Just a rant (having nothing to do with Thailand)

Julia Child once said, when asked about what she thought of haute cuisine, “it’s so pretty on the plate, you just know someone’s fingers have been all over it”. And I reckon that her reaction to the esoteric food craze sweeping the nation right now might be similar.

I had a meal recently (before leaving for Thailand) that was so spectacularly bad I would sound like a jerk if I were to write about it because nobody would believe me that it was truly as bad is it was. It began with the Amuse-Bouche. From the moment it hit the table I adjusted my expectations, certain that I had five courses of disappointment ahead of me (and I was right). The Amuse spoke volumes about the chef’s ability and creativity. “Beets Three Ways” the menu proclaimed. We received a shot glass with diced beets, pink beet foam and a thinly shaved yellow beet. I suppose this could be viewed as a fine demonstration of someone’s knife skills, ability to use a mandolin and a hand blender, but not much else. There was no flavor what so ever to the dish, not even a sprinkle of salt. Where we supposed to taste the essence of the ‘terroire’ that the beets had been pulled from? Or was it tarragon scented oxygen that had been pumped into the foam? I was lost. Perhaps I’m just too dense to grasp a dish so esoteric in nature. From there though our dinner quickly slid into a Nietzsche-like abyss.

On another occasion, I was at a wine tasting and the visiting chef to the winery made vegetarian sushi with “green tea and lemongrass caviar”; a glistening pile of crystal clear, flavorless pearls atop the sushi. After tasting the sushi and “caviar” I inquired with him as to how it was made. Very enthusiastically, he pulled several syringes from underneath the table and explained how he had mixed some noxious-sounding chemicals together with a “lemongrass-green-tea-infusion” and then, using the syringes, dripped that mixture into a bath of some other chemical that formed the balls. An audible gasp escaped me, I had just unknowingly consumed three different chemicals that sounded more like they should be used to clean car parts rather than as an ingredient in cooking. With a big, pleased-with-himself grin on his face he went on to enlighten me to the concept of “molecular gastronomy”.

With all do respect, there are some chefs that do that “esoteric thing” well. Despite leaving hungry and broke, I had a fabulous meal at WD50, Wylie Dufresnies restaurant in New York City. And, like a Muslim saving for a trip to Mecca, I’ve been saving my pennies for a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Il Bulli and the Fat Duck (I just keep getting distracted by places like Thailand, and the West Indies). But, a majority of my “molecular gastronomic”, and otherwise esoteric eating experiences have left me unsatisfied and hungry for an answer to a nagging question: when did novelty win over flavor when it comes to cooking? I fully understand the desire of a chef to come up with something new and interesting but what is so novel and new about copying Ferran Adria, the “grandfather” of molecular gastronomy, who’s been doing foams and faux caviar for over a decade? I also understand the importance of presentation and that we eat with our eyes first, but our taste buds should come in at a close second. No?

There are two basic concepts that, for me at least, cooking should accomplish – the first is to taste good and the second is to nourish the body and soul. If you cannot accomplish this, then what is the purpose of being in the kitchen? A Picasso on the plate is great if you want to eat canvas, acrylic and acetone. But, I like to think that good taste never goes out of style…

I broke my fast with a beer and a cigarette...

Ok, not really… I did, however, break my fast after a mere two days of clay shakes and espresso colonics. Call me crazy, but I prefer to take my food orally.

Princess is still fasting but fortunately for me I could wait it out at The Sanctuary’s fantastic avo-dairy-fish-vegetarian restaurant. The restaurant makes it quite convenient for “fast breakers” as they have a whole “cleansing menu” from which to order; full of bright, fresh, veggie salads, veggie dips, raw and cooked soups and fresh juices. And, although I learned the hard way to steer clear of those Indi-Thai-Euro-American restaurants – The Sanctuary is definitely the exception. For the “non-fasters” they offer a range of dishes from Indian fish curries, Thai dishes and pizza to a full (vegetarian) English breakfast, a Sunday brunch menu that will make you want to stay through the weekend, and fresh fruit juices, fruit smoothies and wraps, a full bar and wine list.

At 7:30pm (almost) every night they offer a communal “family style” dinner ranging between 150 – 180 bhat (about $5). The menu could be anything from Thai to Mexican, usually 3 or 4 dishes, and everyone sits together, a great way to meet fellow travelers – but you could just as easily keep to yourself and whittle away an entire month swinging from a hammock, reading a book and slurping down fresh coconut water.

The Wellness Center at the Sanctuary offers several different fasting programs with a super friendly, supportive staff that is there to guide you and assist you every step of the way (they guided and assisted me, but when I became too light headed to walk, they also said that I should stop fasting). Moon, a hyper-energetic and always smiling Thai from the North who’s been fasting since he was 11, runs the fasting program. But, the fasting program itself is based on a program set forth by Dr. Richard Anderson, author of “Cleanse and Purify Thyself”. There is a juice bar and “social hall” for fasters only, with a library and hammocks where everyone who is fasting knows to come at certain times each day to receive their shakes or herbs, to sit around and chat with fellow fasters, or to watch movies in the evening before the room closes for the night. A sign is posted, “Out of respect for fasters, please do not eat in this room”, and the Sanctuary bar and restaurant is a distance enough away to keep the noise and food smells at bay. The Wellness Center offers a full spa with everything you could possibly need to relax; massage, tai chi, steam room, mani-pedicure, waxing, belly dancing, meditation and a full gym. And, at the various bungalows around that same beach and one beach over, there is reiki, Thai boxing and at least a dozen other offerings for health-minded folk.

After a breakfast of fresh, sweet, cold mango sprinkled with sea salt and a squeeze of fresh lemon; lunch of a spicy, crisp Moroccan carrot salad and dinner of fresh veggies with garlicky, smoky roasted eggplant dip – I finally feel myself again. Poor Princess, she’ll just have to listen to me talk about all the yummy food while she goes hungry.

Time for something completely different...

My stomach is gurgling. I dreamt of thin crust, brick oven pizza (with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes) all night long and woke up this morning to a shake of bentonite clay and psylium husk. Utterly revolting and totally unsatisfying…

It was little more than a week ago that I was roaming through a dizzying array of food stalls at the “Choa Far Variety Weekend Market” in Phuket Town and sucking down bowls of spicy rice noodles with crispy pork skin, bean sprouts and shrimp; gnawing on soft, fatty morsels of tripe satay and succulent pork satay and washing it all down with tall, icy bottles of Singha at Jae Yoa (pronounced “Jay-Yo”), a 50 year old noodle shop on Patipat Road in Phuket Town.



Mr. Ray, our guide that day, was a friendly taxi driver that picked us up at the airport a few days prior and offered to give a tour of Phuket, since our time there was limited. “No touristy places. I want to see Thailand.”, Princess said as he tried to sell us on a trip to the overly-touristed beach of Patong, a monkey circus and a trip to a shopping mall. “Somewhere good to eat”, I said, gesturing as if I was putting something in my mouth. “No problem”, Mr. Ray replied, in very good English.

He took us to Raiwai Beach, a small Thai fishing village.

We walked the fish stalls and vegetable stalls and watched fishermen mend their traps.


Mr. Ray and I inspected the food vendors and filled up on crispy, fried chicken wings (Princess wasn’t to keen on that) and chewy, sweet roties as thin as crepe and filled with palm sugar and sweetened condensed milk.



Next, we were off to a trip to the fruit market where we filled our bellies on mangusteens, darien, mangoes and rambuten.


And then the noodle shop…


So, how the hell did I end up here, drinking clay? Aside from the 12-hour bus ride and death defying ride on a longtail boat in a churning, tumultuous sea?

I had this brilliant idea a few months ago that doing a fast/cleanse/detox would be a nice thing for my body after the surgery I had in October. And, after much research on the web, I booked myself into a “fasting” bungalow at The Sanctuary Resort & Spa at Haad Thien Beach on Ko Pha Ngang. However, I started having doubts last week whether I could make it through a fast after enjoying so much tasty food, or even if I still wanted to do one. There’s so much food to explore in Thailand, why do I want to starve myself? But no backing out, I had paid a deposit.

Haad Thien Beach is only accessible by either a very treacherous ride in a longtail boat (a 10-foot long, wooden boat with an outboard engine at the end of a pole mounted on the back – hence the name) or a very treacherous ride in a taxi (if you can find one to take you there) on an unpaved mountain road, along a cliffs edge. I chose the boat ride because I hear drowning is a more peaceful death than falling over a cliff. Being strangled to death by Princess hadn’t occurred to me when I made the initial decision to take the longtail boat. But, as we were tossed about in 5-foot waves and our luggage became waterlogged and a dripping wet Princess began gesticulating wildly and hollering something in Spanish that sounded like a rapid-fire machine gun I knew my death, one way or the other, was eminent.

The Sanctuary, built into the cliffs along the beach and surrounded by a lush, green jungle is the perfect location for that “getting away from it all” feeling. And as soon as the excess adrenaline from the boat ride had worn off, and my hands stopped shaking, and I had checked into my thatched, Thai style bungalow up on stilts with tropical forest all around – I slipped into the easy, relaxed mood of the place and decided once again that a fast would be a really good idea.

But that was three days ago. And now, as I await another bentonite and psyllium shake and a coffee colonic, all I can think is that I would KILL for a beer and pizza…

If anyone wants to rescue me, please send a helicopter to The Sanctuary - and make sure there's cold beer in the cooler!

Pat's Thai Home Cooking

I have to give a big thanks to Pat Thingtong for my private cooking lessons and allowing Princess and me to stay in her home. My past few posts don't really even do justice to how great the experience of cooking with her was (even though she did say I should give up and do something else when it came to my fruit and vegetable carving lesson!) - but jet lag and being thoroughly sickened by some bad restaurant food has put me way behind on posting about my adventures. I knew I shouldn't have listened to Princess' "warnings", I was doing just fine until I went to a "safe" Euro-Americana-Indo-Thai-sit-down restaurant!

A few of the reasons that I chose Pat's cooking class is that many of the classes offered in Thailand are in a theater setting where you watch but do not participate. Or, the prep has been done by someone else and you merely assemble the ingredients. The classes Pat gave me were private and tailored to my cooking level and entirely hands on, she would show me how to do something and then let me do it. I prepped and cooked all of my own dishes. As a bonus, her outdoor teaching kitchen looks out onto a beautiful garden and is very open and comfortable to work in. Pat was extremely informative and took me on a great market tour. She has a really down-to-earth, easy-going and warm personality and really made me feel very welcome in her home for four days.

At some point I'll get back to posting more recipes and dishes that she taught me how to cook. And if anyone is planning a trip to Southern Thailand, I highly recommend taking a class with Pat. She can accommodate individuals and groups. You can find her here.

Pad Thai

Pat's Pad Thai
(reprinted with her permission)

10 oz. narrow rice noodles
5 shelled prawns
3 eggs
2 tablespoons **white radish pickle, minced
3 bunches chinese leeks or scallions, cut into 1 inch sprigs
1 teaspoon ground, dried chillies
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons **fish sauce
1/2 tablespoon tamarind Juice (tamarind paste, thinned with water)

*White radish pickle is available in most Asian stores. It is commonly a Japanese or Chinese brand that is available. There are two types; sweet and salty. Use the sweet variety for Pad Thai, although if salt is all that is available, soak and rinse them first.

**Fish sauce should be purchased in small bottles so that it is used before it spoils. Good quality fish sauce should be the color of brandy and have a pleasant salty taste, not fishy or bitter. If fish sauce is too dark or black it will be bitter and should not be used.

Pat shows me how to make an excellent Pad Thai, without it being soupy or too sweet. She uses pickled white radish (available at most Asian stores), tamarind juice, fish sauce and sugar to create the contrasting flavors. Also, she says most people are cheap and use too much noodle.

We started out with a hot wok, adding a bit of oil and some garlic and shallots and sweating them just until they began to color. Then, we added thin rice noodles and just enough water to soften them, then fry them, turning constantly to prevent sticking. We removed the noodles from the pan and set them aside. Next, into the hot wok we added diced tofu and allowed it to cook until a crust began to form on it (otherwise it will fall apart). Moving the tofu to the side of the wok, we added the prawns to the center of the wok and allowed them to cook. When barely cooked, we added the pickled white radish, ground, dried chilies, sugar, fish sauce and tamarind juice and allowed that to simmer until the prawns were cooked through, then we added the noodles back in and pushed them to the side. Next, we added the eggs (lightly scrambled) spreading them into a thin layer on the bottom of the pan. When set, we mixed everything together with a scraping motion using the corner of the spatula. At this point you can taste it and add either more fish sauce (for salt) or sugar to your liking. At the very end, we added chopped Chinese leek greens (scallions will do) and garnished the dish with fresh bean sprouts.

Snack time

Pat's Outdoor Teaching Kitchen

One thing that really stands out the most about Southern Thai food is that in every dish there is a play between contrasting tastes such as sweet and salty – like the sweet sticky rice stuffed with ground, dried shrimps, black pepper and rolled in sugar and salt that we had for breakfast - or spicy and sour – like Tom Yum Soup, or a combination of all four tastes. To me, Meung Kum, my new favorite snack, best exemplifies this balance.


The components of Meung Kum: slivered garlic, diced (Not minced. Very important!) shallot, diced ginger, dried shrimps, roasted peanuts, roasted, shaved coconut, slices of a tart little green fruit called “Ta Ling Ping” (but lime can be used instead – and it is equally as delicious), sliced Thai Bird chili peppers and a sweet salty sauce of shrimp paste, fish sauce, palm sugar and finely ground and roasted coconut.


Pat shows me how to form a cup in my hand made of a cha ploo leaf (also known as a ‘pepper leaf’) – a leaf looking similar to spinach but having an herbaceous, savory flavor. She drops a piece of each aromatic into my Cha Ploo cup and tops it with the sweet shrimp sauce and rolls it closed. “This dish is about chewing”, she says and tells me to put the whole parcel in my mouth and chew, and chew and chew. I do so, and with each bite my taste buds sing. With the first chew, I taste sweet from ginger and palm sugar, then salty from dried shrimp, then spicy from the chili and sour form the Ta Ling Ping (don’t you just love that name?!) – it’s amazingly fresh and juicy tasting and much more balanced then I had expected. For westerners, often the sauce is left out because people find the taste to be too strong, or a syrup of just palm sugar is used without the shrimp or fish sauce. I try the Meung Kum prepared in all three ways but without the shrimp sauce the Meung Kum tastes like an unfinished dish, lackluster and uninteresting. The sauce really makes all the flavors come together.

To market, to market...

Our day started early with a trip to Baan Ting Koa market, near Phuket Town.

A CURRY PASTE VENDOR
This is what the Union Square Farmers Market is missing!

3 DIFFERENT SHRIMP PASTES
Each paste is of a different quality. Pat explains that you can tell the better quality shrimp paste because it has lots of little black dots in it, shrimp eyeballs. If there are not a lot of shrimp eyeballs, the the paste has been made with some other type of fish.

KEFFIR LIMES and FRESH GREEN PEPPERCORNS
We'll be cooking the whole peppercorns into the curry.
They are eaten just like any other type of vegetable!

WING BEANS


And so many mushrooms and chillies!

So many funky fruits vegetables!


FRESH EGG NOODLES, RICE NOODLES & TOFU


LOTS OF SPICES & OTHER STRANGE INGREDIENTS


But first, Thai breakfast:
coconut and sweet corn jellies, pumpkin custard with coconut
and bananas with black beans and sticky rice:

Heading south...

This is how winter should be… 80 degrees and balmy, my shirt sticking to my back, hair frizzed out from the humidity, 3 showers a day to keep cool and swatting away blood sucking mosquitoes the size of golf balls.

Princess and I arrive in Phuket Wednesday afternoon. Lots and lots of farang around – “hippie” backpackers living out the Bohemian dream, college kids, older folks enjoying life after kicking the kids out of the house and finally being able to travel. It’s a mixed bag, people from all over the world and of every age.

After an hours wait at the airport, we finally get a “legal” taxi. We have been cautioned to use only the legal taxis in most parts of Thailand. The illegal taxis at the airport cost twice as much and will often change their price once they have your bags in the car. They will also try to take you to a trinket shop or a tailor who offers to make you the finest silk suit – with the taxi driver earning a percentage of whatever sale is made. Our driver tells us that there are only 45 legal taxis on Phuket, an island larger than Singapore. I find this a little hard to believe, but we did wait an hour at the airport and had quite a lot of offers from not-legal taxis. Outside of the airport there are many ways of getting around – motorbike taxis, the legal ones wear red vests. Just wave one down and hop on the back of the scooter! Then there are what I like to refer to as “truck-trucks”, it’s like a tuk-tuk, only instead of a modified motorbike pulling a passenger carriage, it’s a very tiny truck with a seating area for maybe four people in the back. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny, like a clown car with a passenger carriage on the back. With the motorbike taxis and truck-trucks, you have to agree on your price first. It’s a good thing I have Princess with me. I hate to haggle, but Princess, she loves it and she didn’t earn the nickname “Princess” because she’s nice…

We head south down a busy roadway past Wats (temples) and shopping malls and an oddly astonishing number of hip, urban looking furniture stores. It’s a strange dichotomy to see a Wat next to a shopping mall. The farang influence abounds here. But for the fact that there are no front lawns or sidewalks, the area we are in could almost be considered “suburban” by Western standards. Busy roadways, houses packed densely together, strip malls. There are no beaches around and the scenery isn’t particularly noteworthy. Just past a cashew factory on a busy street, we see the sign, “Pat’s Home - Thai Cooking School”. Princess and I look at each other quizzically. The taxi heads up the dirt driveway, past another house and a parcel of land for sale (the for sale sign shows a picture of a shopping mall with a fast food restaurant and a coffee shop), and next thing we know, we are standing at a brass gate in a garden sanctuary surrounded by orchids, birds of paradise, star fruit trees and coconut palms. Song birds fill the air and its as if we are 1,000 miles away from the urban sprawl.

a few garden shots:

the outdoor breakfast table:

We are greeted first by a young, bouncing beagle eager to play and in want of attention. “Pad Thai”, “Pad Thai” a voice calls, then says something sternly in Thai that I imagine is something along the lines of “get in the house”. Pad Thai retreats and heads for the door. Pat greets us with an outstretched hand and a warm hello. Like all the Thai people we have met so far, she is welcoming and gracious. We remove our shoes at the entrance of a large outdoor kitchen where Pat holds her cooking lessons (and where I’ll be having mine). She ushers us through and into her house. The house is very western in style, but for the large alter at the top of the stairs displaying Buddha’s, photographs of monks and jars of incense.

the outdoor teaching kitchen:

After settling into our room, I head downstairs. Pat is sitting on the settee and I make myself comfortable on the stairs. We fall into easy conversation about food and cooking and I feel as if I am talking to a friend. She asks me what I would like to learn, so I open my notebook and turn to the pages of food that I hope to eat while in Thailand. I want to make a Kaeng Pa (“jungle curry”) and I would like to make the curry paste from scratch. Pla Som Rod (“fish with three tastes”); a deep fried whole fish with a spicy, sweet and sour sauce. Pad Thai, since mine always comes out like soup and way too sweet. Maeng Kum, which there isn’t a direct English translation – but it’s little morsels of pungent aromatics wrapped in a cha ploo leaf and served with a sweet and salty fish sauce. And, last but not least, sweet, sticky rice with mango. This is a staple food of South East Asia and I lived off of it for three weeks on a trip to the Philippines (I’m addicted to it). I have tried making it several times and it never turns out. Also, from the basic recipe, it can be made into little cakes, stuffed, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled or turned into many other sweet little treats…

“Great”, Pat said. “Can you be ready to go to the market at 6am tomorrow?”. Can I? I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to sleep I’m so excited!