Nongmon Market in Chonburi

Posted on 5 July 2010 by christao408

In yesterday’s post about eating seafood, I mentioned that after eating we went for a stroll through the adjacent market. Nongmon Market is in Chonburi province, a coastal province southeast of Bangkok. Like all markets, there is a lot to see, plenty of pictures to take, and not a few things to try eating … if you are brave enough!

A view down one section of the market, which stretches over several blocks. It is a busy place and if you aren’t careful you could easily get run down by a motorbike.

It is all about the fresh seafood. Here are some very large prawns, ready to be grilled.

There are many kinds of fish available. I watched for a minute as this skilled fishmonger quickly cut the tails and fins off the fish, moving as rapidly as a machine.

There were bushels full of hoy dong – marinated/pickled clams that are a popular dish.

Lots of vendors sell hor mok – a fish mousse steamed in a banana leaf or mussel shell. Tawn made this for me using salmon shortly after he moved to San Francisco in late 2000. It was tasty, but I have to say that he struggled to find a banana leaf to use.

Visiting the market is fun for the entire family – especially when you can get four members of the family squeezed onto a motorbike. See the second child in there?

A sweet treat called khanom jaak – The leaf is”bai jak”, a type of palm frond. A mixture of shredded coconut, palm sugar, and coconut milk is folded inside the leaf then it is grilled until it becomes a sticky, toffee-like mass. Tasty stuff. Watch out for the staples.

Dried shrimp – Thais use these in dishes like nam prik (chili dipping sauce) and som tam (green papaya salad) to add a salty and fishy flavor.

A fruit vendor slicing up fruit to go. The orange fruit above the pineapple is called gratawn – a summer fruit with a bitter, tangy exterior layer of flesh. Closer to the seed it is very sweet with a cottony flesh. The bananas in the lower right are known as gluay nam waa, which has a sticky flesh similar to a plantain. There are many different varieties of banana here.

Finally a dessert called khanom chan – “layer dessert” – a jello-like dessert, very auspicious for promotions and other things where you go up a level. The green flavor is pandan leaf and blue flavor is an-chan, a type of flower also known as clitoria ternatea.

I hope you enjoyed the stroll through the market. Tomorrow, a retro 60s meal back in Bangkok.

Dining in Chonburi: Seafood Extravaganza

Posted on 4 July 2010 by christao408

The family of one of Tawn’s university friends owns a famous seafood restaurant in Chonburi province, about a 90-minute drive southeast of Bangkok. In all the years he has known her, Tawn has never been down to visit the restaurant. A few weeks ago we decided to finally accept the friend’s offer and drove to the restaurant. It was, to say the least, a seafood extravaganza.

The unassuming restaurant is in a busy market area near the Gulf of Thailand. An open-air shop house, the restaurant looks like it has been there for ages, which it has. It is clean but not fancy. The counter between the kitchen and the dining area is lined with bottles of their homemade chili sauce, a Warhol-esque decorating statement. Large photos of the dishes on the menu line the walls.

The first thing to be placed on the granite tables are a trio of sauces: the homemade chili on the left, a sweet “plum” sauce in the back, and a fish sauce with chilies. The small green chilies in the fish sauces are called prik kii nuu in Thai – literally, “mouse shit chilies”.

The restaurant’s specialty is a kind of seafood sausage, if you will. It comes in two types: Hoy jaew is the round one, and is made of crab meat; Hae gun is the flat one and is made of shrimp. Both are wrapped in tofu skins and steamed then deep fried.

Another batch almost ready to come out of the deep-fryer.

And interior shot of the hoy jaw – basically a crab cake. Large chunks of fresh crab meat.

Another menu item the restaurant is famous for is the bpuu jaa – crab shells stuffed with a mixture of crab meat and pork, then fried. The flavor is especially good at this restaurant because they mix the meat with coconut milk.

Goong ob wuun sen – baked vermicelli with prawns with a sauce made from oyster sauce, cilantro, and ginger. The secret ingredient is pork fat, which lines the clay pot to prevent ingredients from sticking while the dish is baked. As it is served, the dish is stirred and the melted pork fat is distributed over the noodles, which absorbs it. Yummy!

Tom yum talae – Traditionally “tom yum” soup with fresh seafood. Moderately spicy with a tamarind flavored broth.

Khao pad bpuu – Stir fried rice with crab meat. The owner spoiled us by making it stir fried crab meat with a little bit of rice in it. Tasty!

Plaa muk kai tod gratiam – Young squid that are filled with squid roe, fried in a sweet sauce and topped with fried garlic.

Plaa tod – Cotton fish filleted and fried…

and topped with yam mamuang – a sauce of green mango, carrots, cilantro, chilies, and dried shrimp mixed with fish sauce and lime juice. Perfect with the fish and not as spicy as you might expect.

The star of the show, a basket of steamed crab!

The mother of Tawn’s friend as an expert at cracking and peeling crab. She sat there at the table and opened a half-dozen crabs for us, making the choice bits easily accessible. Normally, crab is something I won’t bother with if I have to peel the shells and pick out the meat myself because it seems more work than it is worth. But with an expert peeling them – well, I’m all in!

Sauce of death! Chilies (loads of the “mouse shit” variety) blended with lime juice, fish sauce, and not much else. This is super spicy. And really good with the crab meat.

The strange interior membrane of the crab, which I was encouraged to try. Very astringent, briny flavor and not something I’ll have again.

For the most part, the food wasn’t very spicy but was really tasty. The sauce for the crab, though, is just spicy. There’s no two ways about it. This required a lot of water with lots of ice to cool down the mouth!

Growing up in the US, I didn’t eat a lot of seafood while I was growing up. I only came to appreciate it once I started having really fresh seafood prepared in simple ways that emphasize the freshness and flavor of the meat. Needless to say, this restaurant reinforced all the great things about seafood.

For dessert, some khanom niaow – basically, a Thai-style mochi (pounded sticky rice) served with a palm sugar sauce and fried cooked rice.

After lunch we strolled around the local market. I’ll share those photos tomorrow.

Food in BKK – La Scala at the Sukhothai

Posted on 15 June 2010 by christao408

It is Wednesday morning and I’m bubbling with excitement, or at least as much as I can bubble before my first latte of the day. My friends the Clevelands are landing in a few short hours, here for their first visit. I’ve known Brad since he and I met in three-year old preschool and I was a groomsman at Brad and Donna’s wedding. Along with their children, 10-year old E and 8-year old C, they’ll be here for five days before they head to China.

It is just like having family visit and I’ve planned a series of activities for the children, all tied into an elaborate back-story about them being top secret agents, to make the trip memorable. I’ll share more about their trip, the spy story, and activities over the next few days.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d share some pictures from the dinner we had last Saturday at La Scala restaurant at the beautiful Sukhothai Hotel here in Bangkok. Paul and Nicha, Tawn’s cousin and wife whom we do not see nearly often enough, invited us out for dinner. In Thai culture, when your elders invite you (and insist on paying!), who are you to refuse?

A gorgeous spray of orchids against a glass block wall at the front of the restaurant.

The dining area is an interesting blend of textures and styles. Unfortunately, we weren’t at this table, but at one with less light.

A large part of the kitchen is in the midst of the dining room, letting you see the action. On the left are trays of homemade pasta. On the right are the homegrown mushrooms used in various dishes.

A closer look at some of the pastas!

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A big cured pig’s leg sitting next to the kitchen for slicing off prosciutto. How would you like to have one of these laying about for snacking?

The lighting at the table was very dim, so the quality of these pictures is not great. Hopefully, they will give you an idea of what the food looked like, though.

Amuse bouche of potato puree with truffle oil. Yummy.

We ordered a pair of salads. This one is the rocket salad with a balsamic dressing. Very nice.

The breads were quite nice, too. The more I eat at hotels the more I realize if I want good European style breads, I probably need to buy them from the hotels.

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I had ravioli filled with a mixture of chicken meat and duck foie gras. The sauce is a pumpkin puree with fried thyme leaves and candied walnuts. The dish was very tasty with some of the thinnest pasta skins I have ever had, but it was just a little too sweet for my tastes. To be fair, the waiter did make me aware that while it was a tasty dish, it was on the sweeter side.

Tawn had a dish of pan fried cod served over greens and mashed potatoes with a reduction sauce made from the homegrown mushrooms. It was beautifully done.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get pictures of the dishes Paul and Nicha had, both of which were pasta dishes with a slightly spicy tomato sauce, and both of which were extremely good.

For dessert, I had fresh berries baked in a zabaglione sauce, topped with homemade vanilla ice cream. Yummy!

Tawn had homemade gelato, including this scoop of espresso that was very rich.

The restaurant also served complimentary petit-fours, a nice finish to the evening.

Finally, a view of the beautiful reflecting pool outside the lobby, featuring brick chedis or stupas in a pool of water. Beautiful, no?

Me, Nicha, Tawn, and Paul. There’s a significant back story that I’ve written about once before but can’t find the entry right now. The short version of it is that Paul mother and Tawn’s father’s are siblings. She and her husband raised Paul and his two brothers in the US and they were the first people in Tawn’s family we came out to as a couple. They’ve been super-supportive over the years and we really appreciate it.

Food in BKK – Baan Mae Yui

Posted on 24 May 2010 by christao408

Two weekends ago, before the Red Shirt protests came to a head, I took a taxi up to the Soi Ari neighborhood. Because of the political situation, most people were at home and what could have been a thirty-minute Skytrain ride or a forty-five minute taxi ride took me just fifteen minutes. Down a side soi is a cute little restaurant called Baan Mae Yui – Mother Yui’s House. It is located in an old house set in a nice garden area. The food is standard lunch fare – noodles, fried rice, etc. – but served in a nicer setting than you would get along the side of the street.

The dining area spills out through open doors into a covered patio. There is no air conditioning other than the natural breeze and dozens of fans, but with the green garden just outside, the restaurant always feels comfortable.

One highlight on their menu is the satay, the Southern Thai style grilled skewers of pork or chicken served with a rich peanut-based sauce and pickled cucumbers. The meat is basted with coconut milk, lending an extra rich flavor.

For lunch, I went with an odd choice – pan fried macaroni with tomato sauce. This was actually a childhood favorite of one of my dining companions. It has slices of sausage and onions mixed in and the sauce is a very sweet and vinegary (that is to say, “ketchup-y”) one. It was a lot of fun to eat although not the greatest culinary achievement.

It is places like Baan Mae Yui that make Bangkok neighborhoods so much fun. They date back decades and each have their own unique character. I should write about more of them.

As Bangkok Burned, I Baked

Posted on 21 May 2010 by christao408

In times of fiery stress, we all find different ways to cope. Nero played his fiddle (supposedly) while I turn to baking. Truthfully, I started my baking well before the Red Shirt leaders had surrendered and the angry crowd turned into arsonists. But I knew the army was making their move on the protest site and also knew Tawn and I would be stuck at home for the next few days, so a little bit of preparatory baking seemed wise.

The finished products: granola, oatmeal raisin macadamia and oatmeal chocolate chip macadamia cookies, and a loaf of rosemary-olive bread.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Based on a recipe for Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries in the May/June 2005 issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, I omitted the cherries and then divided the batch in two, half with chocolate chips and the other half with raisins. And instead of pecans I used macadamia nuts.

6.25 oz all-purpose flour, .75 teaspoon baking powder, .5 teaspoon baking soda, and .5 teaspoon salt, whisked together. Mix together in a separate bowl 3.5 oz old-fashioned rolled oats, 4 oz nuts (pecans, but I used toasted and chopped macadamias), 5 oz dried and chopped sour cherries, and 4 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate. I used regular raisins and chocolate chips in place of the cherries and chocolate chunks. Improvise!

Cream together 12 tablespoons of soft but still cool butter and 10.5 oz of dark brown sugar. Once combined, beat in one egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

From there, add the flour until incorporated but be sure not to over-work. Finally, add the mixture of oats and add-ins. Before doing this, I divided my dough between two bowls, adding nuts and chocolate chips to one and nuts and raisins to the other. But heck, you could combine all three together!

Scoop out heaping tablespoons of the dough, forming a ball then mashing it slightly. Cook in a 350 F oven for about 12 minutes, rotating to ensure even baking. Take out of the oven while the centers of the cookies still look a little undercooked. Let sit on the pan for another five minutes before transferring to a wire rack. The cookies will remain soft and chewy this way, which is how I like my oatmeal cookies. Cook for a few minutes longer if you prefer them crispy. As my grandmother used to say, the world would be a boring place if we were all alike.

Rosemary Olive No-Knead Bread

I love making no-knead bread. It turns out every bit as nice as artisanal bread and it fills the house with a wonderful aroma. Oh, and it is easy because you don’t have to knead it!

I make mine with 20.5 oz of flour, roughly and even split between bread flour and all-purpose flour. You could substitute whole wheat for about half the flour, but up the yeast a little. I mix into that a scant 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and .75 teaspoon of yeast. I stir it thoroughly and also add the chopped leaves from a few sprigs of fresh rosemary. Dried rosemary does not work here. Next, add one can of cold beer and stir the dough together. You may need to add a little extra water, but only enough to pull together a pretty dry and stiff dough. At this point you can add about a 1/2 cup of chopped olives, preferably kalmatta.

The secret to no-knead bread is time. I fold the dough over a few times just to make sure there are no dry pockets and then coat it with a little bit of olive oil. Put it in a bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap, a lid, or aluminum foil. Then put it in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours, folding it over once during the time. This is when all the magic happens. The dough kneads itself, forming beautiful, elasticky protein strands.

Then, take the dough out of the refrigerator, turn it over on itself another time or two, then place it covered in a cool room for another 8-12 hours until the dough has doubled in size. Shape the dough into a loaf, deflating gently, and place on a parchment lined pie pan or oval casserole (if you want an oblong shaped loaf). Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let rise at warm room temperature for another 2 hours or so until doubled.

Preheat a 500 F oven, preferably with a pizza stone in it to moderate the heat. For the best effect, preheat a Dutch Oven (with lid) in your oven and, when ready and working very carefully, transfer the parchment paper with the dough into the Dutch Oven. Spritz a half-dozen times with water and then place the lid on, returning to the oven. After ten minutes, lower the temperature to 425 F and cook for another 30-45 minutes or until an instant read thermometer measures 210 F in the center of the loaf. If you don’t have a Dutch Oven just cook it on the breadstone or on a baking sheet. Will still turn out nicely but probably not as crispy a crust.

Use extreme caution when handling the Dutch Oven as it will be very hot. Lift the finished loaf out using the parchment paper and let cool on a wire rack.

Granola

A few years ago when I was still living over on Asoke Place I got into a granola-making kick. It is easy to make and relatively healthy, especially because you can control what goes into it. Tawn wanted to have some granola and yogurt as a change in pace to our usual breakfast of oatmeal, so I pulled up Alton Brown’s recipe from the Food Network and made a few changes.

Mix 3 cups rolled oats, 1 cup slivered almonds, 1 cup cashews (which I substituted with pecans), and .75 cup shredded coconut. You can also add wheat germ or other whole grains here to have some variety.

In another container, mix .25 cup vegetable oil, .25 cup maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener, I suppose), and .25 cup brown sugar. I realized later that the brown sugar is supposed to be mixed with the dry ingredients but it seemed to work this way, too. Please note that Mr. Brown’s recipe called for an additional 2 tablespoons of both sugar and syrup, which seemed a little too sweet for me. In fact, you could substitute a little orange juice for some of the maple syrup to good effect.

Pour the sugar-oil mixture over the dry mixture and stir for several minutes with the spoon until the mixture is evenly moistened. Note that it will still seem pretty dry; you don’t want it sopping wet! If you would like, you can sprinkle on some cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or ground clove to give it a little spice.

Then bake in a 250 F oven on some baking sheets, stirring every ten to fifteen minutes, for about 75 minutes or until there is a nice even golden color. After the mixture has cooled you can mix in 1 cup of raisins and/or other dried fruit to taste. Store in an airtight container once completely cooled.

Well, some might criticize me for doing something as trivial as cooking in the midst of Thailand’s worst political crisis in fifty years, but it seems to me that there is only so much depressing news a person can take. After a while, it becomes an echo chamber and you just get overwhelmed by the rehashed images, sounds, and stories. Best to do something productive in the kitchen, which nourishes both your soul and your body.

Food in BKK – Ruen Mallika

Posted on 18 May 2010 by christao408

Protests be damned – one still has to eat. With a couple of friends in town from San Francisco, we headed out Saturday evening to Ruen Mallika, a long-standing Sukhumvit area restaurant that specializes in Palace Cuisine, a particularly rarified form of Thai cooking that reflects the highest levels of attention to detail and quality.

Located in a rambling old home that dates back over 100 years deep down Soi Sukhumvit 22, Ruen Mallika is hidden in a corner of the Asoke neighborhood that reminds you that Bangkok isn’t all Skytrain stations and air conditioned malls. Still, there is an air of sophistication and traditional Thai hospitality at the restaurant, which is beautifully decorated, that makes you feel like your are a guest of honor in a court regent’s home.

The menu is a huge binder with the largest, glossiest, sexiest photos of Thai food I have ever seen. Even a strong man will risk back strain with this menu. Tawn ordered for us, a bit too much food but perfectly balanced choices that, together, formed an exquisite dining experience and a wonderful final night with which to celebrate our visiting friends’ engagement.

After being seated in the fan-cooled garden, the kitchen sent us an amuse bouche of gratong tong, “golden baskets” – crispy fried shells filled with corn, green onions, ground pork, and pepper.

As an appetizer, we ordered a platter of chan chu butsaba – literally “My name is flower” – a selection of flower tempura in a long dish that fills the center of the table.

These delicate blossoms, served with a sweet and spicy chili sauce, include (from the purple, clockwise) dok gulap (rose), dok kajorn (asclepiadaceae), dok khem (needle flower) and dok leelawadee (plumeria or frangiapani).

Interesting story about the plumeria: When Tawn was growing up the flowering tree was called ton donlantom, which means “very deep sorrow tree”, and was often planted near graves. But people liked the beautiful flowers and the shape of the tree, especially in the beach provinces where it is common (it is the flower of Phetchaburi Province) so the tree was rebranded by the Royal family as ton leelawadee, which means “beautiful motion tree”. This is well-suited to the graceful shape of the branches.

Our first course was a curry – Penang plaa salmon – Salmon Penang curry which is not very spicy but has a rich flavor enhanced by the thinly-sliced Kaffir lime leaves. Something that sets Royal (or Palace) Thai cuisine apart from regular Thai food is that the dishes have more complex layers of flavor. For example, the Kaffir lime adds a subtle citrus note to the top of the deep bass of the curry.

The salmon arrived with khao pad Amphawa – Amphawa style fried rice. Amphawa (home of the nighttime floating market I’ve written about) is a town in Samut Songkhram province known for its coconuts. This fried rice includes mixed seafood and fresh young coconut meat served in a coconut shell. Notice the beautiful “flower” garnish, which is carved from a pumpkin. This dish is served with a glass of fresh coconut juice, which was poured from the coconut before the rice is served.

We then enjoyed the soup course, a variation on a classic Thai soup called tomka plaasalid. You may recognize this as the “tom ka gai” soup – chicken and coconut milk soup – that you enjoy at your local Thai restaurant. However, this version has a special Royal Thai cuisine twist: it is made with plaasalid, a sundried small whitefish that gives the soup a distinctive smoky flavor, and tamarind leaf tips, which give a sour, tangy flavor to the soup. To top it off, this soup was made with freshly squeezed coconut milk, which is every bit as rich as cream.

We then enjoyed kai tune – a baked egg custard that has a shrimp, pork, thousand-year old egg, and garlic mixture on top. Very delicate and silky, this dish was simple in construction but rich in flavor.

We had a second curry, this one a gaeng ped pbed yang, a grilled duck curry. This dish has grapes (or sometimes lychee) in it, providing a foil to the gamey flavor of the duck. The small green spheres are baby eggplants (not green peas as some foreigners expect) which lend a bitter crunch to the dish.

For dessert, classic “street vendor” style ice cream. Homemade coconut ice cream served on a sweet bread bun with kidney beans, palm hearts, and candied sweet potato. This is often served with a splash of sweetened condensed milk, although in this case the restaurant kept it plain.

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And of course, being the tail end of hot season, how could we not enjoy some khao niaw mamuang – sticky rice with mango?

Paul, his fiancee Hey Jung, and Tawn battle over dessert.

Second Attempt at Mozzarella Cheesemaking

Posted on 15 May 2010 by christao408

A week ago I tried making homemade mozzarella cheese, using milk bought at the local grocery store. The results didn’t come together – literally. Analyzing it, I figured it was either due to an insufficient amount of rennet, the enzyme that helps the proteins in the milk coagulate, or else it was due to the milk being pasteurized at too high a heat. Undaunted, I wanted to try again and learn how to do this.

While I originally put more weight in theory that the pasteurization was the cause, now that I look back on what I’ve learned, I suspect the insufficient rennet was probably more likely the problem. But hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.

In the wake of my first attempt, a German-Thai friend suggested I try buying milk from Murrah Dairy, the only water buffalo dairy in Thailand. Great idea, especially considering that the original Italian mozzarella is mozzarella di bufala – buffalo milk mozzarella. So I ended up driving to their retail store and bought five litres of raw buffalo milk. The best way to address the pasteurization issue is to use unpasteurized milk, right?

Sadly, I don’t have many pictures of the second attempt. You’re welcome to watch the video and/or read the description below.

After sanitizing everything in the kitchen, I started heating the milk. One challenge I encountered was that my recipe is in imperial measurements but the dairy sold the milk in metric measurements. Being an American (even a fairy metric-savvy one) I made a few errors in calculation and initially thought I was working with two gallons of milk, when in fact I had only about one gallon. Because of this, I prepared citric acid and rennet solutions that were twice as strong as necessary.

Thankfully, I realized this before adding the solutions into the milk, and added only about half of each solution. The proteins came together much more nicely than in the first attempt, although they still didn’t have the nearly-solid, soft tofu-like consistency shown in the recipe’s pictures. I strained the curds from the whey and ended up with a pretty nice mass to work with.

My next problem came from a lack of understanding of what was meant to happen in the next step. As a learner, it is helpful for me to know not only what a particular step is but the rationale behind the step. The recipe told me to either microwave the curds and then knead them, or else to put the curds in hot water (about 170 F) and use a spoon to fold them together, then pull them out and knead them.

The problem was two-fold. First, I don’t have a microwave. There goes the easy option. Second, I was hesitant to put the curds in the water because I thought they would just dissolve. Knowing what I know now, I realize that the whole point of microwaving or putting them in the water is that the cheese begins to melt a bit, helping it form more elasticky strands that you can knead. No heat and no melting means no kneading.

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Before I figured this out, I tried placing the curds, still in the cheesecloth, above some boiling water – kind of a bain-marie. This resulted in the bottom of the curds melting into the cheesecloth, while the tops of the curds didn’t change. Finally, I figured it out and put the curds into the water and used a spoon to shape them.

Of course, I didn’t have rubber gloves, so kneading the hot cheese was a little painful! Long story short, having a microwave would have been a huge help.

In the end, I wound up with a ball of mozzarella that was a bit tough and overworked, not nearly as elastic as it should be, and it had picked up a little bit of a greyish cast, possibly from the bread board I was using to knead it on. Also, cleanup was a pain as the curds cling to everything, especially the metal utensils!

The important question is, how did it taste?

Well, after a few hours soaking in a brine/whey solution, the cheese turned out okay. I used it on a pizza in a taste test, half of the pizza covered with my cheese and half with the Murrah Dairy’s cheese. My cheese was much more rubbery and not as bright white, but it actually tasted fine, like real mozzarella cheese.

Conclusion: This is a product that is probably worth buying in the store, even if it is a bit pricey. Making it is very time and effort consuming. That said, I’m kind of curious to try another time using store-bought milk, just to confirm my new understanding that the pasteurization wasn’t the issue. I still like the idea of making my own cheese, and if I had an opportunity to apprentice with a cheese-maker, I would jump at it. But the constraints of my Bangkok condo kitchen are such that I don’t think I’ll become a regular cheese-maker.

Okay, what’s the next thing to try?

Food in BKK – Foon Talob

Posted on 13 May 2010 by christao408

Results of the second cheesemaking attempt is coming soon… thank you for your patience. In the meantime:

After returning from our trip to the US in late March, Tawn and I had a conversation about the food in Bangkok that we really miss when we are away. In my mind, this list is much shorter than the list of food from San Francisco I miss now that I live here. One of the Bangkok foods that did come to mind was the gai tod (fried chicken) and som tam (green papaya salad) served at Foon Talob (ฝุ่นตลบ) at the Chatuchak (sometimes “Jatujak”) Weekend Market.

As a special treat, Tawn agreed to serve as host for our video visit. You can watch him introducing the cuisine of Foon Talob here:

Otherwise you can read about it and see the pictures below:

Foon talob translates as “dust all over” and the idea is of a Northeastern Thai (Issan) style roadside restaurant, a place where there would be dust all over the place. The restaurant is open air but covered, adjacent to a paved walkway and rows of stalls. In the hot season it is quite warm. But even then it is quite popular, filling up by early afternoon with everyone sitting shoulder to shoulder and back to back in the tightly spaced rows of tables and stools.

Next to the open air kitchen is a little offering for the gods, a bit of food, sticky rice, and water with the ashes of incense scattered on the plate, a request for good fortune and business success that day.

I’m inclined to think that fried chicken is one of the most universal foods. So many cultures have fried chicken … even before KFC arrived! Here, freshly butchered chicken is breaded in a heavily seasoned coating and then dropped into a wok of boiling oil. The end result is crispy on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside. It is served with two sauces: The one in the back is really spicy and the one in the front is mostly sweet with only a little spice. Always, always, always, the fried chicken is eaten with a bowl of sticky (glutinous) rice.

Fried chicken just isn’t Issan fried chicken without a side dish of som tam or green papaya salad. Hundreds of green papayas are shredded each day to serve the customers.

To the green papaya is added lime, tomatoes, dried shrimp, peanuts, sugar, fish sauce, and chilies. The mixture is pounded with a mortar and pestle, making a sound that in Thai is described as “pok pok…” providing a handy synonym for som tam.

The end result is a tangy, sour, slightly salty, and often very spicy salad that is really refreshing in the hot weather.

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Another popular side dish is laab (sometimes Anglicized as “larb”). Usually made with ground pork (although you can make it with other meats) the salad has ground toasted rice grains, shallots, green onions, lime juice, fish sauce, and chili flakes fried together then served on a bed of basil and mint. Varying degrees of spice but always a very flavorful dish.

For a special treat, we ordered a grilled Northern Style pork sausage. The meat is heavily spiced and flavorful.

After lunch we headed across the walkway to a vendor serving homemade coconut ice cream. Their twist is that they serve the ice cream in half a young coconut shell with the meat from the coconut shaved out to accompany your ice cream.

You can choose from a variety of toppings: boiled water chestnuts, hearts of palm, peanuts, condensed milk, etc.

Coconut ice cream with young coconut meat, hearts of palm, and peanuts. Refreshing!

First Attempt at Making Mozzarella Cheese

Posted on 9 May 2010 by christao408

As you may know, a lot of my choices of what to cook are dictated by my desire to try new things, to understand the characteristics of individual ingredients and the techniques used to coax the most flavor out of them. Recently, I’ve been keen to try my hand at cheesemaking.

My aunt’s sister Jan makes homemade mozzarella cheese and, assuring me that it is easy, sent me back to Thailand armed with baggies of citric acid and cheese salt (I swear, customs officer, that white powder is not what it looks like!) and some tablets of rennet.

Yesterday, I invited Ken over to help me. An American retiree, Ken has this dream of starting a goat farm up in Lampang province near Chiang Mai. He’s convinced there is an untapped market for chèvre.

Jan recommended a recipe for 30-minute mozzarella from cheesemaking.com. It is pretty straight-forward, except for the fact that I don’t have a microwave at home. They had an alternate recipe for those of us without microwaves, so I was pretty eager to give it a try. The big question mark that was facing me: could I make the cheese from the milk we have here in Thailand?

The recipe’s author insists you can use store bought pasteurized milk, so long it is not UHT (“ultra high temperature”) pasteurized, as this destroys the milk’s ability to curdle properly. But inspecting the labels of milk here in Thailand, there is no information about what type of pasteurization process is used, only that the milk is in fact pasteurized. Figuring I could afford a few dollars and an hour of time to experiment, I started with four litres (two gallons) of Foremost brand milk.

The process is pretty easy: you heat the gallon of milk combined with 1.5 teaspoons of citric acid diluted in a small amount of water. Once it gets to 90 F you add a quarter tablet of rennet which has also been diluted in some water. Thirty seconds of stirring to distribute the rennet evenly, then you cover and let the milk sit undisturbed for five minutes.

By this time, what you are supposed to have is the curd (milk solids) separating from the whey (liquid) in a pretty solid, tofu-like substance. Unfortunately, even after trying some of the suggested remedies, my curds never came together any more than runny cottage cheese.

I went ahead and scooped them out to drain, but most of them just ran through the colander. There wasn’t anything solid enough to handle.

Conclusion? Either I didn’t use enough rennet (although I did follow the recipe) or, more likely, the milk is UHT pasteurized.

Options: Try again with another brand of milk, give up, or be thankful that a smart Thai-German friend left a comment on my facebook page asking if I’d considered buying buffalo milk from Murrah Dairy, a local outfit that specialized in a breed of milking buffaloes from India.

What luck! They have a small cafe/retail outlet out near the airport, even though their farm is about a two hour drive east of the city. Tawn and I drove out there Sunday afternoon and located the shop in the midst of an old housing estate.

Murrah Cafe and Bistro: The first buffalo farm in Thailand. In Thai, it reads “The cheese restaurant that is the first and only in the country. You must stop by then you’ll know why.” Yeah, it doesn’t sound as compelling when you read it in English.

Talking with the owner’s daughter, it looks like although they don’t regularly open the farms for visitors, we could call and arrange a tour. She agreed that my problem with making the cheese was probably related to the pasteurization. As it turns out, they sell raw buffalo milk so I placed an order for 5 litres to pick up this Tuesday afternoon.

The cafe is cute but tiny. Lots of cheese and milk for sale and all of their espresso drinks are made with buffalo milk. Here’s the best thing about buffalo milk: 18% fat versus 4% for regular Jersey cow milk. Yum!

Since we were there and it was lunchtime, we ordered some food. The menu is mostly Italian and makes liberal use of buffalo milk products. (Worth noting, by the way, that their price for a container of mozzarella is 140 baht – US$4.40 – versus a minimum of 180 baht for the other locally made cow’s milk mozzarella and 250+ baht for imported. That in itself makes it almost worth the drive.)

What better way to really experience their excellent fresh mozzarella than on a caprese salad? Except for the fact that Thailand’s tomatoes are chronically anemic, it was wonderful.

Baked ziti in tomato sauce with… you guessed it – Mozzarella cheese!

And, finally, an excellent thin-crust Pizza Margherita. This was a small pizza and had a nicely charred, crisp-edged crust. Just like the real deal in Italy.

So here’s where I stand with the cheesemaking experiment: first attempt was a failure but I’m going to drive back out to Ramkamhaeng on Tuesday afternoon, but the raw buffalo milk, and then make a second attempt at the cheese. Stay tuned…

Hong Kong Recommendations

Posted on 6 May 2010 by christao408

Surprisingly often, people ask me for recommendations. “Oh, a friend of mine is going to (insert name of city here). Do you have any recommendations?” Since I think the best way to explore a city is through the recommendations and experiences of people who know the city well, I spent some time this morning combining all of my entries from Hong Kong (along with a list of other favorite places that I didn’t have time to visit) into a Google Map. Many thanks to the many friends whose recommendations and suggestions ended up on this list.