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Jet Tila Comes Out with a Cookbook

What a privilege to watch a career spiral from zero to world-class fame, and to have played a tiny, tiny part in it.

I'm talking about celebrity chef Jet Tila, who today is all over the Food Network, who in 2011 almost beat Masaharu Morimoto on Iron Chef America (he was only two points behind), who opened the dazzling restaurant Wazuzu at the Wynn Encore in Las Vegas, and so much more.

His latest is a cookbook, "101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die." Now he's making the rounds of TV shows and book signings, among them a benefit for C-CAP (Careers Through Culinary Arts Program), where I took the photo at the top. The next morning he was at Melissa's Produce.

How did this start? In 1999, when I was writing about food at the Los Angeles Times, Jet began to teach Thai cooking at his home. This was because non-Asian shoppers at the Bangkok Market, which his parents had opened in 1972, kept asking him how to cook the Thai dishes they loved.

When I found out about the classes, I enrolled in one and wrote it up for The Times. Jet said he expected only a "snippet" in the paper. Instead, it was a full spread (above) that included five recipes--pad krapow, Thai chicken broth, pad Thai, Thai stick (noodles wrapped around shrimp) and tom yum soup.  

The story appeared March 28,1999, with a color teaser on page one of the food section (above). The response was enormous. Hundreds of people got in touch with Jet the first day, and by the end of the week he estimates that he had heard from 1,000. (Click here to read the article and get the recipe for pad krapow, which is stir-fried chicken with Thai basil.)

Jet's tom yum soup so wowed The Times food staff that it was chosen one of the best recipes of 1999. (Click here to see that article and the recipe.)

By then Jet was a food section intern, producing amazing dishes, and we never wanted him to leave. He studied at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, building upon his early work at another family enterprise, Royal Thai restaurant, and also enrolled in the California Sushi Academy. 

Good karma, great cooking instincts, a desire to learn and a strong work ethic drove him onwards. This is how he rose from bagging groceries at the Bangkok Market to Iron Chef. For that challenge, he trained for a month, adding hours of practice to his long days at Wazuzu. 

As a child, Jet learned to cook from his Cantonese grandmother. Pineapple fried rice was "one of the first dishes that grandma taught me to make," he said. Served in a pineapple shell, It became a big hit at Wazuzu and is still on the menu there.

Above is the way he presented it at Melissa's. Another of his top hits from Wazuzu is drunken noodles. Both are in the book.

Early on, Jet began to lead tours of Thai Town and still does so, through Melting Pot Food Tours. Here, he shows Thai ingredients in a market.

At a meal stop he explains the food to a tour group.    

For a Thai New Year festival in Hollywood in 2008, he prepared the best panang chicken curry I had ever tasted, and I begged for the recipe. Click here to see it on my blog, www.TableConversation.com. It's in the book too, in slightly different form. 

In 2013, Jet was named the first Culinary Ambassador of Thai Cuisine by the Royal Thai Consul General in Los Angeles. Here, during a dinner at a festival organized by Thailand's Chang beer in 2016, he's explaining Thai cuisine and the dishes he chose for the menu. 

His cookbook is pan-Asian, including such recipes as kimchi fried rice, Korean short rib tacos, Japanese cucumber seaweed salad and Indian vegetable korma along with Thai food. 

At Melissa's, the menu included kung pao shrimp (above).

These are twice-cooked Szechuan-style green beans.

Mongolian beef is typical of Chinese food created in America. 

Chinese chicken salad is also American, but "it's one of my favorites," he says in the book. This version is deconstructed, with the salad, chicken and fried wonton crisps served separately.

Buddha's delight, a vegetable and tofu combination, isn't just for vegetarians. It's one of Jet's go-to dishes at home. In this photo, it's above the twice-cooked beans. 

Dessert was cinnamon and five-spice easy donuts, easy because they're made with packaged buttermilk biscuits.

From a file of about 700 recipes, Jet chose those that he thought were "super delicious,"  especially popular and that "people can truly accomplish anywhere in the United States."

The book is fun to read and easy to cook from. Jet wrote it himself without a ghost writer, yet another of his achievements. 

Using "101" in the title reflects his love of teaching. Always encouraging and never intimidating, he says, "Cooking is like kung fu. The more you do it, the more enlightened you become."

Learning About Thai Hispanic Food

What would you learn to cook in a class about Thai Hispanic food?

Green curry with poblano chiles? Mole with coconut milk? Aguachile decorated with orchids?

None of the above, at least not at the Thai Hispanic class held at Sur La Table by the Royal Thai Consulate-General, Los Angeles. 

Instead, the four-recipe session featured seafood, which is what Latinos adore at Thai restaurants--spicy seafood soups, seafood curries, noodles with seafood and familiar fresh ingredients such as lime juice and hot chiles.

Chef Chaiwatt Siriyarn, who taught the class (at top and above), has spent 32 years studying customer tastes at Marnee, his popular Thai restaurant in San Francisco, and knows well what Latinos like.

The class appeared live on Facebook, translated simultaenously into Spanish by Ben Herrera (at right), head of food service for Huntington Memorial Hospital.  

Students included chefs, bloggers, culinary students and the Thai consul general, Tanee Sangrat (at right).

First they sampled miang kham, a snack of various tidbits wrapped in a leaf (above), and a coconut-coated dessert, khanom thom.

Then Siriyarn demonstrated four dishes and after each joined students at their work stations to assist, taste and comment. 

First he showed a spicy and sour seafood combo soup, called poh tak (above), loaded with fish, bay scallops, mussels, blue crab, shrimp and squid.

Next came stir-fried rice noodles with soy sauce and Chinese broccoli, guay tiaw pad si ew (above). "If you use this recipe, you will make pad si ew a lot better than at most Thai restaurants," Siriyarn promised.

As a change from so much seafood, Siriyarn turned green curry fried rice into a vegetarian dish, substituting cubes of imitation meat for fish, prawns and squid (above).

Last came three flavored fish (above), named not for the seasonings but for the three basic Thai flavors that it incorporates--sweet, sour and salty. It also contains lots of garlic and bits of garlic skin to make the flavor even stronger.

Siriyarn's presentation was heaped with multicolored ingredients. Students turned out appetizing versions too, including this one by Jazz Singsanong of Jitlada Thai restaurant.

Class members flocked to Singsanong's station (above) to taste her renditions of Siriyarn's recipes, which she laced Jitlada style with extra chiles. 

To refresh after the spicy flavors, Siriyarn served a Thai alternative to the Mexican red drink jamaica. Made with dried butterfly pea flowers from Thailand, it's a blue drink that turns purple when citrus juice is added.

Anyone who missed the class can get the recipes in Siriyarn's cookbook, "Thai Cuisine Beyond Curry" (above).

Meanwhile, here is the recipe for three flavored fish. Siriyarn used salmon, but other fish can be substituted, he said.

THREE FLAVORED FISH
Pla Sam Rod
From Chef Chaiwitt Siriyarn

4 tablespoons oil
1 (8- to 10-ounce) piece fish fillet, such as salmon, halibut, red snapper
Rice flour for dusting
2 tablespoons chopped garlic, with some skin left on
2 tablespoons chopped yellow onion
1 tablespoon diced red bell pepper
1 tablespoon diced green bell pepper
1 tablespoon ground pickled chile
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar, to taste
1 tablespoon tamarind water
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Pinch sea salt, to taste
Steamed bok choy for garnish
10 pieces deep-fried Thai basil for garnish

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a non-stick pan over medium high heat. Pat the fish dry. Coat with rice flour. Shake off excess flour and place fish in the pan. Cook, turning once, until the fish is cooked through. 

In another pan, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Add the garlic and fry until golden brown. Then add the onion, bell peppers and pickled chile and stir until the vegetables are softened. Add the fish sauce, sugar, tamarind water, paprika and salt. Cook until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. 

Place the cooked fish on a plate lined with steamed bok choy or other vegetable. Pour the sauce over the fish. Garnish with the crispy basil.

Makes 2 servings.

Chao Krung Is About to Turn 40!

Family-owned Chao Krung is one of the oldest Thai restaurants in Los Angeles, open since October 9,1976.  The food is consistent, because it's prepared by Supa Kuntee, who has been cooking there since 1989.  The golden boat above is from a mural in one of the rooms, decorated to make you feel as if you're in Thailand.       

With Kuntee in charge, you get genuine home-style Thai food, prepared with special care. Right down to the coconut ice cream,  made from freshly squeezed coconut milk. And look at the lime on this plate of pad Thai. It's a Thai variety called manao hom, meaning fragrant lime.

Abundant in Thailand, it is not available here, unless you have access to Kuntee's tree, which she grew from seeds that she brought from Thailand.

The flavor is light, bright and not sharply acidic. It's what makes Chao Krung's som tam (papaya salad) different from any other som tam in town. And it's what you'll taste in chicken larb (above), which you eat like a wrap with the lettuce leaves in which the larb is nestled. 

Kuntee gave me a few of the limes (above), and I hope  to raise a tree myself.   If I succeed, I can make Chao Krung's larb, because I have the recipe, from a story about the restaurant that I wrote years ago for the Los Angeles Times.  Click here for the story, which includes the larb recipe.  Slightly tweeked, it also appears at the end of this post. 

That same  lime juice is in tom kha gai, the famous chicken coconut soup that Chao Krung presents in a chimney pot.  Kha is galangal, which is sliced and added to the soup along with chicken, straw mushrooms, lemon grass and red chiles. 

House barbecued duck breast goes into the creamy red curry above along with pineapple and cherry tomatoes. 

After so many years in business, Chao Krung has a handle on the sort of Thai food that appeals to non-Thais.  It's a bastion of classics such as crying tiger (above),  marinated ribe-eye steak cooked to an appetizing pink and piled on a bed of grilled sweet onions, zucchini and green beans.  

Shiitake salad with mixed greens is not your usual Thai salad. The mushrooms give the illusion of meatiness.

And here is the coconut ice cream, garnished with roasted cashews.

Many Thai restaurants offer bargain lunches, but Chao Krung sets out a buffet so that you can look at  the dishes and pick what you want. Available Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., it's $8.99, a good deal because with Supa Kuntee supervising, the food is bound to be good.  

Chao Krung, 111 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles CA 90036-2110. Tel: (323) 939-8361.

CHAO KRUNG CHICKEN LARB
Adapted from a recipe that appeared in The Los Angeles Times

1 pound ground chicken
Water
1/2 red onion,  cut into slivers
2 tablespoons sliced green onion
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons ground roasted rice
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground dry red chile
2  kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
Mint sprigs
Lettuce leaves for wrapping

Place the chicken in a  saucepan and add water to cover. Bring to a  boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is cooked through, 7 to 10 minutes, turning to cook evenly.

Drain the chicken and place in a bowl. Add  the  red onion, green onion, fish sauce, lime juice, roasted rice, sugar, ground chile and lime leaves. Mix well. Top with cilantro and mint. Accompany with lettuce leaves for wrapping.

Makes 4 servings.

Note: Ground roasted rice is available in markets that stock Thai ingredients.

For Heat Waves: Easy Thai Chicken

Katie Chin's take on northeastern Thai larb is exactly what you'll want to make this summer.

She's turned the ground meat dish into a chicken salad crunchy with waterchestnuts, spiked with ginger-lime sauce and served in a lettuce leaf (at top). Wouldn't that be cool for a poolside lunch, or anywhere when the temperature soars?

The recipe, Chiang Mai Chicken in Lettuce Cups, is in her book, "Everyday Thai Cooking" (Tuttle: $24.95). And it's easy, as she showed the other day in a cooking demo at Melissa's/World Variety Produce (above). The demo took place there, because Melissa's distributes the ingredients needed for Thai recipes, including lemongrass, galangal, fresh turmeric, Thai basil and Thai chiles. 

Chin's Chinese heritage made her a natural for cooking Thai, which is heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine. As a caterer, she specialized in Asian dishes, which you'll also find on her blog, The Sweet and Sour Chronicles.

"Everyday Thai" (above) is not another basic Thai cookbook, but a lively and personal account of the way Chin cooks. Her recipes are oriented toward quick and easy food for all tastes including kids, and she won't scold if you subtitute brown sugar for palm sugar and a skillet for a wok. 

Here is how she makes the chicken. Beneath it in the top photo is a glimpse of her Thai steak salad, another recipe to rely on in hot weather.  

CHIANG MAI CHICKEN IN LETTUCE CUPS
From "Everyday Thai Cooking"

2 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons minced galangal or gingerroot
1 clove garlic, minced
1 fresh red or green chile, preferably Thai, finely sliced
1/2 pound ground chicken
1/2 cup chopped canned water chestnuts, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon finely chopped green onion, white and green parts
1 tablespoon minced lemongrass
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
8 large butter lettuce leaves
Ginger Lime Dipping Sauce, see below

Heat oil in a wok or skillet on moderately high heat. Add galangal, garlic and chile and stir-fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add ground chicken and stir-fry for 4 minutes. Add water chestnuts and stir-fry for 2 minutes.

Add cilantro, green onion, lemongrass, fish sauce and red pepper and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a serving bowl. Serve with lettuce leaves and Ginger Lime Dipping Sauce, allowing guests to form their own wraps.

Makes 4 appetizer servings.

GINGER LIME DIPPING SAUCE

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon peeled and minced gingerroot
4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 teaspoon rice vinegar or white vinegar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 fresh hot red or green pepper, preferably Thai, deseeded and finely sliced

Bring sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Cool slightly. Mix 1/4 cup of the syrup with the ginger, lime juice, vinegar, fish sauce and chile in a small bowl. Transfer to a small serving bowl. Discard the remaining syrup.

Makes about 2/3 cup. 

Bangkok Chefs Teach Real Thai Food

It looks like Thai food in Los Angeles is going to get an upgrade, not that it isn't OK right now. 

Don't worry, this won't affect bargain Thai lunches. It's a push toward high-end Thai dining that will incorporate what the Thais are renowned for--brilliant flavors, fresh, aromatic ingredients and artistic presentation that goes beyond a carved carrot or frilly green onion.

Here's an example--the seafood mixture called hor mok, tucked into a deep-fried basket crafted from a sheer rice wrapper and accompanied by a little pot of fresh pineapple and red pepper sauce. The hor mok includes steamed fresh crab meat along with minced prawns and chicken.

The golden-brown egg strands that decorate the plate were scattered into hot oil by hand (above).

Here, an upscale diner's favorite, rare duck breast, has been tossed with cherry tomatoes, Thai chiles, onions and lychees in a sauce that includes orange and tamarind juices and palm sugar. That's a smear of raspberry puree on the plate.

A mini presentation of shrimp and coconut soup (above) fits into the small plates craze. 

These were a few of the Thai dishes covered in a series of classes arranged last week by the Royal Thai Consulate General in partnership with Le Cordon Bleu Culinary College in Pasadena. 

The hands-on sessions drew chefs, restaurant owners, culinary instructors and students--people who will influence what we eat in the future. The classes were open to the public, too. If you missed out, keep posted for next year's series.  

The teachers were Nooror Somany-Steppe (at the top), who is founding partner and director of the Blue Elephant restaurants, an international chain headquartered in Bangkok, and her daughter Sandra Steppe. 

They brought more than 300 pounds of ingredients and equipment from Thailand, including some of those above, in order to present the food as accurately as possible. "We are here to make Americans feel that Thai food is the best food in the world,"  said Steppe, who spoke as her mother concentrated on cooking.

If they have any criticism, it is that Thai food in America is too sweet. To make sure flavors were properly balanced, they tasted repeatedly as each dish was prepared, adjusting with pinches of this or that. They showed that Thai cooking is a lively process, not a standardized procedure.  

To cook in proper Thai style, they said, pound ingredients in a stone mortar (above), not just because it's traditional but because such mortars impart minerals.

Never substitute gingerroot for galingal, which has a different aroma and flavor (galingal is the knobby tuber at the left in the basket above). Don't use turmeric powder instead of fresh turmeric (at right in the basket). And you won't necessarily  get a perfect result if you add the amount of coconut milk specified in a recipe. It could be too strong, and you would then have to dilute it. 

If using canned curry paste, work in fresh ingredients such as onion and garlic. And be aware that an ingredient is not always the same. The fresh pineapple that Somany-Steppe used for the hor mok sauce was so sweet it had to be balanced with extra vinegar. 

On view at the classes were the Blue Elephant line of sauces and curry pastes made according to Somany-Steppe's standards. They're pricey because she puts in choice ingredients such as Thai-grown garlic, which is finer and stronger than cheaper Chinese garlic, she said. You can check them out online at Amazon. 

Students learned how to pound their own green curry paste for dishes such as green curry with prawns (above). At the Blue Elephant, the curry is served with roti. You could also serve it with pasta, Somany-Steppe said, turning it into a Thai noodle dish. 

GREEN CURRY WITH PRAWNS
From Chef Nooror Somany Steppe and the Blue Elephant restaurants

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons green curry paste
1/4 teaspoon ground roasted coriander seeds
1/4 teaspoon ground roasted cumin seeds
1 cup coconut milk
About 1/3 cup peeled, deveined prawns (shrimp)
2 round Thai eggplants, quartered
10 pea-sized Thai eggplants
1 1/2 teaspoons palm sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 fresh mild red chile, seeded and sliced
1 kaffir lime leaf, torn into small pieces
10 leaves sweet basil
Red chile slices for garnish
Coconut cream for garnish

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the green curry paste, coriander and cumin seeds and stir-fry until aromatic.

Add a spoonful of coconut milk and simmer until the oil is extracted. Add two more scoops of cocomut milk and simmer for a few minutes.

Add the prawns and remaining coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add the eggplants and simmer until cooked through. Season with palm sugar and fish sauce. Add the red chile, kaffir lime leaf and basil and stir gently.

Remove from heat and transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish with a strip of coconut cream across the top and red chile slices.

Makes about 2 servings. 

 

A New Look for Thai Food?

Chefs seem bent on creating something new. I guess that's how they get attention.

But why tamper with Thai food, which is perfect as is? What makes a difference in this case is that the innovator is thoroughly Thai, born into the royal family and a celebrity chef. In other words, he knows his stuff from the ground up.

He's Chef McDang (that's a nom de cuisine. His real name is ML Sirichalerm Svasti). And traditional Thai food is what he lectures on when Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sends him on an annual tour of Le Cordon Bleu culinary schools in the United States.

This year, Chef McDang gave public lectures for the first time. Anyone who really listened to what he said at Thailand Plaza Restaurant in Hollywood should now be able to cook Thai without a recipe. That's how organized and complete his presentation was.

But the dishes he demonstrated showed his new idea, which is to present Thai food in courses--"like French food," he said, not in communal plates and without rice.

This breaks with Thai custom, which is to eat together, sharing dishes that are served all at once. And rice is so fundamental that to find out if someone has eaten, you ask, "have you eaten rice?"

Just as startling was the dash of olive oil he added to one of his "new" dishes, a timbale of curry fish mousse (at right).

In traditional Thai cookery, only flavorless oil is used, never "smelly" oils, he had said. He topped the timbale with coconut cream and flying fish roe and scattered over the plate finely diced red, green and yellow sweet peppers.  

Even more olive oil went over tuna carpaccio with larb dressing (at top), and micro greens joined typical larb additions such as green onions, shallots, sawtooth herb and mint leaves.

The mango sauce that accompanied grilled marinated pork shoulder (at right) was pretty much like any contemporary mango salsa except that it included fish sauce and Thai chiles.

What all this is leading up to is a book, "Modern Thai Cuisine," due out when Chef McDang has time to finish it. 

His prior book, "The Principles of Thai Cookery," is based on his Cordon Bleu lectures. The chef published that book himself, because he's so dedicated to helping people get it right.

CHEF McDANG'S MANGO SALSA

200 grams (about 1/2 pound) ripe mango meat, peeled and diced small
100 grams (about 1/4 pound) tomato, peeled, seeded and diced small
100 grams (about 1/4 pound) onion, peeled and diced small
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons lime juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Thai fish sauce
1 teaspoon chopped fresh Thai chiles
Granulated or brown sugar to taste

Mix the mango, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime juice, fish sauce and chiles in a bowl. Taste and add sugar so that the salsa is equally balanced between sweet, sour and saltiness.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

 

 

 

Is This Thailand's Best Curry?

The best of all Thai curries, in my opinion, is one rarely seen in the United States--gaeng hung lay from the north.

I came across it years ago in Chiang Mai and was enchanted by its sweet spiciness and flavors that seemed more Indian than Thai, although it is said to come from Burma.

A Chiang Mai cookbook had the recipe, but I couldn't get the hung lay curry paste and powder that it called for at home in Los Angeles. A couple of restaurants here serve hung lay, but I wanted to turn it into my own signature dish. 

Flash forward 15 years, and I return to Chiang Mai and load up on hung lay seasonings at the Warorot Market, a huge place where you can find anything from prepackaged food offerings for monks to spicy northern sausages, dried longans, typical sweets and so much more that it would take hours to explore its many stalls.

Home again, I tried out the spices, using a recipe from what I thought was an authoritative source, a Chiang Mai cooking school. The curry did not turn out well.  A Thai friend said she had never tasted hung lay like mine, and that was not a compliment. 

A few months later, I went back to the north, this time to Chiang Rai. And there, at last, I learned to make delicious hung lay curry, just like the locals.

This happened at Suanthip Vana Resort, where a Thai friend suggested that I stay. 

Located about 45 minutes from Chiang Rai city, Suanthip (right) is gorgeous, with acres of gardens, sweeping views of rice fields and Karen style cottages on stilts that are stunningly luxurious. There's nothing like soaking outdoors in a handmade teak tub in your own bathroom/garden.

The Karens live mostly in Myanmar (Burma) but have a few villages in northwestern Thailand. Judging by my room, the walls of their houses are made of rice straw mixed with clay, sand and mud, but I doubt that they have Suanthip's beautifully polished teak floors. It felt good to walk barefoot on the smooth, warm, resilient surface.

Natural breezes kept the room so cool that I didn't need air conditioning or a fan, but I did have to pull up a quilt at night.

In the morning, either a Thai or European breakast would be waiting in my private outdoor pavilion (right), where I could look out over the quiet landscape to distant mountains as I ate.

Like the pavilion, much of the resort is constructed of teak saved from old houses, not from freshly logged lumber. Produce for the kitchen is raised organically on the premises. 

From my point of view, Suanthip's greatest asset is its young chef, Nongyao Kunanuan, who was born in Chiang Rai.

Nongyao can make anything from croissants to spicy northern sausages, kao soi better than any I’ve tasted, noodles with pork, tomato, pork blood and enough hot chile to make me cry.  And, of course, gaeng hung lay, which she is holding in the photo.  

Her hung lay is sweet with coconut palm sugar and scented with the sweet spices that are incorporated into hung lay powder and paste.

Adding to the glorious flavor are ginger, pickled garlic, tamarind and thick black soy sauce that is sweet, with a hint of molasses. The meat is pork, both lean and fatty. Peanuts make the curry even richer.  

The sweetness is apparently typical of Chiang Rai. Hung lay at a restaurant in town tasted the same. While in town, I bought more hung lay spice packets at the municipal market. They were so cheap--three packets for five baht, which is about 16 cents.

Except for the seasonings, I can get everything I need in Los Angeles, including coconut sugar, which is molded into small cakes that are soft when fresh but become very hard as they stand. They soften easily, though, if sprinkled with a little water and microwaved briefly.

Now my hung lay has true Chiang Rai taste. However, one day my seasonings will run out, so I’ll have to experiment with duplicating them, or else go back to northern Thailand to buy more. I think I’d rather do that.

SUANTHIP VANA'S GAENG HUNG LAY
From Chef Nongyao  Kunanuan

1/2 pound pork butt
1/2 pound pork leg meat
1 tablespoon hung lay curry powder
2 teaspoons hung lay curry paste
2 teaspoons thick sweet black soy sauce
2 teaspoons regular soy sauce
1 3/4 cups pork stock
1 tablespoon oil
4 shallots, chopped
4 small cloves fresh garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons slivered pickled garlic
1/3 cup slivered ginger root
1/3 cup fried or roasted unsalted peanuts
4 tablespoons coconut sugar
2 tablespoons thick tamarind liquid
Salt

Cut the pork butt and leg meat into 1 1/2-inch chunks. Place in a bowl. Add the hung lay curry powder and curry paste, the black and regular soy sauces and 1/4 cup pork stock. Stir and massage with one hand until the liquids and seasonings are absorbed. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour or longer.

When ready to cook, heat the oil in a Dutch oven. Add the marinated pork and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes.

Add 1 1/2 cups pork stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer over medium heat 1 hour.

Uncover and raise the heat. Add the shallots, fresh and pickled garlic and cook and stir for 5 minutes. Add the ginger, peanuts, coconut sugar and tamarind liquid and cook and stir for 5 minutes longer. There should be some liquid, but the curry should not be thin and soupy. If too dry, add more pork stock or water. Taste and add salt if needed.

Makes 4 servings.

A Disaster Before Dinner

The perfect time for a refrigerator to quit working is when you're expecting dinner guests three nights in a row.

On Night 1, the problem wasn't apparent until a carton of chocolate ice cream (for the kids in the group) emerged from the freezer as a super soft serve. 

On Day 2, the cause was determined to be dust (and cat hair) clogging the coils. The ancient vacuum cleaner on hand had no hose or suction tool. This meant I had to get a new one immediately to save that night's main dish. I had made a rare Thai curry in advance and put in the refrigerator to mellow. Rather than mellowing, it was slowly heating up.

An engineer guest pulled out the fridge and vacuumed fore and aft with the new tool. But this didn't help. Dinner that night relied on side dishes that didn't require refrigeration. The wine that had been chilling was off-warm. Cookies replaced the liquid ice cream.

On Day 3, a refrigerator repairman said the 10-year-old fridge wasn't worth saving. Get a new one, he advised.

But the stores I called had no models that would fit the space. They were too tall. The cupboard above would have to be cut away, and there wasn't time for that.

Instead, I  rushed to the market for bags of ice to stuff into the freezer and fridge. These couldn't stop the meltdown. But one last despairing call did. 

Richard, a can-do appliance man, dashed into the kitchen, cheerily assuring me that the refrigerator would be fine. And he was right.

The problem was a dead starter relay, a tiny box of a thing so hot that it almost burned my fingers. The freezer would be back in order that night, he said, the refrigerator by the next morning.

Now all I had to do was clean up a horrific mess and dash to the store for more food.

Night 3's dinner featured newly purchased chicken that I marinated and placed on an ice bag until it went into the oven. 

Meanwhile, chicken that had been thawing in the freezer bobbed in a furiously boiling pot. Richard had said that it was okay to cook thawed meet and refreeze it, and I trusted him. But I tossed out bag after bag of beef, shrimp, sausages and other oldies.

Now I am loaded with frozen cooked chicken. And broth. This means an endless parade of creamed chicken, chicken rice soup, pasta with chicken, curries, enchiladas, arroz con pollo--anything that disguises re-heated meat.

The kick-off dish was great, a Thai pasta salad based on the northern ground meat dish larb.

Combining sweet, sour and spicy larb seasonings with spaghetti was an inspired idea. I can't claim it though. The recipe came from a book that I had bought in Bangkok, "At the Table of Jim Thompson" (Archipelago Press).

Instead of cooking raw meat I put in the frozen chicken, tweaked a couple of things and left off the fried chiles suggested as a garnish. 

I can't say the fridge disaster was a good thing, but at least it had one decent result.

SPAGHETTI WITH SPICY CHICKEN SALAD
(Spaghetti Larb Gai)
Adapted from "At the Table of Jim Thompson")

3 1/2 ounces spaghetti
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon ground roasted rice
2 1/4 teaspoons sugar
Hot chili powder to taste
1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 green onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons mint leaves, chopped

Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water until al dente, following the manufacturer's instructions. Drain and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the chicken and stir until heated through, about 1 minute. Add the chicken stock and cook until reduced by half. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, ground roasted rice, sugar and chili powder. Mix well.

Add the shallots, green onions and cilantro and mix. Add the cooked spaghetti and toss to combine thoroughly. Turn out onto serving plates and garnish with the mint leaves. Serve warm.

Makes 2 servings.

 

A Class at the Blue Elephant

Cooking schools are a dime a dozen in Thailand, but there's a really good one at the Blue Elephant in Bangkok, judging by the one lesson I had.

How could you find a better teacher than Nooror Somany Steppe, founder, director and creative chef of the Blue Elephant restaurant group, which has grown to 12 branches extending from Europe through the Middle East to Asia?

Visiting the Bangkok location is like stepping into Asia's colonial past. The building has the same tropical, exotic feeling that permeates the Raffles in Singapore.

More than a century old, it opened as the Bombay Department Store, became the Japanese army command center during World War II and has now been totally restored.

Classes take place there daily. Students go to the market to learn about ingredients, watch how the dishes are prepared, then cook the day's menu themselves and sit down to eat it.

My class was a special one-dish demo for the group of Thai restaurant owners and chefs (at right) with whom I was traveling. 

We started with blue mai tais from the Blue Bar (above). Yes, there's lots of blue at the Blue Elephant. It's the royal Thai color.

Then we watched Steppe make tom som pla salmon, a sweet, sour, slightly spicy salmon soup. It looked easy, and I had no trouble reproducing it at home.

Dinner after class showed off the Blue Elephant's royal Thai cuisine. The food was exquisite, because that is what makes it royal--beautiful presentation combined with beautiful taste.

Some dishes were classic Thai. Others were updated, like Steppe's  creamy tom yum goong (hot and sour shrimp soup), which she modeled on a French bisque and served in a shot glass. 

Beside it, another shot glass held a single betel leaf wrapped around a mixture of white and pink pomelo, dry shrimp, green mango and pickled lettuce, topped with coconut sauce.

Then on to starters such as steamed flower-shaped dumplings and golden taro dumplings stuffed with shrimp and chicken. Then came  chicken-coconut soup served in a young coconut.

Main dishes included prawns in sweet tamarind sauce and Northeastern style grilled beef with a sauce of dried chiles, accompanied by sticky rice. The rice had been formed into slender rolls and fried. Golden brown, chewy and crisp, they were irresistible.

A snow fish souffle was lightly seasoned with basil and kaffir lime leaves. Rather than a western style souffle in a little casserole, the delicate Thai souffle had been spooned into a length of bamboo and topped with coconut cream and red chile strands.

There was much more, ending with a trio of desserts that included pandan-flavored coconut ice cream, a steamed mung bean cake and foi thong, or golden egg threads cooked in syrup. 

Thai wines aren't yet up to western standards, but those we drank at the Blue Elephant were quite good. They are made for the restaurant at Siam Winery in the Chao Phraya delta, near the Gulf of Siam.

The red is made from a varietal called Pokdum, which is a cross between Muscat Bailey and Golden Queen. The white is a Malaga Blanc, and the rose blends Malaga Blanc and Pokdum.

I wish I had had one of those wines to drink with the tom som pla salmon (photo at right) that I made at home. 

The Blue Elephant Cooking School and Restaurant, 233 S. Sathorn Road, Yannawa, Bangkok, Thailand 10120. Tel: (66-2) 673-9353.  

TOM SOM PLA SALMON
From the Blue Elephant, Bangkok

1 cup salmon in 2/3-inch chunks
1/4 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste (kapi)
1 teaspoon cilantro stems, including any roots that may be attached
4 small shallots
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 cups fish or chicken stock
1 tablespoon finely slivered gingerroot
2 tablespoons fish sauce
5 teaspoons tamarind liquid (tamarind paste diluted with water)
2 teaspoons Thai palm sugar (or light brown sugar)
1 green onion, cut into 1-inch lengths, including some of the green top
1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Prepare the salmon and set it aside. 

Wrap the shrimp paste in a small piece of foil, place in a small skillet and roast over high heat just until fragrant (this will reduce the strong aroma). If you cannot obtain shrimp paste, leave it out, but it does add an interesting nuance.  

Place the cilantro stems in a heavy mortar and pound until crushed. Add 2 small shallots and pound until pulverized. Add the peppercorns and shrimp paste and pound to a paste. Scrape out of the mortar and set aside. There will be about 1 tablespoon paste.

Place the stock in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Crush the remaining 2 shallots and add to the stock along with the pounded paste, gingerroot, fish sauce, tamarind liquid and palm sugar. Bring to a boil and simmer 1 minute. 

Add the salmon and bring to a boil. Do not stir after the salmon is added. Simmer 1 minute, until fully cooked. Add the green onion and remove from heat.

Pour the soup into a heated bowl and garnish with cilantro leaves.

Makes 1 large serving or 2 first-course servings. 

 

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.