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The Answer to a Guessing Game

A few weeks ago, I posted a Thai guessing game. The idea was to guess the identity of a Bangkok restaurant's variation on one of the most popular Thai dishes in the United States.

Only one person got it right (congratulations, Anjali).  It was rad na. Here, that means soft wide rice noodles topped with Chinese broccoli and a thick, Chinese style gravy. 

At Patara, the ingredients are the same, but the preparation is radically different. There, sheets of fresh rice noodles are cut into squares, deep-fried and stacked, looking like crisp layers of filo pastry. Thin strips of beef and chunks of gai lan in a delicate sauce are spooned over the top.

Like this surprising rad na, Patara's food raises Thai cooking to a level that I hadn't seen before--traditional, yet imaginative and modern. 

Some of the dishes came from the first Patara, which opened in London in 1990. The Bangkok restaurant is in lively Thong Lor, far up a lane that branches off Sukhumvit 55.

The building is a refurbished Thai house. Inside, the look is contemporary but accented with antiques and Thai touches such as the Thai style day bed in the bar.

That bar produced the best cocktail that I had in Bangkok, the Lychee Pirinha, a blend of lychees, lime juice and rum. The long list of bar specialties includes a green mango margarita and a Bangkok martini infused with lemon grass and kaffir lime.

The Lychee Pirinha came from London, as did skewered lamb with panang curry sauce. That dish was introduced  to Bangkok with trepidation, because lamb isn't favored in Thailand. It turned out to be a hit, nonetheless. The taste brings to mind India, but the curry sauce is Thai. 

Stir-fried lettuce, new on the menu when I was there, was as simple and distinctive as the rad na. Placing a cover on the  intensely hot wok held in smoke that gave an edgy taste to the lettuce. 

Tiny appetizer dumplings were tinted with natural colors. Pork satay came wrapped in betel leaves. And soft shelled crab topped a green mango salad.

Big river prawns that looked more like small lobsters were speckled with green peppercorns and fried garlic, a different  interpretation of garlic pepper shrimp from others I saw in Bangkok, and very different from anything I've had at home.

And I had a rare chance to taste Thai primrose blossoms in a sweet and spicy salad. This dish is seasonal, and very few restaurants serve it, said Vitoon Sila-On of S&P, the restaurant group that includes Patara.

Founded by his mother, Patara Sila-On, S&P has grown to 100 or more restaurants and 200 bakery shops. Patara is expanding too. The latest branch opened recently in Beijing.

S&P food is more traditional than Patara's. In an S&P branch that looks out on the Chao Phrya river, I had very good green curry with beef, fried fish in sweet and sour mango sauce, garlic pepper spareribs, Chinese broccoli with salted fish and sticky rice with durian.

Patara is more upscale and innovative, as in dessert the night that I was there--young coconut ice cream with such typical Thai toppings as millet, lychees, jelly cubes and beans. In the midst of these sat a chocolate square with the restaurant name.

Only a small lighted sign on Sukhumvit 55 indicates the lane that leads to Patara.  My cab driver made several turns before he found it. To solve this problem, you can take the sky train to the Thong Lor exit, and the restaurant will send a tuk-tuk to pick you up.  

Patara Fine Thai Cuisine, 375 Soi Thong Lor 19, off Sukhumvit 55, Bangkok, Thailand. Tel:  0-2185-2960-1. Open for lunch and dinner daily.

Both S&P and Patara have published cookbooks. Patara's "In the Mood for Thai" explains how to make such dishes as the lamb with panang curry and the primrose salad and has an excellent section on Thai ingredients.  

One of the simpler recipes, easy for western cooks, is salmon steamed with black bean topping. 

PLA SALMON NUNG TAO SEE
Salmon in Black Bean and Fresh Ginger Crust
From Patara restaurant's cookbook, "In the Mood for Thai"

1 tablespoon Chinese black beans
1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon finely chopped small hot chiles, or to taste
3 tablepoons vegetable or chicken stock
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 pound salmon steaks, lightly dusted with flour
Parsley sprigs and fine strips of red chile for garnish

Soak the beans in 1/2 cup warm water for 10 minutes. Squeeze out and reserve the water, then chop the beans.

Heat the oil in a wok. Add the ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the chopped beans, chiles and the stock. Continue to stir-fry.

Stir in the sugar, pepper and 2 tablespoons of the bean soaking liquid. Cook until reduced and thick.

Place the salmon on a heatproof plate lightly coated with oil. Spoon the black bean sauce over the salmon and coat thoroughly.

Place on a rack in a steamer over boiling water. Cover and cook 7 minutes, or until the salmon is cooked through.

Remove the salmon from the steamer. Divide into 2 portions and place each on a heated  plate. Garnish each with a parsley sprig and red chile strips.

Makes 2 servings.

 

A Wat with a Link to L.A.

The main reason to go to Wat Pho in Bangkok is to see the giant reclining Buddha inside the temple. 

Another is to visit the Wat Pho massage school.

And a third is to eat at a restaurant across the street.

Wat Pho attracts so many tourists that you feel pressured to walk quickly around the golden Buddha in order to make room for others. No place to sit and contemplate, and no time for that.

With Thai companions, I escaped the crowd into a more peaceful area, the monks' quarters, where we sought out an altar dedicated to Pha Thammaracha-Nutwat.

This monk came to Los Angeles in 1973 and served as head monk of Wat Thai in North Hollywood from 1979 to 2002. At the same time, he taught at Wat Pho, where he passed away in 2002.

With me was Pramorte (Pat) Tila, who was on the original board of directors of Wat Thai and was involved in building the temple.

Pat Tila lives in Thailand now. His son, Jet, was active in Hollywood's Thai Town  and the L.A. restaurant and cooking school scene until he moved to Las Vegas to become executive chef of Wazuzu in the Wynn Encore.

But I couldn't leave the wat without visiting the massage school, where students are trained in classical Thai massage, and customers serve as guinea pigs. 

The massages are communal. Modesty isn't an issue. You remain fully clothed. However, the guy next to me took his shirt off, which was not a pretty sight.

In years past, I came and went to the school like a regular, walking through the quiet grounds with nobody around. It was enchanting, like spending a moment in  "The King and I." Now, the school is full of tourists.   

The price for a massage has more than doubled since those days. But at less than $12 for an hour, it's still a bargain. The rate for Thais is less than half what foreigners pay.

Leaving the wat, we crossed the street to the Coconut Palm Restaurant, which is frequented by locals and students from a nearby commercial college. Tourists must find it too, because the long menu is in English and Thai.

Thais are picky about what they eat, and my friends critiqued every dish. I listened when Jet praised the mee grob. An expert at cooking almost anything, he has long been my personal guide to Thai food.

This mee grob was spicy and sweet, properly crisp and not sticky. And it was natural in color rather than tinted with catsup or chili sauce to make it look more appetizing. The garnishes included cross sections of pickled garlic heads, scallion tops and dried shrimp.

Jet also liked the filling for  khanom beaung, a Vientamese style crisp pancake folded over sweetened pickled radish, pork, dried shrimp, peanuts and bean sprouts. 

Pat Tila said that fried fish cakes (tod mun pla) were too loose and not sufficiently chewy. This doesn't mean that they didn't taste good.

Our driver, Sert, wanted to have rad na, because the Coconut Palm makes his favorite version of this rice nooodle dish. Pat spoke up that the sauce needed more nam pla (fish sauce). This would have made it saltier.

We also ate very spicy pork larb, prawn salad with lemongrass and roasted chile paste and fried rice with shrimp paste, which was sweet, spicy--and shrimpy. The bill for six dishes and drinks was around $15.

I would have gone back another day, but Bangkok's notorious traffic has to be factored into any plans. And I was staying in a part of town so unreachable at peak hours that one night a taxi driver simply refused to go there.

Coconut Palm Restaurant, 394/3-5 Maharaj Road. Pranakorn, Bangkok 10200, Thailand. (Tel) 0-2622-2246.

Searching for the Best Kao Soi

The plane had barely touched down when my friends and I raced off to find the best kao soi in Chiang Mai.

This soupy dish of soft and crunchy noodles in coconut broth is a northern specialty. I've eaten it in Los Angeles at a restaurant that specializes in northern food, but now I would be able to taste it at the source.

A quick consultation with hotel employees and we were off to Lamduan Kaosoi, a fan-cooled open-air restaurant that has been in business for 70 years.

Here the kitchen is really open--to the street. Crammed with pots and bowls, it was soon to yield a delicious lunch.

The only tourists in the place, we sat at a heavy, elaborately carved table facing a row of Buddhas placed on a high shelf. The remaining tables were crowded with Thais--it's obviously a popular restaurant.

We started with crunchy fried sticks of kabocha squash to dip in a syrupy sweet-sour sauce. The taste was amazing.

Pork satay was just as good. The meat was cut very thin and threaded on sticks with a single square of glistening golden fat at the end.

The accompanying peanut sauce was spooned in a shallow pool on a pink plate. And we munched on crisp diced cucumber and shallots as we ate the satay.

Now it was time for the main show, Lamduan's famous kao soi. We had three styles to choose from, pork, beef and chicken. It wasn't a question of putting different meats in the same broth, but seasoning each differently.

My pork broth was slightly spicy and sweet and tasted of coconut milk. The chicken kao soi was similar, but the beef kao soi was meatier, and the spices were  more robust.

Each bowl had soft noodles in the broth and crisp noodles on top.  For condiments, we added pickled mustard greens and sliced shallots and squeezed in juice from tiny limes.

We drank green pennywort juice and juice made from local dried longans, which the restaurant sells. They're stacked at the front, one type for eating, the other for making the drink.

Various tempting desserts were on sale too, and with leaf-wrapped coconut sweets in hand, we boarded our van, very happy with our first meal in Thailand and really happy about the price--$10 for five people.  

Lamduan Kaosoi, Faharm Road, the road along the east bank of the Ping River, north of Rama 9 Bridge, by the Chinese Church. These aren't my directions, but those on the restaurant's card. The hours are  8 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Chiang Mai's Top Choices

Three days in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand weren't enough, but 30 days wouldn't have been enough either.

There's a lot to explore in a city with a long history and 300 temples, surrounded by some of the most luxuriant countryside imaginable.  

Chiang Mai is the take-off point for elephant camps, where you can watch shows and  enroll in mahout-training classes, and for shopping, because it's a center of such crafts as painted umbrellas, pale green Thai celadon, silks, silver and gems.

For food lovers, its greatest attraction may be the opportunity to taste on home ground northern dishes that have become top hits abroad, like the spicy green papaya salad som tam.

Usually som tam is raw, but the photo shows an interesting variation, fried som tam. (Check my previous post on Thailand's nationwide som tam competition and the winners who are making their prize versions in Los Angeles.)

Other specialties not to miss are kao soi, or soft and crunchy  noodles in coconut-flavored curry; hung lay curry, with its overtones of sweet spices; satay, local sausages and spicy dips such as nam prik noom, made with green chiles, and nam prik ong, which combines pork and tomatoes.  

You don't eat the dips with chips but with another regional specialty, steamed sticky rice. With one hand, you take a little rice from a straw container, form it into a ball and then scoop up a savory mouthful with it as gracefully as you can.

Unlike clogged, hectic Bangkok, Chiang Mai is smaller and manageable. You can actually get in a cab or tuk-tuk and go directly to your destination. My time there may have been limited, but every day was crammed with wonderful sights and tastes. Here are a dozen  highlights. 

1. Most Thai moment: Making merit by offering food to the monks who line up at Warorot market early in the morning. A vendor there sells packages made up for this purpose. The 60-cent meal includes a vegetable curry, rice, water and sweets. After placing this in a monk's bowl, you kneel and receive a chanted blessing.

2. Favorite dish: Hung lay curry. This Burmese influenced pork curry is a Chiang Mai specialty that requires powdered spices and a spice paste that are available only there. I have the spices, and I swear I will learn to make it.

3. Oddest dish: A plate of grilled German style sausages with mashed potatoes and sauerkarut at Palaad Tawanron, an open-air restaurant high on a jungly hill where you can watch the sunset over Chiang Mai.

The mashed potatoes are sweet, and the sauerkraut is more like stir-fried cabbage. The dish is worth ordering just for the novelty, but there's plenty of Thai food on the menu. 

Palad Tawanron, top of Suthep Road behind Chiang Mai University. Entrance via rear gate to Chiang Mai zoo. Tel: 053--216-039.

4. Best food buy: A big sack of fragrant tea composed of dried jasmine and chrysanthemum flowers, dried pandan leaves and tea leaves.

I found this at Warorot market, a fabulous place to shop for spices, curry pastes and other Thai cooking essentials. It was so interesting I could have spent the three days there. 

5. Best non-food buy: An original painting by Chiang Mai artist Punpetch. I loved his bold geometric design in strong primary colors.

Punpetch works at Maesa Elephant Camp. And, yes, he is an elephant. He and his colleagues bring their paints and brushes into the arena and produce art works in a variety of styles--flowers, landscapes, imaginative designs, elephant portraits.

The paintings go from the easels to a gallery. Buy one and you get the artist's photo.

Maesa Elephant Camp: Town office, 119/9 Tapae Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai. Tel: (66 53) 20 6247. 

6. Most beautiful lunch place: The terrace of Pongyang Angdoi resort, where you look out on hills thick with palms, bamboo and teak trees, orchids and frangipani. And a waterfall too.

Good dishes include fried salty pork strips, smoky tasting local mushrooms, wild boar with fresh green peppercorns, galangal and Thai eggplants and, for dessert, ice cream frozen in a tiny pineapple.

Pongyang Angdoi Resort, 49/3 Moo 2 Tambol Pongyang, Amphur Mea-Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Tel: (66 53) 879151-3.

7. Most beautiful cooking school: It's at the super posh Four Seasons Resort, a large open air classroom where you look out at the gardens as you stir-fry. 

If I had mega bucks--rooms cost hundreds of dollars a night--I would study there. I did get to watch chef instructor Pitak Srichan prepare one dish--a salad of white turmeric, young ginger, sawtooth herb, galangal and other exotics wrapped with grilled chicken in an egg net, then rolled and sliced like sushi. 

Four Seasons Resort, Mae Rim-Samoeng Old Road, Mae Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66  53) 298-181.

8. Best breakfast: Fresh green guava juice, dragon fruit chunks, green tea croissants and rice topped with spicy stir-fried morning glory vine and wood ears at the Shangri-La Hotel.

Shangri-La Hotel, 89/8 Chang Klan Road, Muang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 253-888.

9. Most touristy experience: What tango shows are to Buenos Aires, khantoke dinners are to northern Thailand. I can't imagine they get much better than that at Khum Khantoke.

This huge restaurant packs in hundreds of diners and puts on a grand show of regional dances. Meanwhile, you sample local dishes from blue and white Thai bowls that are constantly refilled.  I liked the hung lay curry here best of any I tasted.

Tradition is to sit on the floor, but your feet are in a well, so no discomfort. Afterwards you go into the gardens to watch tall balloons ignited, then sent aloft to float away like giant fireflies.

Khum Khantoke, 139 Moo 4, Nong Pakrung, A.Muang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 304-121.

10. Most startling drink:  Napa wine, not from Napa Valley in California but from  Mae Chan Winery in Chiang Rai. 

Current releases include Napa Mieng Shiraz-Black Beauty, Napa Mieng Shiraz Reserve, Shiraz Premium Vintage 2004 and Dornfelder Tempranillo 2008.

At the tasting I attended, the prices were high, around $40 a bottle. But you don't get Napa wine for nothing, certainly not in Thailand.

Mae Chan Winery, 23 Moo 9, Ban Pamieng, Tambon Patueng, Amphoe, Mae Chan, Chiang Rai, Thailand. Tel: 66 (0) 5391 8440.

11. Greatest regret: That I didn't have time to explore the foodstalls lining a busy street near a university. There must have been hundreds of them. I'm still hungry thinking about the wonderful food that I missed. 

12. Best Chiang Mai cookbook:  The only one I came across in Chiang Mai was written in Thai (I bought it anyway). But at Asia Books in Bangkok, I found "A Passion for Thai Cooking"  by Sompon and Elizabeth Nabnian of the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. Beautifully illustrated, it has recipes for all the top northern dishes.  

Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, 47/2 Moon Muang Road, Opposite Tha Phae Gate, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 206-388. 

Easy, Quick: Thai Rice Soup

Rice soup for breakfast is an Asian thing.

My hotel in Bangkok offered it as one of two Thai options. (The other was an omelet accompanied by a sweet, spicy dipping sauce.)

I liked it so well that I came up with my own version--for dinner, not for breakfast.

It's so easy, you can put it together in 15 minutes, as long as you have cooked rice on hand. And if you have to cook the rice, it doesn't take much longer.

You can dress up rice soup with a variety of garnishes, but my hotel kept it simple, and so do I. What it has to have is a generous dash of pepper, not a pinch. This aromatic spiciness makes it interesting.

My hotel added diced pork.  I put in chicken, and it would be delicious with shrimp or fish.

The recipe makes one big bowl. For me, that's a complete meal, with a simple plate of sliced cucumber and cherry tomatoes on the side.  But you can divide it into two servings, then eat it with something more substantial--like Thai takeout.

THAI RICE SOUP
Khao Tom

3 tablespoons jasmine rice
2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup ground chicken
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 slice gingerroot, cut in half
Salt, if needed
1 green onion, white part and some of the top, chopped
A few cilantro leaves, chopped

Combine the rice and 1 cup water in a small saucepan. Cover and cook until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender. Set aside.

Heat a wok over medium high heat. Add the oil and heat.  Add the garlic and cook until golden, then add the chicken and cook and stir until no longer pink.

Add the pepper, fish sauce, ginger and 1 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil. Add the cooked rice and bring to a boil again. Taste and add salt if needed.

Turn into 1 large or 2 medium soup bowls, removing the ginger if desired. Top each serving with green onions and cilantro.

Makes 1 large or 2 medium servings. 
 

A Personal Best of Bangkok

Was it good to get back to  Los Angeles after 10 days in steamy Bangkok? No. I miss the  soft, warm evenings, the scent of jasmine, the lush gardens, the magnificent palaces, the golden Buddhas, the friendly people who responded when I asked for directions in lame Thai. And most of all I miss the food.

It's everywhere, in restaurants, food courts and on the street, where hawker carts  present endless temptation.

The best of Bangkok? It's presumptuous to make such a list. There's just too much to explore. So here are a dozen personal highlights. Details about restaurants will come later.

1. The most beautiful restaurants (that I visited): The Blue Elephant is in a colonial style building with the antique charm of the old Raffles hotel in Singapore. The address is 233 S. Sathorn Road, Yannawa; Patara occupies a refurbished teak house at 375 Soi Thonglor 19, which opens into Sukhumvit 55. Baan  Khanitha (in the photo)  is in an elegant Thai house at 36/1, Sukhumvit Soi 23.  

2. The most beautiful place to have lunch: The restaurant at the Jim Thompson House and Museum, Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road.  Get a table on the porch beside the fish pond. 

3. The best non-alcoholic drink: A young coconut, hacked open so that you can drink the juice and then scoop out the tender flesh. Pick one up on the street, or ask for nam maprao in a restaurant.

4. The best alcoholic drink: The Lychee Pirinha at Patara. This blend of lychees, lime juice and rum  is sweet and fruity but not cloying, because the bartender doesn't stint on the rum. 

5. The best desserts: Durian and sticky rice anywhere. I also liked a taro and coconut pudding in a handmade clay dish.  I bought this at a market on a klong, expecting to eat it and turn in the container. However, the dish was part of the price (about $1) and traveled home in my carry-on.

6. The oddest after-dinner "mints": The guess-what handed to diners at Cabbages & Condoms, a restaurant founded by the Population and Community Development Association to promote safe sex with frankness and humor. The food is excellent. The restaurant is on Soi 12, off Sukhumvit.  

7. The Most Fun Night Out:  Eating with friends at rickety tables set out in the streets of Chinatown. We had Teochew style peppery pork soup, duck wonton, barbecued duck and Chinese sweets, including black sesame-stuffed rice balls in spicy ginger syrup and kao tung yen, a bowl of syrup containing gingko nuts, chestnuts, longans, jujubes and more. The bowl was heaped with ice, which melted immediately in the hot night.

8. The most thoughtful gesture: Sinks of superhot water in which to dip utensils before eating at the food court in Mahboonkrong. You'll probably spend hours in this enormous shopping mall, working up an appetite like the two girls in the photo, who are sharing a quick lunch. 

There's a great variety of food to choose from and a good selection of Thai sweets, including durian and sticky rice. You can walk right into the building from the Sky Train. The food court is on the 6th floor.  

9. The Best bacon: It may seem odd to put bacon on a best of Bangkok list. But it's so rare to find really good, crisp bacon in a hotel buffet that I had to include it. The place is the Centara Grand at Central World, where the breakfast buffet is on the 24th floor.

But the best coffee was at my bed and breakfast, the Baan Sukhumvit in Soi 20. You couldn't help but have a good day after starting with something so rich, strong and wonderful.

10. The best market in Bangkok: Or Tor Kor, located across from the Chatuchak weekend market. The city's elite come to shop in this spacious, clean, cheerful market, where you can see everything that is in season, buy curry pastes and cooking equipment and eat delicious grilled meats, curries, soups, noodles,  sweets and many other typical dishes.     

11. The best market outside Bangkok: A narrow, cramped market on a train track at Mae Klong. When the trains come through, vendors pull in their awnings to make room, but not the trays of food that are flat enough to pass under the cars without damage.

My friend Jet Tila got scarily close  to take a video of the train, which he has posted on his Facebook page, but I hid in an aisle. 

12. The best foot massage (and you will need this): Massage places (legitimate) line the streets, so comfort for aching feet is never far away. At  OAY, you're greeted with a cup of lightly sweetened, pandan-flavored Chinese tea. Then comes an hour of expert massage that will soothe and restore the most weary tourist. The address is 3/3 Sukhumvit Soi 18. Ask for Pla. The price? Just under $6, so give a nice tip.

A Thai Guessing Game

What's that yummy, crunchy dish in the photo? Answer: It's one of the most popular Thai dishes in the United States, but you'd never recognize the way it's been transformed by a restaurant in Bangkok.  

What restaurant? And what is the dish? You'll find out when I get back to blogging. Just home from Thailand, I'm coping with jet lag, a toe bashed at a boat landing outside Bangkok and other post-travel issues. 

I've hit that in-between stage, not quite here and wishing I were still there so that I could return to restaurants I liked and eat a lot more delicious street food. A 15-cent stick of sate on the street was superb, and seafood noodle soup dished up by a boat cook on the klongs was anything but humble.    

Although Bangkok is far more urbanized and westernized than when I last saw it, the food is as appealing as ever. Thai food in the United States may be good, but it's just a pale hint of what's over there. 

One example: Right now, pomegranates are in season. Our markets display the usual red globes, but in Thailand, you can choose from Indian, Chinese and Thai pomegranates, not to mention rose apples, dragon fruit, pungent durian, mangosteens, rambutans, papayas and giant mangoes.  

Fresh tamarind leaves? Betel leaves? Not in our markets. Imagine living where ginger, galangal. sweet, aromatic pandan, banana trees and coconut palms can grow in your yard. Wherever you look, there is something to excite the taste buds. Even in the middle of a broad, traffic-clogged street, a woman hawks some of the best fried bananas in Bangkok.

McDonald's and Starbucks are there. So is Lenotre and more Italian bistros than I could count. But that's not all bad. Swensen's ice cream has adapted to Asia with a pleasing dessert, a sundae composed of vanilla ice cream and translucent palm seeds, topped with corn kernels and jackfruit, whipped cream and a cherry. 

Even though it may be fiery with chiles, Thai food is refined, ornamental, fresh and full of flavor. What I've been cooking at home looks plain and lumpy in comparison. There's no choice but to try cooking Thai now, and when something turns out well, I'll put it on the blog. 

Aharn Thai aroy mak mak. That's my attempt to say in Thai something we already know:  Thai food  is very, very delicious.