How To Make: Stink Bean Stirfry

Known as sator in Thai, stink bean is the unfortunate English-language name of this podlike vegetable:

The "beans" are actually the large seeds found in the pod, and must be extracted and peeled beforehand. In Thailand, stink bean is mostly associated with southern Thai cooking, where it is eaten raw with dips, used in stir fries and even pickled. The name, although unnecessarily derogatory, is not all that innaccurate, as stink bean is probably one of the most pungent foods around.

Despite all this, I like it (as do many, many people in southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia), and find the flavor similar to an intense, but less biting, garlic. If you can get your hands on it, one of the easiest ways to prepare stink bean is this simple stir fry with some shrimp paste and seafood. I use squid in the recipe below, although you can replace this with shrimp or even pork if you like.

Squid Fried with Stink Bean
(Serves 2 as part of a southern Thai meal)

Ingredients

Cooking oil 3 Tbsp
Garlic 3 cloves
Shrimp paste 1 Tbsp
Onion 1/4, sliced thinly
'Banana chili' 2, sliced thinly
Water 1/4 cup
Squid 100g
Halved stink beans 50 g
Fish sauce 1 Tbsp, or to taste

Method
Using a mortar and pestle or a food processor grind garlic and shrimp paste together into a rough paste. Set aside.

Wash and slice squid into 1" wide rings. Set aside.

In a wok over medium-high heat, heat cooking oil and add shrimp paste mixture. Stirring constantly, fry until fragrant, about two minutes. Add onions and and chili, fry briefly, and add most of the water. Allow mixture to simmer and reduce, stirring constantly, until it reaches a gravy-like consistency. Increase heat to high and add stink beans and squid, stirring constantly. Add fish sauce to taste and saute until squid is cooked, about two minutes.

Serve hot with rice and try to avoid talking to other people for at least three hours.

A Coup Lunch

As the Thai food guy, am I really expected to comment on the current political situation? Well obviously I have some views on what's happening in Thailand, but perhaps you would be better served by getting your information from a highly opinionated Thai foodblogger, the Thai newsblog of the moment, or failing all else, you could always turn to the BBC as a last resort.

As for the state of things here in Bangok, which I feel qualified to comment on, it's really just rather...quiet. I was downtown this morning, hoping to get some interesting pics, but there was not much to see. Most of the last night's tanks have been moved elsewhere and other than some machine gun weilding soldiers here and there, it really just felt like a random Sunday morning in Bangkok. This is in strong contrast with last night, which was characterized by extreme uncertainty, creepy TV messages and communication blackouts. Where all this will lead, nobody knows, but the general feeling one gets here is that nobody is sorry to see Thaksin go, and if these clowns follow through with their promise to relenquish power in a year, then it might actually be a change for the better, albeit by highly unsavory means.

Despite all this, we've still got to eat, and today I actually discoved a great restaurant near my house. The place is called Baan Chan, and specializes in the cuisine of the province of Chanthaburi, east of Bangkok near the Cambodian border. Today's lunch was excelllent, and they have a very interesting menu, so I'll definately be going back for a more detailed report. As a sneak preview, here's what I had there today, kaeng paa nuea, "jungle curry" with beef:

Normally kaeng paa is more souplike, but apparently in Chanthaburi it takes the form of a stirfry and was absolutely delcious--spicy with the famous Cambodian pepper, hearty green chilies and chunks of soft gourd-like vegetable. Behind the jungle curry is s stirfry of pumpkin with pork and the same green chili (known as phrik yuak), good, but not as interesting as the kaeng paa. I can't wait to try the beef curry with nutmeg and the crab fried with Chanthaburi's famous rice noodles.

Tha Siam

Tha Siam is a popular chain restaurant that serves kwaytiao ruea, "boat noodles". This is a noodle dish that originated in central Thailand and which can be identified by its hearty brown/red broth, the result of copious spices and blood.

The importance of this last ingredient is made very clear on the menu:

where just below the evil pig logo it reads something like, "true Thai blood".

Ironically, I don't think I've ever eaten noodles here; I'm not a big fan of blood broth and actually the other menu items are all quite good. In particular, they have a short but great menu of isaan or NE Thai dishes. I ordered som tam laao, Lao-style papaya salad:

They do this dish just the way it should be done; with wide, irregular hand-cut chunks of crunchy unripe papaya, salted field crabs, plaa raa (unfiltered, unpasteurized fish sauce) and ma kok (a sour fruit). It's extremely sour and satisfyingly salty, with none of the sweetness you'll find in Thai-style papaya salad.

Everything was jolly until I received my khao phat naem, fried rice with naem, a kind of fermented pork sausage:

This was among the worst dishes I've ever been served in a Thai restaurant. It looked like it had been sloppily slapped together by the dishwasher and featured a barely-chopped clove of garlic, pinky-sized chunks of naem and an astonishing amount of oil. In his/her haste to prepare the crappiest fried rice dish ever, the dishwater also forgot the obligatory sliced lime and dish of sliced chilies in fish sauce.

I guess that's what I get for ordering fried rice in a noodle restaurant.

We ate at Central Lad Phrao, but there are branches at Fashion Island and Siam Square, among others.

Butterfly The Studio cafe

Today's lunch was taken at, and I quote, Butterfly The Studio cafe. A bizarre name in many ways, as there was no discernable studio, and the place is more a restaurant than a cafe.

We ordered tom kha kai, a dish that's pretty much tom yam with coconut milk:

Despite not looking like the picture in the menu, this was really quite good, even more so because we almost never order this dish (I don't care for chicken, she doesn't care for coconut milk). It was pleasingly sour, with a healthy dose of everybody's favorite aromatic root, galangale (the khaa in the name), and with none of the cloying thickness of too much coconut milk.

The star of the meal was plaa muek phat khai khem, squid fried with salted preserved egg:

Sounds disturbing, I know, but was actually quite nice. The eggs, as the name suggests, are salted, so very little additional salt or fish sauce was needed. And the person who made it flash-fried the squid for just the right amount of time, leaving it tender and cooked, but only just so.

Conversely, the weakest dish of the day was khanaa phat nam man hoy, kai lan in oyster sauce:

On second thought, it wasn't bad, but just lacked personality, which ironic, as it's probably the easiest of the three to prepare!

Butterfly The Studio cafe looks like this:

and is located in a open-air shopping center called Plaza Lagoon (no lagoon here either, nor a plaza) in the Wang Hin area off of Soi Sena, northern Bangkok.

Shanghai Dim Sum

This the the second dim sum shop to spring up in my neighborhood as of late. And by spring up I mean that quite literally; one day this was an empty building and virtually the next it was a fully decorated, functioning restaurant. Shit happens fast in BKK.
After the surprisingly good grub at Chokdee Dim Sum I had somewhat high expectations for this new place. Unfortunatley it was not meant to be. For starters, rather than being able to choose your raw dim sum from a glass cabinet (thus giving you the opportunity to choose what looks fresh), at Shanghai you're given a short menu with photos of the choices:

which inevitably never look so nice in real life.

We began with the standard Thai dim sum starter, a hot bowl of bak kut te:

Spicy with black pepper and chock fulla pork ribs, dried mushrooms and tofu skin, it was not bad, but wholly unremarkable. This was followed by salapao, steamed filled buns:

again, astonishingly mediocre, and somehow they managed to simultaneously over and undercook them. Marginally better was stuffed squid:

My personal fave of the day were the poh pia thod, deep-fried spring rolls:

which were actually surprisingly tasty, but not enough to rescue an achingly average meal.

So it looks like I'll be driving the extra five minutes to get my dim sum fix at Chokdee. Shanghai Dim Sum is located at the far end of Soi Sena (near the Kaset-Navamin Highway), and looks like this:

And just in case there are any unemployed dim sum jockeys out there, the sign in front of the shop says they're hiring and salary starts at 6,000 baht (about $200) a month. It doesn't, however, mention anything about health care benefits or profit-sharing programs.

Lang Head

Lang means "behind" in Thai, and Head refers the the Head Office of Thai Airways International. Put these together and you have the colloquial name of a large market located behind Thai's head office on Vibhavadi Road. The market is primarily known for its clothes, as well as some other frivolous, useless things, but here at RealThai we will focus only on the important issues, ie food.

The Thai Airways Head Office is filled with prepetually hungry people who, every day at lunch, are let free en masse and run screaming out of the building in search of sustenance. Many of Thai Airways employees are upper middle class, and can afford slightly better eats than the average office slave. As a result, the food court at lang head is a bit better than most, featuring an amazing diversity of food from all over the country, as well as several takes on noodles, the staple food of most Bangkokians.

We arrived on a recent day at about 11:00 AM:

It was still pretty quiet when we got there, and I recommend going at this time, as at lunch it's pretty mad and you're liable to get a chili in your eye or worse during the feeding frenzy.

Although there weren't yet many customers, the cooks were very busy, scrambling to get their food ready for the lunch hour:

serving up khao mok kai, chicken biryani:

and frying up roti:

After some initial scouting, I decided to trust my lunch with these people:

They serve a variety of nam phrik, Chili-based dips, that are accompanied by a fresh and deep-fried veggies and a fillet of deep-fried mackerel. I chose nam phrik khai pu, a nam phrik with crab eggs:

Starting at 11 o'clock you have the mackerel fillet, at 1 o'clock deep-fried veggies including battered eggplant and cha om khai, sort of an omelette of egg and a pungent herb, at 3 o'clock the nam phrik, and 6 o'clock par-boiled veggies, including carrot, cabbage, long bean and a kind of gourd. An excellent lunch for 40 baht (just over $1) my only gripe being that they were a bit skimpy on the nam phrik pu.

As lunch approached people started filing in, ordering noodles:

curry over rice:

and some other meaty food:

Thai Airways International Head Office is located on 89 Vibhavadi-Rangsit Road, and as mentioned previously, the market and food center is located on a small street directly behind the building. Just look for all the hungry Thai employees.

Mae Hong Son (again)

This is going to be a long one. I just got back from a week in my favorite place in Thailand, Mae Hong Son. I've been there several times, and have even blogged about it previously, but this was the first time I'd been during the rainy season, and I couldn't believe how green it was:

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mae Hong Son, it is found in the far northwestern corner of Thailand along the border with Burma. It's Thailand's most moutainous and remote province, and is home to a group of people known as Shan or thai yai. The Shan belong to the Tai ethnolinguistic group (the word Shan might possibly be a Burmese mispronunciation of the word Siam), and their language is similar, although not mutally comprehensible, to Thai. Their homeland is over the border in Burma, and they have their own distinct food and culture, and Mae Hong Son is really the only place in Thailand where you'll find a lot of them.

I started out in Chiang Mai, where, before leaving, I stopped by my favorite temple there, Wat Paa Pao. This temple is associated with the Shan, and if you visit in the the morning or during a festival you can try their food:

This noodle dish with pork ribs and tomatoes is known as naam ngiaow (a dish I've previously mentioned here and here) and you'll find it anywhere you find Shan people.

From there I made my way over some very windy roads to Pai, sometimes referred to as the Khao San Road of the North. The whole backpacker scene there is a bit of a joke, but luckily the hippies haven't yet ruined the town with all their free sex and dreadlocks. When I'm in Pai I tend to avoid the vegetarian tofu laap and drum circles and head straight for:

1. The evening market:

Where there's raw ingredients:

prepared food:

traditionally dressed people:

and even fighting bugs:

2. Laap Khom Huay Pu (0 5369 9126). This is a restaurant just outside of town that serves the most amazing laap khua

I've ever eaten. Taken with a plate of mostly bitter-tasting herbs

and a katip of sticky rice, and pehaps a glass of the locally-produced passion fruit juice, this is a meal I could probably eat every day for the rest of my life.

Moving on, I spent the next night in neighboring Pang Ma Phaa district, where by the side of the road you'll find hilltribe people selling vegetables and fruits they've grown:

And that night I ate, you guessed it, another dish of laap khua:

this specimen at a place called Laap Khom Phaa Toob. Of course inferior to that of Huay Pu, but only slightly so.

After two days I reached my destination, the provincial capital, Mae Hong Son. I love this city's morning market, where in one corner, you'll find a row of Shan women selling traditional breakfast dishes:

Many of these dishes revolve around soybeans, of which the Shan are very fond, but there's also the previously mentioned noodle dish:

At the market you'll also find deep-fried bamboo worms:

some marginally more normal deep-fried stuff:

Shan curries:

and bunches of flowers meant to be given at temples:

This is Mae Hong Son as seen from the hilltop temple of Wat Phra That Doi Kong Mu:

Somewhere down there is a shop, Panoon Khaw Soi (0 5361 2384; 9 Th Phadungmuaytor), that serves a pretty mean bowl of khao soi:

And in Baan Phaa Bong, about 10km south of Mae Hong Son, you'll find this friendly lady selling sweets:

The thing she's cutting into is called thamin suay, thamin being the Burmese word for rice. It's a Shan "cake" of sticky rice sweetened with sugar and coconut milk, and was delicious.

Arriving back in Chiang Mai, I had some time to take photos of the 100+ year-old murals at Wat Phra Singh:

Which proves I'm not the only one obsessed with recording images food and eating!

For anybody visiting Mae Hong Son, in addition to the places mentioned above, I recommend the following restaurants:

Baan Phleng (look for yellow shop with sign reading ‘Local Northern Thaifood’; 0 5361 2522; 108 Th Khunlumpraphat) Located just south of ‘downtown’ Mae Hong Son, this popular restaurant is the best place to try northern Thai and Shan food. Come at lunch, when as many as 30 different dishes are on display; simply point to what looks interesting or refer to the English-language menu.

Mae Sri Bua ('Local Shan Food'; 0 5361 2471; 51 Th Singhanatbamrung) Like the Shan grandma you never had, Auntie Bua prepares more than a dozen different Shan curries, soups and dips on a daily basis. I recommend the kaeng hang ley, a curry of pork belly with a flavor not unlike American-style barbecue sauce (but much better!).

Welcome to my first mobile blog

As previously mentioned, I'm on the road, currently in the hopelessly beautiful province of Mae Hong Son. Using a computer that somebody told me is known as a "PC", along with software that another kind soul described as "Internet Explorer", I decided to stop by RealThai, only to discover that all the contents of my right-hand bar have rudely been dumped to the bottom of the page! First of all, why didn't anybody tell me this earlier? And what can be done to correct this? Muchly appreciated.

Oh, and by the way, can you tell I'm a Mac user?

BlogDay 2006

Since Pim at Chez Pim and Helen at Grab Your Fork were both kind enough to mention RealThai as one five blogs they want to share on the occasion of Blog Day 2006, I thought it best to repay the favor and mention five blogs I enjoy. Unfortunately, I'm a day late (Blog Day was officially August 31st), but I'm sure none of the following talented bloggers will mind:

1. Rolly's Recipes is probably the first thing resembling a foodblog I ever came across, and I liked it immediately. Rolly is an American guy living with a family in Mexico, who graciously shares illustrated recipes of the food that the family makes. Try their insanely spicy, but delicious salsa casera. I did, and I love it.

2. I must admit that I'm not a regular reader of Algerian Cuisine, a blog by Farid Zadi, but I try to stop by in every once in a while, and find it fascinating to learn about a cuisine I know absolutely nothing about. Although he hasn't been updating too much lately, do visit and learn how to make octopus soup!

3. The Traveler's Lunchbox is one of the most aesthetically pleasing foodblogs on the 'net. Ironically, the author, Melissa, and I are the same age, come from the same part of the US, have both studied linguistics, have both lived outside of our home country for ages, and are both crazy about food. Who knows, maybe we're also related?
4. Although Pim already beat me to it, and I've previously mentioned it here, I can't enough of the Cambodian-based foodblog, Phnomenon. Phil (the self-confessed "pimp of Khmer cuisine") really knows his stuff, and is probably the most talented and sharp-witted foodblog writer out there, as seen in the following quote: "Cambodian beer will always have a place in my heart, right next to that blood fluke that I caught while swimming in the Mekong."

5. I've recently been obsessed with real tacos. Part of the source of my obsession was my discovery of The Great Taco Hunt, a blog based in LA. The author, Bandini, is a card-carrying "taco journalist" who scours southern California for the best tacos, and who occasionally also delves into taco politics, and taco couture. I immediately gained respect for his work when, on the first anniversary of his blog, he enjoyed, yes, a birthday taco, complete with candle.

Ban Nam Toey Hom

This is a longstanding neighborhood joint that recently either won the lottery or robbed a bank, and expanded to much posher digs across the street:

The new place still carries all the southern-style curries and fried dishes of the "old" branch, but also has a new menu of noodle dishes and a la carte dishes. We started our rather lengthy power lunch with an order of khao tang naa tang:

This dish consists of squares of crispy deep-fried rice served with a slightly sweet, generously savory currylike topping consisting of ground pork and shrimp. I liked it, mostly because they went light on the sweet, unlike most places.

Our food was washed down with glasses of fresh guava juice:

Our second appetizer (!) was papaya salad:

This is a dish that, I imagine, was previously relegated to roadside isaan, or NE Thai food joints. However now papaya salad is the de facto national dish of Thailand, and is seemingly available everywhere. Despite this restaurant serving mostly southern-style food, they did an excellent job on this dish, which featured an almost perfect (in my opinion) balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.

For my main, I ordered sen chan phat poo:

The famous rice noodles from Chantaburi fried with crab. Essentially phat thai without the peanuts, this dish was done very well, although perhaps a bit more crab meat wouldn't hurt.

Khuat ordered the southern special, kaeng tai plaa, literally "fish kidney curry", served with fermented rice noodles:

She found it too salty, but actually this dish is supposed to be salty. Nice try, Khuat.

It was an excellent lunch--the place is better than ever. I'm also excited about a couple more new places in the neighborhood--a dim sum place and what appears to be a "steak" restaurant just across the road from this one. Reportage will ensue.

Ban Nam Toei Hom
Soi Sena (near Kaset-Navamin highway)
02 578 3757

See that thing in my hands?

It's my new camera, a Nikon D200. I like it. Really like it. It focuses and feels just like my F100, and the light meter is heaps more accurate than my D100. And it makes me look more handsome.

Chokdee Dimsum Restaurant

Dim sum is a dish I've always wanted to like, but one that has inevitably disappointed me. I'm not sure why; it involves seafood, consists of a variety of small dishes, is served with tea and is eaten with chopsticks--several of the earmarks of a good meal. Maybe it's just that I've never eaten it at the right place, although to date I've eaten dim sum at various restaurants in Macau, Malaysia, Oregon and Thailand. Despite all this, whenever I see a new dim sum place here in Bangkok I'm always keen to try it.

My latest effort in the search for edible dim sum was at a nearby branch of a somewhat new chain restaurant, Chokdee Dim Sum. Like most dim sum restaurants, upon entering Chokdee, you walk to a glass case where the uncooked dim sum are anxiously waiting for you. You choose the ones you want, which are steamed to order and brought to your table:

Despite it being a corny fast food restaurant, it was one of the first times I've ever really and truly enjoyed dim sum. The steamed dumplings weren't defrosted and deformed like the usual stuff one typically gets in Bangkok, and the vegetables and (most of) the seafood were relatively fresh. Mom liked the steamed buns:



which, as she accurately noted, were compellingly similar in taste and texture to Polish pierogi. Another highlight was a big fat steaming bowl of bak kut teh (a dish previously mentioned here). The broth was downright spicy with ground pepper, and contained pork ribs, tofu skin, and dried and fresh mushrooms.

I think mom and grandma were initially weirded out by the unfamiliar ingredients and all the steaming going on, but they soon lost all inhibition and went into something of a dim sum frenzy, stabbing each other with their forks (the poor souls haven't yet learned to use chopsticks) to get at the best bits:

I tried my best to ignore all of this and enjoyed several cups of Chinese tea:

Incidentally, the company's motto is (among other things) "Our dimsum is made fresh by hand, with love right here in our kitchen." Because this is written on virtually every wall of the restauant, we decided to ask if it was in fact true, and were told that the dim sum were actually made elsewhere and brought to the restaurant every morning! Oh well, at least it's probably made with love. Regardless, I'll be back. You can find me at:

Chokdee Dimsum Restaurant
Wang Hin Branch
Thanon Choke Chai 4
02 942 3208

A Trip Up North

Ditching the traffic and boiled rice of Bangkok, we headed up north. Our first stop was in Chiang Mai, where after picking up our rental car, we proceeded directly to Khao Soi Lam Duan, Chiang Mai's, and by association, Thailand's best and most famous khao soi restaurant:

From Chiang Mai we drove directly to the pleasant town of Lampang, home to an excellent night market selling heaps of northern Thai food. This stall was virtually inundated with people buying food to go (a very good sign), and their food was nearly sold out even before it was dark:

Selling mushrooms:

Serving up sticky rice, which as in much of northern Thailand, is wrapped in large leaves called bai tong tueng:

We took our goods back to our hotel, the lovely Riverside Guesthouse, where they were kind enough to let us use their dishes.

The next morning, on the way out of town, we stopped at a shop selling a vareity of curries meant to be served over khanom jeen, fermented rice noodles:

Mom chose the northern specialty, khanom jeen naam ngiaow, a dish of tomato-based broth not unlike a spicy spaghetti sauce:

I think this pic was taken at the point when she was told that those dark cubes are not liver, but rather coagulated blood!

Our next stop was the beautiful province of Naan. Unfortunately almost as soon as we arrived, the entire area experienced its worst flooding in nearly 50 years! I was planning to spend a few days in Naan, so this drastically changed our plans, but at least we had an amazing dish of laap khua at a restaurant call Pu Som before heading to higher ground:

The next day was spent in the small provincial town of Phrae. A night market can be found in the middle of town, and although the food sold there wasn't local (nor really good), we did have some good roti:

From Phrae we drove south to Sukhothai to check out the ruins. The modern city of Sukhothai is probably one of the least attractive urban areas in Thailand, but there is some decent food there, including a night market with both prepared dishes and people selling produce such as the local favorite, phrik num:

However one of the best restaurants in town is an extremely popular noodle shop called Jay Hae. This place is known for its Sukhothai-style noodles, as Nong Paeng is showing here:

And they also do an excellent khanom jeen naam ngiaow:

One of the most interesting stops on our trip was at Thung Kwieng Market, found along the highway between Lampang and Chiang Mai. Also known as the jungle market, this market previously had a reputation for selling rare animals/produce from the surrounding forests. Today the sale of endangered wildlife is more or less a thing of the past, but there are still some bizarre things to be found, such as this:

a nearly fully developed buffalo fetus, known locally as khwaay awn. It is prepared by chopping it up, rubbing it with copious spices (to cover up the horrible smell) and steaming it, as shown below:

The market had an amazing amount of particularly northern Thai specialties, such as dried spices:

grilled food, including the famous northern Thai sausage, sai ua (located on the right):

and maengdaa:



an insect used all over Thailand for its fruitlike "essence".

In the coming weeks I'll be going up north again, this time to my beloved Mae Hong Son, to write a sample chapter for a particular publisher of travel books popular in SE Asia.

5 Things to Eat...

At the urge of Melissa at the Traveler's Lunchbox, I've decided to play along with her fun foodgame and list the five things I feel one should make a point of stuffing into his/her gob before the unfortunate but inevitable event of passing away. Here are my five:

1. Khao Soi (as prepared in northern Thailand, of course)

This is the legendary curry noodle soup indigenous to northern Thailand. Served with beef or chicken and egg noodles and a side of sliced shallots, lime and picked mustard cabbage, the dish encompasses virtually every taste and flavour. Whenever I have friends or family visiting I always make a point of introducing this dish, and invariably people love it.

2. Beer from Oregon

I come from just east of Portland, Oregon, a city considered by many to be one of the world's beer hotspots (and by some accounts, the city with the most breweries per capita). Beer from Oregon is almost certainly the one food I really and truly miss here in Thailand, and I would give my left earlobe to obtain access virtually anything from Portland's own Widmer, or Newport's Rogue, or especially my favorite beer of all time, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, an example of American brewing at its best, courtesy of Bend Oregon's own Deschutes Brewery.

3. Orecchiette con Cime di Rapa

I've been making my own version of this southern Italian pasta dish for years using dried pasta, Thai anchovies (!), pecorino romano, broccoli and a generous amount of dried Thai chilies. I've always liked it, but never realized how perfect a pasta dish it really is until I was fed the dish by Giovanni Speciali, a native of Puglia, and (former) head chef at the Bangkok Four Season's Biscotti. His take employed fresh orecchiette ("little ears") pasta, plump cherry tomatoes from Italy, young broccoli sprouts from northern Thailand and grated ricotta dura de pecora, a semi-hard sheep's milk cheese from Puglia. What I learned from Chef Giovanni's version is that besides being absolutely delicious, the dish is drop dead easy to make; all you need is the best ingredients possible.

4. Real Bread

Not WonderBread. Not Whole Wheat Bread. In fact, nothing already sliced or in a plastic package will do. It has to be kneaded by a human, is probably European in origin, and has a tender yet chewy center, and a crisp exterior. Dip it in something greasy or spread it with the coagulated milkfat of a well-fed cow; it's been the stuff of life for a long time and shows no sign of dying out. A good place to taste Real Bread is the Pearl Bakery, in Portland, Oregon.

5. Anything green prepared phat fai daeng

Phat fai daeng is Thai for "fried with a red flame" and refers to the Chinese-influenced style of cooking where one flash fries veggies, igniting the cooking oil to give the dish a pleasant "smoky" flavour. In Thailand these dishes usually use phak boong (morning glory, an aquatic vegetable) or kai lan, flavoured with fried with oyster sauce or fermented soybeans, along with copious garlic and tiny fresh Thai chilies. Salty, spicy, garlicky and green--everything you need.

I pass the mission along to the following food bloggers:

1. The one and only Pieman, Graham at noodlepie.
2. My homegirl Pim at chez pim.
3. Everybody's favourite meat-obsessed Cambodia correspondant Phil at Phnomenon.
4. Former Thailand inhabitant Robyn at EatingAsia.
5. Culinary globetripper Mike at Trippin' Mag.

The Suan Lum Night Bazaar

Mom and grandma like shopping. I like food and beer. We needed a place to go, and as I compromise I suggested visiting the Suan Lum Night Bazaar--the Chatujak Weekend Market's slightly more upscale, cooler, less crowded competitor--a place where one can find stuff to buy, and more importantly, eats.

We arrived at 6 PM, when it's still light out and the food stalls at the gigantic covered beer garden are just beginning to open. To begin, I ordered a plate of one of my fav Thai appetizers, deep-fried soft shell crabs:

A decent job here, although some of the shells weren't as "soft" as one would expect. And they also lose points for the crappy bottled dipping sauce.

When left to her own devices, Grandma is somewhat conservative in her Thai food choices, and chose the good but safe, khao phat poo, fried rice with crab:

served here with peas and corn (both hightly unusual additions), and the more traditional sides of thinly sliced chilies in fish sauce, sliced cucumbers, green onions and a wedge of lime. This dish is probably one of the most simple, but most satisfying Thai dishes, and is a necessary accompaniment to grilled seafood.

Mom is a sucker for regional Thai foods, and headed directly for the isaan (NE Thai) stall:

where she ordered a dish of tam poo, papaya salad with crab:

As for myself I stood with severe indecision in front of a variety of slightly overpriced dishes at a ahaan taam sang, made-to-order restaurant:

and eventually chose khao khluk kapi, rice cooked with shrimp paste and served with a variety of toppings:

a dish previously mentioned on these pages. This version was much greasier than it should be, and oddly used shredded cabbage in place of shredded mango, but was acceptably salty and exceptionally filling.

In general the Thai food at the Suan Lum Night Bazaar is mediocre and somewhat overpriced. For me, the highlight is the great selection of imported (mostly from Germany) beers. While mom and grandma were shopping, I spent a good 20 minutes searching for Bass Ale--an extremely rare specimen of beer that I had previously consumed at this very same night bazaar. Coming up empty handed, I settled for a delicious but under the circumstances somewhat disappointing Weihenstephaner, only to find the Bass Ale tap on the way back to my seat! Oh well, next time.

Incidentally, there are rumours (unconfirmed) that the Suan Lum Night Bazaar is closing. Apparently locals have complained that the place is too loud, but don't these people have any sympathy for imported beer lovers? If their desires are met and the bazaar is eventually closed, where do these people expect me to buy English ale and German hefeweizen? Is sleep really more important than Schneider-Weisse? People like this deserved to be fed nothing but lukewarm Beer Chang for the rest of their cruel, selfish lives.

Mall Rats

Unlike at home, malls here can actually be pretty good places to find food. The restaurants can be hit and miss, but the foodcourts--an essential part of every mall in Bangkok--are usually more than decent. Foodcourt food is for the most part void of soul-sucking franchiseism and is generally cleaner and fresher than that found on the streets. The best foodcourt in Bangkok is probably that of MBK, but it's a long trip up six floors of frantic shoppers, so we settled for the glittery new food court at Siam Paragon, where we already happened to be. Paragon's food court is firmly average, and the prices double what you would pay outside, but it's a decent and safe intro to real-ish Thai food for those who would rather not have car exhaust in their noodle soup. There's lots to choose from, especially if you're a fan of noodles, but the dish that caught mom's eye was khao man kai, Haiananese chicken rice:

Khao man kai is boiled chicken:

served over rice that has been cooked with chicken broth and coconut milk. Grandma ordered a regular:

and mom a dish of khao man kai thot, chicken rice with deep-fried chicken:

The dish typically comes with a bowl of chicken broth and a salty/spicy/sour sauce.

After some shopping we stopped for cake and coffee at the Face cafe:

I've previously had the opportunity of interviewing the friendly pastry chef of this restaurant, who is responsible for making some of the best desserts and chocolates in town:

Right now Face is currently running a special: 150 baht for a piece of cake and a coffee. Not dirt cheap, but a great value when one considers the quality of the desserts and the going price of Lavazza coffee elsewhere. I encourage a visit.

Off to the wild north tomorrow. Should be back and posting in about a week.

Thai Kitchen Utensils

I was recently contacted by a writer who asked me to share some advice on Thai kitchen utensils for a piece she is working on. I think this is a great idea for an article and reckoned I could both help her out and do a fun blog by picturing and describing a few of the tools here. This is by no means an exhaustive list; in the course of doing this blog alone I thought of heaps of other impliments/tools/appliances that I'd like to include, but it's a start, and I'll try to add to it later. If anybody out there has anything to suggest, please do comment away.

Perhaps the most important tool in the entire Thai kitchen is the mortar and pestle. Granite mortar and pestle sets are used to grind curry pastes, dried spices and chili pastes, as seen below:

Clay and wood sets are used to make som tam, papaya salad:

Speaking of which, if you're going to eat papaya salad, then you'll also need sticky rice, which in turn requires the huat, the straw basket used to steam the rice:

(As a slight aside, the huat is also used, painted and in combination with a palm tree branch, as part of the well-known masks in the Phi Ta Khon Festival in Loei, NE Thailand):

One of the most unusual tradtional Thai kitchen tools is literally translated as the "coconut milk scraping rabbit". This tool is used to scrape the meat from mature coconuts, from which coconut milk is extracted. In the past, the tool used to take the form of a large rabbit; one would sit on the rabbbit's back while using its sharp metal "teeth" to scrape the coconut. Although it's not too clear, the woman below is using a less-rabbitlike, more modern version of the tool:

My personal favorite Thai kitchen tool is the coffee sock. This is a cloth tube that serves as a primitive coffee filter:

It's probably not the best way of making coffee in the world, but is certainly unique. The coffee sock is usually found with a stainless steel pot of hot water (over a traditional charcoal stove, as seen below), a recepticle or two for the filters, and a specially designed ladle for pouring the hot water:

Wood makes its way into a few different iconic Thai kitchen utensils. Any Thai who sees the following wooden container:

will immediately be reminded of its contents: chao kuay, or grass jelly. And hard coconut shells are also used to make a variety of spoons and ladles:

Clay is another important material, and takes several different forms and serves several functions, as seen below:

Possibly the most iconic is the tho naam:

This clay pot is usually associated with northern Thailand, where it is located in fron of houses on a small roofed stand in order to provide clean drinking water for anybody passing by.

Somewhat more refined, but equally iconic are the bowls with hand-painted chicken design:

And possessing hardly any aesthetic value at all, but entirely practical and ubiquitous, are the aluminum, plastic-handled pots used for serving curries and soups:

A final interesting tool is the ice-filled basin used to make old-school Thai popcicles:

Small metal tubes are suspended in icy water from a rack that can be shaken and turned to uniformly chill their contents:

Again, there's lots more where this came from (i.e. the pin to or Thai "lunchbox", enamel colanders, the metal tray with the flower design, intimidating-looking cleavers, and katip, sticky rice containers), and I'll try to post more when I get a chance to take the pics. And Jill, it would be wonderful if you could send us by a pdf of the piece when it runs ; )

Thai with Mom and Grandma

My mom and grandma are currently here in Bangkok. This is mom's third trip, and she does pretty well with the Thai food, except for her irrational, prejudiced and wholly unwarranted fear of the spicy stuff. Today we drove down to the province of Phetchaburi, about 100+ km from BKK. This hardly-visited-by-foreigners small town is really a fun destination, with a nice outdoor morning market and heaps of cool temples. Mueang Phet has some good eats, but for lunch we drove about 40 clicks south to the old seaside resort of Cha Am. The beach at Cha Am is none too impressive, and a the town a bit run down, but none of this matters, because at the northern end of the beach, right at the foot of the pier, are about 87 restaurants serving fresh seafood! We randomly chose a restaurant with a seafront view called, for some reason, Captain Yuad, and here's what we ate:

Our eating marathon began with the traditional Thai carb accompaniment to seafood, khao phat puu, fried rice with crab:

Shown above is the "medium" size--more than enough for the four of us, and well-seasoned with hearty chunks of crab and egg.

Mom still has dreams about the grilled prawns from her last trip here, so we orderd a 1/2 kilo:

She needed a bit of instruction in peeling them, but got it eventually:

Not stopping at this she also ordered shrimp fried with palm hearts:

This was a dish with lots of Chinese influence: dried mushrooms, bell peppers, soy sauce and green onions.

Khuat went directly for the spicy stuff, ordering hoy shell phat chaa, scallops fried with fresh herbs:

and the previously mentioned po taek, a tom yam-like soup with mixed seafood and flavored with holy basil:

This was probably our favorite dish of the meal--and ironically grandma and mom's least favorite! The broth was rich, but according to them, too sour (not true at all), and contained meaty crab, chunky squid and giant fresh prawns. Here's grandma enjoying the latter:

And in a fit of seafood feeding frenzy, Khuat ordered a dish of par-boiled cockles:

She regretted this decision almost immediately, and jusifiably so: nobody ate them and she ended up sharing them with the cat at home. I've heard that the cat liked them.

I ordered plaa samlee daet diaow, "cottonfish" dried in the sun for one day, then deep-fried and served with a sour/sweet mango-based side sauce:

This dish employed probably the biggest, meatiest cottonfish I've ever seen--all to its detriment. Smaller cottonfish have a more delicate "salty" flavor that is really pleasant--this specimen was so meaty it was not unlike the tasteless protein of an American Chicken Breast. And ideally, the fish should be somewhat dry (the result of drying), however I'm pretty sure they just took the biggest fresh fish they could find and deep-fried it. Naughty, naughty.

All of these were served with the famous Thai seafood dipping sauce:

An unpalatable cauldron of fire to mom and grandma, but a tad too sweet for my tongue.

As with most of our meals so far, mom and grandma were utterly shocked by the amount of food we ordered. Nonetheless, we always seems to finish it off:

All of this fun for 1,300 baht (about $30).

Incidentally, in the next few days we'll be going up to northern Thailand--Chiang Mai, Lampang, Naan and Sukhothai--and I'll certainly be posting bits and bobs from our eats up there.

Yen Ta Fo Corner

Noodles are big in Bangkok, and at the top of the heap sits yen ta fo, a noodle-dish probably of southern Chinese origin that combines a sweetish red broth, fish balls and morning glory. There are countless restaurants serving this dish, but a new one caught my eye today. It is called Yen Ta Fo Corner, and is located in an small outdoor mall called Palm Street.

We started with a couple unusual appetizers. The first was deep-fried fish skin:

As bizarre as it sounds, this is actually pretty common find in yen ta fo restaurants, however this version was apparently made from salmon skin, and was served with an excellent nam phrik phao, a roasted chili dip--both divergences from the norm. Ironically, I dislike the skin when eating fish in other forms, but kinda like this dish.

This was followed by a variety of fish balls, topped with chinese celery and crispy garlic, and served with a spicy/sour dipping sauce:

They make some pretty good balls here, and the exceedingly detailed notes on the menu testified that they are made from 100% fish with no preservatives or borax! The long ball in the front is known as a "rugby" ball, the darker one behind it is a shrimp ball, and behind that is kiaow plaa, a "fish wonton" filled with ground pork, coriander root, garlic and pepper. The dipping sauce, a combination of tiny fresh chilis, garlic, lime juice and fish sauce, is standard in Thailand, but absolutely delicious.

We then made it to the restaurant's namesake, yen ta fo:

This was somewhat disappointing. The broth was a bit too red and too sweet, the noodles limp and overcooked, and the morning glory on the skimpy side. But again, some pretty good balls.

A view from the top:

Yen Ta Fo Corner
Palm Street Shopping Complex
Located under the Ram Inthra Expressway, about 2 km from Lad Phrao.

Flowers!

Before going over to Chinatown yesterday, I spent a couple hours at Paak Khlong Talaat, one of Bankgok's biggest wholesale markets, and come evening, the home of Bangkok's famous flower market. There's lots to see here, and even more to photograph, but it's tough shooting. Low light makes it necessary to use a tripod in most cases, and the variety of light (natural, tungsten, flourescent) wreaks havoc on even the best digital SLRs. I don't like to use a tripod though, and could care less about White Balance, and tried to take advantage of these factors, as well as the hectic nature of the market:

No, the young man above is not on fire; he's simply moving some bright yellow flowers. This guy is moving roses wrapped in newspaper:

Choosing the right flowers can be a hard decision:

After all, there are lotuses:

and more lotuses:

and... uh, I'm really not sure what these are:

Particular to Thailand are buds of fragrant jasmine that have been threaded and formed into garlands, often used as religious offerings:

Another happy customer:

and another busy vendor:

at a busy market:

A few more pics from the night can be seen here.