by | 03/28/2013 · 6:20 pm

Rediscovering the familiar

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Suki and seafood gravy noodles, courtesy of Krua Porn Lamai

I find it amusing when I hear someone say they don’t want to end up like the old married couple in the restaurant, eating their dinner in silence. I find this amusing because, in my opinion, THAT IS THE BESTEST THING EVER. Why do I have to talk all the time? The well-worn song-and-dance, the incessant thrum of pleaselikemepleaselikeme — all of this singing for our suppers … it’s just not my normal state. My normal state is that of a big old grump who thinks occasionally eating a restaurant dinner in silence IS THE BESTEST THING EVER. That’s because sometimes, I don’t want to talk. And sometimes I don’t want to listen. Sometimes these two desires meet up over the dinner table in front of my spouse. Whenever this happens, I call it RELAXING.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the feelings of my long-suffering spouse. Maybe he wants to bare his soul over his salad caprese and dish over the little details of his day as we work our way through our oxtail stew. Something tells me I probably wouldn’t be married to this person, but once in a while my husband does want to talk, and it’s not the old refrain “When are you going to take care of the kids/clean the house/take a shower” that I usually hear coming out of his mouth.

So, in the interests of compromise, and against all my better instincts (I AM SO MUCH FUN), we talk, we discuss, we communicate. And in doing this, we find out more about each other, even as we soldier on through our 157th year of marriage. As many eons and eons (and eons) that we have been together, we discover that much more every day.

As many times as I’ve been down the main drag of Yaowaraj Road and explored its many offshoots (YES I AM EQUATING MY MARRIAGE TO A PART OF TOWN), I still find new vendors to get excited about — not every day, but often enough to make an hour-long Skytrain-then-subway-then-tuk tuk trek to Chinatown from my house worthwhile (I CANNOT WAIT for the subway extension into Chinatown to be finished. My life will BE CHANGED FOR THE BETTER. THEN I CAN STOP WRITING IN ALL CAPS).  

Enter Krua Porn Lamai (081-823-0397). Despite the suspicious likeness of its name to a made-up massage parlor in a future installment of “The Hangover Part 34”, this outdoor vendor specializes in kata ron, or “hot pan” — fried noodle dishes given the special oomph afforded by the sizzle and smoke of a heated plate. Part of a “cooperative” of vendors that share tables and help service each other’s customers (something I’m seeing more and more of nowadays), Porn Lamai is set right at the entrance to Soi Plang Nam, just as you turn right from Yaowaraj Road. All those tables with hot plates on them? That queue of excited-looking customers staring at other people’s food? That’s them.

The reason for all the excitement — despite the wait elicited by having to wash all those hot plates for new customers — is obvious. Take, for example, the guaythiew lard na talay (seafood gravy noodles), charred to a crisp on the bottom, just like the bottom layer of rice in a good paella. It arrives at the table still seething, emitting a slight hiss, but when the server upends a pitcher of gravy over the liquid, a giant plume of smoke and sound erupts:

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Krua Porn Lamai’s lard na noodles

This is food that fights back (seriously, watch you don’t burn the roof of your mouth off). This is food that you will remember (as you’re doing your laundry). This is food that will not go gently into that good night. Enjoy.

 

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by | 03/26/2013 · 3:04 pm

What’s cooking: Aim Och

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“Egg in a pan” at Aim Och in Khon Kaen

There is nothing easier to make in all of Thai street food than kai kata, or “egg in a pan”. Still stinging from our inability to decode Jay Fai’s Byzantine fusion of herbs and spices masquerading as tom yum goong, Chris and I decided to give ourselves a break and do something that is, quite literally, fool-proof.

Kai kata is the Thai version of the Vietnamese version of the American breakfast, said to have been inspired by homesick American GIs during the Vietnam War. In an attempt to replicate the American breakfast standby “ham and eggs”, Vietnamese cooks cracked eggs into “personal-sized” pans, garnished them with Chinese sausages and Vietnamese steamed pork pate (moo yaw) in place of sausages and ham, and cooked them quickly on a stovetop until the whites set. Garnished with a splash of red chili sauce like Sriracha and fish sauce and accompanied by a toasted, buttered bun stuffed with more “sausage and ham”, this no-fuss breakfast combo is quick, easy — and unbelievably satisfying. Best of all, you can let your imagination run riot: anything, anything at all, will work with these eggs. Have a sweet tooth and want to drizzle some maple syrup on it, maybe with a garnish of crispy

bacon? A handful of peas? Maybe some pancetta and sliced fresh chilies? Or maybe a

splash of minced chicken and diced carrots, just like at King Ocha in Udon Thani:

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Kai kata and buttered bun at King Ocha in Udon Thani

There are no rules for this fusion-y adaptation of a Western favorite. Ironically, if you are in the West, you may need to make some substitutions for some hard-to-find ingredients, so you may have to re-substitute those substitutions. Hence our choice to use buttered ceramic ramekins instead of tiny pans, because we aren’t sure how many of those are available back West. If you don’t have an oven, you can make a bain-marie by putting your ramekins in a pan, filling with water up to the middle of the ramekin, and cooking your eggs on the stovetop. However you decide to make it, we have tried to cleave as closely to the “authentic” (circa 2013) basic Isaan-style kai kata as possible.

Kai kata a la Aim Och (makes 2 servings)

What you’ll need:

– 2 ramekins, well-buttered

– 2-4 eggs, depending on size of ramekins

– 1 link Chinese sausage (gunchieng), sliced

– 6 slices moo yaw (Vietnamese steamed pork pate) — baloney works in a pinch

– Two mini-baguettes or soft rolls (for real Thai street food flavor, they should be as sweet as possible)

– Butter (for toasting buns)

– Fish sauce with sliced chilies, Maggi, or Golden Mountain sauce (to taste)

– Sriracha sauce (to taste)

– Salt and pepper (to taste)

To make:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celsius.

2. Place buns, slightly open and their insides buttered, into a casserole and toast in the oven until warm, edges are light brown and butter is melted. 

3. In a pan, warm slices of Chinese sausage and/or moo yaw until hot to the touch.

4. Crack 1-2 eggs into each buttered ramekin, depending on size. Cook in oven for 5-10 minutes (depending on how well your oven works), until whites are set when you jiggle them and start to pull away slightly from the sides of the ramekin. If you like your eggs more well done (I love runny yolks), wait at least 10 minutes.

5. Take eggs out of oven and garnish with sausages and “ham”. If you have cooked minced meat and/or vegetables, scatter those onto your eggs as well. Season with salt and pepper.

6. Fill toasted buns with slices of “ham” and “sausages”. Serve alongside eggs, and make sure to pass the fish sauce/Maggi and sweet chili sauce. Easy AND delicious.

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Our versions

 

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by | 03/21/2013 · 4:26 pm

What’s Cooking: Jay Fai

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On the menu at Jay Fai

It was an interesting proposition: turn out some recipes inspired by my favorite street food stalls. Of course, I would never get the exact recipes from these folks, however lovely they are; in the street food world, recipes are family heirlooms, to be guarded as insurance for the next generation.  Instead, the recipes we end up with would be approximations, wild guesses, stabs in the dark — love letters to the originals in the hope that imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.

To aid my on my quest, I enlist the help of my friend Chris Schultz (http://christao408.xanga.com), one of the best home cooks I know. We would do a total of 15 dishes over the course of three months. Some would be simple, chosen for their (expected) ease. Others would take more work refining. All would, eventually, hopefully, fingers-crossedly, be delicious.

There is no question that Jay Fai (327 Mahachai Rd., 02-223-9384) is one of my favorite street food vendors. A middle-aged lady in a woven beanie and a slash of lipstick, Jay Fai plows through an extensive repertoire of made-to-order favorites, solo and with the help of two searing hot woks. Her fried noodle dishes are to die for: punters frequently argue over which is her best, wavering between her “drunken noodles” (guaythiew pad kee mow, so called because the grease and spice are good hangover remedies) and her crispy noodles in seafood gravy (guaythiew lard na talay). Her crabmeat omelet, currently holding at 900 baht/serving, is a Japanese-inspired eggy roll stuffed with mammoth chunks of white, juicy crabmeat; hers is the only kitchen in town to serve a “dry” congee (jok hang), a gelatinous splay of broken-in rice grains topped with a tumble of shredded ginger and scallion. I could go on.

But it’s possibly her spicy lemongrass soup with prawns (tom yum goong, priced at an astronomical 1,500 baht/bowl) that intrigues me most. It’s a dish that everyone knows, but I suspect few bother to tinker around with. Have you ever made a tom yum? I ask because, despite the “infusion”-style broth that simply calls for throwing a handful of bruised herbs into water at a rolling boil, this soup is hard to excel at.

Boil 6 cups water, toss in a handful of bruised galangal, 7-8 kaffir lime leaves, 4 bruised lemongrass stalks , a shallot or two, a couple of green peppercorn branches and 4 chilies; a few minutes later, throw in 3 Tablespoons fish sauce and at least 3 limes’ worth of juice, take your pan off the heat, and add your 8 cleaned and shelled jumbo shrimp; stir around in the muck until your shrimp blush a deep red, then garnish with coriander leaves — this is tom yum made the traditional way. Yet the flavor is … underwhelming, warmed-over Lean Cuisine after two days in the refrigerator. Where is the heat? Where is the tart? I was missing the fireworks, but without sticking an entire forest of dreck into the broth, what was I to do?

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Jay Fai’s tom yum goong

The verdict: I can’t hope to replicate even half of the flavor Jay Fai gets with her tom yum by doing a straight-up infusion. There is a chili paste in there somewhere. In the coming days, I will pound fresh chilies, garlic, shallots and herbs with my mortar and pestle and see where that gets me; I’ll also roast the chilies, garlic and shallots before pounding a second batch and compare the two. I’ll try another with roasted chili paste (nam prik pao), and in yet another, I might even add a dash of coconut milk. What do you think? There is a grocery store’s worth of places where this can go. 

Until then. The leftovers beckon.

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My tom yum

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