Foreign food

It may not look like it, but these very Thai-looking sweets, photographed at a market in Samut Songkhram, are in fact Portuguese in origin. Here's a description of how they came about, excerpted from an article I wrote a while back for Chile Pepper magazine:

Other than simply having brought new ingredients to the people and places they colonized, in some cases, by living and mixing with local populations, the Portuguese also had an impact on the way Asians cooked. This can be seen as early as the early 16th century, when after having secured the port of Melaka in present-day Malaysia, the Portuguese went abroad to nearby Thailand, then known as Siam. Establishing friendly relations with the kingdom that was based in Ayuthaya, the Portuguese influenced an unexpected aspect of Thai cuisine: its sweets. By introducing the concept of using egg yolks and flour, ingredients integral to Portuguese dessert making, the Portuguese had an impact on Thai desserts that exists until today. Remnants of this legacy can still be found Ayuthaya today. There I came across a variety of Thai sweets, probably variants of ovos moles, a Portuguese egg custard. These bright orange sweets included foy thong, ‘golden strands’, thong yot, ‘golden drops’, and thong yip, ‘pinched gold’, the names all including the Thai word for gold, thong, a reference to the color imparted by the use of duck-egg yolks.

Do I have any Portuguese readers out there? Am curious to know if these sweets still take the same form in their country of origin.

Stay tuned for more pics from Samut Songkhram's very impressive market.

Kok Kaat

Curries are a big deal in Kanchanaburi. People in this province love them, and love lots of them. I saw a restaurant in Thong Phaa Phoom district advertising 100 dishes. You can recognize such restaurants by the stainless steel pots out front. Other than curries, you'll also find soups, stir-fries and other dishes. Understandably, it's a big decision:

Finding myself both in Kanchanaburi and hungry, I was lucky to find Ko Kaat, a roadside stall boasting 39 dishes. After lifting about 20 lids, my partner in eating, Aong and I finally rounded it down to four dishes. Unfortunately, Kok Kaat appears to favour quantity over quality, and the dishes were had were average, although not bad. These included a pretty good tom yam het, mushroom tom yam:

and kaeng khii lek, a curry made from a bitter leaf:

For a few more pics, see the slideshow here.

Kok Kaat (Google Maps link)
211/1 Th Saengchuto, Kanchanaburi
034 512481
7am-3pm

Jay Wa

Khao man kai, Hainanese-style chicken rice is a dish you can find just about anywhere in Bangkok. The hard part is finding a good one. Working on vague word-of-mouth instructions, my food detective friend Aong and I found ourselves near the Victory Monument confronted by two identical-looking khao man kai restaurants. Employing an innate ability to find good eats in Bangkok that has yet to fail us, we chose Jay Wa. Good choice. The rice was perfectly-cooked (not too soggy or to dry), and my favourite part, the sauce -- a mixture of tao jiaw (fermented soybeans), ginger and vinegar -- was also wonderful.

In the course of our gluttony we discovered that Jay Wa also does a wonderful kuaytiaw yentafo (a noodle soup combining fish balls and a red, spicy broth).

Khao Man Kai Jay Wa (Google Maps link)
Victory Monument
02 640 9891
lunch & dinner

A change is gonna come...

In the words of the great Mr. Cooke, I'd like to announce some significant changes coming to RealThai. In the next couple days, those visiting this blog will automatically be redirected to a more general foodblog at my online portfolio, www.austinbushphotography.com/foodblog. RealThai has been just as international as it has been Thai for while now, so you can expect to see no real change in content. However I thought thought that integrating my blogs (I'll also have a photography blog, www.austinbushphotography.com/photoblog) with my online portfolio would make a unique 'hub' of all my work. I hope you'll agree, and I also hope you'll take the time to check out the new images that form my portfolio, as well as my photography blog. Enjoy!

Naay Mong

Mr. Mong makes the best hawy thawt, fried oysters, in town. Actually, don't tell Mr. Mong, but I prefer it when Mrs. Mong is at the stove (see above). Her dish is greasy, has little nutritional value, and honestly, doesn't look very attractive:

but it's delicious, which is what counts.

To make it, they fry a flour and egg-based batter over a coal-burning stove until it resembles crispy and nearly burnt pancake:

They then toss either mussels or oysters on the stove and along with some spring onions, soy sauce and a corn starch wash, fry until just done. These are then used to top the crispy batter.

I'm told they also make an excellent fried rice with crab.

Naay Mong (Google Maps link)
539 Thanon Phlapplaachai
02 623 1890
5-10pm

Thai Charoen

Wandering about Bangkok's Chinatown as I often do, I tend to pass by lots of good eats, usually immediately after I've finished eating. I always make a mental note to come back, but it's not often that this happens.

A couple weeks ago I finally made it back a shop that I had noticed several times. Thai Charoen, a tiny family-run place along Thanon Charoen Krung, sells equal parts Thai (curries, spicy stir-fried dishes) and Chinese (stewed veggies, fried noodles), and dishes, such as the stuffed squid shown above, that seem to straddle both cuisines.

I had eggplant stir-fried with fish dumplings (another Thai-Chinese 'fusion' dish), and a bowl of jap chai, a Chinese vegetable stew.

Both excellent, and I would recommend stopping by. And on this note, I realize Bangkok is a big, confusing town, so from now on, I'm going to try to link all my restaurant writeups to Google Maps. Hope this helps!

Thai Charoen
454 Thanon Charoen Krung (Google Maps link)
02 221 2633
9am-7pm

Not exactly food related, but

the images I got of actors getting ready for a ngiw performance in Bangkok's Chinatown are still pretty cool. Some more can be seen at my photo blog, The Old Main Drag.

Chinatown, December 15, 2007

Menu for Hope '07

What is Menu for Hope?
It's when food bloggers from all over the world join together, and take leave from our usual obsession with our own stomachs. Throughout the year, we tend to wank on about food, beer, wine and other such visceral pleasures, but for two weeks every December, we pull together a bunch of excellent prizes and ask you, our readers, to help us support those who are not so lucky, to whom food is not a mere indulgence but a matter of survival. This Menu for Hope is our small way to help. All proceeds go to the World Food Program.

RealThai and all other excellent and gracious foodblogfriends have managed to add to the global prize pool....prizes are:

BANGKOK PRIZES
From me, a free copy of latest edition of the Lonely Planet's Bangkok Guide (which I'm currently writing) + one-day Bangkok food tour. (value $200 USD)
Code: AP30

Dinner for 2 @ Bangkok's premier destination restaurant Bed Supperclub Bangkok (value 3500 baht)
Code: AP28

18 year old Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky Gold Signature (value 95 USD) also from the good folks at Bed Supperclub
Code: AP23

12 bottles of deliciously good 42 Below Vodkas to see you through 2008 courtesy of the kind kiwis at 42 Below (value 12,000 baht)
Code: AP24

6 bottles of 42 Below Seven Tiki Rum. Also from the kiwi crew. Makes perfect mojitos (value 6,000 baht)
Code: AP25


One night accommodation at hip hotel Dream Hotel, Bangkok (value $280++ USD). Donate and sleep in peace in their sumptuous DREAM Beds
Code: AP29

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA PRIZES
One night accommodation at uber hip hotel Hotel De La Paix, Siem Reap (value $235 USD)
Code: AP31

One night accommodation at boutique hotel in the heart of Siem Reap's charming laneway Be Hotel Angkor subject to availability (value $150 USD)
Code: AP32

Market Tour and Cooking Class with Joannes Riviere, Khmer food expert and author of La Cuisine du Cambodge avec les apprentis de Sala Bai. He knows all the women at the market, speaks fluent Khmer and can teach you how to make a mean samlor machu
Code: AP33

Wild Jungle Honey Collecting Tour with Angkor Conservation Centre for Biodiversity Sustainable Bee Program. A once in a lifetime experience. Trek into the jungle with experienced guides, collect wild honey and taste the magic that is freshly harvested bee pollen (value 200 USD)
Code: AP34

To Donate and Enter the Menu for Hope Raffle
Here's what you need to do:

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope above or at the global prize list site
2. Go to the donation site at First Giving and make a donation.
3. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code.
Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02 - 2xEU01, 3xEU02.
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Regional Prizes
UK: The Passionate Cook and Cooksister!
Europe:Food Beam
US: West Coast:Rasa Malaysia
US: East Coast: Serious Eats
US: Central: Kalyn's Kitchen
Canada: The Domestic Goddess
Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand: Grab Your Fork
and, last but not least, our special Wine Blog Host: Vinography

Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday, January 9 for the results of the raffle.
Thanks for your participation, and good luck in the raffle!

A brief Australian interlude

I recently made my first trip to Australia to attend a Lonely Planet writers' workshop (ta Tony and Maureen!). The workshop was held at LPHQ in Melbourne, but I touched down near Byron Bay, at a place called Brunswick Heads. My friend K lives a short walk from the sea, which, I've been told, is good for a variety of things, in particular easy access to excellent fish and chips:

It was also a pleasure to discover that Australians consistently do excellent coffee:

although the nomenclature is a bit difficult to get one's head around. In Australia, an espresso is known as a 'short black', but at the coffee bar above I mistakenly called it a 'small black' and received a blank stare as a response!

After a long weekend of relaxing by the beach, I flew over to Melbourne for the workshop. I only had an afternoon free to explore the city, so armed with tips from Phil and Hock, I headed directly to the amazing Queen Vic Market:

I really loved the deli section (above) that has all that good stuff that is so hard to find, and/or too expensive here in Bangkok.

This was followed by a delicious lamb souvlaki at Medallion Cafe in the Greek district (apparently Melbourne is the largest Greek city outside of Greece), immensely filling Western-Chinese at the brilliantly named Supper Inn, and a mini pub crawl to Transport (which boasts 150+ kinds of beer including the excellent Crackenback Pale Ale, and the local brew, Mountain Goat Pale Ale), and Hock's old haunt, Troika.

Melbourne has to the be most Asian 'Western' city I've ever visited, and seeing as LP HQ is in Footscray, home to the city's largest concentration of Vietnamese, J, one of my former editors, took some of us out for a Vietnamese lunch:

where we had huge bowls of a very tasty vegetarian pho:

Yuy Lee

You've just got to keep your eyes open. Khao soi, the northern Thai curry noodle dish that every foreigner seems to love, is in fact available in Bangkok. My most recent discovery was on Thanon Sukhumvit, an unlikely place to find good, let alone, regional Thai food. A small family-run shophouse outfit, Yuy Lee has been serving khao soi for a couple decades. Despite this, the product of their labour:

is, in my opinion, decent, but not exceptional. The broth could have used a bit more oomph, and the noodles were regular round bamee noodles, not the flattish noodles typically used in khao soi. The deep-fried crispy noodles were also of the cheap, packaged variety.

Much stronger was the khanom jeen naam ngiao (pictured above). The broth was fragrant and deliciously sour (from the addition of tomatoes), and loaded with deep-fried crispy garlic. If I went to Yuy Lee again, I would probably go straight for this rather than waste time with the khao soi.

For a cutting edge dispatch from the heart of khao soi country, check out The Last Appetite's recent post, which in a bizarre circle, also links back here.

Yuy Lee (Google Maps link)
25 Sukhumvit Soi 31
02 258 4600
10am-8pm, closed Sun

Any guesses where I've spent the previous week?

Hint: The vendor was out of tomato sauce.

Chinatown, November 13, 2007

Ko Lun

Something of a mini Southeast Asian food bloggers summit was held a couple weeks ago here in Bangkok. This involved Hock of Gut Feelings, Phil formerly of Phnomenon and currently The Last Appetite, and me of here, and any day now, Gut Feelings. Aided with my in-depth Bangkok food experience, as well as a handy illustrated map provided by food-blogger-in-spirit Aong, we attacked Thanons Tanao and Mahanop, leaving nary a crumb behind.

I've mentioned most of our stops in previous posts, so I'll just touch the one new place I visited, Ko Lun. Directed by Aong's map, we entered Thanon Mahanop and turned right at the fat dog:

and started with the recommended khanom jeen hailam, Hainan-style noodles (pictured above). The dish took the form of a clear, rather bland broth, with hearty udon-like noodles, and deep-fried and par-boiled pork, and oddly, toasted sesame seeds. It wasn't much to write home about until you added the tiny bowl of seasoned shrimp paste, an unusual but tasty condiment for a noodle dish.

The restaurant's other signature dish is goat stewed in red sauce:

It was good--although perhaps not as flavourful as the deeply-coloured broth would suggest. The goat was still pretty tough, and was supplemented with tofu skin and offal:

The dish was served with rice and two dipping sauces, one very much like the spicy/sour Thai seafood dipping sauce, another of finely shredded dried galangal that I found absolutely delish.

Despite the big names and egos involved, it was an enjoyable day, and the Summit went generally well until Phil unsuccessfully tried to score us a free meal by promising to blog on the restaurant ('Do you know who I am? No? Does a little thing called Phnomenon ring a bell? Bitch...').

Ko Lun (Google Maps link)
Thanon Mahanop
089 010 2123
8am-4pm

Grass jelly

Grass jelly is a dessert of Chinese origin that can be found virtually everywhere in Southeast Asia. If you're not familiar with it, have a look at this piece I wrote last year for a domestic paper.

My favourite place in Bangkok to eat grass jelly is an old shophouse just a few steps away from Tha Chang. There are a couple of chairs and tables inside, but most people simply sit on the stools set out along Thanon Maharat, as shown in the picture above.

The grass jelly itself has subtle 'herbal' flavour, and is served with crushed ice, but my favourite part is the unprocessed cane sugar, naam taan daeng, that the dish is topped with:

9 Days in the Kingdom Photo Exhibition

I'd like to urge any readers in Bangkok to visit the 9 Days in the Kingdom photo exhibition currently being held on the 8th floor of ZEN, Central World. The exhibition is the offshoot of the book of the same name that features the images of world-famous photographers such as Greg Gorman, David Alan Harvey, Steve McCurry, Mike Yamashita, Abbas, Eric Valli, et al over a nine-day period in Thailand during January, 2007. James Nachtwey's images on an AIDS hospice are particularly moving, and I really enjoyed shots by Surat Osathanukhrah, Dow Wasiksiri, Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Ben Simmons. And as an added bonus, I'm actually featured in one of the images! Mad props to the first RealThai reader who finds me.

Roti Mataba

Roti Mataba is the name of restaurant on Thanon Phra Athit that has been made extremely popular by its place in the Lonely Planet guide. It used to be quite good, but standards have dipped in recent years and I'd not really recommend it any more. The Roti Mataba I'm mentioning today is an entirely different place.

Found around the corner next to Thammasat University, this Roti Mataba is located at the beginning of the impossibly narrow alleyway known as the Tha Phra Chan Market. We were simply here for a snack, and ordered a mataba (pictured above), a Thai-Muslim dish similar to a stuffed pancake. This one was filled with minced chicken that had been mixed with a delicious 'curry' mixture and egg. Mataba are always served with ajaat, a sweet/sour dipping sauce that includes sliced chilies (the mild type) and cucumber.

The restaurant itself is tiny cave-like affair:

(Click here to see a larger version.)

and since there's no ventilation, and virtually everything the restaurant makes is fried, the entire place is coated with a thin film of oil. It's also very hot, but despite all this, it really is an ideal place for a snack, as they serve a huge variety of drinks, as well as every imaginable type of Thai snack-type food, including hoy thord (fried oysters), spring rolls, som tam, and in particular, yam plaa duk foo:

the salad of crispy deep-fried catfish.

Roti Mataba Tha Phra Chan (Google Maps link)
081 309 6780

Likhit Kai Yaang

Another day, another Bangkok food legend. Today's gem is Likhit Kai Yaang, an ancient isaan restaurant next door to Ratchadamnoen Thai boxing stadium in Banglamphu. Likhit doesn't appear to have changed much since its apparent grand opening in 1960-something, and is not unlike, I imagine, a Soviet-era mess hall. And as was probably the case with Soviet-era mess halls, I wouldn't particularly advise looking into the cave-like kitchen.

Kai yaang means grilled chicken, and this is what people come here to eat. The birds (in this case kai baan, the Thai version of free range chicken) are first marinaded in a secret mixture, which I'm thinking must include at the least garlic, coriander seeds and/or roots and perhaps a bit of turmeric, before being grilled over coals outside the restaurant by an expert:

The result is a crispy skin redolent of the delicious marinade, and flesh that is tender and slightly smoky. Lovely indeed. Other than the restaurant's namesake, Likhit also does the issan staples, including a delicious som tam:

tap waan, liver:

grilled catfish:

and tom saep, a spicy/sour issan-type tom yam:

All wonderful, in particular the som tam, but the chicken is the reason I'll come back.

Likhit Kai Yaang (Google Maps link)
74/1 Thanon Ratchadamnoen Klang (next to the Thai boxing stadium)
02 281 1094

Paa Thong Ko Sawoey

Still in the Thanon Tanao area of Banglamphu, virtually across the street from K. Phanich and Nom Jo (I told you there's a lot of good stuff to eat here), exists a second-generation shop that specializes in making one product: paa thong ko. Essentially deep-fried bits of dough, it's a simple dish, and the owner has been making them in the same place for fifty years, taking over from his parents after they were too old to run the business.

The paa thong ko are served with a sweet milk-based dipping sauce flavoured with (and turned green by) bai toey, pandanus:

They are best eaten right away, when they're still hot, but I was surprised to find that the paa thong ko remained relatively crispy a good half hour after we bought them.

Paa Thong Ko Sawoey (Google Maps link)
540 Thanon Tanao
02 222 2635

Nom Jo

Virtually next door to K. Phanich is Nom Jo, a small restaurant that specializes in, of all things, milk. This is an odd variety of Thai restaurant that, I assume, dates back to the days when milk was something not generally available in Thailand and Thais had to go to specialist restaurants to drink it. Nowadays milk can be bought everywhere, but the restaurants still exist, and have begun to sell a variety of dishes to stay alive.

At Nom Jo ('Jo's Milk') we skipped over the milk altogether and went directly to kuaytiao luy suan, literally 'noodles on an adventure in the garden'. I really have no idea regarding the origin of this name (can anybody help?), and can only assume that it has to do with the fact that the dish is served with a large variety of fresh herbs and veggies.

As shown above, the dish is similar in form to spring rolls, the main difference being that kuaytiao luy suan are 'wetter' and more savoury. With lesser versions of this dish, when you break the noodle wrapper, the typically 'dry' filling tends to tumble out. With Jo's version, the filling, a mixture of ground pork, carrot and shiitake mushrooms, and a few other things I can't recall, had been sauteed before being placed on a lettuce leaf and bundled in the noodle. This helped hold the mixture together, and the seasoning during this process also provided a salty, savoury taste. The rice-flour noodle wrapper was also very nice, and was thick and toothsome without being soggy or heavy.

The dish was served with two sauces: a delicious spicy/sour one similar to that served with Thai seafood, and another sweet sauce similar to the one Thais eat with fried chicken, not to mention herbs including basil, mint, sawtooth coriander and lettuce.

Nom Jo also serves what look like some very interesting Chinese-Thai stews and curries, not to mention a variety of drinks (both milk and non-milk).

Nom Jo (Google Maps link)
Thanon Tanao (next door to K. Phanich--look for the cow sign)
089 788 6417