Thai cuisine is famous for its intricate blends of flavor--sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy, pungent and so on.
The Thais do a good job with textures too. The one I can't resist is crisp, like in a couple of dishes at Jitlada the other day.
The menu describes koong pear (at top) as deep fried shrimp with a southern curry sauce. No mention of what makes this dish really intriguing--golden fried crispies made from coconut flakes and spices. They ought to bottle those and sell them as cocktail snacks. Crisp fried shallots come with the shrimp too.
Fried morning glory vine leaves coated with crunchy golden batter go into yam pak boong (above), a sweet, sour, spicy Thai salad. Fried basil leaves add still more crispness.
This crisp high plunged to a soft finish with Thai coconut custard surrounded by mounds of sweetened sticky rice. It was the same custard that usually comes in a wedge of kabocha squash, minus the kabocha container and covered instead with diced squash.
Jitlada, 5233 1/2 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 667-9809.
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