Bangkok Glutton

I just searched for “most annoying songs” on Google and what came up — “My Humps”, “Macarena”, “Barbie Girl” — make total sense. These are objectively annoying songs, tunes that make your jaw set when you hear the opening notes at the supermarket or the drug store or whatever place you have to be in to do those chores that you’ve been putting off for three days now. Part of the reason why chores are called chores is because they put you in such a vulnerable position, your respiratory system open to random viruses and your eardrums subject to someone else’s cruel whims. True story: I actually complained at Emporium one dark, unlucky day when for some reason some monster decided to play “Way Back Into Love” on a loop over and over again. Customer Services actually laughed at me. When I returned to finish my grocery shopping I heard the ladies at the cheese counter humming along to the chorus. TLDR: “annoying” can be subjective.

So I understand if you will disagree with me when I say that Eric Clapton is annoying. Not only does he look like a guy who would buy a villa in Phuket only to eat a steak-and-potatoes diet and complain nonstop about Thai people, but he has now committed full-time to his role as “old white guy who gets all his news from Facebook.” This is how we get stories like this one. TLDR: Eric Clapton is now an anti-vaxxer, a logical progression from his tenure as booster of “white Britain” and as creator of “You Look Wonderful Tonight”, a song annoying enough to make me want to drown myself in the nearest body of water.

If I would allow myself a moment to be smug — it is my blog after all — I never went through a “this guy is ok” phase, not during the “Tears in Heaven” period, or even during the Derek and the Dominoes era. Admit it: “Layla” is only a great song after Clapton stops his sing-shouting and Duane Allman is finally allowed to take center stage. If no one knew the story behind this song (the same marketing ploy Justin Timberlake would ape decades later with “Cry Me A River”), it would be something that people knew exclusively from Martin Scorsese movies as a signal when characters got whacked. I have never liked Eric Clapton because he stole “I Shot the Sheriff” from Bob Marley and made a ton of money off of it, and built on a career of playing black music while being hailed as among the best guitarists of them all. It has always stuck in my craw, and when he made those horrible remarks about non-white immigrants to England, it sealed the deal for me, case closed, game over. TLDR: the temerity of this dude, who makes his money off of playing blues guitar.

Some Thais feel that Thai restaurants outside of the motherland are guilty of “pulling a Clapton”, as it were, making lesser approximations of someone else’s creative labor while profiting handsomely from it. Indeed, some Thais feel so strongly about this that they created a Thai food tasting robot (no, I will never not talk about this story, so stop asking). I myself can attest to some truly hair-raising meals at Thai restaurants abroad involving burnt crab rangoon (who created this? How has it become a thing?) and iceberg lettuce in a wan, chili-less yum salad dressing. TLDR: I understand the impulse to make sure this never, ever happens again by using taxpayer money to build a robot that will keep all of those culinary nightmares at bay. He would be 8 feet tall and painted in red, white and blue (the colors of the Thai flag, of course) and make his pronouncements in the voice of Optimus Prime in the cartoons from the ’80s. Alas, this was not what we got (stop telling me to quit harping on this, or I will continue posting links).

But maybe we are looking at this from the wrong way around. Maybe we should champion these missionaries of Thai food, brave enough to spread the gospel of aharn Thai worldwide. Of course, one must make a living when one lives by their own wits; of course, this means making an adaptation or a hundred off of the “real thing”. So if this means serving drunken chicken and crab rangoon (seriously, I’m a fan), or designating your curries as “red”, “orange” or “green” in accordance with the color of the chili used, or doing some sort of all-you-can-eat buffet deal that includes some sort of Jell-O, we must not malign these soldiers on the front of the food popularity wars. Instead, shouldn’t celebrate these innovations, the eventual Thai equivalent of General Tso’s, or even the crab rangoon (seriously, where can I find this in Thailand)? After all, no one complains when we do our own little tweaks at home (finally, we come full circle to the photo of the reimagined Thai “ice cream in a bun” at very top of this long and rambling post). TLDR: authenticity is a mirage, adaptations are a necessary fact of life, and Clapton was a musical missionary. He’s still annoying, though.

We are nearing the end of the feverishly-working-to-finish-the-first-draft stage of our cookbook, and Lauren suggested that we include some old photos of family getting together to share a meal when I was young. Alas, I have almost no photos of this at my house. It’s kind of strange how that is, when we only meet up over lunch or dinner or dinner parties.

The oldest one I can come up with is this one. Needless to say, I was not a cute baby.

Another photo at a meal features just my husband and me, before we were married, on a trip (with his parents, because I grew up in the stone ages) to the Netherlands.

The photos that I do have featuring the food itself are noticeably absent of people. This one is of a breakfast spread in Chiang Rai that looks like it was a buffet for ghosts.

The closest I can get to something that captures the vibe of what I’m looking for is a super old photo that doesn’t have me in it at all. Instead, my husband’s parents and their cousins are in it. It’s in the 70s or 80s (hard to tell), at a family party on the beach in Hua Hin, probably during Songkran. Anyway, the point is that Thais like to party, but it’s not a real party until there’s good food. Only then can much merriment be had.

In any case, the search will continue apace, so my post to you will be uncharacteristically brief. Wish Lauren and me luck on our deadline. Until then, stay safe and healthy everyone!

It’s been a tough third COVID wave for us in Thailand, and it doesn’t look like it’s improving anytime soon. My son has taken to running to his computer every day at noon to check on the latest numbers; they are always grim. The effect on the local economy — and by extension, the dining scene — has been predictably grave. A few weeks ago, Bo.lan announced they were shuttering their doors, hopefully in order to morph into another iteration at the end of this particular tunnel.

But there were also some small glimmers of light during this time, for me at least (and isn’t that what’s really important?) I got to go up North and traipse around a farm, taking photos of the literal fruits of other people’s hard labor.

The lovely Aarya made us a gorgeous spread that included a whole roasted seabass “acqua pazza”-style and a faithful rendition of a Veronese duck stew enriched with chestnuts and an entire bottle of red wine. It inspired me to attempt my own duck stew (whole Barbary duck ordered via Paleo Robbie), which was then discovered in a freezer while marinating due to some communication issues (my Thai is truly terrible), and ended up becoming a pretty good duck fried rice and jab chai (Chinese-style veggie stew) with duck broth.

I am also sort-of celebrating the imminent arrival of one book, originally slated for release in 2020. The COVID-delayed third edition of my Thai street food guide is … hopefully? … coming out at the end of this year. This book *may* join its sister on the shelves — tentatively titled “Real Thai Cooking”, it’s my very first cookbook with co-author, photographer and genius recipe doctor Lauren Taylor in New Zealand. We have just finished the first draft of our manuscript and are ready to send it to our long-suffering editor Doug (insert fingers crossed emojis here!)

When I originally sent out my book proposal (written during our first COVID wave with help and guidance from Jarrett Wrisley and Paolo Vitaletti, who generously allowed me to see their proposal for “The Roads to Rome”), I envisioned a book in which all the focus would be on my essays, which would place the recipes in context and make them less of a consideration. What I ended up doing — with generous assistance from both my mother’s and mother-in-law’s kitchens and a treasure trove of funeral cookbooks from my husband’s family — was literally stumble into a bunch of recipes that have deepened my own understanding of Thai food and how it has evolved. TLDR: a lot of these recipes are the bomb tbh. This is coming straight from the horse’s mouth.

There are a bunch of recipes that I really love in this book so there’s some competition, but I think my favorite recipe of all is the one gifted to me by my friend Tawn C., who is a designer in his normal life. While we were in Phuket he made a nam prik out of store-bought peanut brittle that was a flavor explosion; when paired when grilled salt-encrusted fish and all of the accoutrements for a mieng pla meal, it ended up blowing everybody away.

The main ingredients, I kid you not, are a good-quality fish sauce and local peanut brittle (tua thad, or “cut peanuts”, made out of peanuts, sesame seeds and palm sugar) from the candy aisle.

Needless to say, it’s a fine tightrope walk between super-sweet, salty, spicy and tart, all the while making sure not to overshadow the main star of the show (What’s that? Oh yeah, the fish).

So here it is, Tawn’s chili dip recipe, and don’t ever say I don’t give you anything!

“Nam prik tua thad”

Ingredients: 

• 6 pieces of tua thad, or peanut brittle
• 4 goat chilies or bird’s eye chilies
• 2 cilantro roots, cleaned
• 7 garlic cloves
• the juice of 2 limes
• 3 Tbsps fish sauce
• 1 tsp golden syrup

Method:

1. In a mortar and pestle, pound chilies, roots and cloves together into a paste. Scrape out of mortar and set aside.
2. Pound your peanut brittle until it is pulverized, then add your paste to it. Mix well.
3. Season with lime juice and fish sauce. Taste. It should be a balance between salty, acidic, spicy and sweet.
4. Add golden syrup if not sweet enough. Surprisingly, the sweetness will amplify all the other flavors.