What to Do with Herbs vol 3

Thai-ish Fried Rice

Taste & See: It's inevitable: at some point in the summer, you will have too much caprese. 

Sure, it's well and good in June, when can't get enough of the season's first tomatoes and basil drizzled in olive oil and balsamic. But at some point you begin to dream of other uses for basil. Maybe you make pesto. Maybe you throw some on pasta. But do you really still that tiny nagging voice in the back of your head wondering, "Isn't there something more?"

In fact, there is.

You may associate fried rice with cheap Chinese food, thawed frozen peas and carrots. You have been mislead.

Thai-style fried rice is nothing like Chinese-style fried rice. It usually incorporates a colorful array of vegetables, and is often served with some combination of fresh cucumbers, tomato, and spring onions, doused with fresh lime juice, and given a shake or two of zingy white pepper.

Like most dishes on this site, you're meant to use up what you have on hand. I prefer a simple mix of tomato and dark greens, but almost any chopped vegetables will do. (Caveat: Denser vegetables like carrots need more time to cook, so add them first, or even do a brief pre-stir-fry, so nothing gets burnt while you wait for the carrots to soften.)

It's also perfect for incorporating handfuls of mixed basil. (If you grow different kinds of basil, you often have small amounts of each plant begging to be used, but not enough to season an entire dish with one variety. This is a great dish for mixing. Thai basil, spicier than the kind used in Italian food, is particularly good. Go figure.)

I love this dish because it is cheap, quick to make, uses up leftovers, delivers a 1-dish balanced meal, and tastes great -- truly faux gourmet.

What You Need:
Wok 
Oil
Garlic
About 1 cup day-old rice (At least! The harder and dryer it is, the less it will stick and the less oil you need.)
Vegetables of your choosing (I used about 1 cup torn spinach leaves and 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes)
Handful of basil leaves
1 egg
Seasonings to taste: soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili sauce (You could use fish sauce instead of / in addition to soy sauce. I used brine from pickled carrots / daikon instead of vinegar - you can see the pickles on the side in the photo above.)
Garnishes to taste: lime juice, white pepper

What to do:
Heat oil in wok, turning wok to coat sides. Add garlic slices and fry briefly; do not let burn. Add rice and stir to coat with oil, breaking up any clumps. A wide, flat utensil works best, so you can lift and turn the rice, rather than stirring it as you would with a spoon or spatula.

Add seasonings to taste; not too heavy - you can always taste & add more. Add vegetables in order of most to least dense. In my case, I start with a handful of cherry tomatoes, then incorporate the spinach. Move everything to one side of the wok, add a tiny bit more oil, and crack in egg. Scramble it in the pan, incorporating into rice and vegetables as it cooks. Add basil and stir to incorporate, gently cooking.

Serve with fresh lime juice and white pepper. A garnish of cucumber and chopped spring onions is nice as well.
 

Better be street if you lookin' at me II

A beginner's guide to snacking on Thai fruit

Taste & See: My family is in town to visit, and naturally I'm busy trying to cram in as many delicious eating experiences as possible in a three day span. My stomach is currently the size and shape of roughly a bowling ball but I'll deal with that later. In the mean time, we are eating our way through New York. Or, more precisely, yesterday afternoon we ate our way from Union Square to SoHo, savoring snacks at a half dozen of my favorite eateries. While I'd be happy to recreate the food tour any time, that's not what I'm writing about today.

The experience of grazing on small bites up and down New York neighborhoods was reminiscent of what I love about eating in Thailand. There is food in abundance, lining the streets, tucked into alleys, perched along the edges of bus and train stations. Any time you get hungry you hardly have to turn around to find a cheap snack, ready and waiting. There is rarely camel-eating in Thailand, gorging til you can't take a bite more, justified by the need to hold yourself over until the next food milepost. No. Food is an ongoing constant and you can afford to take a small snack of one thing now, knowing another small snack of something else is waiting for you around the next bend, the moment you are in need.

While snacks in the US tend to be carb-heavy, Thailand offers a rich variety of fruity treats, the perfect respite from the hot and dirty Bangkok streets. In fact, one of the delights of Thailand is the abundance of fresh fruit, all the time, everywhere. This doesn't begin to cover the variety of fruits available--no photos of the alien-esque rambutan or the jewel-like mangosteen--but these fruity snapshots from Thai street life aren't a bad start for a wannabe Thai snacker. (Note, this isn't the first time I've written on the topic; see another piece here ("Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old AK"), here ("Sugar + Spice") and here ("Better be street if you lookin' at me I")

One of my favorite Thai snacks is green mango (mah-muan). Or to be precise, partially green mango. The best mango isn't the lip-pursing, bracing hard and sour green fruits, or the sweet juicy candy of those fully ripe. No, the best are just a bit flexible, a bit pale-yellowish soft and ripe in the middle, just the faintest trace of sour remaining and only the beginning of sweet. The effect is not the overwhelming candy of the ripe fruits or the suckerpunch of the raw ones, but a simple, mellow mangoey essence. A mango in pre-cut slices in a bag runs about 10 B; hard to beat.


Everywhere you find little blue carts with glass iced containers containing, typically, coral sticks of papaya, (mah-la-gawn) spiky yellow mounds of pineapple, (za-pa-rote) pink watermelon (dtang-moe) wedges and glossy green rose apples (chom-poo) or guava (farang, which, incidentally, also means foreigners; expect a little laugh at the popular joke: farang gin farang; the foreigner is eating himself). Everything is 10 B for a bag; that is, 10 B for half an ice cold pineapple, peeled, chopped and slid into a plastic bag with a whir of a machete. Stab a piece with a bamboo skewer and feel a cool breeze transport you from Bangkok grime to a beachside cabana.



Chili salt and sugar are option but favored by Thais, especially for guava and raw mango.


One of the boons of Thai street fruit offerings is that all the work is done for you. Jackfruit (tah-noon), durian (tuhr-ri-ahn) and pomelo (some-oh!) are all a pain and a half to peen and serve, definitely not something you buy for a casual stroll down the street. (For durian, there is also the small matter of that smell . . . ) But thanks to ingenious vendors who do the dirty work for you, a snack sized takeaway container is ready and waiting to provide that crisp fresh pomelo burst, any time you like.


Don't let jackfruit's spiky outer covering fool you; it looks like durian but the fruit is nothing like it. The yellowing hunks of jackfruit, like oversized corn kernels, have a flavor unlike any Western fruit or spice I can recall, sweet but not overpoweringly, with a note of something a bit sour and tangy—but not acidic. The fruit itself is fairly hefty, with a stretchy, chewy texture. Banana leaves make a convenient serving tray—waste not, want not!


150 B for the durian, 20 for the pomelo and jackfruit is usually comparable to pomelo in price/serving size; prices vary more widely with these kinds of specialty fruits.

Oranges (som!, as if an exclamation) by the kilo are pretty cheap, but I might prefer the piles squeezed into made-to-order juice than whole.


Whole coconuts (mah-prao) conveniently provide natural containers for coconut water with coconut shavings options; prices vary but expect to pay 20-35 B.


Guava (farang) and passion fruit (nang chom) juices are two other fabulously refreshing treats. This woman also sold an orange carrot mix.



Be wary, juice may be salty; it can come as a shock if you're not prepared. Check to make sure it is not by asking, “mai kem, chai mai?” Not salty, right? You want to hear them tell you “mai kem,” not salty.

And when the sun beats down, your feet are sore from a day of traipsing the Bangkok streets, and your throat is dry with the pollution of a bustling city, nothing beats the heat like a strawberry smoothy (bun sah-traw-ber-ree!) made from almost nothing except strawberries chilling in a fat of icy water. It is kind of like drinking summer. 15 B.

Yum!

Hello dear friends,

I've been a bad blogger lately. I know I rarely talk about my personal life but for those who don't know me personally, I'm completing a graduate program this week and I've been rather busy—well--doing that. But I've missed you, as I hope you've missed me. Now that you can call me Faux Gourmet, Esquire, I'm back with a vengeance . . . until prepping for the bar sends me back into a cave for a few weeks in July. But before & after that I'm all yours, so please resume your habit of checking What's in the Pot? blog regularly!

Thanks for your patience while I took a needed hiatus. I look forward to celebrating the joy of eating & exploring good food on the cheap once again.

The Faux Gourmet

“I ordered the Yum Neuah but yours was better.”

Taste & See:  In honor of my dear friend, D, who is soon to move away from our great city back to the barren wilderness from whence he came, I present for you one of his favorite recipes—that is, one of his favorite things to have me cook: Yum Neuah (new-ah). I know. With a name like “yum!” how can you go wrong? Yum Neuah is a Thai beef salad, kind of like a deconstructed beef burrito, sans carbs & replacing Mexican spices with Thai spices. Ok, maybe it's not that similar to a beef burrito. Maybe, simple, fresh & healthy recipe that it is, Yum Neuah is far superior.

D sometimes tells me when he's had Thai food, “I ordered the Yum Neuah but yours was better.” That may be a bit of nostalgia speaking more than, say, an bite-to-bite taste test analysis, but I'll take it. I did learn from the best, after all. My most memorable Yum Neuah experience involved a Hmong wedding in the north of Thailand where almost every last part of an entire cow (and two pigs) were slaughtered, butchered and transformed into myriad beefy recipe. The women sat at long picnic tables, peeling bags of garlic, chopping lemongrass and green onions, and pounding chilies for an hour. The most magical concoction of all was an enormous vat of glistening chunks of beef into which a potpourri of spices and sauces were churned. A bit of time on the grill and the Yum Neuah meat fairly danced in the mouth, popping with complex notes of flavor, as Thai food is wont to do.

You don't have to kill your own cow to make good Yum Neuah, however. D, if you should desire to impress your new friends, just follow along. Before you know it, they'll be sending you texts about how much better your Yum Neuah is.

Do it Yourself

Yum Neauh involves three steps, each of which is fairly easy. The hardest part is figuring out proportions that create a flavor that works for you. The trick in Thai food is balance- a harmonious blend of salty, sweet, sour and spicy. I give you estimates (for a 4 person meal) so the rule-bound cooks among us don't get too worried, but it is really best if you experiment. Don't be afraid to pour and shake using your eye instead of measuring cup, and when it comes to chopping veggies, go with however much of each you want to eat. There is no formula. Just take heart that with these ingredients as your raw materials, it is hard to make the food taste bad, and if you do, they're cheap enough you can try, try again.

Ingredients

Meat: About one pound rump or sirloin steak

Meat marinade:
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 square inch ginger, chopped
1 bunch cilantro (coriander) roots, washed and chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp ground black pepper

Dressing:
4 Tbsp fish sauce (like salt in baking, fish sauce doesn't give a fishy or salty flavor but simply helps to enhance other flavors)
4 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili flakes (more if you like it hot; also consider chopping up 1-2 fresh bird chilies per person), 1Tbsp palm sugar (substitute brown sugar if you can't find it)

Vegetable base:
2 red onions, diced, generously sized
1 bunch green onions, chopped (use both the green and the white parts)
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 bunch mint (sprinkle on chopped leaves as you like)
1 bunch cilantro (sprinkle on chopped leaves as you like; I can't stand cilantro so I omit)
1 bag pre-mixed greens
1 ½ cup cherry tomatoes

Directions

Let the meat marinate while you prepare the dressing in another bowl.

Grill the meat—and by “grill” I mean, fire up the back burner, let a pan dowsed in olive oil get good and hot, and give the steak a good few minutes on each side, just enough to char the outside and leave the middle nice and juicy. Of course, if bloody isn't your thing, by all means, keep it on a bit longer. Once the top and bottom are both seared, however, you might want to turn down the heat a bit and add a lid to avoid burning the outside while the middle gets done.

Slice the meat into long strips and let it marinate in the dressing.

Start a batch of rice.

While the meat soaks in the flavor, chop the vegetables for the vegetable base and arrange them in a separate bowl.

Spoon meat and dressing over a pile of greens and a side of rice; enjoy with a cold beer.

Note: Yum Neuah makes great leftovers, but don't pour the juicy meat over the whole bowl greens or they'll get mushy; instead, serve individual portions from separate serving bowls. When you eat Yum Neuah right as its cooked, the meat will be hot but it is also delicious cold, straight from the fridge.

You can also make a vegetarian option by simply serving as a vegetable salad; there is a vegetarian version of “fish” sauce. But honestly, you're missing out.

Restaurant Week outing #2: Kittichai, January 29

Khao Gaeng Ron Ron Ma Laew Ja!!

Taste & See: Like Mercer Kitchen, Kittichai is the domain of a celebrity chef. Like Mercer Kitcher, Kittichai is the hotel restaurant of a rather swank SoHo hotel. Unlike Mercer Kitchen, however, the food at Kittichai is inventive and fun, anything but dull. As I explained previously, I found MK tasty, but not particularly exciting. Kittichai is both.

I had been to Kittichai in the fall, courtesy of a potential employer (with, apparently, impeccable taste). It was a rooftop party looking out on the twinkling Manhattan skyline, with trays and trays of eye-popping appetizers from which I picked and munched on constantly, with absolutely no shame-- even as I carried on polite chit chat with higher-ups. The food put us on equal ground: we were all in awe of it. Naturally, Kittichai was one of the first places I thought of for Restaurant Week this year.

The interior is quite and still, with dark walls imprinted in heavy metal Thai letters leading to a a dimly lit room draped floor to ceiling along the walls in swaths of autumnal raw silks. Orchids dangle from the ceiling over a pool in the middle. The peaceful atmosphere- a girl is studying at a table opposite us!- is perhaps in some part thanks to the advice of the feng shui master who was called in to consult on design.

Chef Ian, as the restaurant website affectionately refers to the head chef, is noted for being the first Thai chef to head the five star Bangkok Four Seasons Hotel:


What this means for me is not simply that he has broken racial and cultural barriers, but that I have previously had the honor of dining in one of his restaurants, the Italian 'Biscotti,' where my real parents hosted my Thai host family to a memorable fine (Western) dining experience when I first lived in Thailand.

Chef Ian's illustrious career began at the age of three when he would rise before dawn and help his mother buy vegetables, then later push through the city yelling Khao Gaeng Ron Ron Ma Laew Ja!!!-- hot curries are coming! I find the familiarity of the phrase, one I've heard being hurled through Bangkok allies, and retold in an anecdote on the restaurant website, comforting.

Now at Kittichai the hot curries are coming, along with multitudes of other creative arrangements of Thai-esque food ("Thai Tapas"). It is a very tasty take on Thai food, even if you'd never find it in Thailand itself. No wonder it is Mario Batali's favorite restaurant in New York.

The normal menu changes regularly, and features a wider range of options than does the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe; I'd go for the chocolate baby back ribs and Thai spices, the banana blossom salad with cashew nuts and chili jam, or the crispy rock shrimp with grilled eggplant and palm sugar tamarind sauce if I had my way. And those are just appetizers.

This time we started with a crispy fried bean curd and green beans with a mild curry sauce ($5) from the regular menu:


A seafood salad from the RW menu, with shredded raw mango and juicy scallops, squid and shrimp:


Also for RW, a light curried butternut squash soup with a single pumpkin ravioli:


The restaurant week entrees were a bit of a disappointment, compared to my high expectations-- just a little too simple. The vegetarian salad with Brussels sprouts, plump whole tomatoes and fried tofu was a bit too saucy, though the tangy, sweet sauce in lower proportions would have been nice:


The five-spice beef potato curry had a good flavor, but nothing I couldn't mix up myself, and the beef was a little tough-- all three pieces of it.


The spikes of color from the vegetables and the unexpected green egg noodles were a fun-though odd- touch.


The grilled beef with green beans and preserved chili sauce off the regular menu ($14) was hands down the favorite; the meat was tender and held the sauce wonderfully:


No other way to put it, the desserts knocked our socks off:


The bright orange black specked Thai tea custard, like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup upside down, was swirled with rich caramel and simply divine:


All in all, well worth the splurge- for Restaurant Week and again (and again, and again).

Enjoying a Well Stocked Kitchen

Two easy dishes made while I was pressed for time and had very little in the kitchen to work with- all thanks to my well stocked kitchen.

Taste & See: A few days ago, I preached the virtues of having a well-stocked kitchen, divulging how it is the secret behind being a true faux gourmet. Now that you've got one, or at least have thought briefly about perhaps going to the store once the holidays are over and you're off your diet of cookies and hot cocoa, let me entice you a bit further.

The first dish is called phat si-ew, or fried noodles with soy sauce. It's a typical Thai street dish made with very simple ingredients, available everywhere for about 20 B. But it wasn't til I saw my host mom make it in the village that I learned the secret to avoiding massive clumps of noodles, the perpetual result of my previous attempts.

I used fresh noodles from a shop in Chinatown, which come as big slab and cut them into noodles myself.


The sooner they're used, the better; once I bought the noodles in advance and refrigerated them until the day I needed them, only to find the noodles had gone hard and were impossible to cut. They softened up with heat and oil but were hideously ugly. This time I asked the noodle man and he said to just leave them at room temperature, in the bag. I was skeptical, but as you can see for yourself, they actually look like noodles. (I bought mine for 63 cents a slab and used two slabs to feed 12 people; ask for chow fun, the Chinese name; I'm not sure of the Thai name for fat, soft noodles.) NB: in keeping with the faux gourmet spirit, if you don't want to go to Chinatown, you can use whatever noodles you have on hand, even, dare I say it, spaghetti noodles, in a pinch.

Next, remember the sauces from A Well Stocked Kitchen Part I?

Mix in equal proportions so you have just enough to coat all the noodles, oyster sauce, Indonesian sweet soy sauce & regular soy sauce:


Separate by hand of every last piece of noodle with a plastic bag, as I learned in the village, the trick to dispelling the clumpy phat si-ew of yore.


Heat up a bit of oil in a wok then add a handful of noodles, turning over gently with til the noodles are soft and stretchy.


Add a handful of chopped dark greens- any kind you have will do: broccoli, kale, bok choy.


I used kale, the typical vegetable in street phat si-ew (known as pak kana in Thailand).


Move the noodles to one side of the wok and crack in an egg. Let it heat up for a minute.


Scramble it up and mix it into the noodles.


Season to taste with a combination of the following: lime juice, sugar, chili flakes, fish sauce [the four flavors: sour, sweet, spicy, salty].


Voila!

I had friends over for dinner the night I made this. I already had the ingredients together and people took turns coming in the kitchen and making up their own small batch. Either my friends are ridiculously talented across the board in the arts of Thai noodle making, or it is really a very simple dish to make. How about you find out for yourself?

The second dish was a simple stir fry:


Didn't have much to work with- just a large hunk of broccoli, an onion, some green onions & a chicken breast. But adding a simple soy sauce-sugar-oyster sauce-vinegar-sri racha sauce mix & sprinkling a few cashews on top transformed it into a tasty dinner in about 20 minutes. Assuming cashews are optional, with a well-stocked kitchen you'd have all that on hand, making for cheap & easy food with no need to buy anything special.


And that's really what having a well stocked kitchen is all about.

Breakfast and 3 Variations

It may be the most important meal, but with all these delicious options I wouldn't mind eating it more than once a day.

Taste & See: Every couple weeks I go on a new breakfast kick, happily eating my way through my entire supply of my current fixation before moving on to something new. (Always with my morning latte, of course.) For years it was cereal, with a pleasant rotation between old standbys like Life & Chex, splurging on Special K with berries when it was on sale at Safeway. But a little over a year ago, I had a breakfast experience that changed my life. At an early morning meeting, a friend of mine brought along egg sandwiches, two slices of whole wheat bread crammed good with poached egg, cheese and bacon. I'm really not a bacon person, but this was GOOD. I mean, really, really, addictively good.


And accordingly, for the past year or so I have been obsessed with egg sandwiches. In fact, I do believe I have it down to a science- though finding the perfect mix of fillings (I'm just not willing to continue on with bacon) is purely an art. The mix above was my first and most constant friend: prosciutto, provolone, English muffin, and of course, an egg. [The rest of the breakfast shall await another day in the sun, as today I'm all about eggs.]

My latest obsession, and what I believe is perhaps the pinnacle of all egg-sandwiches: egg on a whole wheat English muffin with brie cheese and a few sun dried tomatoes. Don't think it is hyperbole when I tell you that the mix of the nutty wheat bread with the sweetness of the cheese and tomatoes is pure breakfast perfection. Of course you can vary it up as you like- most kinds of cheese work, meat is optional, and vegetables could punch up the color. All you really need is a bread (pita, toast, tortillas, bagles, etc.) and an egg.

Now you'll notice the egg in the photograph above is perfectly round and flat. Where, you may wonder, do eggs look like that outside of McDonalds? Let me share a little technique trick: the microwave. I'm dead serious:

- Crack that egg into a little round microwave safe bowl, preferable flat bottomed
- Stir up with a fork
- Zap it for 40 seconds
- Wait a few seconds for it to cool so the second round doesn't splat raw egg all over your microwave, then heat again for 10-30 seconds, depending on how jello-y the egg is when you check on it.

But first:

- Heat up a sauce pan on medium and put both halves of the English muffin in, cut side down
- Cover the muffin with a pan for a minute or so if you're in a rush to speed things up, being careful not to let it burn

Then:

- Turn the muffin over & fork out the cooked egg
- Add your other toppings
- Sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper on the egg if you like.
- Put the sandwich together when the uncut sides are a bit warm, and let it heat til the cheese melts
- Enjoy!

[You may also use an oven/broiler if you become madly enraptured with the sandwiches and would like to make some for all your lucky friends.]

***

Now, sometime you find yourself outside your comfort zone. For me, that used to mean without my cereal & espresso machine. When I first lived in Thailand I used to resist the daily breakfasts of greens & rice, sneaking in my daily coffee via a French Press lugged to my village home and cereal by way of instant oats in a tin. Not entirely delicious.

It wasn't long before I realized the error of my ways and learned of all the ridiculous breakfast options Thailand has to offer. Now this isn't entirely Thai- Taiwanese, to be precise, but the freshly fried up donuts from dough stretched and cut before your very eyes and the sweetened hot soy milk with chewy textured bits swirling about is ta-sty. The carts are all over Thailand, easy to identify by the long slabs of white dough being cut, fried and stacked in glass containers & the big silver vats of boiling milk. The milk, nom tao-hoo, is usually 5 B and donuts are 1 B each.


This is not Thai either-- Chinese-- but I have the fondest memories of being stranded in my village house in the rain, unable to ride my moto to market to buy food, and forced to dart down to the mini-mart next door to buy an egg & a packet of instant jok. Jok is rice porridge, rice that has been boiled until it is the consistency of grits or cream of wheat. I'd pour the packets of gritty powder in a pot with some water, heat it up on our single gas-stove burner, and watch as the powder magically expanded into a steamy bowl of soup. I threw in some chopped ginger and green onions and crack in the egg and let the heat of the soup cook it as I folded it in. I finished it off with a dash of soy sauce. Only later did I get to try the real thing, and as you can see, I was quite pleased. Jok is usually 25 B, give or take 5-15 for meat (pork meatballs is traditional but I like chicken) or egg (obviously!).


Next we have an item that is very Thai, but not strictly breakfast: bpun. Four dollar fruit shakes at jamba juice just can't compare to the 10 B wonders sold in every village in Thailand. You can get them in every kind of fruit you can imagine, and a few you have never seen. Just point to the fruits stacked around the carts with blenders. I recommend mango (man moo-ahn), pineapple (zap-a-rote), and the flavor pictured below, coconut (ma-prao). (Never had I dreamed a shake could be so good!) Coffee, chocolate & Thai iced tea are also available.


I couldn't do a review of Thai breakfasts without returning to my earlier post on the ideal commuter's breakfast. My recommendation still stands but I confess I forgot a very important Thai trend: Mr. Bun.


Now I arrived after the trend's initial explosion and thus never got to see the rage first hand, but I have seen, and tasted, the result: "Mr. Bun" shops of all stripes claiming to be the real thing, like Gray's Papaya in New York, all nearly identical from the outside and impossible for an outsider to distinguish.


"Fresh fresh, hot hot, soft soft," the above sign reads. They're available below in coffee, coconut and vanilla, about 10 B each.


I don't know if this Mr. Bun stand at Victory Monument, just at the foot of the escalator, is the 'real thing,' but the boys there were more than delighted to share whatever Mr. Bun it is they're selling.

Gaeng Hang Lay

A bit different than the Thai curries your momma makes, Gaeng Hang Lay combines the best flavors the North has to offer.

Taste & See: This curry from the capital of the old Lanna kingdom is more complex than spicy. The curry paste packs healthy doses of a number of particularly fragrant herbs and spices which, when left to simmer for a good while [or left in the fridge overnight] create shivers of delight.

I used to live in a little po-dunk province in Thailand called Nan. My host used to make a thick, earthy base in which she'd simmer tough pork on the bone for hours. I would smell it all afternoon, staring maddeningly at the clock. While the spicy sauce did its work, we'd go to the little "Fitness" center in the public park and work up an appetite. Oh the joy that filled my heart when we stepped back into the house, filled as it was with a sweet, full aroma, and sit down to heaping bowls of rice topped with chewy pork covered in delicious Gaeng Hang Lay.


For the longest time I thought it was a product of my host's imagination, as I had never seen anything comparable at restaurants. Since then, I have learned that my coveted curry is called Gaeng Hang Lay and hails from Chiang Mai. According to a fellow Thai food blog, it probably came to Thailand via Burma (hin means curry in Burmese), and is common communal festival dish in the north of Thailand, especially among the Shan ethnic group. The simplest iteration of the curry is pork fried in a mix of chilies, ginger, shallots, garlic and thua nao khep, or dried, flattened soybeans, as well as the hang lay spices. See notes below for more specifics.

Before I left my village home, I made sure to get my host's recipe. One day we sat down together and chopped up a storm: hunks of galangal and ginger, reedy stalks of lemongrass, round shallot bulbs like little purple golf balls, and pesky miniature cloves of garlic with paper thin peels.


With such a mix of raw ingredients it would be hard not to cook good food. In my host's version, everything is finely chopped and pounded in a mortar and pestle, with a handful of roughly chopped ginger sticks tossed in. We did not pre-marinate the meat, use coconut milk or tamarind, or top the final version with peanuts. The finished product was a bit woodsy; chomping through the sinuous pork covered in gobs of curry paste felt like something one should do after a full day chopping down trees or roping cows.

I have cross-checked my host's version against several other recipes and come up with a few alterations/variations. Some use coconut milk, albeit in much smaller quantities than the soupy curries you typically think of, and tamarind paste. In mine, I relied on the good ole' blender to do the work for me instead of a mortar and pestle. I also used chicken pieces rather than pork, marinated in a fish sauce/spice rub the night before. Finally, I provided a bowl of toasted peanuts and Thai basil leaves for crunch and contrast at my guests' discretion.

A few notes on ingredients:

[Peanuts] If you're toasting your own peanuts, broil for just a minute or two, til you see the nuts start to brown. Immediately take them off the hot pan when you remove them from the oven or they'll continue to brown and burn, and you'll set off the fire alarm [as I did the other night] and have to toss the blackened peanuts and start from scratch.

[Substance] You could use this curry paste for a variety of substantive fillings- red pepper and potatoes, tofu, chicken, pork, beef. The pork cut traditionally used is called moo sam chun, or 'three level pork,' because it has meat, fat and skin. It is the pork belly fat cut of meat. I'd avoid seafood- imho the paste is too strong to allow the flavors of seafood to shine through. I think potatoes make a better vegetarian substitute than tofu, as the flavor is better absorbed, but this tofu version was nonetheless quite delicious.


[Galangal & Lemongrass] Galangal is a cousin of ginger but a bit tougher and spicier. Its often in large slices in tom kha gai, a coconut milk soup often found at US Thai restaurants. You can often get galangal and lemongrass stalks at Asian market, but if not, look for powders as substitutes. Not perfect, but better than nothing.


[Heat] You can use dried red chili peppers, though I recommend soaking in hot water a bit first to get them soft enough to blend into the paste. I used bird chilies, approximately 1 for every two people who will be eating the curry [or, about 1/4 the amount of galangal, ginger and lemongrass used.] Personally I could do a bit spicier, but it is always easier to add heat than tone it down later.


[Spice Powder] Gaeng Hang Lay powder, the spices used in the marinade, is available in packets in the US [see the yellow & green pack in the photo of the marinade] but you can make your own with equal parts turmeric, cumin, mace and coriander. If you don't have mace it won't kill you.

[Tamarind Paste] I also added a few tbsp's tamarind paste as an experiment, based on one recipe I found that included it. You can make it by boiling tamarind pods or buy it pre-made. It has a rich sweet and sour flavor that I thought would complement the other flavors well. The end result was pretty tasty, so at worst the tamarind didn't ruin it.

How to make the curry:

Part I: Marinade
Mix about 3 tbsp Gaeng Hang Lay powder with about 5 tbsp fish sauce [contrary to the picture, it really is fish, not squid] and 3 tbsp palm sugar [also easily available at Asian grocery stores; substitute brown sugar if necessary
Pour over about 2 lb of desired meat [or other filling]
Store in refrigerator at least 30 min, preferably overnight

Part II: Curry Paste
Chop equal parts ginger, galangal, and lemongrass; for proportions above I used aprox 1/4 cup of each; I used half the amount of garlic and twice the amount of shallots
Combine in food processor or blender together with 2 tbsp palm sugar, 1 tbsp shrimp paste [this can stink but lasts forever; keep in the fridge tightly closed] and 1 tbsp sweet soy sauce [Indonesian style, thick and syrupy]
Blend until it makes a paste with applesauce-like consistency. I had about 1.5 cups of paste in the end



Part III: The Curry
Heat a little oil in a pan and add chicken in its marinade
Add a few tablespoons of coconut water/milk [not the heavy cream] to tenderize the meat as it begins to cook
Stir in a few tablespoons of curry paste, more or less depending on how intense you want the flavor, once meat has begun to cook
Simmer the whole thing for as much time as you have, at a minimum letting the meat cook through fully [I also used tofu as my vegetarian alternative, which cooks much faster]
Add a bit more coconut milk if you like it creamy, or add coconut milk or water if the sauce reduces too much.


Enjoy!

NB: This recipe is a bit time consuming for all the chopping involved- but oh, so worth it. How about making it with friends Stone Soup style? Have everyone bring a half cup of one item chopped, blend it as soon as people arrive and put the curry on to simmer while you enjoy a round of beer & poker. You'll definitely want beer with this curry, btw; its a hearty, warm your tummy through and through kind of meal and a light beer provides a great complement.