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Crispy Pork Beats Out Noodles

Pa-Ord Noodle on Sunset Boulevard obviously specializes in noodles. And they are very good, because Pa-Ord is the new incarnation of Ord Noodle on Hollywood Boulevard, which became one of the top draws in Thai Town.

Lawan Bhanduram, who founded Ord Noodle, sold it and moved on. Now she has opened Pa-Ord, serving the same dishes. Read what I wrote about this on Squid Ink.

What I like apart from the noodles is No. 24 on Pa-Ord's menu: rice with Chinese broccoli and sliced crispy pork (khao kanah mu grob). I don't think I could go there without ordering this dish.

The small, crunchy pork chunks are irresistible. The meat is fried, then roasted and stays crisp until you finish. Soft rice and bright, fresh Chinese broccoli set it off perfectly. But watch out, devilishly hot bits of Thai chile lurk in the mix. 

If you want to eat Thai style, you'll order a fried egg on top of the rice. Watching a cooking demonstration of red curry in Bangkok, I was surprised to see an omelet served on the side and to learn that this is a typical pairing.

The Thai egg and meat affinity hasn't yet arrived in Los Angeles.  Order red curry in a local Thai restaurant and you may get rice, but not an omelet. And so Pa-Ord's crispy pork is eggless unless you specify otherwise.

Pa-Ord Noodle, 5301 Sunset Blvd., #8, Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 461-3945.

A House of Mystery in Bangkok

Fairfax Avenue, a street in Los Angeles lined with Jewish delis, bakeries and restaurants, would seem to have little in common with Thailand. 

Yet a book that I found in a thrift shop there led me to an extraordinary place in Bangkok.

The book was a silk-bound copy of "The House on the Klong" by William Warren, an American who resettled in Bangkok.

Warren has written any number of books about Thai culture. This one was privately printed in Tokyo in 1968. My copy is the 11th edition, published 10 years later.

The house on the klong was the home of James H.W. Thompson, who developed the Thai silk industry. Assembled from old teak houses brought from various villages, it was furnished in Thai style and housed Thompson's Asian art collection. 

In 1967 Thompson disappeared while walking in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. No trace was ever found.

The house is now a museum, administered by the James H.W. Thompson Foundation.

Bill Warren, whom I met years ago when he came to a Thai food festival in northern California, told me that he designed the gardens at the Thompson house.

And so, during my recent stay in Bangkok, I went to see it. Tours are offered daily. You can wander freely through the beautiful gardens and ground floor structures, which house fine pieces acquired by Thompson.

Inside, you must be escorted by a guide and are not allowed to take photos. This was frustrating, because I would love to have photographed the dining room, where I could almost feel the presence of Thompson and his guests as they ate from antique blue and white china and admired 19th century paintings that depict the life of the Buddha.

The sideboard in this room is an old Chinese worship table. The dining table has the insignia of King Chulalongkorn, or so I read in another book about the house in my collection, "6 Soi Kasemsan II." That book was signed by Thompson himself.

The title is the address of the Thompson compound, which has been expanded to include a shop that sells contemporary silk items with the Thompson label and, happily, a restaurant.

Although I would never be able to eat in the house, I could dine on a veranda that faced it. What a beautiful spot for lunch, looking out on a fish pond and the gardens beyond.

The silk-covered menu has a section titled "Absolutely Thai Thompson Style."  Did Thompson eat such food? Possibly, because the rice with stir-fried shrimp and Thai basil that I ordered is very common.

It was a fine dish, tender shrimp and mushrooms alongside a mound of jasmine rice topped with a fried egg. My drink: lemongrass juice, accompanied by a pot of syrup so that I could sweeten it to taste.

It had been raining, and that added a mysterious, spectral feel to a place that will always be shadowed by the strange disappearance of Jim Thompson. 

Jim Thompson House & Museum, 6 Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road, Bangkok, Thailand 10330. Tel: (662) 216-7368. Opens daily at 9 a.m. The last tour is at 5 p.m.

Sydney's Star Chef Visits L.A.

Australia's celebrity chef Neil Perry was in town last week, for a couple of reasons.

One was to check a site for a restaurant in Beverly Hills, but that's a long way off.

The other was to cook for a lunch promoting Qantas Airways' new, lower fare from Los Angeles to Sydney and tourism in New South Wales. Perry had two reasons to do that. First, he's in charge of the food served on Qantas. Secondly, three of his four restaurants, including the flagship Rockpool, are in Sydney, so bringing more travelers there is good for business.

Lunch, at the home of the Australian consul general, went from appetizers (goat cheese tortellini) to three courses paired with Australian wines and bread provided by one of Perry's chef chums, Thomas Keller. 

The first course was a zucchini and Parmesan tart, a  round of rich pastry topped with thin circles of zucchini. An arrangement of "summer vegetables" on the plate made sense because it's summer in Australia now. There was also black olive oil, which Perry makes by blending salty black olives with olive oil. The wine was 2008 Brokenwood Semillon.

New Zealand John Dory may have come from the wrong country, but in Australian hands, it came off very well. Perry poached it in water from tomatoes hung to drain. Scattered around it were cut-up fingerling potatoes and tomato confit and on top was a cluster of chervil, tarragon and micro parsley.

The two wines were 2007 Robert Oatley Chardonnay from Mudgee, New South Wales, and Oatley's 2008 Sangiovese Rose.

Perry's food is driven by multiculturalism and heavily influenced by Asia. (The best Thai restaurants outside of Thailand are in Australia, he told lunch guests.) His Sydney restaurant Spice Temple is devoted to Chinese regional cuisines, and his cookbook "Rockpool" (New Holland Publishers, Australia) has a large section of Asian-inflected recipes.

But this lunch was Mediterranean. It ended with  strawberry mascarpone cake, a creamy strawberry mixture between two layers of dacquoise, and a luscious dessert wine, the 2006 De Bortoli Noble One, a botrytis Semillon from Riverina, New South Wales.

The Sydney Morning Herald's "Good Food Guide 2010" describes Perry as "the king of modern Sydney dining." Here are the addresses of his three restaurants in that city. 

Rockpool, 107-109 George St., The Rocks, Sydney, Australia. Tel: 9252 1888.
Rockpool Bar and Grill, 66 Hunter St., Sydney, Australia. Tel: 8078-1900.
Spice Temple, 10 Bligh St., Sydney, Australia. Tel: 8078-1888.

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What Tavern Will Feed the Stars

Check out my Squid Ink post on what Tavern in Brentwood will put onto plates at the SAG awards this Saturday. 

La Morenita's New Alfajores

Alfajores are new at La Morenita bakery in Cypress Park.

Although this sandwich cookie with dulce de leche in the center is especially typical of Argentina, these came from Peru via Guatemala.

Head baker Alex Pena spotted them at a Peruvian bakery in Livingston, Guatemala. He noticed the similarity to another cookie that he makes, the Mexican sevillano, and set to work devising his own version, which he introduced just after New Year.

The cookies are snow white because the dough is made with powdered sugar. Argentinian alfajores are more like shortbread, rich in eggs and butter.

La Morenita's alfajores are put together with a thin layer of dulce de leche, made at the bakery. The edges are coated with coconut. About 3 1/2 inches in diameter, they're similar to the king-size alfajores that you find in Peru. One bite, and you'll be addicted

Alfajores are 75 cents each at La Morenita Tortilleria & Bakery, 1157 Cypress Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065. Tel: (323) 222-7953.

Saying Goodbye to Surya

My favorite Indian restaurant, Surya, will close by the end of this week after 10 years of producing marvelous food.

It was unthinkable not to have one last meal there. And that last meal was as good as any I have had in the past. This makes the closing all the more painful.

Because I couldn't choose among so many favorite dishes, owner Sheel Joshi decided what I should eat.

The appetizer was ginger lamb--lamb tikka masala cut into strips rather than chunks and fiery red with its juices. The meat had been marinated with orange juice and chiles, including a touch of habanero, and seasoned with rosemary and strips of gingerroot.

It's an art to cook fish in the tandoor so that it doesn't dry out, but tandoori seabass has always been one of Surya's best dishes, moist and tender throughout, yet with a wisp of crust at the edges.

Joshi had found fresh methi (fenugreek leaves) in an Indian shop, and those gave a delicate herbal flavor to chicken in a spicy, rich, slightly tart sauce. This was a new dish to me, as I always order Surya's signature chicken Mangalorean.

The accompaniments were saffron rice with peas and lots of naan.

Surya is upscale Indian, white tablecloths and all that, and has a good wine list. The wine for this last dinner was Pellegrini Milestone 2006, a blend of Merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. It was full-flavored and fruity, very good with this food.

After so much rich Indian food, the only dessert advisable was mango sorbet frozen in a mango shell.

Although Surya will close, much of the menu will continue to be available at Joshi's smaller, more spartan place, Holy Cow, which is located a few blocks west on the same street. This was some consolation as I walked away with a sack of leftovers to continue my last meal for another day or two. 

Surya Indian restaurant, 8048 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, Ca 90048. Tel: (323) 653-5151.. 

Holy Cow, 8474 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90048. Tel: (323) 852-8900.

An Odd Couple: Malbec, Tacos

I would only eat Mexican food in Argentina out of curiosity. Nevertheless, I ate it Sunday paired with Argentine wines. An odd coupling, but fun to try something different.

Really spicy salsas kill the taste of a good wine, I noticed, but tacos, burritos and quesadillas work as well as bread and cheese, as long as they are salsa-free.

The tasting was Silverlake Wine's first of 2010. Tastings take place there every month, and the place buzzes as people get to know each other. Most of those I met live in Silver Lake, and the wine shop is a handy place to meet.

But the tastings are serious, and so commentary on Argentina's wine industry accompanied the five tastes. What I like about the tastings is that wines are brought to you, so you don't have to line up at the counter. And each taste comes in a fresh glass.

Sunday's five wines started with a sparkler, an extra brut 2007 that blended Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The name alone makes you want to buy it, that is, if you have a taste for the exotic. It is Siesta en el Tahuantinsuyu, and it's from Ernesto Catena.

Next came Tahuan Malbec Ernesto Catena Selection 2006, a deep, pink-toned red, dry and elegant with restrained fruit.

We tried a Malbec blend, Ca' de Calle Reserva 2008, composed of 75% Malbec, 20% Tempranillo and 5% Syrah. This too was from Ernesto Catena, whose wines dominated the tasting. 

The priciest wine poured ($29.50) was his Siesta en el Tahuantinsuyu Malbec 2005, another elegant, restrained wine.

But my favorite was a Malbec more like those I am accustomed to drinking in Buenos Aires, the sort of wine you might have in a cafe or a parrilla restaurant, or that Portenos would serve with  really good barbecue at home. It was Altocedro "Ano Cero" Malbec 2008.

Full of fruit and easy to drink but classy and well made, it was the least expensive wine of the tasting ($16.50). Ano Cero means the year zero, but this wine rates many more points than that.

Its place of origin was La Consulta in the Valle (Valley) de Uco, Mendoza. The winemaker was Karim Mussi Saffie, who blended 15 % Tempranillo with 75 % Malbec.  

The food rated high points too. It came from Taco Zone, which parked a van-drawn kitchen outside the wine shop. Malbec is everywhere in Argentina. But mobile tacos-- I have yet to see anything like that down there.

Silverlake Wine Company,  2395 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039. Tel: (323) 662-9024. 

Try Tuna Salad, Thai Style

Now that all the glorious holiday food is gone, it's time to cut back and eat tuna salad.

This is not punishment but a good thing, because you'll really want to eat the one you see in the photo. It's a Thai salad, seasoned with lime juice, fish sauce and cilantro. 

The recipe is from "Thai Cooking in a Sufi's Kitchen" by Alima Ravadi Quinn of the Emerald of Siam Thai restaurant in Richland, Washington.

Alima gave me a copy when we were touring Thailand together last fall.  She's put in plenty of easy, practical recipes, photographs of each dish and bits of inspiration from her Sufi philosophy.

Printed in Thailand and available at shops such as Asia Books in Bangkok, her book can be ordered online. People without much experience in Asian cooking will find it easy to work with. Most of the recipes don't require anything more obscure than basic curry pastes, fish sauce, coconut milk and lemon grass.  And some require no special ingredients.

The book is $17.95 plus $4.50 for shipping and handling. For information on how to order, go to http://www.sufichef.com.

THAI TUNA SALAD
From "Thai Cooking in a Sufi's Kitchen"

2 (6.5-ounce) cans solid white tuna, packed in water, or 1 (12-ounce) can
4 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 small onion, sliced
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped, optional
1/2 teaspoon ground hot chile
1/4 teaspon black pepper

Drain the tuna well. Place it in a bowl and separate it into flakes. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, onion, green onion, cilantro, ground chile and black pepper and mix well.

Serve on lettuce or with hot steamed rice or rice crackers.

Makes 4 servings.