Meet Pim

Pim, dining out for a change at Big Bowl in Chicago.

Pim is my lovely wife, and this is my ode to her Thai cooking.

Unlike me, Pim can really cook. She, of course, knows by heart all the favorites of her Northern Thailand. But she's also a consummate improviser, and can substitute to great effect the fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat she finds here in her temporary home of LA into the traditional dishes of her homeland.

Another thing I admire about Pim's cooking: she's remarkably frugal and resourceful. Rather than letting a bag of limes go bad, she'll surprise me with a glass of iced lime-aid at dinner time.

After a few months of watching me over indulge in her cooking, Pim is now teaching me to cook Thai, and it's my intention to impart what I learn to any farang (foreigner) who wants to cook Thai.

Why? Because at the age of 37, after having slopped up untold buckets of Count Chocula cereal for dinner, I've just awakened to the pleasures of real food -- of Thai food, in particular, but of home-cooked, zero-processed, un-microwaved, let's-sit-down-together-at the-table food in general.



It's my plan to break down the preparation of each dish I cover in a way that all we farang can understand, with careful attention on where to find the sometimes exotic ingredients, and when it's OK to substitute the common for the esoteric, the ginger for the galangal.

Since I'm a bit of a history geek, it's also my plan to explain in brief the origins of each dish I cover -- unless that just gets too boring to read or to write.

So, now, with many thanks to Pim, without whose knowledge, I couldn't continue, let's move on to the few but necessary tools you'll need in the kitchen.

The Minimalist Thai Kitchen

One of the many things I love about Thai cuisine is the simplicity of the equipment you need to prepare it. I've seen this confirmed in street stalls all throughout Thailand and in Pim's mom's home kitchen in Chiang Mai -- a simple, semi-outdoor affair with a wok on a single gas burner, a few knives, cutting boards, and stirring spoons.

You don't need much in the way of equipment to cook Thai. And, in fact, Mark Bittman, the New York Times minimalist chef, argues persuasively in this piece, that you don't need much in the way of equipment to prepare any cuisine -- less that $200 worth!

Your kitchen's probably already pretty well outfitted. I'll just list out here a few essentials.

Rice Cooker
This we use daily. Buy the cheapest one at Target, sized according to your family's needs.

Frying pan/wok
You don't really need a $500 copper clad frying pan from Williams-Sonoma. I love using an over sized, stainless steel one I found at Target. A wok would work just as well, but Pim also seems to prefer the frying pan, one that's Teflon coated -- a substance lately I'm fearful of -- if eggs are involved.

Sauce pan
So many Thai dishes are accompanied by soup and sauces, so buy a few of different sizes

Knives
Thai food is seemingly 80% chopping, so buy knives you like the heft and sharpness of. We suffered along with some cheap Ikea ones, then bought the inexpensive, white-handled Dexter-Russell ones Bittman recommends at Costco. A pleasure to use.

Cutting board
Plastic will suffice and they seem to clean up more nicely than the wood. I like one for meat and one for veggies. Pim's content with one for everything.

Mortar and pestle
This was the one thing that I didn't have when Pim moved in. We found ours at the supermarket in Thai Town, Los Angeles, but I'm sure you can find them everywhere. Ours is solid stone, and I feel like a caveman -- in a good way -- every time I use it to make a pungent, cough inducing mash of Thai chillies and garlic. (Forget peeling garlic with this thing: just pound on the unpeeled cloves, then pick out the feathery husks.)

Core Ingredients: Or How Three Stinky Seafood Sauces Make Thai Food Yummy

I have no idea how to answer the above question. Thai food is definitely more than the sum of its parts, and this is particularly true in the case of three of its most common condiments: fish sauce (nam pla), shrimp paste (kapi), and oyster sauce (nam monhoy). (Actually, the latter doesn't deserve to be called stinky -- it's quite tasty and aromatic on its own.)

Having watched Pim cook with at least one of these condiments nearly every meal, I was a curious what goes into the making of each, so I consulted the Wikipedia oracle.

Fish Sauce
Wikipedia informs me that fish sauce is the result of taking small fish, usually anchovies, and very salty water and letting the mixture ferment in clay pots in the hot sun for many months. (Lesser brands cheat the process by boiling the mixture and/or adding chemical catalysts.)

Pim's favorite brand (because its her mother's) is simply called Squid.

You can get a hold of fish sauce, at least the non-premium brands, almost anywhere. Pim was even able to find it in my very uncosmopolitan hometown of Logan, Utah.

Given its preparation, you'd expect it to be at least as foul smelling as shrimp paste, but somehow fermentation magically mellows its flavor, and cooking with it mellows it even further. It harmonizes nicely with symphony of flavors inside a curry or soup.

Even without cooking, it's tasty combined with diced chillies to make a concoction called prik nampla (chilli fish sauce), an excellent accompaniment to fried rice.

An interesting factoid (also supplied by Wikipedia): ancient Romans also used fish sauce, prepared in an almost identical way.

Shrimp Paste
This is one of the most malodorous substances known to man. Pim tortures me with it by thrusting opened cans of it under my nose while I'm doing the dishes. (Somehow she also manages to eat this stuff directly out of the can like it's peanut butter.)

Wikipedia say it's made by drying piles of shrimp in the hot sun until they ferment into a pulp. Depending on the size of shrimp used, the pulp is then ground one or more times to improve consistency. Cooking somehow tempers the horrific odor, and, like fish sauce, it manages to subtlety enhance the flavor of the given dish (usually a curry).

Oyster Sauce
Unlike shrimp paste, oyster sauce is quite tasty its own right, not at all fishy considering its ingredients, and resembling A1 steak sauce or Worstechestershire sauce in flavor. According to Wikipedia, it's made by boiling oysters into a white broth, then caramelizing this broth. Industry has naturally found many shortcuts to this process, and the ratio of oysters to chemicals varies with price.

Oyster sauce acts a tenderizer, and it's a common Thai practice to marinate meats in it prior to cooking.

Kapao Gai (Basil Chicken)

Kapao gai, ready for plates of rice and fried eggs.

Who knows when this fiery little dish was invented, but not more than 400 years ago when the Portuguese introduced the Thais to New World chillies. Kapao Gai is all about chillies -- and basil, of course.

Pim and I buy chillies in a shrink wrapped foam packages at a supermarket in Thai Town, Los Angeles. Tiny and green, yellow, orange, or red, they're simply labeled "Thai Chillies" and cost only a little over a buck for 20 or more. Much smaller than the Mexican varieties I'm used to seeing, I wondered about their origin and taxonomy till I read this article. As it mentions, Thais call these chillies prik kee noo, or "mouse poop chillies," because, well, they're small and resemble psychedelic mouse dukie.

The author also mentions that substituting other chillies for the mouse dukie variety can lead to disappointment. I have to agree. In preparing the kapao gai pictured above, I substituted a jalepeño from our local Jewish market, plus a couple of unknown species that we're growing in a pot in front of our apartment. While the end result was still pleasing, it lacked the punch and piquancy you get with Mickie's droppings.

If you can't source the Thai chillies, then your challenge will be to experiment with the right mixture of Mexican varieties. (Maybe a single jabenero, plus a couple of jalepeños, plus a serrano?)

This dish is fun to make -- and easy, which is probably why you see it in street stalls throughout the Kingdom. I prefer chicken, but you can substitute pork (moo). The stir frying takes place in three waves: garlic and chillies (mashed by mortar and pestle), followed by the meat (coated in oyster sauce and a sprinkling of sugar), finished off by basil and onions (and a bell pepper, if you like.).

There's nothing too difficult to source here. As mentioned, substitute Mexican chillies if you can find prik kee noo. Most supermarkets have both oyster and fish sauce in their Asian section.

Ingredients
half pound chicken (I prefer breast meat.)
small onion
half bell pepper (optional)
two or 3 garlic cloves
small lime
large bunch of mint basil
a few splashes of oyster sauce
a few splashes of fish sauce
a couple teaspoons of sugar (I prefer brown.)
a few tablespoons of cooking oil
fresh ground black pepper
(serves 2-3)

Directions

1. Chop chicken into bite sized chunks, then, in a small bowl, coat with oyster sauce and sugar. Refrigerate for at least half an hour. (The oyster sauce will act as a tenderizer.)
2. Dice onion and bell pepper (optional) or green beans (optional).
3. Now the fun part: place garlic and chillies in mortar and grind with pestle -- not too finely, just enough to release the juices and seeds of the chillies and soften the garlic. Remove any stray garlic husks.
   



Mash of chillies and garlic ready to meet the hot oil.



4. Heat on high oil in frying pan or wok. Add the chilli/garlic mash and fry until garlic turns slightly golden and translucent (2 or 3 minutes). Add a splash of water if the mash gets too dry.
5. Add meat/oyster sauce mixture and evenly brown the chicken.
6. Add basil, onion, and bell pepper (optional) and cook till the basil leaves have shriveled and the onion is crisp/tender.
7. Squeeze in lime juice, and season to taste with fish sauce, more oyster sauce, and black pepper.

Serve with steamed rice and fried eggs.