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Read About Thai Pies in Saveur

Go far north in Thailand and what do you find? Believe it or not, pies, American pies. They're at Charin Garden Resort on the road from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai.

What are they doing there? To find out, read my article, "Thai Pie," in the November issue of Saveur.

The article includes a recipe for the most popular of all the pies, one made with young coconut meat.

Baked by a Thai woman who once lived in Los Angeles, the pies are so delicious that, if you're heading for Chiang Rai, you ought to make a point of visiting the resort to try them.

Charin Garden is not far from the city. In addition to the pie counter, it offers a restaurant that opens onto beautiful vistas of the countryside. The address is in the article. 

The photo at the top shows the young coconut cream pie. In the center is a pie filled with translucent palm seeds. Below is the counter where the daily assortment of pies is displayed.

Order a slice--make that several slices so you can appreciate the variety--then enjoy with a cup of strong, aromatic local coffee.   

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.

Road Food in Chanthaburi

Eating on the road guarantees some of the best food you can get, that is, if you are on your way from Bangkok to the east coast resort island Koh Chang.

This is judging by the two places my van stopped going and coming from the island. Both were in Chanthaburi Province.

One restaurant turned out beautiful fresh seafood. The other offered regional dishes. Both were charmingly local, not tourist places that water down food to please foreigners.  

At the first stop, Pooja Thachaleb, I could look into the open kitchen, where women were cutting up vegetables and frying freshly caught seabass that would come to the table with a spicy shredded green mango sauce. 

Pooja means crab, and the restaurant logo is a smiling cross-eyed crab wearing a chef's hat. Perhaps he's smiling because he's the only one who escaped the cookpot.

My table was almost overwhelmed with big platters of cracked crab and crab cakes with plum sauce that showed how well the restaurant cooks its signature dishes.

More platters held huge whole prawns, prawns stir-fried with very fresh crisp peapods and jumbo-sized prawn cakes that could have passed for donuts.

The restaurant sent out big bowls of fried rice too and, for dessert, chunks of watermelon, pineapple and green mango to dip into a mixture of  sugar, salt and red chile.

I don't imagine there are many roadside restaurants where you can eat your fill of such luxury dishes for about $8 a person. 

Pooja Thachaleb Restaurant, 136/2 Moo 9, Thachaleb Bangkaja,  Muang Chanthaburi, Chanthaburi, Thailand. Tel:  (039) 391129.

After a couple of days in Koh Chang, it was time to move on to Pattaya. The first stop after getting off the ferry was the town of Chanthaburi, which is known for gems. Few shops in the wholesale jewelry district were open that day, and I only bought a stuffed cloth cat from a sidewalk stand.

But Chanthorn Phochana was open, and my group went in to try such local dishes as fried Chanthaburi style noodles with crab.

The noodles were soft but chewy, and the tiny fresh water crabs had been deep-fried in their shells. The sauce was spicy and slightly sweet.

Deep-fried Vietnamese spring rolls had been prepared Chanthaburi style, hardly an exotic dish because Vietnam is so close to Thailand.

What stood out was an extraordinary crab dip flavored with kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass and shallots.

Set around the bowl were the dippers--not carrots, celery and broccoli, but bitter melon, okra, winged beans, corn, cabbage and an intensely bitter herb, maera kaenuk (that's only a guess at the spelling) that Thais think can prevent cancer and HIV.

Bai cha muang, another herb that I hadn't seen before, appeared in a soup and in a pork curry that was so good I was delighted to learn that the restaurant sells it canned.

As soon as I had the tempting can in my hand, ready to impress my friends back home with this unusual dish, I remembered that meats aren't allowed into the United States. I put it back and bought instead a crisp durian snack with coconut and Thai herbs to eat on the road.

Drinks and desserts were limited. We ordered canned mangosteen juice and sala in syrup. Sala, a small tropical palm fruit, is fairly common, but the rest of our lunch was not.  To find food of this type, you have to get off the tourist track, and Chanthaburi is a good place to do that.

Chanthorn Phochana, 98/2 Benjamarachuthit Road Watmai, Muang Chanthaburi, Chanthaburi, Thailand. Tel: (039) 02350.

From Bombs to Wine at Naj

During World War II, Thailand formed an alliance with Japan and therefore was bombed by the allied powers. 

The Thai historical novel "Si Phaendin" (Four Reigns) by Kukrit Pramoj, which touches on this period, describes the raids, the damage and the shelters constructed for protection.

You can see evidence of this today if you go to Naj restaurant in Bangkok. Naj opened in 2004 in a house that dates back 120 years. Through glass panels in the floor of the dining room, you can look down into what was once a bomb shelter. Today it has a much better use. It's a wine cellar.

But you may not want to order wine at Naj, because the restaurant has such interesting cocktails. Its tom yum tini made it into my Bangkok top 10 list. There's a lemon grass and lychee gin fizz (right) that is also worth consideration. And a tom kha tini made with vodka, coconut rum and galangal. And--the name is no surprise--a My Thai that combines rum, lime and pineapple juices and basil leaves.

The food at Naj is Thai, not fusion like the cocktails. Some say Naj has the best pomelo salad in town. It certainly was good, and it too went into my Bangkok best list.

Another specialty is pork spareribs in panang sauce (right). The ribs are cooked for hours until the meat is fork tender, and the sauce goes light on coconut milk. Both panang and massaman sauces at Naj are less sweet than their counterparts in the United States.

Another standout is prawns with cashews and minced chicken in a sweet sauce that combines tamarind, fish sauce and palm sugar.

Sweet-sour garoupa (right) is almost like candy. But not everything is sugary.  Naj does an excellent tom yum goong, the classic hot and sour shrimp soup with straw mushrooms, lime leaves and slivered lemon grass.

Four people who are willing to pay $100 (1,200 Thai baht)  can have a platter of grilled seafood including crab, a whole fish, prawns and scallops in a spicy sour sauce, accompanied by four glasses of Chardonnay--whose Chardonnay the menu doesn't say. 

The grill extravaganza is the last in a group of 23 recommended dishes, just part of a menu so long that almost every Thai dish you've ever heard of is on it.

Naj is named for its founder, Luckananaj Markawat, who trained the staff in cooking. It's her second restaurant, following Oam Thong, a smaller place that she opened off Sukhumvit Road in 1984.

With Naj, she stepped up to a grander, dressy place. The atmosphere is colonial, with burnished teak floors, a profusion of orchids and, along one wall, a row of golden pagodas. It's a pretty place  that makes a nice escape from Bangkok crowds and traffic.

Naj Exquisite Thai Cuisine, 42 Convent Road, Silom, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. Tel: (662) 632-2811. 

The Condom-Clad Tiger: Part 2

There's a real hullabaloo over my post about the condom-decorated figure of Tiger Woods at Cabbages & Condoms restaurant in Bangkok.

The story is circulating through sports and news blogs in the United States and also around the world, apparently. At least they're writing about it in Australia and India. Some reports are skewing the facts. They say that I created the figure. Not true. I just took the photo and wrote the story.

And shame on those bloggers and news sources that are lifting details from my post, including direct quotes, and using these and my photo without crediting my blog. It's disgustingly unprofessional to pass off another person's work as one's own.

As a follow-up to the first story, here are a few more photos of condom figures at Cabbages & Condoms, including another look at Tiger. And one where you can see me.

I'd like to give the recipe for the restaurant's famous condom salad, but I can't, because it's copyrighted.  It's in  "Cabbages & Condoms: The Beautiful Thai Cook Book," which you can buy there for about $10.

This is an excellent book, by the way, and includes other, less titillating, restaurant specialties such as pla sam lee daed deaw, which is fried whole fish with green mango sauce; gung obb mapraow on (steamed shrimp in a whole young coconut) and kai hor bai toey (deep fried chicken wrapped in pandanus leaves).

Sensing a need to tie in with  its image, the restaurant gave the chicken another name in its brochure: "chicken in herb leaf bikini." 

The cookbook is totally proper. Its editorial advisory board included Mechai Viravaidya, who is known in Thailand as the Condom King.

It was he who founded the Population and Community Development Association in order to promote family planning. That was in 1974, when the topic was too awkward for most Thais to discuss.  

The PDA recruited villagers to talk up birth control in their communities and distribute condoms.  Viravaidya was so linked to this campaign that his first name, Mechai, became Thai slang for condom.

A flagship of the campaign, the PDA-supported Cabbages & Condoms is a large place with an outdoor beer garden. It now has branches in other parts of Thailand.

The name was chosen to  reflect Viravaidya's belief that birth control should be as affordable and available as vegetables in the marketplace.

Walking down the lane where C&C is located (Soi 12 off Sukhumvit Road),  I used to pass a no-scalpel vasectomy clinic. I didn't spot the clinic this trip, but the Darling massage parlor is still doing business there. 

And in my travel purse are two souvenirs of my latest meals at C&C.  You can guess what they are.

Bangkok's Ten Bests, 2010

Every trip to Bangkok turns up more great Thai food, more places in which to eat it and a list of must-dos for the next trip, whenever that may be.

These are highlights of a rushed few days in February that included a mad dash through Chinatown on the morning of the first day of the Year of the Tiger.

Red lanterns bobbed overhead, and food stalls jammed both sides of the main drag, offering everything from eel to heavenly fresh coconut ice cream (see below).

Not everyone ate the rich dishes on display. One of the smallest celebrants (right) was content with just a bottle of milk. 

Why was I in such a hurry?  Because I had to meet fellow travelers for lunch, which turned out not to be Chinese (darn), and then catch a boat to my hotel down (or was it up?) the Chao Phrya river.

But New Year's Day was lucky after all. Dinner that night yielded two "bests" for my top 10 list, which starts with one of them.  

1. Best Dish: Pomelo salad with shrimp at Naj. This version of a common salad was so light and refreshing that I would have been happy to eat nothing else. 

The segments of the pomelo fell apart into juicy crisp flakes that mingled with crisp fried shallots and crunchy deep-fried coconut meat for a panorama of textures.

The sweet, spicy dressing  (red chile, fish sauce, coconut milk, sugar) did them justice. And so did the presentation. The salad bowl was a pomelo shell expertly carved in keeping with the precepts of royal Thai  cuisine.

Naj Exquisite Thai Cuisine, 42 Convent Road, Silom, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. Tel: (662) 632-2811.

2. Spiciest Dish: Sea bass with green papaya and bamboo shoots in spicy and tangy herbal soup at Thanying. Years ago, I ate a curry in Chiang Mai that was so unbearably hot I thought my body would dissolve.

Not until I ate at Thanying did I have such an experience again. The waiter had steered me away from very spicy dishes to this "medium" seabass concoction.  As my lips threatened to peel away, I regretted having chosen the dish simply because it was different from the usual red and green curries. Even worse, there was hardly any fish in the venomous yellow sauce.

Thanying, No. 10 Thanon Pramuan, between Silom 17 and 19, Bangrak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. Tel: (66) 02-236-4361.

3. Coolest Dish: Coconut ice cream in Chinatown. On New Year's Day, street stalls sold freshly made coconut ice cream scooped into halved coconut shells, with fresh young coconut meat around the ice cream and peanuts on top. Simple and better than sublime.

4. Best Drink: A Tom Yam Tini at Naj. This wasn't hot and spicy shrimp soup (tom yam goong) strained into a cocktail glass but a delicate herbal drink composed of vodka, Cointreau, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice and chile.

Fortunately, the only chile seemed to be the whole red one stuck into a lime leaf as the garnish.

5. Weirdest Drink: Mexican iced coffee at Caffe Nero. This cafe looks into the gardens of the Siam Society, and I had planned to enjoy the refreshing view and recuperate from the heat outside with an iced green tea latte.

There was some confusion when I placed my order, and the waitress brought instead a boot filled with strong, bitter coffee blended with milk, ice and "Kahlua flavor." Yes, a glass boot. "Cowboy have energy," the menu blurb explained and recommended the drink at any time of day "to aid digestion."

The dark little blobs that clung to the sides of the boot indicated it  had been made with instant coffee.

Siam Society, 131 Soi Asok (off Sukhumvit), Bangkok 10240, Thailand. Tel: (02) 661-6470.

6. Best Thai Dessert: Bua loi Benjarong at  Oam Thong Restaurant. I was a little leary of another Benjarong dish at this restaurant after gang kew wan Benjarong goong (green curry with prawns, aubergine, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, lychees and grapes) turned out to be overloaded with inedibly tough tiny green eggplants.

Called makhua puang in Thai, these may have been put into the curry at the last minute so that they were barely cooked. Or else they were underripe. Furthermore, there were no lychees.

The restaurant redeemed itself with this dessert, a bowlful of warm, thick, sweet and salty coconut cream enveloping tiny rice flour dumplings tinted pale green, yellow and violet. There were slices of tender, young coconut meat too. I can't imagine a more soothing dish. 

Oam Thong Restaurant, 7/4-5 Sukhumvit 33, Soi Daeng Udum, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: (66) 2-662-0766.

7. Best non-Thai dessert: Boi loi nam king at Cabbages & Condoms. This dessert of sticky rice flour dumplings stuffed with black sesame paste in hot, dark ginger syrup is Chinese. However, it's Thai too, because so many Thais came from China long ago, and the Chinese influence on the food is strong. 

I had eaten this dessert at Wazuzu in Las Vegas shortly before leaving for Thailand, and I was longing for another taste. The restaurant obliged with its own excellent version.

Cabbages & Condoms, 8 Sukhumvit 12, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: (662) 229-4610.

8. Best room with a view: The food hall on the fifth floor of the Emporium Shopping Complex looks out on a beautiful park, the city beyond and the sky train, which in the distance shrinks to the size of a miniature electric railroad.

The variety of food available in the hall is tempting, but it was mid afternoon, and I settled for a simple dessert, grass jelly and red-coated waterchestnut cubes with ice and coconut syrup. It cost about 75 cents.

The Emporium Shopping Complex is on Sukhumvit Road close to Soi 24, Bangkok, Thailand. Take the sky train to the Phrom Phong exit.

9. Best snack: Khanom ping. I picked up a bag of these tiny coconut cookies at a 7-Eleven outside Bangkok but found them neatly packed in jars at the upscale market adjacent to the food hall on the 5th floor of  the Emporium Shopping Complex. 

What sets them apart is an intriguing smoky taste and the way they dissolve to a powder as you bite into them. Although they seem fragile, they were sturdy enough to survive the trip home intact.

10.  Best old standby: P Kitchen  Sometimes I want to relax and not chase edgy new food experiences. That's when I go to P Kitchen (actually P.4 Kitchen according to the sign, but everyone calls it just P Kitchen).

This time, I checked out its version of one of my favorite Thai dishes in Los Angeles, crispy pork with gailan and rice. The omelet that was part of the dish almost hides the pork and gailan.

P Kitchen, 11/3 Sukhumvit Soi 18, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: 02-663-4950.

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. 

 

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.

A Place Where Cats Eat Too

If you love cats, there is one restaurant in Bangkok where you must eat. It is P Kitchen on Soi 18, which branches off Sukhumvit near the Asok exit from the sky train (BTS).

There is actually a tiny 4 after the P, so I suppose the correct name is P.4 Kitchen, but I never heard anybody call it that.

P.8 might be a better name, because that is how many cats I have counted while eating there. The cats are not in the restaurant, which is open-air (I felt a few sprinkles of rain one night), but next door.

A fence comes right up to the tables, and this is where they assemble. As you eat, they stare at you, and a cat who wants food knows how to exude devasating appeal. If you're heartless, you'll ignore them. If not, you'll toss a few bites over the fence.

The reason they are so determined is that the food at P Kitchen is very good. A small, family-run place, it turns out dishes that would cost a lot more, and perhaps not be as well prepared, at more pretentious places.

Western tourists eat there because they stay in the neighbohood, as I did, but the food has not been altered to please them.

One of the best dishes of my entire trip was P Kitchen's yam pak boong grob, or crispy morning glory with minced pork and shrimp.

Pak boong and morning glory are names for a long-stemmed green that crosses cultures in Asia. In this dish, it is lightly coated with lacy batter, like tempura, and fried until the batter becomes crisp. And it stays crisp, no matter how long it takes you to eat.

The minced pork and a few whole shrimp are in a bowl of spicy sweet sauce for dipping.

With this, I drank the fresh juice from a young coconut, then scraped out the tender flesh for dessert. The price for both was a little over $3.

Another time I had asparagus stir-fried with shrimp. Cut into short lengths, this Thai asparagus was slim and crunchy, nothing like the fatter spears in California markets. I also ordered crispy catfish salad.

Can you imagine such a fresh and interesting seafood dinner for $7? And this included fresh limeade (nam manao) and rice.

I've attempted to copy another P Kitchen dish that I liked very much, pork in lemon (actually lime) sauce with garlic and chile.

The pork was served like a salad over raw cabbage with lettuce underneath. Thais usually add a dash of sugar to such dishes, but this was not sweet, just fragrant with fresh lime juice balanced with fish sauce.

I stir-fried the pork, but I suspect the P Kitchen cook might have boiled it and then added the seasonings. That's what I'll try next time.  

P.4 Kitchen, 11/3 Sukhumvit Soi 18, Bangkok, Thailand 10110. Tel: 02-6634950. Open 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Closed Sunday.

PORK WITH LIME, GARLIC AND CHILE
Adapted from P.4 Kitchen, Bangkok

1 pound lean pork
1/2 small head cabbage
2 leaves lettuce
5 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon thinly slivered fresh red chile or 1 serrano chile, thinly sliced
White pepper
Mint sprigs

Cut the pork in very thin strips (less than 1/8-inch-thick) that are 1 1/2 to 2 inches long.  This is easy to do if the pork is partially frozen. Set aside.

Cut the cabbage in half lengthwise and remove the core. Now cut crosswise in 1/2-inch slices. Separate the cabbage layers. Line a serving plate with the lettuce leaves, then top with the cabbage.

Combine the lime juice, fish sauce and sugar in a small bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar.

Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and heat until very hot. Add the garlic, then immediately add the pork and stir-fry until cooked through and no pink color remains, about 5 minutes depending upon the heat and thickness of the meat.

Stir in the red chile, then add the lime juice mixture. Cook and stir about 1 minute, until the meat absorbs the flavors. Taste, check the seasoning and add more lime juice and/or fish sauce if needed. The taste should be bright with lime and not overly salty.

Sprinkle lightly with white pepper and turn out onto the cabbage. Garnish with mint sprigs.

Makes 4 servings.

 

Ngwanlee: It's The Same as Ever

Soi Langsuan has changed so much I hardly recognized it on this trip to Bangkok. The street is much more upscale, lined with smart residences, spas and restaurants. LeNotre is there, and so is Starbucks.

Instead of the restaurants I remember, among them Pan Pan, which was always crowded; the Hot Shoppe, Old World and the Bee Z Pub, I saw the Yaki Ten Japanese Bar and Restaurant, Le Pre Grill, Air Plane Restaurant and Cafe, Forlente Italian restaurant and The Ninth Cafe, which puts out Thai, Italian and fusion dishes.

Order The Ninth's stir-fried spicy spaghetti with basil leaves and you can finish with a slice of double chocolate cake, tiramisu or pannacotta with raspberry sauce. 

But the soi still has street food and sidewalk tables where office workers eat lunch. And Ngwanlee is still there, at the far end where Langsuan deadends at Lumpini Park.

Unlike its upscale surroundings, this Chinese/Thai restaurant is as plain as ever. But you go there to eat, not to look at a fancy dining room.

The best time to go is night. If it's not raining, the restaurant will be open to the stars. But this trip I went for lunch, which is served in a barracks like air-conditioned room with tinny tables, a linoleum floor and a gruff waitress.  

The food, as always, was wonderful. Three dishes and a rich tasting nam manao (limeade) with a touch of salt came to $10, plus a tip for the gruff but efficient server.

The plates were Chinese style, meaning my lunch would have served two or three. But I wanted all of the fried shrimp with garlic and pepper for myself. The tender, very fresh shrimp were butterflied and fried, then sprinkled with pepper and topped with golden flakes of fried garlic.  

Fried fish noodle would be noodles with fish, right? Well, not exactly. In Ngwanlee's version, the noodles are the fish, cut into pale, thin strips and mixed with bean sprouts and yellow chives in a light, broth-based sauce. This delicately seasoned dish is the opposite of the fiery food one expects in Thailand. 

For old times sake, I had to have a favorite from the past, pak boong fai dang, which means morning glory vegetable stir-fried in a red hot wok (fai is Thai for fire and dang is red). The greens come in a Chinese style brown sauce with good-sized chunks of garlic and a scattering of fermented soy beans.

The menu is long, and Ngwanlee has a thrifty way to adjust for rising costs without reprinting it. A disclaimer reads, "The price may be changed. Must be sorry here." But whatever the price, you will not be sorry that you ate there.

Ngwanlee Langsuan Restaurant, 101/25-26 Soi Langsuan, Patumwan, Bangkok, Thailand. Tel: (02) 251-8366