Food in Chiang Mai – Grandmother’s Khao Soi

Posted on 11 August 2011 by christao408

Sometimes you have bits and pieces of information in your head but they have yet to coalesce into a linked arrangement that qualifies as knowledge. Prior to this trip to Chiang Mai, that described the state of affairs in my mind when it came to the subject of Northern Thai cuisine. On this trip, though, the bits of knowledge started to come together and my understanding of Northern Thai cuisine began to solidify. The process began, appropriately enough, over a bowl of khao soi.

Khao soi means snipped or trimmed rice and it refers to the way the noodles used to be made in this classic curried noodle soup. Originally, sheets of rice noodles colored and flavored with turmeric were rolled up and then snipped into strands. These days, though, the dish is generally made with egg noodles.

The dish is believed to have roots with the Hui, Chinese muslims from Yunnan province. Similar dishes with similar names are found in Burma, northern Thailand, and Laos, the result of the trade routes crisscrossing the area where the three countries not far away from China.

While khao soi has a curry base, it is usually not as thick as a traditional curry. It also does not have a lot of spicy heat, although it certainly has a lot of flavor. The dish also relies on two types of noodles: fresh ones in the soup and deep fried ones on top to add some crunch. All in all, it qualifies as comfort food and is certainly a defining dish in Northern Thai cuisine.

We ate khao soi a trio of times during our trip. The first stop was at Ran Aahan Khao Soi Khun Yai, which translates as “Grandmother’s Khao Soi Restaurant.” Located on Sriphum Road, which runs along the inside of the north moat, Grandmother’s Khao Soi is in a private residence nestled between two wat, or temples: Wat Kuan Kama to the east and Wat Montien to the west. It is only this small orange sign, all in Thai, that indicates the entrance.

Parking is limited to a few places on the grass and most customers walk from nearby businesses and houses. As you can see, Wat Montien is literally right next door.

The restaurant is an open air pavilion just inside the gates. Grandmother’s house is further back on the property. The restaurant is open from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm daily except Sunday and quantities are limited.

In a wonderfully old-fashioned touch, the menu is painted on the property wall as well as being posted on a sign over the kitchen. I didn’t see any English menus, but imagine that you would be able to make yourself understood (through pointing, if nothing else). The menu is basically three items: khao soi, bami (thin egg noodles), and guaytiaw (rice noodles), available with chicken, beef, or pork. (I know, strange that a Muslim-origin dish would have a pork option.)

I opted for the khao soi nua (beef), which is always a good test for a khao soi restaurant. The key is whether they have stewed the beef long enough so that it is very tender. Grandmother’s beef met the tenderness test and the noodles were cooked to the perfect, not too mushy consistency. The curry broth is fully flavored, a little thinner than some versions I’ve had but not lacking in flavor. A small splash of boiled coconut cream added richness.

It is customary to doctor your khao soi with a plate of garnishes. These always include some dark chilli paste, red shallots, lime, and pickled cabbage. I make it a point to taste the broth before adding condiments so that I can get a sense of the original flavor. The lime and cabbage add acidic notes that keep the curry broth from being too heavy.

A wonderful drink with which to accompany the khao soi is naam lamyai, or longan juice. Don’t you love the high-end table covering? Winnie the Pooh and Tigger love khao soi!

To get a taste of what else Grandmother’s Khao Soi has to offer, Tawn and I split a dish of bami moo, egg noodles with ground pork and pork balls. This dish is always comforting, a little sweet, a little savory (thanks to the fried shallots on top), and very easy to eat.

The look of a satisfied diner. All told, Grandmother’s Khao Soi met and exceeded expectations, setting a very high bar against which other khao soi we tried during our trip had to compete.

Not to spoil your appetite, but I found this garden snail climbing up the midst of the menu painted on the wall, crossing the “o” in “soi”. I thought it was an interesting shot.

Food in BKK: Din Tai Fung

Posted on 2 August 2011 by christao408

After a year’s delay caused by the May 2010 political protests and subsequent fires, Taiwanese dumpling chain Din Tai Fung recently opened its first branch in Thailand at the Central World Plaza mall at the Ratchaprasong intersection. Last week, Tawn and I made a trip there to see how well it upholds the chain’s reputation. The results? Overall, positive, but a little bland.

I almost didn’t write this entry because, well, how many times do I need to post pictures of food from Din Tai Fung? I’ve been twice in Taipei and then again in Hong Kong and Singapore. The pictures never look that different. But I waited more than a year for this branch to open and I thought it would be a shame not to give it due consideration.

One feature of Din Tai Fung locations is that the kitchen, or at least the dumpling making portion, is very visible. The company takes pride in how they operate and their cleanliness is a sign of quality. Plus, the army of cooks making thousands of dumplings is impressive to watch. Here are some photos I took, which I think looked a little more interesting in black and white.

The dining area faces large windows overlooking the Big C Supercenter across the street, letting in lots of natural light. Another seating area is open to the rest of the mall, which leaves you feeling a bit exposed.

The logos on the spoon and napkin have the Chinese, English, Japanese, and Thai versions of the restaurant’s name. The lady working the front counter, taking names, and coordinating orders was from the Singapore branch, leaving me curious about how they manage operations in different countries. Is this a franchise location or is it owned directly by the original company in Taiwan?

We started with a special “Oriental Salad in Vinegar Dressing,” which is a combination of seaweed, sprouts, mung bean noodles, and thinly sliced vegetables. While a tasty combination, it was underseasoned and benefitted greatly from a hearty splash of soy sauce.

Sliced ginger in a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, the ideal condiment into which you should dip your bao, or dumplings.

The original Xiao Long Bao, steamed pork dumplings. Here in Bangkok, as well as in the Hong Kong location, I felt that the filling was under-seasoned. My memory from Taipei is that the dumplings were full of flavor, but perhaps I need to go back and test that memory.

Another variation on the dumplings, this one with vegetables and pork. The filling was more flavorful than with the original Xiao Long Bao.

Perhaps my favorite dish, the wontons with black vinegar and chilli oil. Stuffed with shrimp, these lightly sweet dumplings are served in a sauce that is not as frighteningly spicy as you might imagine.

A good concluding dish was the fried rice topped with pork chop. The lack of flavor in the bao was made up for by the pork chop, which was liberally dusted in salt and pepper.

If you are thinking of ordering dessert at the Bangkok branch, be advised that nothing is yet available. I didn’t ask why but perhaps one day they will fix whatever problem they are having.

All told, the quality continues to be high and the Din Tai Fung company can be confident that their good name will be upheld here. I’m left with the lingering question of whether the blandness in their dumplings is something that I just didn’t notice at the original locations in Taipei and the Singapore location, too, or are the dumplings actually less flavorful here and in Hong Kong? Further tests will have to be conducted!

Meanwhile, I am glad our wait for Din Tai Fung is over.

Trying to Eat Healthy

Posted on 1 August 2011 by christao408

Most weeknights, Tawn and I try to eat dinner at home. Whatever I cook, it almost always includes a salad with lots of vegetables. This is our attempt to fill up on veggies, rather than on meats and carbs. Sometimes, I try for something a little fancier like this steak salad with thin slices of American sirloin, roasted red peppers and onions, and shavings of Parmesan cheese. Most of the time, though, the salads are a little less ambitious.

Weekday breakfasts are also eat at home meals, usually oatmeal with a combination of dried fruits and nuts, sometimes with a little quinoa, which provides some protein to start my day. Since I work from home, my lunches are also usually eaten at home, often leftovers from dinner the night before. From time to time, though, I will step out for lunch, stopping most often at a neighborhood ramen shop for some noodles.

All this weekday eating at home is offset by frequent social events on the weekends, when we end up eating out for most of the meals. On both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend, we had engagements for lunch and dinner. The odd calculus of this pattern of socializing is that while my wallet gets thinner, my mid-drift gets thicker.

A Healthy Start

Posted on 20 July 2011 by christao408

In an attempt to add a little (relatively healthful) variety to my usual breakfast of oatmeal, I bake batches of granola made of rolled oats and barley, nuts, wheat germ, dried coconut, and flax seed, all of which is lightly moistened with a mixture of canola oil and maple syrup and then roasted until lightly browned. After cooled, I add raisins, dates, or other dried fruit.

Served with some plain yogurt and some fresh fruit – in this case, passion fruit pulp – it makes for a nice breakfast, no? I’d like to believe it is also a healthful but in addition to the whole grains and good fats, I think it is pretty high in calories. Thoughts?

Food in LA – Musha in Torrance

Posted on 17 July 2011 by christao408

About two years ago, Gary and William took me to the Santa Monica branch of Musha, a Japanese izakaya, or small plates, restaurant. They have another branch a few miles south in Torrance and I took the opportunity during our June visit to Los Angeles to take Tawn there. It remains a satisfying place to dine.

An izakaya is a drinking establishment that, in the same way that Spanish bars serve tapas, provides small plates of food to patrons to accompany their drinks, encouraging them (or, perhaps, enabling them) to drink longer. After all, you can’t continue to sell drinks to someone who has passed out and a little food in the stomach delays or prevents that happening.

While at first Torrance may seem an unlikely location, the city is home to many Japanese businesses, including Toyota’s North America headquarters. As such, there are countless restaurants and other services geared towards the many Japanese who live and work in the area. Musha is located in a strip mall on the northwest corner of Carson Street and Western Avenue. With its dark green awning, the building could just as easily house a Starbucks.

The restaurant is a small space with a large table running down the center. Smaller tables line the walls and on the left is counter seating facing one of the two kitchen areas. The interior is a cozy and several fans are running to dissipate fumes from the grill-your-own dishes that are on the menu.

We opted for the counter, giving us a good view of the action in the kitchen and a tempting view of plates and bowls full of some of the previously prepared foods that we could order. It took a lot of will power to not help ourselves.

A must-order item is the Aburi Shimesaba. The description on the menu, complete with spelling errors that seem to authenticate the Japanese ownership of this restaurant, is as follows: “New creation from the great chef of Musha!! Fresh mackerelmarinated with rice vinegar, sliced like a sashimi then torched at your table. Try the taste of “Holly Mackerel !!”

While I’ll avoid speculation about the holly mackerel, I will say that this is a wonderfully complex dish made of only the simplest of ingredients. The rice vinegar helps to cook the fish in a ceviche-like way. It adds a sweetness to an otherwise fishy tasting flesh. Then the torching give the skin a crispy texture with caramel flavors. To top it off, the banana leaf on which the fish is placed starts to char a bit so you get the smoky fruit aroma. While the dish is really only two ingredients – fish and vinegar – the flavor is multi-layered and complex.

The second dish was the lobster roll, a riceless bit of sushi that uses a thin springroll wrapper instead of seaweed filled with lobster and cucumber. Very tasty.

One of my favorite dishes is the spicy tuna dip served with rice crackers. The name pretty much describes what it is, but doesn’t have any superlatives that convey how tasty this dip is. Might I suggest something like, One of the Tastiest Things You Will Ever Scoop with a Cracker?

Another Musha signature dish is the Takotama. This is their take on okonomiyaki, a “Japanese style pancake”. In the case of Takotama, you have the two-layered omelette (pictured sitting on the counter above) with chopped octopus, Tokyo leek, red ginger, bonito flakes, chives, and nori seaweed. The sauce is a thick, sweet sauce topped with mayonnaise.

To finish we had a plate of Typhoon Char Han, a spicy fried rice prepared with ground pork, chili, bamboo shoot, ginger, garlic, and Tokyo leek. Tasty and filling.

Stuffed and running out of time to head to LAX and pick up my sister and her family, we skipped dessert, cleansing out palettes with the complimentary salted plum tea.

All in all, I think Musha offers tasty food at a fair price. Like all “small plates” restaurants, you have to watch out because the bill can rapidly increase. That isn’t a matter of the prices being high; instead, it is a matter of ordering more food than you really need. If you are in the South Bay part of Los Angeles, or in Santa Monica, a stop at Musha would be worth your while.

Food in Long Beach: Starling Diner

Posted on 11 July 2011 by christao408

Near the end of our trip to Los Angeles last month, while driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to visit Janet for tea, we stopped for brunch at the Starling Diner. Located on East Third Street in Long Beach, the look and feel of the Starling Diner is that of an old-time neighborhood institution. The food is comforting, the service friendly, and the fellow diners are, well, neighborly.

Starling Diner is all this despite having been around for less than five years. It is no surprise then to learn that owner Joan Samson made a very conscious effort to create a space that had that neighborhood institution feel. From their website:

In times past, neighborhoods were Communities where everyone casually knew each other and the gathering places were icons such as the front porch, the corner store and the neighborhood diner. It has always been our personal mission to create gathering spots that provide a sense of place along side the highest quality food and drinks. We live in and love Long Beach. We just made a place where we would like to meet our friends and connect.

My cousins had first brought me here in 2009 and I was eager to share the cute restaurant and tasty dining experience with Tawn. He wasn’t disappointed.

This pale green cruiser parked outside seems to exemplify the Starling Diner. Located amidst houses on a quiet street, this is the type of place you would hop on your bicycle and ride three blocks to meet some friends for breakfast at.

The tables are crowded with little tin tubs of all the condiments you might need. Interestingly, they serve water in these biodegradable corn-based plastic cups in order to save the environment. As I pointed out to the server (in a friendly, non-complaining sort of way), they would do more to save the environment to serve their cream, jellies, sugars, etc. in bulk containers rather than individual sachets and packages.

The fact that our server took that suggestion with a thoughtful smile and remained friendly and welcoming is a good example of the type of consistent service I’ve enjoyed during both my visits.

The highlight of the menu is the San Francisco stuffed French toast. Unlike most French toast, this is broiled not fried, and is made from baguette, not square loaf bread.

It does not disappoint! The result is something that is light and crispy rather than heavy and soggy like most French toast. This is a recipe I would like to learn to recreate at home.

Tawn had the crab cakes sandwich, which had these wonderful, large lump crab meat and tons of fresh greens. This was really tasty, too.

All in all, the only disappointment at the Starling Diner was that there were just the two of us and, as such, we were only able to try two items on the menu. Mark this on the list of places to come back to on a future visit!

Food in LA: Johnnie’s Pastrami in Culver City

Posted on 6 July 2011 by christao408

The first few nights we were in Los Angeles in June, Tawn and I stayed at the Travelodge Culver City on Washington Place just east of Sepulveda Drive. As down-market as you would expect a Travelodge to be, this one has received well-deserved high rankings in TripAdvisor and other review sites. In addition to the really tasty Metro Cafe located downstairs from the motel, just around the corner was the timeless Johnnie’s French Dip Pastrami. Of course, I wanted to try it.

Established in 1952, Johnnie’s is this small shack of a diner. As their menu explains, the jukeboxes are originals and some of the waitresses are, too.

The restaurant is open until 2:30 am and an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. A wide mix of people stop by, young and old, well-off and those barely making ends meet. They all are there for one thing: good, honest food. The menu is simple: burgers, dogs, and sandwiches, with the pastrami taking center stage.

Complimentary dill pickles, sliced thick.

Combine the pickles with a root beer float made with hand scooped ice cream and, despite it sounding like the food cravings of a pregnant woman, I was in heaven!

The ambience is all chrome and naugahyde. The pastrami boils for a while then finishes in a steam bath, coming out moist and thinly sliced. What’s that machine on the left? Well, for you youngsters out there, that’s how a real milkshake is made!

The pastrami on rye arrived. While pastrami is generally a fatty meat, I found my cuts to be quite rare. The fat that was attached was well-cooked and not overwhelming. Compare the construction of this sandwich to a pastrami I tried at a wanna-be place in Bangkok called New York Cheesecake, which served me only a thin layer of meat topped with a third slice of bread and several inches of lettuce and other veggies. Needless to say, Johnnie’s came a lot closer to satisfy my pastrami craving. As for the flavor, it was fantastic.

Tawn ordered a veggie burger. What’s that!? A veggie burger at a place like Johnnie’s!? Well, as my dearly departed paternal grandmother used to say, if we all liked the same things the world would sure be a boring place. Truth be told, it was a pretty tasty veggie burger probably thanks to all the burnt-on beef bits on the grill!

Overall, we could debate whether Johnnie’s has the best pastrami in LA or not. People have different preferences, of course. I just know that Johnnie’s hit the spot for me, filling a need for good pastrami that I had been carrying with me for many months. Next time I’m back in LA, I may return. Or I may seek out some of the other recommended pastrami shops. We’ll see.

Food in Bangkok: Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin

Posted on 4 July 2011 by christao408

Before we headed to Los Angeles last month, Tawn and I were invited to a special foodie dinner held at Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin restaurant. Sra Bua is known for its molecular gastronomy take on Thai food. Organized by CatAndNat.com, a Thai lifestyle website, and WorldFoods, I was invited to attend because of the writing I do for CatAndNat.

Dinner was held at the beautiful Siam Kempinski Hotel, tucked away right behind the Siam Paragon mall.

Opened less than a year ago, the Siam Kempinski is a beautiful 5-star hotel. Their fresh flower arrangements in the lobby make it worth a visit just to “stop and smell the roses”.

The building also features gorgeous architecture and decorations throughout. I enjoy visiting nice hotels like this just for the ambiance.

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By coincidence, fellow blogger Angel and his partner were on holiday in Bangkok, staying at the same hotel. We were able to meet them for a late afternoon tea before proceeding across the hall to our dinner.

Our host didn’t have Tawn’s full name handy so used my surname for his place card. Tawn was very excited as this is the first (and only) time after our wedding that he’s had my surname!

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Each dish was made with a WorldFoods sauce and was paired with a wine from Monsoon Valley Wines, a local Thai winery.

WorldFoods is a Malaysian based maker of high quality Asian-inspired sauces, marinades, chutneys, and pastes that previously has given me samples of their products and invited me to try and, if I like, to write about them. While I’ve been given no compensation, Tawn and I were invited to this very nice complimentary dinner.

The restaurant,Sra Bua, is the sister restaurant of Henrik Yde-Andersen’s Kiin Kiin in Copenhagen, the second Thai restaurant in the world to receive a Michelin star (which I understand has since been lost).

Appetizer – Yum Som O, which is a traditional salad made with pomelo. Pomelo is basically a large, less sour grapefruit. Here, the chef added frisée and fish roe, which was meant to have a similar texture to the individuals pulp sacs of the pomelo.

Close up of the pomelo salad. This wasn’t much of a success, in my opinion, with too little pomelo and too much roe, which overpowered the flavor of the salad. The pairing wine was a Monsoon Valley Colombard, a fruity white.

Next dish was a Laksa Soup, which used the Singaporean Nyonya Laksa Paste. This was a very pleasant, curry-type soup that was flavorful but not too spicy. It was paired with a Monsoon Valley Cuvee de Siam, another white wine from grapes grown in the hills above Hua Hin, a beach town about three hours south of Bangkok.

The fish course was a pan-seared white fish (bass, I believe) with fish mousse and red curry. This used the Red Curry Sauce and is actually based on a classic Thai dish called haw mok, in which fish is pureed, mixed with a red curry paste, and steamed in banana leaves. I really enjoyed this course. It was paired with a Monsoon Valley Shiraz that was pleasant, although not very complex.

The highlight of the meal was this beef with basil curry sauce. The chunks of beef couldn’t have been more tender and it was served in a lightly fried pastry shell that is balance (although you can’t see it) on a small mound of jasmine rice. This dish was so good that Tawn, who rarely eats beef, had the whole thing. It was paired with a Monsoon Valley Cuvee de Siam Rouge, which was also the highlight wine of the evening. It is a blend of 70% Shiraz and 30% Sangiovese grapes and has nice fruity flavors without too many tannins.

Dessert was a jasmine ice cream served wrapped in phyllo dough and a jasmine rice panna cotta served with mixed tropical fruits, wrapped in a banana leaf. These were really nice as the flavors were very delicate and refreshing. The wine was a Monsoon Valley Muscat Dessert, which was sweet and syrupy.

After dessert a variety of hand-rolled truffles were set out. If you like chocolate, you’d like these!

What the room felt like after the dinner. Ha ha…

Me and Tawn with our friend Linda, who was able to join us at the last minute for dinner. Conclusion: the menu, which was specially prepared for the event, worked very well in some areas and less well in others. Attention to detail in the preparation was very high, though, as was the quality. Service was also very attentive, which of course can be a challenge when you have some 30-40 diners. Kudos to the chef and staff of Sra Bua for pulling this off.

Cooking for 80 – the Results

Posted on 30 June 2011 by christao408

Whew! The big day has come and gone: cooking for a group of up to 80 for a community event called the River Space Dinner Party and Talk. Reservations for the event were coming in faster and earlier than ever before in their several-month history and the day before, Yvan, one of the organizers, suggested I prepare for as many as 90 diners. Thanks to a little rain, we ended up with about 70 people, still more than any previous dinner.

Much like I imagine one feels after running a marathon, I’m very glad I had the opportunity to tackle this challenge. Now I know I can do it. But it was exhausting and took a lot of hard work, not to mention the support of several friends who pitched in, so I’m probably not going to volunteer to cook for such a large group again anytime in the near future!

The preparation was spread over three days leading up to Tuesday’s dinner. Most of the prep work involved careful planning – extrapolating my recipes into larger batches, creating shopping lists, and checking prices to ensure I would stay within my budget of 80 baht (US$ 2.63) per head. When it came time to do most of the shopping on Tuesday morning, I had to go to three stores, managing to clean out two stores of their supplies of cilantro, radishes, and cherry tomatoes.

Tuesday morning I also baked more than 80 buttermilk shortcakes, which would be part of the dessert.

The grains for the mixed grain salad were cooked in batches and then sealed in bags. Note the carefully-written labels. Four parts (each serving about 20-24 people) with bags A, B, and C providing the different mixtures of grains. Bag A contains brown rice, GABA rice, and Job’s tears. Bag B contains brown rice, black beans, and small red beans. Bag C contains pearl barley and corn.

I used large plastic storage containers to divide the ingredients by dish. Some dishes took several containers, which completely filled our car.

The River Space is located on the second floor of a building in a local market on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, next to the Millennium Hilton hotel. Since the street is some distance away from the building entrance, we temporarily parked (during rush hour!) and Tawn hired a porter from the market to help us move everything into the space. That cost 200 baht (less than $7) and was the best 200 baht I’ve ever spent.

While I thought I had prepared a pretty simple recipe, one that required only one dish to actually be cooked on-site, there was still a lot of peeling, slicing, chopping, and dicing that needed to be done. Thankfully, a half-dozen friends came early and rolled up their sleeves. Little did they realize they would spend the next four hours in the kitchen! From left to right, Bee, Ken, me, Sophie, and Linda.

At moments like this, I imagine that a Cuisinart food processor might be a worthwhile investment! Except they would have decimated the tomatoes.

Very organized, I had instructions for pulling together each dish, including plating diagrams, prepared and taped to the kitchen walls. These aren’t exactly a recipe, but helped everyone keep track of what steps we needed to complete and what the finished items were to look like. This is for the dessert, a buttermilk shortcake topped with macerated mango and ginger whipped cream.

We had two burners to work with, although a second-hand stove was recently acquired that has three burners, significantly expanding the capacity. Here, I start frying batches of the green curry marinated chicken while organizer Yvan prepares his signature garlic bread recipe.

Done with the mixed grain salad, my volunteers (now joined by Tammy and Tawn) slice mangoes for dessert while Doug, the friend who roped me into this event, supervises.

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Doug also wandered around with my camera, documenting the action.

By 8:30 the crowd was ravenous, the best way to have them! People started pouring into the kitchen and my friends expertly plated the meal, controlling portion size and garnishing with chopped cilantro and sliced almonds. Unfortunately, in the chaos, nobody snapped a picture of the finished product!

After everyone ate, the guest speaker took the microphone for about 20 minutes. Since this is an art space, they try to have someone at each dinner who can talk about a project they have worked on, usually with some relevance to Thailand or the local scene.

In this case, it was Thai photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat and German writer Tom Vater, the photographer and author, respectively, of Sacred Skin, a book about the history and contemporary practice of Sak Yant, Thailand’s spirit tattoos.

These tattoos, written in ancient Khmer, are said to provide powers of protection from accidents, misfortune, and crime. You see these tattoos peeking out from under monks’ robes, the shirt collars of young men, and even on Angelina Jolie.

The crowd seemed very interested in what Tom and Aroon had to say and enlargements of Aroon’s photos had been placed on the wall, startling images that sparked many discussions throughout the night.

As the talk concluded, we served our dessert, complete with a mint garnish. Again, in the rush we managed to not get a picture of the finished product! Next time, I need to bring my own media people, right?

We received a lot of compliments and had no troubles convincing people to take zip-loc bags of the extra mixed grains salad home, which is perhaps the best compliment of all. We ended up with about 70 people and a final cost of 7,400 baht. Based on the 90 people we prepared for, this was just ever-so-slightly over budget, coming in at 82.2 baht per person, or US$2.70.

To say I was exhausted when we returned home at about 11:00 is an understatement. I’ve rarely been so tired, ever. Working in a space that is not well-equiped for group cooking, I gained a new appreciation for the work of caterers and restaurateurs. Thanks again to all my friends (and my husband) for helping me pull it off!

Preparing to Cook for 80

Posted on 25 June 2011 by christao408

This weekend I’ve been scrambling to prepare for a dinner on Tuesday night, at which I will cook for up to 80 people. This will be the largest group I’ve ever cooked for by a factor of three, and I’m excited to take on the challenge. Oh, and an added challenge: I’m working on a budget of 80 baht (US$2.63) per head. How did I get roped into this?

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Two months ago, my friend Doug, an expat American to whom I was introduced by a friend from the San Francisco Int’l Asian American Film Festival, invited me to an event called the “River Space Dinner Party and Talk”.

The dinners are inspired by Jim Haynes and his famous Paris dinners which have lasted for more than 30 years. Jim’s son, Jesper, helped launch the Bangkok dinners at the River Space a few months ago. Jim described his dinners during a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered:

Every week for the past 30 years, I’ve hosted a Sunday dinner in my home in Paris. People, including total strangers, call or e-mail to book a spot. I hold the salon in my atelier, which used to be a sculpture studio. The first 50 or 60 people who call may come, and twice that many when the weather is nice and we can overflow into the garden.

Every Sunday a different friend prepares a feast. Last week it was a philosophy student from Lisbon, and next week a dear friend from London will cook.

People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn’t be better. I love the randomness.

I believe in introducing people to people.

Here in Bangkok, the dinners are held twice a month in a second floor flat on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, immediately next to the Millenium Hilton hotel. The space is used for various arts events and is mostly just a large, open space.

The space is spectacularly situated, though, just above a small market and adjacent to the local ferry pier. The reflection of the setting sun bathes the banks of the river in shades of purple and pink as residents who live on the west side of the river commute home.

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The dinners are cooked by volunteers in a kitchen that is, to be generous, under-equipped. But there are plenty of hands willing to pitch in, which is the important thing. As I’m preparing to cook on Tuesday, most of my thoughts are about the strategy of how I’m going to do this in the most organized manner. What tools will I need, what equipment, what supplies?

The meal served when I attended in April. Potato salad, green salad, quiches (made at home by the head chef), and a wonderful strawberry triffle. One of the things I’ve realized is that to cook effectively in this space requires a lot of advance cooking at home.

When I say “under-equipped”, you get the idea when you watch Doug contorting himself as he tries to make garlic bread for what was about 50 people using only a tiny toaster oven. Needless to say, I was dragooned into the kitchen, willingly, and helped prepare the garlic bread.

So that’s the challenge I’m facing. Having given a lot of thought to the meal, I’ve adapted, updated, and revised my proposed menu several times. Finally, Friday night I cooked a “proof of concept” meal, to make sure the recipes worked (at a small scale) and would be on-budget.

The menu as it stands today: Mixed grains and vegetable salad with a sherry vinaigrette; stir-fried chicken marinated in green curry; and a yogurt relish with cucumbers and tomatoes. The homemade bread and hummus will not make the cut. Instead, the garlic bread and a green salad will be provided by another person. And for dessert? Saturday night I did another “proof of concept” and served homemade buttermilk shortcake with mangoes and ginger whipped cream.

Stay tuned to heard how it all turns out!

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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