Bangkok Glutton

A bunch of fresh-picked dok kae pa, or jungle vegetable hummingbird

I have not used the time while in self-imposed isolation to do anything of any use or benefit to anybody. I have not read anything big or smart, written anything big or smart, or learned anything big or smart. I have been busy imagining how it would be to escape my little prison, and when I say “prison”, I don’t mean like Ellen Degeneres in her big airy living room like the lobby of an Aman resort while her producer is lurking in the plants outside. I mean prison like my actual body. I sometimes want to literally jump out of my skin. To forget that feeling, I have been playing countless hours of Candy Crush or watching “Breaking Bad” for the first time, despite really, really disliking Walter White — even more than I disliked Don Draper, which I thought was not possible. Proved me wrong!

I have been on the occasional walk, and on one of these walks came across what I thought were called “dok gang” (curry flower) but are actually called “dok kae pa”. I do not believe they have anything in common with the vegetable hummingbird (or sesbania grandiflora) but when the blossoms are blanched, the flavor is similar: bittersweet, with a pleasant crunch. It’s great with a nice spicy chili shrimp paste dip.

And that has been my check-in from the other side. For more mentally balanced content during lockdown, maybe check out my friends Chris and Eddie at https://planestrainsandanchovies.com.

Deep-sea pomfret ready for frying in the wok

MFK Fisher once wrote of “How to Cook a Wolf”. She did not mean it literally. It was during World War II, and the wolf that she wrote of was snuffling at the door and threatening to devour all of the inhabitants in the house. The wolf, of course, was hunger. The recipes, while mostly standard, were introduced with pithy headings that spoke to the times: “How to be Cheerful through Starving”; “How to be Content with a Vegetable Love”; “How to Pray for Peace”.

In “How to Keep Alive”, she details a recipe that involves a strictly utilitarian mix of ground beef, whole grain cereal, and root vegetables, cooked into what Fisher referred to as “sludge”. It was not a meal over which to mull the day’s little triumphs. “Not only is it good for people, it is ideal fare for dogs,” wrote Orville Prescott of The New York Times in a May 22, 1942 book review.

Today, there are many wolves at many doors. The wolf may come in different guises, but its methods are essentially the same. My friend James wrote to me just a few days ago, exhorting me to go out and patronize all the restaurants I could; the days to go out would be numbered, he said. The next day, he was proven right. It’s hard to say what the cost of the shutdown will ultimately be on businesses both large and small, but it is clear that it will probably be very high. If you can, contact that restaurant you have been thinking about and order from them. It will not go unappreciated. Just last weekend I enjoyed a roast chicken with perfectly soft, garlicky spinach  and a super-thyme-scented tranche of porchetta with apple sauce delivered to my door from Appia. Of course I have no photos.

Here, in Phuket now where it is at the height of the hot season, I have little desire to spend any time over a hot wok or boiling vat of water. However, I can spend a couple of minutes making a simple sauce in the mortar and pestle.

OK OK Prince. You win. What I mean is, I can watch Pravee doing it. Pravee was born in Chiang Rai, just like me, but she is a far better cook. This sauce is the bomb for any type of seafood: boiled shrimp, fried fish, steamed crab, grilled squid, you name it. The secret is the inclusion of pickled garlic and mashed coriander root.

Pravee’s Seafood Sauce (for 4)

• 2 cloves of raw garlic
• 1 head of pickled garlic
• 2 tsp of pickled garlic juice
• 5 bird’s eye chilies (for spicy)
• 1 large coriander root (or 2 small ones)
• juice of 1 lime
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• 1/2 tsp palm sugar

Add solid ingredients to the mortar and pestle and mash well, Thai-style, pounding like you have a grudge against the ingredients. Gradually add liquids and palm sugar, mushing around like you are working at an ancient apothecary. Taste to adjust seasoning. Like most Thai food, this wasn’t meant to lie around in wait for a few days. Use as soon as you can!

Be like Pravee and make this sauce!

Getting ready for som tum

It’s nearing the end of my self-quarantine period, and I have yet to do anything constructive with my time, aside from rererewatching “Friends” on Thai Netflix. So the valuable hours I could have spent making tasty batches of jam (“Friends” season 3, episode 3), learning how to ballroom dance (season 4, episode 4), brushing up on my public speaking skills (season 6, episode 4), or getting divorced (any episode with Ross) have instead been spent scrutinizing all 10 seasons of a 20+year-old television show that I never watched back when it was actually on TV, because there was a time when I was actually cool.

But there are times when even *I* tire of seeing Ross throw a hissy fit over his half-eaten Thanksgiving sandwich. Those are the moments in which I threaten to actually do something. My friend from Malaysia, Eddie, braved my potential cooties long enough to come over to learn how to make a good batch of som tum (grated Isaac-style salad) with pla rah (fermented Thai anchovies) from our super-housekeeper, Somporn.

A Roi Et native, Somporn is actually a superlative cook of just about everything, but her number one dishes, in my humble opinion, are her deep-fried chicken wings and her som tum. The chicken wings I’ll save for another day, because I am afraid of heating up the whole vat of oil necessary to make the wings (it’s just so scary!) Som tum, however, just involves the potential cutting off of one’s fingers.

Grating the green papaya the right way

We live in a time of amazing technological innovations, like the julienne peeler, which allows you to cut the long, thin strands that make up som tum. The problem with this tool is that the strands are too thin to add the kind of heft to the salad that makes it really sing. You need to cut up the papaya (or any other vegetable, because som tum can be made from pretty much anything) by hand.

Tak-tak-tak-tak goes the knife into the papaya, scoring the side of the fruit with thin vertical cuts that are then peeled off of the papaya with the knife edge pointing outward. Anything else you choose to add: in our case, carrots, a bit of Thai eggplant, maybe even a bit of tomato skin like the time when Monica did that cooking demo and said she would julienne her tomatoes. Add some cut-up long beans and a bit of lime peel and you’ve got a great approximation of what you’d get from a very good food cart.

Some things to ponder as you are making this som tum:

1. Always do this with a mortar and pestle. Make the dressing first and add the salad ingredients after. Pound with intention like you are Rachel on a break, not gently like you are Phoebe with a massage client.
2. We use tamarind juice (mixed with a few teaspoonfuls of hot water) plus the lime juice because the salad lasts longer that way. When it’s just lime juice, it gets bland more quickly, just like Chandler’s personality in season 10.
3. If you are making this to go, always add the dressing at the last minute, like when Rachel shows up at Ross’s second wedding.

Foolproof Som Tum Pla Rah (the superior som tum, in my opinion)

Ingredients 

• juice of 1 lime
• 3 Tbsps of tamarind pulp, thinned out with a few teaspoons of hot water
• 2 Tbsps of pla rah (we buy bottled, made from boiled anchovies only)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/4 Tbsp of palm sugar to even out the flavors
• Fresh bird’s eye chilies (between 2, my standard family level, to 20, the level preferred by Chef Prin Polsuk at Samrub for Thai!!!)
• Salad ingredients: Anything crunchy and julienne-able, e.g. 1/3 of a small green papaya, half of a large carrot, 3-4 plum tomatoes, handful of cut-up long beans. (It actually doesn’t have to be julienne-able either. Corn kernels are popular, as are cut-up long beans on their own. They just have to be poundable.)

Mix all the dressing ingredients together in the mortar. Taste to adjust seasoning. Then add the salad ingredients and pound with the pestle hard enough to bruise the strands (in the papaya’s case, to release some of the sap into the dressing). Mix well. Upend onto your serving dish and eat as soon as you can.

A blurry photo of the som tum. I was in a hurry