Kaeng Som (Thai Sour Curry - แกงส้ม)

This is the ultimate grande dame of Thai curries.

On the one hand, it's so simple to make that it's made almost weekly in Thai households. On the other hand, simply because of that everyone, their mother, their grandmother, their dead great-grandmother and her long-dead ancestors have an opinion about it!

(Read the post about food and identity to understand this phenomenon.)

That having been said, the dish is easy to make casually but extarordinarily hard to make expertly.

It's hard for the same reason that chefs routinely test novices with making an omelette, or that you end up skating naked making certain Italian dishes.

You're using a minimal set of ingredients, and there's no place to hide. Either you nail it or you don't, and if you don't, there's no way to fix it.

It's the ultimate test of technique. It's doubly hard for those of us who didn't grow up with a Thai grandmother beating us up while we were learning. We're going to have to take our beatings the ol'-fashioned way via experience.

What is it?

It's a simple water-based "sour" curry that's really quite "primitive" (to use David Thompson's description) in which vegetables and fish are simmered. It's served with rice (of course!)

There are only five ingredients that matter - chillies (which are emphatically not Thai but New World), garlic, shallots, shrimp paste, and tamarind.

There are also ingredients that will "balance" it - e.g. palm sugar, etc.

All the magic is in the paste which takes a bit of effort with a mortar and pestle. Thai curries simply don't work with food processors. You need to pound the ingredients.  (The neighbors rang the bell to check that everything was OK since the sound of pounding wafted out the kitchen window. It sure was, kids, it sure was!)

For the record, it's harder to pound soft ingredients into the right consistency than hard ingredients. This one is filled with soft ingredients — garlic and shallots.

If you persist, and the CC is sure that the readers on this blog are the kind that would do so, you'll be rewarded with sheer magnificence. Everything that is so wonderful about Thai food distilled down into one elegant minimalist package.

Ingredients

Paste

2 tbsp dried shrimp

4-6 long red chilies
3 red shallots
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp shrimp paste

2 cups water
tamarind water (thin)

vegetables
fish

fish sauce (nahm pla) to taste
palm sugar (optional)

Note 1: The kinds of vegetables you can add varies. Long beans are classic as are bamboo shoots, or raw papaya but the CC has seen modern stuff like cauliflower, cabbage, etc.

Note 2: The village roots of this dish should be "obvious".

Note 3: There is a relatively modern variation that plonks in a square-piece of cha-om omelette. Cha-om is going to be impossible to find outside of California. It has a strongly sulfurous smell exactly like that of kala namak in Indian food. The texture is not dissimilar to samphire. If you're feeling particularly flush with money, the combination would do the trick. Otherwise substitute a bitter green and kala namak for a rough approximation.

Note 4: You still need to make the square "omelettes". Cook them thick with egg in a pan like a frittata. Flip, cook the other side. Cool and cut into squares. (They should be quite dry since you're going to plop them into a curry.)

Note 5: This is not a "fancy" dish. All the crazy caveats aside, this is closer to the fast and the furious. You should be able to make it in at most 30 minutes if you get all your ingredients in a row.

Note 6: There is considerable warfare even among the Thai population about how "thin" the curry should be. The CC is going to stay out of this particular "Vietnam".

Note 7: Side dish. The ultimate test of serving Asian food. Keep it simple. The dish is spicy hence sliced cucumbers.

Note 8: You need a fish broth ideally. David Thompson suggests pounding some dried shrimp as the first step of the recipe. Works like a charm. Instant "fish broth" as the deeply dead great-great-great-grandmother would've understood and appreciated.

Note 9: The "correct" sequence of pounding is the driest hardest first to softest wettest last. This just makes it easy to do the pounding. In this case, it would be dried shrimp, soaked chilies, garlic, shallots. and finally shrimp paste.

Recipe

First make the tamarind water. Soak the lump of tamarind in 1/2 cup of boiling water for 20 minutes. Strain it squeezing the tamarind. You can do this directly into the boiling water later.

Soak the separately chilies in boiling water for the same 20 minutes. Pull out the chilies. Reserve the water to add to the broth.

Roast the dried shrimp briefly on a skillet. Put aside. On the same skillet, roast the shrimp paste wrapped in aluminum foil. Flip and keep roasting until it gives off its characteristic smell. Be careful not to burn it.

(These first three steps can clearly be done in parallel.)

Start making the paste. Pound the dried shrimp followed by the chilies, the garlic, and the shallots. Add the roasted shrimp paste and make a smooth paste.

Combine the stock, tamarind water and paste and bring to a boil. Add fish sauce to taste. Add some palm sugar to balance the flavors. Let it simmer for 4-5 minutes.

It should taste hot, sour and salty.

Add the vegetables and let them cook through. Add the fish and let it poach for 2-3 minutes.

Serve at once with rice.

Stir-Fried Squid with Long Beans, Thai Eggplants, Shrimp Paste & Green Peppercorns

There's this wonderful Thai restaurant near the CC's old workplace which has a dish that the CC is obsessed with.

It ticks off all the right notes - funky, umami, complex with enough heat to set your mouth alight and yet, in that precise Thai way, it works!

The CC has had plenty of opportunities to "reverse engineer" this particular dish. It looks like a variation on the equally famous pad prik khing.

The CC is totally a sucker for the green peppercorns that come in the dish. They are not easy to find but you must get the ones pickled in brine not in vinegar.

There seemed to be a complex metallic note behind it, and the CC figured it the old fashioned way when he spilled some on his shirt. It was fresh turmeric. The CC was out a shirt but had gained a recipe. Cosmic balance and all that.

Ingredients

Paste

4 kaffir lime leaves (sliced very fine)
4 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
2 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
1" galangal
1 lemongrass stalk
1 small turmeric
2-3 Thai bird chilies
sugar (to balance the taste)

Stir-Fry

peanut oil

2 squid (read notes below)
6 Thai eggplants (quartered)
8-12 long beans (cut into 1" pieces)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots
3 tbsp green peppercorns

Thai basil

Recipe

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle to pound it to a paste. A food processor is simply not the same.

Note 2: Traditionally, the paste may require more or less ingredients depending on the quality thereof. For example, the CC only used 1 chili pepper since it was super hot. You need to taste and adjust based on the ingredients you have.

Note 3: The squid are cut into 1.5" x 1" pieces and cross-hatched with a knife. They will curl up and quickly cook in the stir-fry.

Note 4: The stir-fry goes at a rapid pace. You will need to have everything ready.

First prepare the paste. In a mortar and pestle, pound all the ingredients together to a fine paste. You may need to add more fish paste to loosen the sauce, or a little more sugar if it feels too salty. The paste should be thick, pungent and definitely have a bite from the chilies.

Heat the peanut oil until it is shimmering. Add the paste and fry for a bit. Add the eggplants and continue frying for 2 mins. Add the bamboo shoots and the long beans and fry for 2-3 mins. You may need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to loosen the sauce at this point. Add the squid and the peppercorns. Take off the heat as soon as the squid curl.

Top with the basil leaves.

Serve at once with jasmine rice.

Astoria Shopping Trip

Pad Prik Khing

Not for the "vegetables". Shrimp paste is essential. So are long beans.

Kapi (gkapi)

The motherlode.

The stuff that tests your commitment to serious Thai cuisine (and most serious Far East cuisines.) The line that separates the women from the girls.

The initial smell while frying? Intense; not entirely unpleasant but decidedly an acquired taste.

The initial smell while roasting? Over-the-top intense. Definitely a test of character and commitment to the culinary arts.

The taste? Indescribably silky-smooth "mouth feel" that is completely impossible to replicate + a layered complexity to the dish + umami up-the-wazoo.

How is it made? Perhaps you don't care to know in the spirit of not wanting to know how sausage is made. If so, bailout now.

Basically, there are these tiny shrimp called keuy, and they are macerated with tons of sea salt, and left to dry. The stuff is then macerated again with more salt, and left to dry, and so on and so forth until you get the above smooth dark-brown almost-purplish paste.

The stuff lasts pretty much indefinitely. Nothing is going to grow in that amount of salt.

The quality of the ingredients matter as does the care taken to produce it. Folks in the "know" are just as sniffy and snooty about their shrimp paste as they would be about the finest parmigiano-reggiano, or the finest miso or the finest mangoes.

Just for the record, here's a translation table:

Indonesian: terasi
Malay: belacan
Vietnamese: mắm tôm
Filipino: alamang

In practice, the CC has most commonly encountered the Thai + Malay words. Why, he cannot possibly tell you.

Go forth and enjoy. May all your sauces be rich and complex.

More Musings on Umami

There are three sources of umami known.

The ones that were first discovered historically were glutamates (present in konbu, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste.) Others found in short order were various isosinates (present in broths made of dried bonito flakes,) and guanylates (found in high concentrations amongst shiitake mushrooms.)

The key idea here seems to be a sort of synergy. A small amount of any of them enhances the small quantities of natural umami substances already found in hundreds of foods, and the most important point is that when glutamates and isosinates are combined, they have a powerful multiplier effect, which enhances the umami-ness of the underlying food.

This pretty much explains a huge number of historical phenomena, from all over the world.

Consider the Japanese dashi. It's made from both konbu, and dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi.) You're getting a potent mix of glutamates, and isosinates. Sometimes, they add shiitake mushrooms to further enhance the mix.

Same goes for the simple pasta sauce recipe of fried pancetta, tomatoes, and dried porcini mushrooms. Talk about a triple whammy!

We can also explain the powerful spread of the tomato. In a few hundred years, it radically transformed ancient cuisines (Italy and India.) The point is that the local recipes were already very attractive before the tomato, but the addition of the tomato unleashed more of the umami qualities that were already present in minute quantities in the underlying substances.

It also explains certain truths that chefs hold dear -- young peas over older ones, ripe tomatoes over fresh ones, aged cheeses over unaged ones, and oysters in winter over summer (the latter has a health component but one that has been irrelevant for at least half a century.) Same with aged hams, and dry-aged beef, and sun-dried tomatoes (even when fresh ones are available.) Your palate is selecting for the more powerfully concentrated glutamates (and drying is just one way of achieving that.)

It should be clear why fermented fish sauces (garum/liquamen in Roman times, nahm pla in Thai food, nuoc mam in Vietnamese food), fish pastes (allec in Roman times, gkapi in Thai food), dried shrimp, and intense meat products have been popular for millenia. Likewise meat extracts (Bovril), and autolyzed yeast extracts.

This is why pizza (tomato paste and parmesan), and hamburgers, french fries, and ketchup practically constitute two religions in and of themselves.

Free glutamates are most commonly found in vegetables. Isosinic acid most commonly in meat, and animal products. This is responsible for the strong intensification when meat and vegetables are cooked together.

This is why certain Italian recipes start with "fry the pancetta, or the prosciutto" even when the ingredients are all vegetarian, and the instructions call for the pancetta to be fished out after the frying. Even a relatively poor family could afford the modest amount of meat required, but the combination of meat and vegetables is a powerful one.

That's why anchovies have been popular through the millenia, and why Thai curries and pastes can never truly be approximated in vegetarian terms. They are too dependent on the grammar of seafood and its umami. There is simply no mechanism to substitute the intense mouthfulness (= umami-ness) of gkapi (shrimp paste.)

Cambodian Food (in the ghetto)

First stop, the day after I arrived was a Cambodian lunch place in some suburban ghetto. Gritty surroundings, lots of barbed-wire, geeks galore from Silicon Valley, and some amazing food.

We ordered a catfish hamok (also spelled as h'mok and amok), and a dish with long beans. (I'm sure I'm not doing justice to the pronunciation.)

The h'mok is fish chunks mixed with coconut milk, and ground coconut meat. It's heavy on the galangal, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and particulary kapi (or gkapi) (fermented shrimp paste.) All of this is wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.

The aromas are simply sublime! My sister was generous enough to let me have the "first smell".

The CC openly admits his addiction to gkapi (watch for a post on this later), but this is not for the faint of heart, and is definitely an acquired taste.

The CC was also just impressed that the long bean dish contained long beans. Far too often, restaurants substitute French beans (what a copout!)

Talk about an auspicious beginning to a vacation!