Most citrus leaves are edible. In fact, they are downright addictive. Particularly when steeped and added to a martini.
(However, that's not this article.)
Somebody smart at my local farmers' market figured out that they could market lime leaves. As many of you might know, winter is the time for citrus fruits. Ergo lime leaves.
While they are not a perfect substitute for kaffir lime leaves in Thai cooking, they work perfectly excellently in the soups. Most importantly, they work really well as substitutes for curry leaves in Indian cooking particularly when you slice them into pieces. They are hardier so they will not be edible and you will have to fish them out but they lend exactly the correct aroma.
Your rasams and your chitraanam can now be "locavore".
The CC is just thrilled.
Showing posts with label thai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thai. Show all posts
Monday, January 7, 2019
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
2-acetyl 1-pyrolline
Do you love Thai food?
Do you love fresh bread?
Do you love basmati or jasmine rice?
If so, you're in love with this particular molecule.
It amplifies itself in both Indian and Thai culture with their love of jasmine blossoms and pandanus leaves — both of which have the above molecule as a dominant fragrance — and which are added to rice to amp up the already existing fragrance.
Sanskrit literature has a tendency to have lovers' meetings beneath jasmine trees. The majority of Indian miniature paintings in the "romantic lovers' mode" feature jasmine trees. Even today, jasmine is the dominant flower for weddings in India.
Clearly in the modern parlance, 2-acetyl 1-pyrolline, you got game!
Do you love fresh bread?
Do you love basmati or jasmine rice?
If so, you're in love with this particular molecule.
It amplifies itself in both Indian and Thai culture with their love of jasmine blossoms and pandanus leaves — both of which have the above molecule as a dominant fragrance — and which are added to rice to amp up the already existing fragrance.
Sanskrit literature has a tendency to have lovers' meetings beneath jasmine trees. The majority of Indian miniature paintings in the "romantic lovers' mode" feature jasmine trees. Even today, jasmine is the dominant flower for weddings in India.
Clearly in the modern parlance, 2-acetyl 1-pyrolline, you got game!
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Beef Rendang
This is the CC's second-favorite beef dish with the honors going to steak tartare.
A true masterpiece of Indonesian cooking but it does take some work to make. It requires a ton of time and it's even better the next day. The CC once started it at five in the evening which turned out to be a terrible idea. The hungry hordes waited and we ate at ten at night.
The CC suggests starting at noon for dinner. The dish literally makes itself. All you need is a timer and towards the end a little bit of stirring every 10 minutes. (This is one of those places where a large non-stick flat pan works great!)
Rendang is actually a preservation technique not significantly different from the French duck confit or the Philippine adobo. It's as much a mechanism of preserving the meat in the absence of refrigeration as it is a cooking technique.
(There's a reason that the meat is tender but almost dry and coated with a fatty sheen and the list of spices includes garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and especially turmeric all of which have strong anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.)
The recipe is adapted from James Oseland. (He skips a few crucial spices but since these are old-hat to people used to Indian cooking, the CC has restored them.)
Traditionally, made with water buffalo, you really want the leanest cut of beef that you can get — boneless chuck, top round, bottom round, or even shoulder. It's going to be braised in coconut milk and a ton of spices so there will be the plenty of time for the dish to turn meltingly tender.
James Oseland does have one of the great lines of all time:
The accompaniment (shown below) is a classic nasi kuning (= turmeric rice) which is nothing more than rice boiled with fresh turmeric and salt — pandanus leaves if you have them.
(Note that traditional nasi kuning would generally be cooked with coconut milk but if you do that for such a rich dish, the two would clash so you should go with the simpler style.)
While the recipe is complexly spiced, it's emphatically not "spicy". It has a layered complexity not pure heat.
You will need a side salad and while the CC went with greens and tomatoes (which is a tad French); you'll be equally well served with the classic — slices of cucumbers, salt, and whole chillies.
Ingredients
Flavoring Paste
1 whole nutmeg (cracked)
5 cloves
2 cardamoms
1/4 tsp cumin
5 candlenuts (read notes)
1 largish piece of turmeric (or 2 small ones)
2" ginger
2" galangal
3 stalks lemongrass (sliced diagonally very thin)
dash of palm sugar (substitute by brown sugar)
Main
2 lbs boneless beef chuck (or bottom round) - cubed in 2" pieces
2 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 cup asam keping water
1/2 cup roasted dried coconut
3 thick stalks lemongrass (tied into a knot)
1 piece cinnamon stick
7 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 whole daun salan leaves (read notes)
salt
To Serve
1 tbsp kaffir lime leaves (very finely shredded)
Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle. No, the food processor will not work. Deal with it! The CC knows that people claim it does including Oseland but it gets the textures all wrong. Oddly, the shallots are not soft enough to just dice finely. You need to pound them.
Note 2: Add kosher salt to the mixture while you are pounding soft ingredients. It makes it far easier to control the texture. You won't need to add salt to the final product.
Note 3: Candle nuts are hard to find outside of specialty stores. While most recipes call for macadamia, the CC finds that hazelnuts actually provide the right kind of fat content and taste. You will need 10 hazelnuts since candle nuts are larger.
Note 4: You're bluntly going to have trouble finding asam keping (= "garcinia atroviridis".) Your best choice is to use kudampuli from Southern Indian cooking (= "garcinia cambogia" or "garcinia gummi-gutta".) If you are totally stuck, use the North Indian kokum (= "garcinia indica") or even in the worst case, plain ol' tamarind. (This makes less difference than you think. It's primary job is the both tenderize the meat and make it less "meaty" while adding a subtle sour flavor.)
Note 5: The remaining fresh spices are easily available at your local Thai store. They're so popular now that the CC found all of them this weekend at his local farmers' market. The dried spices are Indian classics. You should be able to find them in any supermarket or even cheaper in the Indian markets. Use whole ones freshly ground not pre-ground ones!
Note 6: The leaves known as daun salan are actually dried leaves of the cassia tree. Not cinnamon but cassia. They are called tējapattā in Hindi (= तेजपत्ता, literally: "cinnamon leaves") and you find them in Indian stores labeled as "bay leaves" which is complete nonsense since they taste nothing like traditional bay laurel. (If you don't have them, your best bet is a smattering of cinnamon or cassia although the dried leaves are stronger in flavor so amp it up a notch or two.)
Note 7: The two absolute non-negotiables are lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves both of which add very strong citrus notes. In fact, as you read in the recipe below, you need more kaffir lime leaves finely slivered to add to the beef as you serve it (easily seen in the picture above.)
Note 8: Nutmeg is also crucial. Enjoy your happy vivid dreams!
Recipe
To make the asam keping water, just add the dried ingredient to some water and boil it for a few minutes. This is one of the places the microwave works great. (If using tamarind, just cover it with boiling water. When it cools down, squish it with your hands and pass through a sieve. Discard the solids.)
Take all the ingredients for the flavoring paste and pound them using a mortar and pestle. First do all the spices and the hard ingredients then all the soft ingredients. (They are listed in the order that you should do them above.)
Don't worry if your mortar gets full. Just empty it into a bowl and mix afterwards.
This pounding will take the better part of 20-30 minutes so patience is required.
(It's harder to pound soft ingredients rather than hard ones since they just squish and slide around rather than get pounded into a paste. Very counter-intuitive but important to know.)
Combine the paste, all the other ingredients including the beef, coconut milk, leaves and spices into a large pan. Stir gently to mix them all. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.
Let it bubble away stirring every 20 minutes so that the paste and coconut milk do not stick to the bottom and burn.
James Oseland describes the rest vividly:
When all the liquid has evaporated, reduce the heat to low and allow the beef to brown in the fat. Stir every 5 minutes because it has a tendency to stick.
The beef should be coffee-colored and barely moist with a glossy sheen.
(As a general rule, there should not be any fat left in the pan but if there is skim it with a spoon and store for later use. It's great for a classic Indonesian dish made with new potatoes!)
Discard the whole lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, daun salan leaves, and cinnamon.
Allow the beef to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. More if you can swing it. It's best served at room temperature (or slightly warm rather than hot) topped with the finely slivered kaffir lime leaves.
† from the turmeric.
‡ This may very well be an underestimate. Five hours is not out of the question if the cut of the meat is extremely lean.
A true masterpiece of Indonesian cooking but it does take some work to make. It requires a ton of time and it's even better the next day. The CC once started it at five in the evening which turned out to be a terrible idea. The hungry hordes waited and we ate at ten at night.
The CC suggests starting at noon for dinner. The dish literally makes itself. All you need is a timer and towards the end a little bit of stirring every 10 minutes. (This is one of those places where a large non-stick flat pan works great!)
Rendang is actually a preservation technique not significantly different from the French duck confit or the Philippine adobo. It's as much a mechanism of preserving the meat in the absence of refrigeration as it is a cooking technique.
(There's a reason that the meat is tender but almost dry and coated with a fatty sheen and the list of spices includes garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and especially turmeric all of which have strong anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.)
The recipe is adapted from James Oseland. (He skips a few crucial spices but since these are old-hat to people used to Indian cooking, the CC has restored them.)
Traditionally, made with water buffalo, you really want the leanest cut of beef that you can get — boneless chuck, top round, bottom round, or even shoulder. It's going to be braised in coconut milk and a ton of spices so there will be the plenty of time for the dish to turn meltingly tender.
James Oseland does have one of the great lines of all time:
Rendang has its own lethargic cooking rhythm, so that the more you try to rush it, the longer it seems to take.This is talking truth to lazy cooks. Just let it do it's own thing, stir it occasionally, indulge in a book or a crossword, and it will make itself. It has its own meditative rhythm which cannot be rushed.
The accompaniment (shown below) is a classic nasi kuning (= turmeric rice) which is nothing more than rice boiled with fresh turmeric and salt — pandanus leaves if you have them.
(Note that traditional nasi kuning would generally be cooked with coconut milk but if you do that for such a rich dish, the two would clash so you should go with the simpler style.)
While the recipe is complexly spiced, it's emphatically not "spicy". It has a layered complexity not pure heat.
Ingredients
Flavoring Paste
1 whole nutmeg (cracked)
5 cloves
2 cardamoms
1/4 tsp cumin
5 candlenuts (read notes)
1 largish piece of turmeric (or 2 small ones)
2" ginger
2" galangal
3 stalks lemongrass (sliced diagonally very thin)
5-7 fresh red chilis (more if you like it spicy)
3 cloves garlic
6 shallots (coarsely chopped)dash of palm sugar (substitute by brown sugar)
Main
2 lbs boneless beef chuck (or bottom round) - cubed in 2" pieces
2 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 cup asam keping water
1/2 cup roasted dried coconut
3 thick stalks lemongrass (tied into a knot)
1 piece cinnamon stick
7 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 whole daun salan leaves (read notes)
salt
To Serve
1 tbsp kaffir lime leaves (very finely shredded)
Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle. No, the food processor will not work. Deal with it! The CC knows that people claim it does including Oseland but it gets the textures all wrong. Oddly, the shallots are not soft enough to just dice finely. You need to pound them.
Note 2: Add kosher salt to the mixture while you are pounding soft ingredients. It makes it far easier to control the texture. You won't need to add salt to the final product.
Note 3: Candle nuts are hard to find outside of specialty stores. While most recipes call for macadamia, the CC finds that hazelnuts actually provide the right kind of fat content and taste. You will need 10 hazelnuts since candle nuts are larger.
Note 4: You're bluntly going to have trouble finding asam keping (= "garcinia atroviridis".) Your best choice is to use kudampuli from Southern Indian cooking (= "garcinia cambogia" or "garcinia gummi-gutta".) If you are totally stuck, use the North Indian kokum (= "garcinia indica") or even in the worst case, plain ol' tamarind. (This makes less difference than you think. It's primary job is the both tenderize the meat and make it less "meaty" while adding a subtle sour flavor.)
Note 5: The remaining fresh spices are easily available at your local Thai store. They're so popular now that the CC found all of them this weekend at his local farmers' market. The dried spices are Indian classics. You should be able to find them in any supermarket or even cheaper in the Indian markets. Use whole ones freshly ground not pre-ground ones!
Note 6: The leaves known as daun salan are actually dried leaves of the cassia tree. Not cinnamon but cassia. They are called tējapattā in Hindi (= तेजपत्ता, literally: "cinnamon leaves") and you find them in Indian stores labeled as "bay leaves" which is complete nonsense since they taste nothing like traditional bay laurel. (If you don't have them, your best bet is a smattering of cinnamon or cassia although the dried leaves are stronger in flavor so amp it up a notch or two.)
Note 7: The two absolute non-negotiables are lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves both of which add very strong citrus notes. In fact, as you read in the recipe below, you need more kaffir lime leaves finely slivered to add to the beef as you serve it (easily seen in the picture above.)
Note 8: Nutmeg is also crucial. Enjoy your happy vivid dreams!
Recipe
To make the asam keping water, just add the dried ingredient to some water and boil it for a few minutes. This is one of the places the microwave works great. (If using tamarind, just cover it with boiling water. When it cools down, squish it with your hands and pass through a sieve. Discard the solids.)
Take all the ingredients for the flavoring paste and pound them using a mortar and pestle. First do all the spices and the hard ingredients then all the soft ingredients. (They are listed in the order that you should do them above.)
Don't worry if your mortar gets full. Just empty it into a bowl and mix afterwards.
This pounding will take the better part of 20-30 minutes so patience is required.
(It's harder to pound soft ingredients rather than hard ones since they just squish and slide around rather than get pounded into a paste. Very counter-intuitive but important to know.)
Combine the paste, all the other ingredients including the beef, coconut milk, leaves and spices into a large pan. Stir gently to mix them all. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.
Let it bubble away stirring every 20 minutes so that the paste and coconut milk do not stick to the bottom and burn.
James Oseland describes the rest vividly:
The meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will now go on a fascinating journey. At first, the broth will be thin and gorgeously bright orange†. As it cooks, the coconut milk will reduce, its fats (as well as the fat the meat renders) separating from the solids. It will be become progressively thicker and darker eventually turning brown.Keep stirring until the meat becomes rather glossy with a very thick sauce. This will take the better part of anywhere between 3 to 4 hours‡. The meat should be tender enough to easily poke with a fork. (You may need to add some water from time to time.)
When all the liquid has evaporated, reduce the heat to low and allow the beef to brown in the fat. Stir every 5 minutes because it has a tendency to stick.
The beef should be coffee-colored and barely moist with a glossy sheen.
(As a general rule, there should not be any fat left in the pan but if there is skim it with a spoon and store for later use. It's great for a classic Indonesian dish made with new potatoes!)
Discard the whole lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, daun salan leaves, and cinnamon.
Allow the beef to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. More if you can swing it. It's best served at room temperature (or slightly warm rather than hot) topped with the finely slivered kaffir lime leaves.
† from the turmeric.
‡ This may very well be an underestimate. Five hours is not out of the question if the cut of the meat is extremely lean.
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Green Peppercorn Pickles
The CC is not the sentimental type and he's certainly not the rhapsodising type but if there ever were something to send him into a Proustian "madeleine" moment, it would be these pickles.
What are they?
Fresh green peppercorns that have been pickled with just salt and lime.
A good friend of the CC's used to eat them with yogurt-rice. He couldn't cook if his life depended on it (still can't!) so these were "a lifeline for kitchen failures and the lovelorn". Bit of a harsh judgment on the CC's part.
Back to the peppercorns.
Only going to work with fresh peppercorns which are hard to find. Ideally, you would use just salt but you need lime to get the pH of the liquid down to the right level. The lime does not participate in the final product as a taste since the canning process neutralizes it.
If you're going to make truly great steak au poivre or the classic Thai green fish curry with green peppercorns (พริกไทยอ่อน), these be the peppercorns that you want to use. In a wondrous world, you'd have fresh peppercorns all year around but it's not a wondrous world. We can just make it a little more wondrous with food technology.
Ingredients
(based on your canning jar size)
500 grams green peppercorns
8 tbsp sea salt
4 limes (juiced and passed through a sieve)
water
Note: Canning jars come with a sealant. The sealant is activated when inverted in boiling water.
Recipe
Wash the peppercorns really carefully. Set aside.
Bring water to a boil. Dump the bottle inside and fish it out. You are just sterilizing the bottle. In this bottle, drop the peppercorns, the salt and the lime juice. Add enough cold fresh water to top off the jar.
Add the sealing mechanism and seal carefully. Gently put the bottle upside-down in the boiling water. Bring to a boil and let it boil for about 5-6 minutes.
Fish it out and let it sit.
Takes about 2-3 weeks to pickle. Once you open the bottle, you must keep it in the fridge. Use a clean fork/spoon to fish out the pickles. Add more salt and water to cover them when you do so.
What are they?
Fresh green peppercorns that have been pickled with just salt and lime.
A good friend of the CC's used to eat them with yogurt-rice. He couldn't cook if his life depended on it (still can't!) so these were "a lifeline for kitchen failures and the lovelorn". Bit of a harsh judgment on the CC's part.
Back to the peppercorns.
Only going to work with fresh peppercorns which are hard to find. Ideally, you would use just salt but you need lime to get the pH of the liquid down to the right level. The lime does not participate in the final product as a taste since the canning process neutralizes it.
If you're going to make truly great steak au poivre or the classic Thai green fish curry with green peppercorns (พริกไทยอ่อน), these be the peppercorns that you want to use. In a wondrous world, you'd have fresh peppercorns all year around but it's not a wondrous world. We can just make it a little more wondrous with food technology.
Ingredients
(based on your canning jar size)
500 grams green peppercorns
8 tbsp sea salt
4 limes (juiced and passed through a sieve)
water
Note: Canning jars come with a sealant. The sealant is activated when inverted in boiling water.
Recipe
Wash the peppercorns really carefully. Set aside.
Bring water to a boil. Dump the bottle inside and fish it out. You are just sterilizing the bottle. In this bottle, drop the peppercorns, the salt and the lime juice. Add enough cold fresh water to top off the jar.
Add the sealing mechanism and seal carefully. Gently put the bottle upside-down in the boiling water. Bring to a boil and let it boil for about 5-6 minutes.
Fish it out and let it sit.
Takes about 2-3 weeks to pickle. Once you open the bottle, you must keep it in the fridge. Use a clean fork/spoon to fish out the pickles. Add more salt and water to cover them when you do so.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Soy Me Up, Soy me Down!
There are soy sauces and there are soy sauces but they are neither equivalent nor substitutes.
Historically, soy sauce arose in China but it spread across South-East Asia and then the world. As it spread, the production became local and its irresistible umami flavors were tweaked to local tastes.
That means that Chinese, Japanese and Thai soy sauces (just to use three as an example) are totally different. Even within a single culture there are multiple kinds of soy sauce that have different end uses. This parallels the equally different kinds of fish sauce each tweaked to local tastes.
The CC can hear the screams from the peanut gallery already.
"You mean to say, that I must now stock different kinds of soy sauces?!? Are you nuts?"
Sadly yes.
If you want to get the right flavors then yes, and yes the CC is nuts. (Not much doubt, was there?)
The point about the "right" flavor is made most memorably in one of the episodes of the serialized food manga Oishinbo (美味しんぼ).
The name is a portmanteau word between oishii (= 美味しい, delicious) and kuishinbou (= 食いしん坊, glutton). On the one hand, the manga has a simple format which is important in a serialized format just like a sit-com, which is why it ran for 30+ years, but it's so heavy-handed and Oedipal that Freud might have objected!
However, it's both excellent and makes important points. At one point, the father upstages the son by making the same dish with the same ingredients but using Chinese soy sauces rather than the equivalent Japanese versions because the dish is of Chinese-Japanese origin not truly Japanese. (As stated, heavy-handed but still with a point.)
If you choose to engage in this journey, these are not expensive products and they store indefinitely in a cool and dark environment so it's not as big a burden as it sounds.
How many can you get away with at the bare minimum?
The CC is guessing between four and six — two for Thai food, one or two for Japanese, and one to two for Chinese. More if you want to cook Indo-Chinese or Filipino.
Sorry.
Just don't shoot the messenger.
Historically, soy sauce arose in China but it spread across South-East Asia and then the world. As it spread, the production became local and its irresistible umami flavors were tweaked to local tastes.
That means that Chinese, Japanese and Thai soy sauces (just to use three as an example) are totally different. Even within a single culture there are multiple kinds of soy sauce that have different end uses. This parallels the equally different kinds of fish sauce each tweaked to local tastes.
The CC can hear the screams from the peanut gallery already.
"You mean to say, that I must now stock different kinds of soy sauces?!? Are you nuts?"
Sadly yes.
If you want to get the right flavors then yes, and yes the CC is nuts. (Not much doubt, was there?)
The point about the "right" flavor is made most memorably in one of the episodes of the serialized food manga Oishinbo (美味しんぼ).
The name is a portmanteau word between oishii (= 美味しい, delicious) and kuishinbou (= 食いしん坊, glutton). On the one hand, the manga has a simple format which is important in a serialized format just like a sit-com, which is why it ran for 30+ years, but it's so heavy-handed and Oedipal that Freud might have objected!
However, it's both excellent and makes important points. At one point, the father upstages the son by making the same dish with the same ingredients but using Chinese soy sauces rather than the equivalent Japanese versions because the dish is of Chinese-Japanese origin not truly Japanese. (As stated, heavy-handed but still with a point.)
If you choose to engage in this journey, these are not expensive products and they store indefinitely in a cool and dark environment so it's not as big a burden as it sounds.
How many can you get away with at the bare minimum?
The CC is guessing between four and six — two for Thai food, one or two for Japanese, and one to two for Chinese. More if you want to cook Indo-Chinese or Filipino.
Sorry.
Just don't shoot the messenger.
Friday, October 28, 2016
Pad See Ew (ผัดซีอิ๊ว)
This dish is a favorite in Thai restaurants everywhere and the CC has spent plenty of money on it in increasingly dubious renditions. It was time to take the bull by the horns (or the wok by the handle) and get it right.
There is one massive hurdle that all home chefs are going to have to jump over. Your stove (and the CC's too!) simply don't generate enough heat. They don't pump out enough BTU's. There is no way to recover from this and compare your dish with the street food that it is. You'll get a very good approximation but you'll never match the street.
(If you happen to have one of those professional ranges, the CC is jealous as all hell.)
There is another thought that the CC has had on and off over the years.
The CC was near Chinatown for jury duty when he thought that he should he make this recipe. He did pick up one or two of the ingredients that he was missing. It would've been effortless to pick up the Chinese broccoli since it was plentiful and cheap. However, the CC knew that he had a ton of kale with splendid stalks in his fridge.
It's very easy to just duplicate a recipe but in order to get to the next level and understand its internal grammar, you must understand what makes it really tick.
This recipe is street food. Do you genuinely believe they care about anything more than what makes them a profit and what is locally available?
There is a secondary point. The first time the CC made it for himself (solo siempre solamente solo), he fucked up so spectacularly that it was embarrassing. What was interesting was that even though the noodles were absolutely inedible, the chicken, kale, eggs and sauce were absolutely delicious. Noodles got discarded and the rest was more amazing than any restaurant could make.
So the flavors had been nailed but the texture had some issues. No problem. Tried a few days later. Got there.
(On a related note, why don't food writers talk about their failures? Failures are vastly more instructive than success.)
The dish literally just means "stir-fried with soy sauce". Its name betrays its Chinese origins. You'll see the same dish as char kway teow in Singapore and Malaysia or lard na in Laos. However, just with a few tweaks, the dish has been made "Thai" and it's truly amazing how such small tweaks can make a dish "native". It also points out how immigrants have made cuisine richer through cross-pollination.
There's a massive difference between Chinese broccoli and anything else you could use. It's softer and eminently workable as a stir-fry.
Kale would work as would just regular broccoli. What would totally kill would be broccoli rabe. The trick for the home cook since they don't have the heat for the wok is to make sure the stalks and the florets have the right texture. French chefs have been dealing with this forever. It's called par-boiling. The CC will give you the general parameters but for once you will have to par-boil for yourself. Early winter kale is very different from later winter stalk-y kale. There is no way to standardize. Just par-boil until the stuff is "barely chewy" and then drain, dry completely before you stir-fry.
For the record, the kale slayed. The CC's intuition was absolutely on target. The darker slightly more bitter taste held up much more to the sweetness and umami of the stir-fry and made it vastly more interesting. The balance of flavors corresponds to the Thai ideal.
Lunch is served.
Ingredients
(serves 1 - read note about scaling)
rice noodles (sen yai)
1 cup Chinese broccoli (gai lan)
1-2 cloves garlic (minced)
1/4 cup chicken (sliced against the grain)
1 egg (beaten)
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
black pepper
sugar
peanut oil
Note 1: Make sure that the total "wet" sauce is no more than 2 1/2 tbsp per serving. You will never get your home wok hot enough to counter that. This is IMPORTANT.
Note 2: Because of the above, you may need to use salt to balance out the sugar. Normally, you'd just use more soy sauce or fish sauce but it's not going to work if you make the stuff wetter than necessary.
Note 3: This ain't no "health dish". You'll need to add some extra oil so that the stuff doesn't stick.
Note 4: The max "scaling" for a home cook is 2 portions. There is just no way to get the wok hotter and make it work. You'll have to clean the wok and start over for more.
Note 5: The original recipe calls for "white pepper". It's a Thai aesthetic thing except this particular sauce is black. Ain't no one that got time for such shenanigans. Just use black pepper finely ground.
Note 6: The rice noodles (unless fresh which are hard to get) must be par-boiled according to the instructions. They must be drained, dried and separated.
Note 7: They also add carrots sliced very thin (stir-fry, stir-fry!) steeply on the diagonal. Highly recommended not just for the color pop but also the taste and nutrition.
Note 8: This is a stir-fry. The drier you get your ingredients, the more success you will have. Invest in paper towels.
Note 9: Thank you, David Thompson.
Recipe
The recipe is quite straightforward but do try and follow it. Make sure everything is diced and ready to in quickly.
Mix all the sauces in a container. Taste. Modify according to what you like.
Heat the wok. Just let it heat for at least 5-7 minutes.
Add 1-2 tbsp peanut oil. When it is shimmering, add the garlic and immediately add the chicken. Stir quickly. Add the egg and mix it up. Push it to the edge of the wok. Add the stalks first and fry for a bit. Then the leaves. Push everything to the edge.
Add the rice noodles which have been par-cooked. Stir and separate. You may need to use your hands and add an extra 1-2 tbsp of peanut oil.
Let the mixture stir for a while. Once the noodles have caramelized a bit, add the sauces and stir-fry for a minute or two. Serve at once.
This recipe has no shelf life.
There is one massive hurdle that all home chefs are going to have to jump over. Your stove (and the CC's too!) simply don't generate enough heat. They don't pump out enough BTU's. There is no way to recover from this and compare your dish with the street food that it is. You'll get a very good approximation but you'll never match the street.
(If you happen to have one of those professional ranges, the CC is jealous as all hell.)
There is another thought that the CC has had on and off over the years.
The CC was near Chinatown for jury duty when he thought that he should he make this recipe. He did pick up one or two of the ingredients that he was missing. It would've been effortless to pick up the Chinese broccoli since it was plentiful and cheap. However, the CC knew that he had a ton of kale with splendid stalks in his fridge.
It's very easy to just duplicate a recipe but in order to get to the next level and understand its internal grammar, you must understand what makes it really tick.
This recipe is street food. Do you genuinely believe they care about anything more than what makes them a profit and what is locally available?
There is a secondary point. The first time the CC made it for himself (solo siempre solamente solo), he fucked up so spectacularly that it was embarrassing. What was interesting was that even though the noodles were absolutely inedible, the chicken, kale, eggs and sauce were absolutely delicious. Noodles got discarded and the rest was more amazing than any restaurant could make.
So the flavors had been nailed but the texture had some issues. No problem. Tried a few days later. Got there.
(On a related note, why don't food writers talk about their failures? Failures are vastly more instructive than success.)
The dish literally just means "stir-fried with soy sauce". Its name betrays its Chinese origins. You'll see the same dish as char kway teow in Singapore and Malaysia or lard na in Laos. However, just with a few tweaks, the dish has been made "Thai" and it's truly amazing how such small tweaks can make a dish "native". It also points out how immigrants have made cuisine richer through cross-pollination.
There's a massive difference between Chinese broccoli and anything else you could use. It's softer and eminently workable as a stir-fry.
Kale would work as would just regular broccoli. What would totally kill would be broccoli rabe. The trick for the home cook since they don't have the heat for the wok is to make sure the stalks and the florets have the right texture. French chefs have been dealing with this forever. It's called par-boiling. The CC will give you the general parameters but for once you will have to par-boil for yourself. Early winter kale is very different from later winter stalk-y kale. There is no way to standardize. Just par-boil until the stuff is "barely chewy" and then drain, dry completely before you stir-fry.
For the record, the kale slayed. The CC's intuition was absolutely on target. The darker slightly more bitter taste held up much more to the sweetness and umami of the stir-fry and made it vastly more interesting. The balance of flavors corresponds to the Thai ideal.
Lunch is served.
Ingredients
(serves 1 - read note about scaling)
rice noodles (sen yai)
1 cup Chinese broccoli (gai lan)
1-2 cloves garlic (minced)
1/4 cup chicken (sliced against the grain)
1 egg (beaten)
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
black pepper
sugar
peanut oil
Note 1: Make sure that the total "wet" sauce is no more than 2 1/2 tbsp per serving. You will never get your home wok hot enough to counter that. This is IMPORTANT.
Note 2: Because of the above, you may need to use salt to balance out the sugar. Normally, you'd just use more soy sauce or fish sauce but it's not going to work if you make the stuff wetter than necessary.
Note 3: This ain't no "health dish". You'll need to add some extra oil so that the stuff doesn't stick.
Note 4: The max "scaling" for a home cook is 2 portions. There is just no way to get the wok hotter and make it work. You'll have to clean the wok and start over for more.
Note 5: The original recipe calls for "white pepper". It's a Thai aesthetic thing except this particular sauce is black. Ain't no one that got time for such shenanigans. Just use black pepper finely ground.
Note 6: The rice noodles (unless fresh which are hard to get) must be par-boiled according to the instructions. They must be drained, dried and separated.
Note 7: They also add carrots sliced very thin (stir-fry, stir-fry!) steeply on the diagonal. Highly recommended not just for the color pop but also the taste and nutrition.
Note 8: This is a stir-fry. The drier you get your ingredients, the more success you will have. Invest in paper towels.
Note 9: Thank you, David Thompson.
Recipe
The recipe is quite straightforward but do try and follow it. Make sure everything is diced and ready to in quickly.
Mix all the sauces in a container. Taste. Modify according to what you like.
Heat the wok. Just let it heat for at least 5-7 minutes.
Add 1-2 tbsp peanut oil. When it is shimmering, add the garlic and immediately add the chicken. Stir quickly. Add the egg and mix it up. Push it to the edge of the wok. Add the stalks first and fry for a bit. Then the leaves. Push everything to the edge.
Add the rice noodles which have been par-cooked. Stir and separate. You may need to use your hands and add an extra 1-2 tbsp of peanut oil.
Let the mixture stir for a while. Once the noodles have caramelized a bit, add the sauces and stir-fry for a minute or two. Serve at once.
This recipe has no shelf life.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Tom Yum
This is hands down one of the absolute favorites of the CC's in the Thai repertoire. It was requested so frequently by the CC's friends once that it was practically a standby as appetizer before "other" meals.
It also happens to be extraordinarily easy provided you have the right ingredients.
At its heart, it involves the simmering of extraordinarily fresh ingredients and then topping with some protein and aromatics.
Once again, it's a meta-recipe where you can have tom yum goong (shrimp) or tom yum gai (chicken) or tom yum talay (mixed seafood.)
David Thompson's recipe is ultra-minimalist and ultra-purist and it would work if the CC lived in a tropical climate and had access to the very best of produce in large quantities. It also eliminates shallots which is fine for royal cuisine but that's not what you're getting on the street.
Not having access to that quality of produce perenially, the CC's version is closer to that of Kasma Loha-Unchit's which tweaks the parameters to get the same taste profile.
The soup is an exercise in freshness. Simmer it at the last moment. Ideally, the boiling hot soup should be poured over the fresh meat/seafood and served at once. They will cook in the boiling broth and be both perfectly cooked and tender at the same time.
The CC once had a the sister of a friend who refused to eat barely cooked shrimp until we persuaded her to try it. Then she wanted seconds and thirds (of which alas, there were none!) A convert to the excellence of barely cooked seafood.
The existence of this soup on menus across the country may be a cliché but there's a solid reason it is one. It's a masterpiece of flavor.
Ingredients
3 cups water
1 small block tamarind
3-5 kaffir lime leaves
3 pieces lemongrass (sliced at a diagonal, pounded lightly)
1" galangal (sliced, pounded lightly)
3-4 Thai chillies (or to taste)
1 tbsp nahm prik pao (roasted chili paste/jam)
2 shallots (sliced lengthwise into thin slivers)
1 small tomato (sliced into quarters)
1/2 cup straw mushrooms
fish sauce (to taste)
chicken/shrimp/seafood
1-2 limes
cilantro leaves
Note 1: It's best to use water rather than broth. You get a very sharp clear taste profile. Broth muddies the waters so to speak. Think of it as the difference between limpid watercolors and an oil painting.
Note 2: The fresher the chicken/shrimp/seafood and also the aromatics, the more this soup will shine.
Note 3: The chicken should be sliced thinly against the bias. The shrimp can be left whole. The seafood should also be sliced finely.
Note 4: Since the galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves are not eaten, technically you could strain it. That's not the Thai way and yet the CC has seen it done in a superb "fancy" Thai restaurant in Manila.
Note 5: Scallions are fairly traditional too but the CC doesn't like the clash between the shallots, scallions and cilantro. He likes the sharper watercolor flavors.
Note 6: There are excellent brands of nahm prik pao on the market. No artificial ingredients, etc. You could be a purist and make it but the CC finds that these are not just acceptable but positively excellent.
Note 7: The CC would like to draw your attention to a powerful concept. The idea of a background "mellow" sourness (tamarind) allied with a perfumed "fresh" sourness (lime). You will see this idea as a conceptual framework all along Southeast Asia whether it's kudampuli + lime (South India) or dried raw mango (aamchur) + lime (North India) or tamarind/vinegar/raw mango + calamansi (Philippines.) You'll see it Italy too (vinegar + lemon). It's an extraordinarily potent idea.
Recipe
Smash the galangal and lemongrass lightly. Add them, the chillies and kaffir lime leaves to the water.
In a separate bowl, pour hot water over tamarind and let it soak for 20 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve into the same bowl of liquid. Discard the remnants.
Bring the liquid to a boil. When it is boiling, turn the heat down to a low simmer. Add the nahm prik pao and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Add fish sauce and check to taste. It should be aromatic, spicy and salty (and a little tart and sweet from the tamarind.)
Add the shallots, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Bring to a boil again for 2 minutes.
Turn off the heat. Squeeze the lime juice into it.
Pour over the chicken/seafood in individual bowls. Top with the cilantro leaves.
Serve at once with jasmine rice.
It also happens to be extraordinarily easy provided you have the right ingredients.
At its heart, it involves the simmering of extraordinarily fresh ingredients and then topping with some protein and aromatics.
Once again, it's a meta-recipe where you can have tom yum goong (shrimp) or tom yum gai (chicken) or tom yum talay (mixed seafood.)
David Thompson's recipe is ultra-minimalist and ultra-purist and it would work if the CC lived in a tropical climate and had access to the very best of produce in large quantities. It also eliminates shallots which is fine for royal cuisine but that's not what you're getting on the street.
Not having access to that quality of produce perenially, the CC's version is closer to that of Kasma Loha-Unchit's which tweaks the parameters to get the same taste profile.
The soup is an exercise in freshness. Simmer it at the last moment. Ideally, the boiling hot soup should be poured over the fresh meat/seafood and served at once. They will cook in the boiling broth and be both perfectly cooked and tender at the same time.
The CC once had a the sister of a friend who refused to eat barely cooked shrimp until we persuaded her to try it. Then she wanted seconds and thirds (of which alas, there were none!) A convert to the excellence of barely cooked seafood.
The existence of this soup on menus across the country may be a cliché but there's a solid reason it is one. It's a masterpiece of flavor.
Ingredients
3 cups water
1 small block tamarind
3-5 kaffir lime leaves
3 pieces lemongrass (sliced at a diagonal, pounded lightly)
1" galangal (sliced, pounded lightly)
3-4 Thai chillies (or to taste)
1 tbsp nahm prik pao (roasted chili paste/jam)
2 shallots (sliced lengthwise into thin slivers)
1 small tomato (sliced into quarters)
1/2 cup straw mushrooms
fish sauce (to taste)
chicken/shrimp/seafood
1-2 limes
cilantro leaves
Note 1: It's best to use water rather than broth. You get a very sharp clear taste profile. Broth muddies the waters so to speak. Think of it as the difference between limpid watercolors and an oil painting.
Note 2: The fresher the chicken/shrimp/seafood and also the aromatics, the more this soup will shine.
Note 3: The chicken should be sliced thinly against the bias. The shrimp can be left whole. The seafood should also be sliced finely.
Note 4: Since the galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves are not eaten, technically you could strain it. That's not the Thai way and yet the CC has seen it done in a superb "fancy" Thai restaurant in Manila.
Note 5: Scallions are fairly traditional too but the CC doesn't like the clash between the shallots, scallions and cilantro. He likes the sharper watercolor flavors.
Note 6: There are excellent brands of nahm prik pao on the market. No artificial ingredients, etc. You could be a purist and make it but the CC finds that these are not just acceptable but positively excellent.
Note 7: The CC would like to draw your attention to a powerful concept. The idea of a background "mellow" sourness (tamarind) allied with a perfumed "fresh" sourness (lime). You will see this idea as a conceptual framework all along Southeast Asia whether it's kudampuli + lime (South India) or dried raw mango (aamchur) + lime (North India) or tamarind/vinegar/raw mango + calamansi (Philippines.) You'll see it Italy too (vinegar + lemon). It's an extraordinarily potent idea.
Recipe
Smash the galangal and lemongrass lightly. Add them, the chillies and kaffir lime leaves to the water.
In a separate bowl, pour hot water over tamarind and let it soak for 20 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve into the same bowl of liquid. Discard the remnants.
Bring the liquid to a boil. When it is boiling, turn the heat down to a low simmer. Add the nahm prik pao and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Add fish sauce and check to taste. It should be aromatic, spicy and salty (and a little tart and sweet from the tamarind.)
Add the shallots, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Bring to a boil again for 2 minutes.
Turn off the heat. Squeeze the lime juice into it.
Pour over the chicken/seafood in individual bowls. Top with the cilantro leaves.
Serve at once with jasmine rice.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Tom Kha
No, the CC hasn't lost his marbles. He knows that the soup is uniformly referred to as tom kha gai in the US except that the soup is not a soup and the "gai" (chicken) is basically optional.
It's really a family of stews at the heart of it.
For starters, there is neither the concept of "soup" nor that of "courses" in Thai cooking. A rich dish such as this would be served with rice and it would be a blowout meal (because of its richness.)
The tom roughly suggests a soup or a stew and the kha refers to galangal. Substitutions are pointless since galangal is the main feature.
Secondly, it's really a meta-dish in the sense that the basic stew is prepared first and then other stuff added. You can have tom kha tao-hoo (with tofu) , tom kha hoi (with shellfish), tom kha talay (with mixed seafood), etc.
The dish is all about the aroma, and you have an insanely umami-laden broth with a mildly sweet, savory, sour broth and a solid kick on the back-end.
The CC will provide a recipe with a mild variant that he once had — it had a slight amount of pandanus (screwpine).
Superb in every way.
Ingredients
3 cups coconut milk
3 cups chicken broth (substitute with water)
1 stalk lemongrass (sliced on a bias)
10 pieces of sliced galangal
2 chillies
1 piece pandanus
2 cilantro roots
3 kaffir lime leaves
1 tbsp palm sugar
fish sauce
12 pieces chicken (sliced against the bias into thin slices)
1 cup straw mushrooms
2 shallots (sliced lengthwise)
1-2 lime(s)
1/3 cup cilantro leaves
Note: The chicken is cut into very small pieces. It's poached in the broth. This preserves its tenderness because it's barely cooked through.
Recipe
Smash the lemongrass, galangal, and cilantro roots gently in a mortar and pestle. Add them to the coconut milk, broth, chillies, pandanus, palm sugar, and kaffir lime leaves. Bring to a boil. Simmer very gently at a low heat for 12-15 minutes.
Add fish sauce to taste (this provides the salt.)
Taste it. It should be intense, faintly sweet and fragrant. It will become tart once you add the lime later.
(Technically, you can strain it at this point but that's not the Thai way.)
You can stop the process here if you like. (Remember it's all about the smell and it dissipates so don't wait too long.)
When ready to serve with jasmine rice, bring once again to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the chicken, mushrooms, shallots, and lime. Let it sit for 3-4 minutes.
Serve with the cilantro leaves on top.
It's really a family of stews at the heart of it.
For starters, there is neither the concept of "soup" nor that of "courses" in Thai cooking. A rich dish such as this would be served with rice and it would be a blowout meal (because of its richness.)
The tom roughly suggests a soup or a stew and the kha refers to galangal. Substitutions are pointless since galangal is the main feature.
Secondly, it's really a meta-dish in the sense that the basic stew is prepared first and then other stuff added. You can have tom kha tao-hoo (with tofu) , tom kha hoi (with shellfish), tom kha talay (with mixed seafood), etc.
The dish is all about the aroma, and you have an insanely umami-laden broth with a mildly sweet, savory, sour broth and a solid kick on the back-end.
The CC will provide a recipe with a mild variant that he once had — it had a slight amount of pandanus (screwpine).
Superb in every way.
Ingredients
3 cups coconut milk
3 cups chicken broth (substitute with water)
1 stalk lemongrass (sliced on a bias)
10 pieces of sliced galangal
2 chillies
1 piece pandanus
2 cilantro roots
3 kaffir lime leaves
1 tbsp palm sugar
fish sauce
12 pieces chicken (sliced against the bias into thin slices)
1 cup straw mushrooms
2 shallots (sliced lengthwise)
1-2 lime(s)
1/3 cup cilantro leaves
Note: The chicken is cut into very small pieces. It's poached in the broth. This preserves its tenderness because it's barely cooked through.
Recipe
Smash the lemongrass, galangal, and cilantro roots gently in a mortar and pestle. Add them to the coconut milk, broth, chillies, pandanus, palm sugar, and kaffir lime leaves. Bring to a boil. Simmer very gently at a low heat for 12-15 minutes.
Add fish sauce to taste (this provides the salt.)
Taste it. It should be intense, faintly sweet and fragrant. It will become tart once you add the lime later.
(Technically, you can strain it at this point but that's not the Thai way.)
You can stop the process here if you like. (Remember it's all about the smell and it dissipates so don't wait too long.)
When ready to serve with jasmine rice, bring once again to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the chicken, mushrooms, shallots, and lime. Let it sit for 3-4 minutes.
Serve with the cilantro leaves on top.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
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.
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.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Thai Oyster Omelette (Hoi Tod - หอยทอด)
People who head to Bangkok would probably be surprised that pad thai is not the most popular street food. It's something called hoi tod.
This is a crispy oyster omelette that is irresistible because it tickles all the different parts of your food longings. There is the super crispy, slightly soft, slithery continuum between the crisp edges, the eggs and the oysters. The oysters, eggs and fish sauce add an absurd umami. The scallions, garlic and cilantro are just classical tastes and the crispy bean sprouts add textural contrast once for added measure.
The recipe is clearly not Thai. It seems to be a Chinese idea ("scallion pancakes") adapted to Thai tastes. However, it's vastly more seductive than pad thai.
Hoi (หอย) refers to any shellfish really. You could use mussels but the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you shuck them and keep them raw. This is a bigger pain for mussels than oysters (provided you know how to shuck them safely and cleanly.)
The hardest part about this recipe is that you don't have a flat iron surface with a roaring fire underneath. An iron skillet or a non-stick pan are going to come closest provided you pre-heat them and really get them going.
Remember this is street food so you'll have to keep everything ready ("mise-en-place") so that it can go in at high speed. This recipe is really going to test your classical French cooking skills even though it's so easy that it's the most popular street dish in Bangkok.
The recipe is adapted from David Thompson's book but it's so popular that there are tons of recipes all over the web. Clearly, this is a much-loved item.
David Thompson who's probably the leading authority in the world on Thai cooking calls for a mixture of mung bean flour and rice flour but it's hard to find the former. The latter works excellently. However, if you have access to an Indian grocery and bung in some urad flour, it's going to achieve the same result. The goal is crisp and it really resembles more than anything a dosa except it's not fermented and a second layer of eggs is going on top.
Coherence in the French manner of a "perfect" omelette is simply not necessary. Even though you can rather trivially make it into a perfect flipped omelette, such precision for a street dish is rather besides the point. Don't sweat this part. It's far more important that you cook it individually and serve it as quickly as possible.
The dish originated as a fast snack at seaside towns in Thailand before migrating to the rest of the country. So did Sriracha. They are match made in culinary heaven.
The CC's friend noted that while the oysters added a perfect counterpoint, you could easily envision the dish with something that supplied the umami like shiitake mushrooms and the CC would concur. It would also work with something like snails. (This heresy is probably going to make the Thai internet explode with outrage but that's par for the course for a much loved dish.)
There is a savage irony to the fact that notes for a simple street dish are so copious but what can the CC do? It's a choice between an expensive airplane ticket to Thailand or cheap local oysters and making it himself.
That's street food. You need the culture otherwise you are stuck working hard to achieve something that's both dirt-cheap and fast.
Whither, progress?
Ingredients
(per serving)
1/4 cup rice flour
1/2 tsp salt
cold water
3 oysters (shucked)
2 tbsp peanut oil
2 eggs
1 tbsp fish sauce (nahm pla)
1 red chilli sliced fine (prik kee noo)
1 tbsp sugar
1 scallion - both white and green - sliced really fine
white pepper
2 sprigs cilantro (minced)
bean sprouts
1/2 tbsp minced garlic
Notes
[1] The Thai overwhelming prefer "white pepper" over "black pepper" for aesthetic reasons. They don't like the black flecks. Sorry but this is one of those details that the CC is simply not going to sweat. Certainly not at brunch.
[2] The traditional "choice" is between "crispy" and "extra crispy". This is trivial to achieve by increasing the proportion of rice/lentil batter and bunging it in at intervals. (Just read below the understand the process.)
[3] The oysters will have plenty of oyster liquor. Separate it, filter it -- East Coast oysters have plenty of grit -- and add it to the egg batter.
Recipe
First, make the rice flour batter by mixing the rice flour, salt and cold water. The cold water will make it go into suspension faster. It should be slightly thin, slightly salty and when tasted after 10 minutes, not taste like flour. Add some more water otherwise.
Mix the eggs, fish sauce, sugar, chilis, scallions, 1 tbsp of the minced cilantro, and white pepper as a batter in a separate bowl. You won't need salt since the fish sauce is plenty salty.
Pre-heat your skillet. It should be as hot as possible.
Add a tbsp of peanut oil. When hot, ladle the rice batter all around it. It will bubble furiously and start getting crispy right away. Let it cook for a minute or so and gently loosen the edges. Cut into four pieces and push them towards the edges of the skillet.
Add the other tbsp of the oil in the center. Add the minced garlic and let it color a bit. Add the oysters in the center and let them cook for 30 seconds.
Pour the egg batter, gently all over the pan, adding a little bit over the crispier rice batter bits so that it makes it into an omelette. Let it cook. You can flip it if you like but not necessary. The CC prefers that the outside be crisp and the inside soft.
Serve over a bed of bean sprouts with the extra minced cilantro on top. Sriracha on the side.
This is a crispy oyster omelette that is irresistible because it tickles all the different parts of your food longings. There is the super crispy, slightly soft, slithery continuum between the crisp edges, the eggs and the oysters. The oysters, eggs and fish sauce add an absurd umami. The scallions, garlic and cilantro are just classical tastes and the crispy bean sprouts add textural contrast once for added measure.
The recipe is clearly not Thai. It seems to be a Chinese idea ("scallion pancakes") adapted to Thai tastes. However, it's vastly more seductive than pad thai.
Hoi (หอย) refers to any shellfish really. You could use mussels but the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you shuck them and keep them raw. This is a bigger pain for mussels than oysters (provided you know how to shuck them safely and cleanly.)
The hardest part about this recipe is that you don't have a flat iron surface with a roaring fire underneath. An iron skillet or a non-stick pan are going to come closest provided you pre-heat them and really get them going.
Remember this is street food so you'll have to keep everything ready ("mise-en-place") so that it can go in at high speed. This recipe is really going to test your classical French cooking skills even though it's so easy that it's the most popular street dish in Bangkok.
The recipe is adapted from David Thompson's book but it's so popular that there are tons of recipes all over the web. Clearly, this is a much-loved item.
David Thompson who's probably the leading authority in the world on Thai cooking calls for a mixture of mung bean flour and rice flour but it's hard to find the former. The latter works excellently. However, if you have access to an Indian grocery and bung in some urad flour, it's going to achieve the same result. The goal is crisp and it really resembles more than anything a dosa except it's not fermented and a second layer of eggs is going on top.
Coherence in the French manner of a "perfect" omelette is simply not necessary. Even though you can rather trivially make it into a perfect flipped omelette, such precision for a street dish is rather besides the point. Don't sweat this part. It's far more important that you cook it individually and serve it as quickly as possible.
The dish originated as a fast snack at seaside towns in Thailand before migrating to the rest of the country. So did Sriracha. They are match made in culinary heaven.
The CC's friend noted that while the oysters added a perfect counterpoint, you could easily envision the dish with something that supplied the umami like shiitake mushrooms and the CC would concur. It would also work with something like snails. (This heresy is probably going to make the Thai internet explode with outrage but that's par for the course for a much loved dish.)
There is a savage irony to the fact that notes for a simple street dish are so copious but what can the CC do? It's a choice between an expensive airplane ticket to Thailand or cheap local oysters and making it himself.
That's street food. You need the culture otherwise you are stuck working hard to achieve something that's both dirt-cheap and fast.
Whither, progress?
Ingredients
(per serving)
1/4 cup rice flour
1/2 tsp salt
cold water
3 oysters (shucked)
2 tbsp peanut oil
2 eggs
1 tbsp fish sauce (nahm pla)
1 red chilli sliced fine (prik kee noo)
1 tbsp sugar
1 scallion - both white and green - sliced really fine
white pepper
2 sprigs cilantro (minced)
bean sprouts
1/2 tbsp minced garlic
Notes
[1] The Thai overwhelming prefer "white pepper" over "black pepper" for aesthetic reasons. They don't like the black flecks. Sorry but this is one of those details that the CC is simply not going to sweat. Certainly not at brunch.
[2] The traditional "choice" is between "crispy" and "extra crispy". This is trivial to achieve by increasing the proportion of rice/lentil batter and bunging it in at intervals. (Just read below the understand the process.)
[3] The oysters will have plenty of oyster liquor. Separate it, filter it -- East Coast oysters have plenty of grit -- and add it to the egg batter.
Recipe
First, make the rice flour batter by mixing the rice flour, salt and cold water. The cold water will make it go into suspension faster. It should be slightly thin, slightly salty and when tasted after 10 minutes, not taste like flour. Add some more water otherwise.
Mix the eggs, fish sauce, sugar, chilis, scallions, 1 tbsp of the minced cilantro, and white pepper as a batter in a separate bowl. You won't need salt since the fish sauce is plenty salty.
Pre-heat your skillet. It should be as hot as possible.
Add a tbsp of peanut oil. When hot, ladle the rice batter all around it. It will bubble furiously and start getting crispy right away. Let it cook for a minute or so and gently loosen the edges. Cut into four pieces and push them towards the edges of the skillet.
Add the other tbsp of the oil in the center. Add the minced garlic and let it color a bit. Add the oysters in the center and let them cook for 30 seconds.
Pour the egg batter, gently all over the pan, adding a little bit over the crispier rice batter bits so that it makes it into an omelette. Let it cook. You can flip it if you like but not necessary. The CC prefers that the outside be crisp and the inside soft.
Serve over a bed of bean sprouts with the extra minced cilantro on top. Sriracha on the side.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
The Adaptation & Appropriation of Dishes
The CC really wanted to include this article under that of The Naming of Dishes but there was a lot more to be said about this subject than just the naming portion so he decided to spin it off into its own little post.
The world has always been global.
We've had traders and merchants traveling the seas trading across countries and continents. It's not uncommon even today to find Roman coins in India when land gets dug up for some new project. The largest collection of gold artifacts in the world was discovered in Surigao in the Philippines in 1981 as part of an irrigation project. Its connections to ancient India of the 10th century is quite well established (Source: Ayala Museum.)
Along these trade routes flowed something else besides spices, grain and gold — recipes and techniques for recipes.
The most famous of these routes is undoubtedly the Silk Road over land but equally important were the three sailing routes. One across the Mediterranean from Alexandria (modern-day Egypt) hopping counter-clockwise, hugging the coast, all the way to Rome and also from Cyrene (modern-day Libya) and Carthage via Alexandria to Rome. The other was the route from the modern-day Gulf of Eden hugging the coast of the modern-day Middle East all the way down the western coast of India to Calicut (modern-day Cochin). And finally the extension of this route around the southern tip of India hugging the eastern coast of India to Burma and from there on to Thailand, Indonesia and the far East.
The most powerful of impulses that the traders appealed to was that of the "exotic". Anything remotely exotic is lapped up by any population as long as it is not too far off from their own conception. Whether these are colorful clothes or dishes or spices hardly mattered to the traders just as long as it could be sold for a profit.
Not knowing anything about a foreign culture — remember travel was hard before the last 75 years or so — local dishes with some exotic ingredient are just the ticket for a sharp businessman with a marketing strategy.
Exoticism sells. Nobody from emperors to laymen are immune.
This is not just a theory. We have evidence.
Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India in 1876 and the British went crazy over "anything Indian". There were "Indian-themed" parties and "Indian food" marketed by the East India Company. This is also the birth of the infamous curry powder — a non-existent concept in Indian cooking. This powder marketed globally is now ubiquitous in such far-flung places as France, Thailand, Singapore and Japan all thanks to the marketing of the East India Company.
In the 1950's and 1960's there was a worldwide craze of "Hawaiian". Needless to say the folks from Italy and India and Vietnam or even most of the United States for that matter had never been to Hawaii but "Hawaiian Salad" was all the craze globally. The exotic element was pineapple. Take a typical salad with a mayo-based dressing and toss in some pineapple to get the afore-mentioned dish. Needless to say this had about as much to do with Hawaiian cuisine as chalk has to do with cheese. There were "Hawaiian cakes", "Hawaiian cocktails", you name it! All with pineapple. It was all marketing, of course. (Yes! The "Mad Men" had their hands all over this. We have the ads to prove this.)
The relatively recent movement towards "authenticity" is not more than about 30-40 years old. Sure there were pioneers even in the 1930's towards an honest and detailed assessment of global cuisine but its mass adoption is a relatively recent phenomenon.
This trend towards exoticism isn't relegated to dishes. Ask yourself if you really know what entrée means. It means "appetizer" in French from the verb entrer — to enter. Same goes for hors d'oeuvres which means "first course" in French but has taken on the meaning of "appetizer" in English. (Appetizers would be des toasts — "nibbles" in French.) Clearly some things got lost just getting across the English Channel and if that's the case, you can just imagine how much got lost when recipes migrated longer distances in older times.
Every culture appropriates dishes. Whether it is the Sicilian adaptation of Arabic eggplant recipes or the Malaysian appropriation of Indian recipes (roti canai — canai probably comes from Chennai but the concept is, quite likely, from Kerala), or the Japanese versions of "spaghetti" and "ma po tofu", it's universal. You also have wholescale adaptations like the Hakka-originated "Indian-Chinese cuisine". Not to mention chop suey and the like which are American adaptations of Chinese dishes.
Italian cuisine is a particularly special case. There's the Italian-American branch but that, at least, can be understood as the reaction of new immigrants to a foreign land and its native resources. What no Italian would recognize is Japanese "spaghetti napolitan" (sic) or Filipino "spaghetti" (made with banana ketchup!) or even Indian "masala spaghetti".
It's lost in translation but why?
To truly master a cuisine, you must first internalize its grammar. And every cuisine has an unmistakable grammar. A set of rules, techniques and ingredients that work in a specific set of combinations and in a very narrow context (historically) to create a meal. Only after you know this grammar backwards and forwards can you truly break free into true creativity. Science helps.
Needless to say, mastering different grammars is insanely hard work. It's far easier for cooks to get a superficial understanding of some foreign cuisine, just use the local grammar of cooking instead of mastering a foreign one, and make something vaguely in that style. It would've been even more the norm in older times since travel and authenticity were so hard. In time, the dish gets appropriated into the local cuisine and becomes "native".
So how does one distinguish incompetence at rendering a foreign cuisine from a slapdash effort from a deliberate rethinking/reworking?
The answer lies in a similar one from the world of art.
In order to break the rules, you first have to understand and master them.
Not many people know that Picasso was a master draftsman and painter. His early paintings where he copies the classical works and even the Impressionists and out-flanks them are not well known. It's only after complete mastery of older techniques that that he broke new ground both aesthetic and technical. The same goes for Matisse.
It always pays to master different grammars. Picasso "borrowed" shamelessly from African art, and almost all painters of that era borrowed extensively from Japanese art. So it goes with any artistic endeavor.
The bias should be towards mastery of grammar and technique. The "going beyond" follows as a natural consequence.
The world has always been global.
We've had traders and merchants traveling the seas trading across countries and continents. It's not uncommon even today to find Roman coins in India when land gets dug up for some new project. The largest collection of gold artifacts in the world was discovered in Surigao in the Philippines in 1981 as part of an irrigation project. Its connections to ancient India of the 10th century is quite well established (Source: Ayala Museum.)
Along these trade routes flowed something else besides spices, grain and gold — recipes and techniques for recipes.
The most famous of these routes is undoubtedly the Silk Road over land but equally important were the three sailing routes. One across the Mediterranean from Alexandria (modern-day Egypt) hopping counter-clockwise, hugging the coast, all the way to Rome and also from Cyrene (modern-day Libya) and Carthage via Alexandria to Rome. The other was the route from the modern-day Gulf of Eden hugging the coast of the modern-day Middle East all the way down the western coast of India to Calicut (modern-day Cochin). And finally the extension of this route around the southern tip of India hugging the eastern coast of India to Burma and from there on to Thailand, Indonesia and the far East.
The most powerful of impulses that the traders appealed to was that of the "exotic". Anything remotely exotic is lapped up by any population as long as it is not too far off from their own conception. Whether these are colorful clothes or dishes or spices hardly mattered to the traders just as long as it could be sold for a profit.
Not knowing anything about a foreign culture — remember travel was hard before the last 75 years or so — local dishes with some exotic ingredient are just the ticket for a sharp businessman with a marketing strategy.
Exoticism sells. Nobody from emperors to laymen are immune.
This is not just a theory. We have evidence.
Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India in 1876 and the British went crazy over "anything Indian". There were "Indian-themed" parties and "Indian food" marketed by the East India Company. This is also the birth of the infamous curry powder — a non-existent concept in Indian cooking. This powder marketed globally is now ubiquitous in such far-flung places as France, Thailand, Singapore and Japan all thanks to the marketing of the East India Company.
In the 1950's and 1960's there was a worldwide craze of "Hawaiian". Needless to say the folks from Italy and India and Vietnam or even most of the United States for that matter had never been to Hawaii but "Hawaiian Salad" was all the craze globally. The exotic element was pineapple. Take a typical salad with a mayo-based dressing and toss in some pineapple to get the afore-mentioned dish. Needless to say this had about as much to do with Hawaiian cuisine as chalk has to do with cheese. There were "Hawaiian cakes", "Hawaiian cocktails", you name it! All with pineapple. It was all marketing, of course. (Yes! The "Mad Men" had their hands all over this. We have the ads to prove this.)
The relatively recent movement towards "authenticity" is not more than about 30-40 years old. Sure there were pioneers even in the 1930's towards an honest and detailed assessment of global cuisine but its mass adoption is a relatively recent phenomenon.
This trend towards exoticism isn't relegated to dishes. Ask yourself if you really know what entrée means. It means "appetizer" in French from the verb entrer — to enter. Same goes for hors d'oeuvres which means "first course" in French but has taken on the meaning of "appetizer" in English. (Appetizers would be des toasts — "nibbles" in French.) Clearly some things got lost just getting across the English Channel and if that's the case, you can just imagine how much got lost when recipes migrated longer distances in older times.
Every culture appropriates dishes. Whether it is the Sicilian adaptation of Arabic eggplant recipes or the Malaysian appropriation of Indian recipes (roti canai — canai probably comes from Chennai but the concept is, quite likely, from Kerala), or the Japanese versions of "spaghetti" and "ma po tofu", it's universal. You also have wholescale adaptations like the Hakka-originated "Indian-Chinese cuisine". Not to mention chop suey and the like which are American adaptations of Chinese dishes.
Italian cuisine is a particularly special case. There's the Italian-American branch but that, at least, can be understood as the reaction of new immigrants to a foreign land and its native resources. What no Italian would recognize is Japanese "spaghetti napolitan" (sic) or Filipino "spaghetti" (made with banana ketchup!) or even Indian "masala spaghetti".
It's lost in translation but why?
To truly master a cuisine, you must first internalize its grammar. And every cuisine has an unmistakable grammar. A set of rules, techniques and ingredients that work in a specific set of combinations and in a very narrow context (historically) to create a meal. Only after you know this grammar backwards and forwards can you truly break free into true creativity. Science helps.
Needless to say, mastering different grammars is insanely hard work. It's far easier for cooks to get a superficial understanding of some foreign cuisine, just use the local grammar of cooking instead of mastering a foreign one, and make something vaguely in that style. It would've been even more the norm in older times since travel and authenticity were so hard. In time, the dish gets appropriated into the local cuisine and becomes "native".
So how does one distinguish incompetence at rendering a foreign cuisine from a slapdash effort from a deliberate rethinking/reworking?
The answer lies in a similar one from the world of art.
In order to break the rules, you first have to understand and master them.
Not many people know that Picasso was a master draftsman and painter. His early paintings where he copies the classical works and even the Impressionists and out-flanks them are not well known. It's only after complete mastery of older techniques that that he broke new ground both aesthetic and technical. The same goes for Matisse.
It always pays to master different grammars. Picasso "borrowed" shamelessly from African art, and almost all painters of that era borrowed extensively from Japanese art. So it goes with any artistic endeavor.
The bias should be towards mastery of grammar and technique. The "going beyond" follows as a natural consequence.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Basil, Basil, Basil
Now that it's summer (finally!), it's time to talk about basil.
The Greek name for basil (ocimum) which is where the scientific name comes from "to smell" — clearly the principal virtue of this herb.
The English word "basil" also comes from the Greek and it means "monarch" — entirely appropriate for this "king of herbs".
1. Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum = O. basilicum)
This is the traditional variety used in Italian cooking. It's mild and most known for its characteristic aroma. This is what you need to make pesto.
2. Thai Basil (O. basilicum var. thyrisflorum)
It's a variant of sweet basil and it's called bai horapa in Thai. This is the predominant type used in Thai cooking.
This has a strong peppery taste and at least chez CC this is frequently preferred even in Italian dishes that call for black pepper. It has a muscular taste that goes particularly well with pasta dishes that contain vegetables. It's too aggressive for pesto however. For that, you will need to stick with sweet basil.
It's also more heat stable under the classic stir-fry methods of Thai cooking under which sweet basil discolors rapidly. Carefully washed and wrapped in paper towels in a bag, it lasts a lot longer in the fridge as well with its smell intact.
3. Holy Basil (O. sanctum, O. tenuiflorum)
It's called bai kaprao and it's also used in Thai cooking.
It has a strong aggressive anise-like flavor which is a variant to the above. Also used in stir-fries that need a strong taste.
One of the stranger things that the CC notes is that even though this variety is completely widespread in India and even "worshipped", it doesn't make its way into any dish. Devout Hindus will eat one leaf daily and even plant it but it doesn't get eaten. "Basil chutney" rocks the world with samosas and the like and the CC offers up this idea gratis to enterprising Indian chefs.
Followers of politics might be amused that one of the "biggest" controversies in Thailand in 2013 was the banning of the dish pad kaprao (stir-fry with holy basil) in army canteens because of the aggressive flavor spreading throughout. Entirely rational journalists asked why the ventilation fans were not up to the task and a parallel was drawn to the coup. The army commander-in-chief had to personally make a statement that he too loved pad kaprao and he had nothing to do with the ban.
Moral: Men will wage war and put up with military coups but never mess with their beloved foods. That way lies defeat.
The Greek name for basil (ocimum) which is where the scientific name comes from "to smell" — clearly the principal virtue of this herb.
The English word "basil" also comes from the Greek and it means "monarch" — entirely appropriate for this "king of herbs".
1. Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum = O. basilicum)
This is the traditional variety used in Italian cooking. It's mild and most known for its characteristic aroma. This is what you need to make pesto.
2. Thai Basil (O. basilicum var. thyrisflorum)
It's a variant of sweet basil and it's called bai horapa in Thai. This is the predominant type used in Thai cooking.
This has a strong peppery taste and at least chez CC this is frequently preferred even in Italian dishes that call for black pepper. It has a muscular taste that goes particularly well with pasta dishes that contain vegetables. It's too aggressive for pesto however. For that, you will need to stick with sweet basil.
It's also more heat stable under the classic stir-fry methods of Thai cooking under which sweet basil discolors rapidly. Carefully washed and wrapped in paper towels in a bag, it lasts a lot longer in the fridge as well with its smell intact.
3. Holy Basil (O. sanctum, O. tenuiflorum)
It's called bai kaprao and it's also used in Thai cooking.
It has a strong aggressive anise-like flavor which is a variant to the above. Also used in stir-fries that need a strong taste.
One of the stranger things that the CC notes is that even though this variety is completely widespread in India and even "worshipped", it doesn't make its way into any dish. Devout Hindus will eat one leaf daily and even plant it but it doesn't get eaten. "Basil chutney" rocks the world with samosas and the like and the CC offers up this idea gratis to enterprising Indian chefs.
Followers of politics might be amused that one of the "biggest" controversies in Thailand in 2013 was the banning of the dish pad kaprao (stir-fry with holy basil) in army canteens because of the aggressive flavor spreading throughout. Entirely rational journalists asked why the ventilation fans were not up to the task and a parallel was drawn to the coup. The army commander-in-chief had to personally make a statement that he too loved pad kaprao and he had nothing to do with the ban.
Moral: Men will wage war and put up with military coups but never mess with their beloved foods. That way lies defeat.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Som Tam (Thai Green Papaya Salad)
This is a classic street recipe from North-East Thailand (Isaan) that has become so popular that it you can find it all over Thailand now.
It combines the classic Thai tastes — hot, sweet, salty, sour. It's a textural masterpiece and it has umami like no other. It's also visually impressive — something that is most important from the sales perspective of street food.
It is important to understand that the Thai conception of a "salad" is different from Western expectations. It's just a side dish. It might be topped by "pickled blue crab" or "fried pork". It just acts as a base register.
Note the seamless integration of the entirely New World tomato into the mixture. The reason is clear. It's umami as the CC has explained before.
Seasonings in the Thai conception are a little hard to give precise instructions for. The ingredients are precise enough but the quantities rely on "balance" — something that can only be learned via experience. You keep adding counterbalances until it all makes "sense". This sounds vague but it really is not. It's taking into account the variability in the ingredients that make up the mixture.
(Experienced eaters and makers of most South-Asian street food — Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino — will probably recognize what the CC is saying a lot easier.)
A very quick note about some of the techniques. You need a mortar and pestle which is easy enough. The long beans must be quite young because they are eaten raw. This is simply not possible where the CC lives so a quick blanching is in order. It's the only way to make them edible. Fidelity to the source can only go so far when practicality drives the truck crashing through the door.
Ingredients
1 small raw papaya
8 long beans (cut into 2" lengths)
16-24 cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup dried shimp
1/3 cup peanuts (roasted)
2-4 Thai green chillies (sliced really thin)
2 cloves garlic
2-3 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)
4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 limes
Recipe
If your beans are young, ignore this. Otherwise blanch them for no more than 60 seconds in boiling water and put them in an ice-cold bath. Drain and set aside.
Make the sauce. The garlic needs to be finely chopped. Add the garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste to make sure it has the right balance. You may need to add more of the palm sugar, fish sauce or lime juice.
Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves.
The papaya needs to be shredded into thin strips. Either a mandoline or a grater make quick work.
In a mortar and pestle, add the papaya, long beans, shrimp and roasted peanuts. Pound lightly to crush the ingredients just to release some juices and to break up the shrimp and peanuts a bit.
Toss everything together and serve at once.
It combines the classic Thai tastes — hot, sweet, salty, sour. It's a textural masterpiece and it has umami like no other. It's also visually impressive — something that is most important from the sales perspective of street food.
It is important to understand that the Thai conception of a "salad" is different from Western expectations. It's just a side dish. It might be topped by "pickled blue crab" or "fried pork". It just acts as a base register.
Note the seamless integration of the entirely New World tomato into the mixture. The reason is clear. It's umami as the CC has explained before.
Seasonings in the Thai conception are a little hard to give precise instructions for. The ingredients are precise enough but the quantities rely on "balance" — something that can only be learned via experience. You keep adding counterbalances until it all makes "sense". This sounds vague but it really is not. It's taking into account the variability in the ingredients that make up the mixture.
(Experienced eaters and makers of most South-Asian street food — Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino — will probably recognize what the CC is saying a lot easier.)
A very quick note about some of the techniques. You need a mortar and pestle which is easy enough. The long beans must be quite young because they are eaten raw. This is simply not possible where the CC lives so a quick blanching is in order. It's the only way to make them edible. Fidelity to the source can only go so far when practicality drives the truck crashing through the door.
Ingredients1 small raw papaya
8 long beans (cut into 2" lengths)
16-24 cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup dried shimp
1/3 cup peanuts (roasted)
2-4 Thai green chillies (sliced really thin)
2 cloves garlic
2-3 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)
4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 limes
Recipe
If your beans are young, ignore this. Otherwise blanch them for no more than 60 seconds in boiling water and put them in an ice-cold bath. Drain and set aside.
Make the sauce. The garlic needs to be finely chopped. Add the garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste to make sure it has the right balance. You may need to add more of the palm sugar, fish sauce or lime juice.
Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves.
The papaya needs to be shredded into thin strips. Either a mandoline or a grater make quick work.
In a mortar and pestle, add the papaya, long beans, shrimp and roasted peanuts. Pound lightly to crush the ingredients just to release some juices and to break up the shrimp and peanuts a bit.
Toss everything together and serve at once.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
The Yikes Meter!
Seen today on a menu, "pad thai tacos".
There is so much wrong with this the CC can't even begin to enumerate. Perhaps there's a reason that those two countries are so far apart?
This is the kinda bullshit that gives "fusion" a bad name.
There is so much wrong with this the CC can't even begin to enumerate. Perhaps there's a reason that those two countries are so far apart?
This is the kinda bullshit that gives "fusion" a bad name.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Thai Food from Isan
So the CC was treated to a restaurant that cooks food from the North-Eastern part of Thailand (Isan.) The food is closer to Laotian than to the more well-known Thai food (which stems mainly from the South.)
As you can guess from the geography, it's heavy on the freshwater fish and pork. Also, the heat quotient in true Thai style is very high.
The first dish is your traditional papaya salad but it has pickled crab in it. (If you squint, you can see the bluish crab sticking out on the right hand side.) The crab is intense! It has the consistency of jelly but it's like a concentrated sea-flavor which has absorbed the sweet-sour-salty dressing. Also, featured as a topping is fried crispy pig skin.
The second dish is fried catfish. The fish is cut into thin rounds, and fried in such a way that you can eat it bones and all. Quite delicious!
Som Tum Poo Plara
Pla Dook Pad Ped
As you can guess from the geography, it's heavy on the freshwater fish and pork. Also, the heat quotient in true Thai style is very high.
The first dish is your traditional papaya salad but it has pickled crab in it. (If you squint, you can see the bluish crab sticking out on the right hand side.) The crab is intense! It has the consistency of jelly but it's like a concentrated sea-flavor which has absorbed the sweet-sour-salty dressing. Also, featured as a topping is fried crispy pig skin.
The second dish is fried catfish. The fish is cut into thin rounds, and fried in such a way that you can eat it bones and all. Quite delicious!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Souring Agents
One of the most important tricks in the chef's repertoire is the deployment of sour tastes.
It's extraordinarily underused and the CC doesn't understand why.
In fact, the CC will argue that this idea is so important and so undeveloped that it should be better known. (The CC will probably regret this when he gets old. Perhaps you shouldn't give away all of your best ideas?)
The dynamic use of sour ingredients is the lynchpin in nailing the entirely desirable "wanna-eat-more" feeling.
It's not unknown — it's common to Indian street food, and Japanese cooking. It's well known to both Moroccan food, and Thai cuisine. It's actually the key idea that distinguishes Filipino food with its "hit-me-again" taste.
Why is so underutilized then? The CC stays mystified.
Humans are conditioned to eat slightly acidic foods. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, substances that contain alkaline substances naturally (e.g. alkaloids) tend, on a general basis, to be highly poisonous. That's why soap tastes "bad". It's an evolutionary response to ensure avoidance of dangerous things.
(On a side note, that's why sweet tastes good instinctively to babies. It's an evolutionary response to fruits which are safe for consumption.)
Most chefs will tell you that they use two tricks. One is surface salt which the CC has talked about here extensively.
The other is the use of sour ingredients which "brighten" the flavor, and bring into sharp relief the other flavors that are being used.
Try it. You'll thank the CC later.
It's extraordinarily underused and the CC doesn't understand why.
In fact, the CC will argue that this idea is so important and so undeveloped that it should be better known. (The CC will probably regret this when he gets old. Perhaps you shouldn't give away all of your best ideas?)
The dynamic use of sour ingredients is the lynchpin in nailing the entirely desirable "wanna-eat-more" feeling.
It's not unknown — it's common to Indian street food, and Japanese cooking. It's well known to both Moroccan food, and Thai cuisine. It's actually the key idea that distinguishes Filipino food with its "hit-me-again" taste.
Why is so underutilized then? The CC stays mystified.
Humans are conditioned to eat slightly acidic foods. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, substances that contain alkaline substances naturally (e.g. alkaloids) tend, on a general basis, to be highly poisonous. That's why soap tastes "bad". It's an evolutionary response to ensure avoidance of dangerous things.
(On a side note, that's why sweet tastes good instinctively to babies. It's an evolutionary response to fruits which are safe for consumption.)
Most chefs will tell you that they use two tricks. One is surface salt which the CC has talked about here extensively.
The other is the use of sour ingredients which "brighten" the flavor, and bring into sharp relief the other flavors that are being used.
Try it. You'll thank the CC later.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Thai Tricks of the Trade
Salacious title but it refers to food, you perverts!
The CC was taken to a "home-style" Thai restaurant. This was extraordinarily good cooking. What an extraordinarily competent mom (not grandmom, mind you!) would make.
If this sounds like "damning by faint praise", rest assured, it's anything but. The CC has impossibly high standards, and this is quite excellent food.
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What surprised the CC was how quickly they could tailor the recipe. The owner ("Charlie") would quickly gauge the heat quotient of the tables and either amp it up or down.
What was extraordinary was that they could tailor the heat using dry chillies or Thai green chillies, on demand (the two taste nothing like each other!)
This is almost impossible. There's gotta be a trick.
It took the CC a day to figure it out.
The clue was given by the friend who took the CC there. He remarked, while eating, that the heat seemed to be on the "surface" of the noodles -- an extraordinarily perceptive remark -- the significance of which the CC didn't quite latch on to for that night and the morning after.
DOH!!!!!!
It's an old Thai cooking trick. One of the oldest in the book.
In fact, the CC has used it here (in the first dish.)
Dry rice is roasted on a skillet and ground to a fine powder. You can mix it with anything. This powder is the glue of cooking. It will stick to anything that it comes in contact with. In fact, it's hard to get this powder to unstick!
This is precisely the trick they use to get water-based salad dressings to work!
Rice powder mixed with powdered chillies!
The CC was taken to a "home-style" Thai restaurant. This was extraordinarily good cooking. What an extraordinarily competent mom (not grandmom, mind you!) would make.
If this sounds like "damning by faint praise", rest assured, it's anything but. The CC has impossibly high standards, and this is quite excellent food.
.JPG)
.JPG)
What surprised the CC was how quickly they could tailor the recipe. The owner ("Charlie") would quickly gauge the heat quotient of the tables and either amp it up or down.What was extraordinary was that they could tailor the heat using dry chillies or Thai green chillies, on demand (the two taste nothing like each other!)
This is almost impossible. There's gotta be a trick.
It took the CC a day to figure it out.
The clue was given by the friend who took the CC there. He remarked, while eating, that the heat seemed to be on the "surface" of the noodles -- an extraordinarily perceptive remark -- the significance of which the CC didn't quite latch on to for that night and the morning after.
DOH!!!!!!
It's an old Thai cooking trick. One of the oldest in the book.
In fact, the CC has used it here (in the first dish.)
Dry rice is roasted on a skillet and ground to a fine powder. You can mix it with anything. This powder is the glue of cooking. It will stick to anything that it comes in contact with. In fact, it's hard to get this powder to unstick!
This is precisely the trick they use to get water-based salad dressings to work!
Rice powder mixed with powdered chillies!
Monday, September 14, 2009
"Thai" Salad with Cucumbers & Peanuts
There's nothing "Thai" about the salad but it's made by keeping Thai cooking principles firmly in mind.
The dressing was made by blending galangal, Thai green chillies, some kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass in water and passing the result through a sieve. To that was added some nahm pla (fish sauce), lime juice and palm sugar, and turned into a vinaigrette. The resulting vinaigrette was complex - salty, sweet, sour, hot with just a little bit of a bitter edge. In short, "Thai".
To top it all there were thinly sliced cucumbers sprinkled with fine sea salt and crushed peanuts.
.jpg)
How you ask, gentle reader, did it taste?
It fuckin' kicked ass is what it did!
The dressing was made by blending galangal, Thai green chillies, some kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass in water and passing the result through a sieve. To that was added some nahm pla (fish sauce), lime juice and palm sugar, and turned into a vinaigrette. The resulting vinaigrette was complex - salty, sweet, sour, hot with just a little bit of a bitter edge. In short, "Thai".
To top it all there were thinly sliced cucumbers sprinkled with fine sea salt and crushed peanuts.
.jpg)
How you ask, gentle reader, did it taste?It fuckin' kicked ass is what it did!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Going Native
It has been noted by many participants that the CC's posts have a strong region-inflected Italian, Indian, Thai bias.
It's not that surprising. These are the cuisines which the CC understands at a "native" level. The grammar of the conception of the dish is completely transparent to the CC's "mental taste buds" to the point where not only does a recipe translates into a "mental taste" instantaneously but the underlying logic of how to conceptualize a meal has a clearly delineated grammatical structure.
To use an art metaphor, while Indian recipes have the texture and taste of oil paints, Thai recipes are much more akin to water colors in their limpidity and transparency.
(If you have no clue what that last statement meant, you really need to re-examine your understanding of these cuisines!)
Even invoking such a metaphor means that you must first understand the underlying structure (or grammar) by which such recipes are constructed. Needless to say, these structures are accidents of geography and history but isn't that the very definition of "culture"?
It's not that surprising. These are the cuisines which the CC understands at a "native" level. The grammar of the conception of the dish is completely transparent to the CC's "mental taste buds" to the point where not only does a recipe translates into a "mental taste" instantaneously but the underlying logic of how to conceptualize a meal has a clearly delineated grammatical structure.
To use an art metaphor, while Indian recipes have the texture and taste of oil paints, Thai recipes are much more akin to water colors in their limpidity and transparency.
(If you have no clue what that last statement meant, you really need to re-examine your understanding of these cuisines!)
Even invoking such a metaphor means that you must first understand the underlying structure (or grammar) by which such recipes are constructed. Needless to say, these structures are accidents of geography and history but isn't that the very definition of "culture"?
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