels, powdered) (optional)

First, make your paste. Pound chilies in a mortar and pestle with 1 tsp salt. When chilies are well mashed, add shallots, then continue with the process on through to lemongrass and galangal. Make sure everything is well pounded before adding the next paste ingredient. Stop after galangal and set aside.

In a stockpot with a lid over medium-low heat, add chicken, green onion, gourds (or zucchini), eggplant, and pumpkin. Add water or stock to cover, then add paste. Add your aromatics and seasonings next: dill, makrut leaves, pla rah (or fish sauce), and soy sauce. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary. If water levels have gotten too low, add more water but remember to readjust seasoning.

Allow to boil until everything is cooked through (about 30-40 minutes depending on your source of heat). Taste for seasoning again. Once you’re ready to serve, scatter chopped lemongrass and rice kernels on top for added aroma and stir into the soup.

Serve with sticky rice as part of a great Isan meal.