How to make: Khao phat nam liab/ข้าวผัดหนำเลี้ยบ

This is a fantastically simple but tasty dish you can make even if you have access to only the most rudimentary Asian ingredients. One of many Chinese-influenced fried rice dishes available in Thailand, khao phat nam liab revolves around nam liab, Chinese salted olive (Western-style olives are not a substitute), which gives the dish a distinct briny/umami flavour. I suspect that I first encountered the dish at Je Ngor, a Chinese-Thai seafood chain with several branches around Bangkok.

The amounts below are approximate, and like always, you should constantly be tasting the dish as you cook it to arrive at the flavour that your prefer. To my mind, this dish should have an assertively salty flavour that is balanced by the acidic sides.

And as written instructions aren't always enough, here's a video - in Thai only - of the dish being made:

Khao phat nam liab

Lime, 1, diced Ginger, 1 small piece, peeled and diced Fresh chili, to taste, sliced Cilantro, a couple sprigs Roasted cashews, a couple Tbsps

Oil, 2 Tbsp Minced pork, about 1/4 cup Garlic, 2-3 cloves, minced Nam liab (Chinese salted olive), about 4, seeded and chopped Cooked rice, about 2 cups*

White pepper, to taste Sugar, to taste Soy sauce, to taste

Prepare lime, ginger and chili as described above, and set aside along with cilantro and cashews.

In a wok over medium-high heat, heat oil and add pork. Saute until somewhat dry and crumbly, about four or five minutes. Add garlic and salted olive, saute a minute or two longer until ingredients are combined and garlic is no longer raw.

Add rice, stirring to combine all the ingredients and separate the grains. Season with white pepper to taste, sugar, if desired, and soy sauce, if rice isn't salty enough.

Serve with prepared sides as illustrated above.

*As suggested in Thompson's Thai Street Food, I use just cooked rice, still hot from the cooker, and find that it doesn't tend stick to the pan and maintains the right consistency. This contrasts with many other fried rice recipes, which suggest using cooked rice that's been chilled overnight.

Sor Naa Wang/ส.หน้าวัง

Mee phat krachet (หมี่ผัดกระเฉด) is a somewhat obscure dish that combines thin rice noodles, seafood and krachet, a type of crunchy aquatic vegetable. At Sor Naa Wang, a shophouse restaurant near Bangkok's City Hall, the noodles are seasoned with plenty of garlic and fresh chili, and come from the wok with lots of delicious singed bits. The dish is served with a somewhat unusual tart/salty dipping sauce that combines sliced fresh chili, sliced shallots, fish sauce and lotsa lime.

They also do a reputedly tasty sukii haeng that I'm keen to investigate, as well as several other fried noodle dishes, but I've yet to work my way past this one.

Sor Naa Wang 156/2 Th Din Sor, Bangkok 02 622 1525 10am-11.30pm

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Somsong Phochana/สมทรงโภชนา

A while back, I asked fellow Bangkok-based blogger and likewise graduate of the University of Oregon, Sirin, about her favourite places to eat in Bangkok. Without hesitation she mentioned Somsong Phochana, a shophouse restaurant in Bangkok's Banglamphu neighbourhood. I ate there for the first time not long after our chat, and after a few subsequent visits, suspect that Somsong may also be nudging its way onto my own favourites list.

Somsong is actually the name of the current owner's deceased mother, who started the restaurant more than 40 years ago. A native of Sukhothai, she began by selling curries and stir-fries, and later also sold the signature dish of her hometown, kuaytiaw Sukhothai, Sukhothai-style noodles. The dish is still available today:

and appears to be the reason most people visit Somsong. Kuaytiaw Sukhothai combines thin rice noodles, a sweet broth, thinly-sliced long bean, various cuts of pork, and a topping of deep-fried pork rind. The version here also includes - unusually - crunchy squares of salted radish and ground peanuts. But despite the accolades and fans, I found the dish (both the 'dry' and broth versions) overly sweet and one-dimensional, lacking the meatiness and oily richness of the versions I've encountered up in Sukhothai.

Instead, what brings me back to Somsong is the restaurant's excellent central Thai-style curries and spicy stir-fries. In particular, you're safe ordering just about anything that contains the restaurant's look chin plaa kraay, dumplings make from a type of freshwater fish. Tender and pleasantly fishy, they're some of the best I've encountered in Bangkok, and feature in several dishes including Somsong's excellent green curry (pictured at the top of this post). If you've only encountered green curry at Thai restaurants abroad or at places that predominately serve foreigners, you might initially be disappointed, as the curry itself is rather thin and watery and has little of the coconut milk creaminess that I suspect many have come to associate with the dish. Instead, the emphasis is on taste, not texture, and an effort is made towards a balance of sweet and savoury, with tender eggplants providing a slightly bitter kick. The curry above was served over khanom jeen noodles instead of rice, and as with many central Thai dishes that include fish or seafood, also included thin strips of krachaay (a root herb with a camphor-like flavour), which serve to counter any unpleasant fishy flavour.

On a previous visit I had a somewhat more traditional green curry with chicken, accompanied by a spicy stir-fry of frog:

And on my most recent visit there was a tempting kaeng matsaman, but as usual, I went for the green curry.

I've also been told that Somsong does excellent desserts, but I'm usually too full to investigate. For more descriptions of the dishes at Somsong, proceed to Sirin's write-up, here.

Somsong Phochana Soi Wat Sangwet, Bangkok 02 282 0972 9.30am-4pm

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Khao Man Kai Jao Kao/ข้าวมันไก่เจ้าเก่า

The Thai-language food guide Aroijang recently led me to Khao Man Kai Jao Kao, a restaurant in Bangkok's Chinatown known for its khao man kai, Hainanese chicken rice. According to the guide, the restaurant still does the dish the old-fashioned Hainanese way, using fat kai ton (castrated roosters) and cooking the rice over coals. This resulted in rice that was just about perfectly cooked, well seasoned and pleasantly fatty, but the chicken was unremarkable and lacked the tender, velvety texture that defines a truly remarkable version of this dish. Instead of the more common sides of cucumber slices and chicken soup, here the rice and chicken is served with a chunk of blood and garnish of coriander, as well as the usual fermented soy bean dipping sauce, which in addition to the usual ginger and chili, also included coarse chunks of garlic.

Almost certainly more interesting was the restaurant's tom lueat muu:

literally 'boiled pig blood', a soup that, in addition to its namesake, also includes lean slices of pork, crispy pork belly, spleen, stomach and intestine. The meat and offal was extremely tender and flavourful without being too porky. The broth is clear and garlicky and came served with a couple leaves of lettuce and a sprigs of a fresh herb not unlike Italian parsley. You can order the soup with rice noodles or a side of rice, and if you find the offal too overpowering, you can temper it with a spicy/sour dipping sauce that combines crushed fresh chilies and vinegar.

Khao Man Kai Jao Kao 36-42 Th Plaeng Nam, Bangkok 02 623 1200 8am-4.30pm

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From Pratu Chiang Mai to Portland

This previously-mentioned photo panorama taken in Chiang Mai (click here for a larger version):

has now been installed here:

inside Portland, Oregon restaurant, Pok Pok Noi. Has anybody in Portland been by to see it yet?

opposite

Much fine dining in Bangkok is relegated to hotel-based restaurants. This is fine for some people, and several of Bangkok's hotel kitchens are putting out some great food, but for most of us, hotel dining often lacks character and rarely feels like a good value.

Luckily, some clever folks have swooped in to provide us with an intriguing alternative.

Opposite, run by the people who started WTF, is a multi-purpose event space that has embarked on a series of pop-up dining events. Their most recent dinner (pictured above) was my first time experience with the concept, and took the form of a night of Roman cuisine as prepared by Italian chef Paolo Vitaletti. Dishes included Roman-style tripe, borlotti beans with prosciutto skin, deep-fried artichoke, and la porchetta, suckling pig stuffed with pork offal and fennel pollen that was easily the most delicious pork dish I've encountered in a while. There was tasty prosecco and wine, and real bread, flown in from Italy. In addition to enjoying dishes one won't find elsewhere in Bangkok, we were pouring our own wine, scooping second helpings from communal bowls and making friends. It was all a lot like eating at the home of a very talented home cook, and my take-home impression of the meal was that this is how dining should be: informal, communal and tasty. At 2500B (about US$80), it wasn't exactly cheap, but with good food, generous serves and virtually free-flow booze, I can't imagine that anybody would feel that that he didn't get his money's worth.

If this sounds like your thing, stay tuned to opposite's website or Twitter feed (@oppositebangkok) for their next pop-up.

opposite 27/1 Soi 51, Th Sukhumvit, Bangkok 02 662 6330

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Nay Hor Khao Tom/นายฮ้อข้าวต้ม

I'm finally back home and hope to do a couple more Euro posts in the near future, but for now am keen to jump back into the Thai stuff...

Khao tom (ข้าวต้ม) translates as 'boiled rice', but can be refer to a couple different rice-related food concepts. Many Thais associate the term with khao tom kui (ข้าวต้มกุ๊ย), a Chinese-style of dining that involves lots of small dishes, typically eaten with small bowls of watery rice. It can also describe a dish of rice served in broth with seafood. I first encountered the latter years ago at a cozy restaurant in my former neighbourhood in northern Bangkok. I have to admit that I wasn't initially impressed with khao tom - it's pretty bland when compared to just about any other Thai dish. But after subsequent and increasingly frequent visits over several years, I learned to like the dish, and also grew quite fond of the place that served it.

Since having moved downtown, I haven't eaten much khao tom, and with the old place in mind, have had my eye open for a new one. The Thai-language food guide Kin Rob Krung 2 and the English-language Famulous Eateries both recommend Nay Hor, a longstanding restaurant on Th Charoen Krung, so I investigated.

Nay Hor is unabashedly old-school Thai/Chinese (think overabundant florescent lighting and an aged owner/money collector slumped grumpily behind office furniture), and is easy to locate by some immense stuffed fish out front. These are generally both good signs, but I made the mistake of ordering the 'mixed' bowl, which included fish skin, fish eggs and what appeared to be pork intestines - items I don't really care for. Still, I thought the quality of the seafood was pretty good; I particularly enjoyed the oysters, fish and the bateng (cubes of marinated, deep-fried pork). The dipping sauce is, like at other khao tom restaurants, made from fermented soybeans, but here it lacks chili and has been blended, giving it the consistency and appearance of tahini. They also had bags of deep-fried tofu strips, which are great to crumble into to the broth or dip in the bean sauce, but unfortunately they appeared to have been fried long ago.

Would I make it my regular? Ideally not. But given the pricey bowls at Chiang Kii or the traffic nightmare involved in getting to my old place, I may very well be eating there again soon.

Nay Hor Khao Tom Cnr Th Charoen Krung & Th Chan 02 675 2598 6pm-midnight

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Portugal's café culture

I haven't been to France since I was a teenager and have never been to Italy, but I'm willing to wager that the café scenes of both of these countries pale in comparison to that of Portugal. The sheer amount of shops serving a combination of coffee, light snacks and pastries - known in Portuguese as pasterlarias - in Porto and Lisbon was frankly, quite ridiculous. Within a block of Porto's main market alone I can recall at least eight from memory. And not only were these pastelarias everywhere, but the the quality of both the coffee and sweets were quite high and the prices low (a galão - the Portuguese equivalent of a café au lait/latte - and a pastry, my usual breakfast in Portugal, typically cost around €2). I was particularly interested in Portugal's sweet snacks, as they possess quite a few culinary links with Asia. The most obvious example of this are the pasteis de nata, egg tarts, which are now a standard sweet in parts of East Asia. These are unavoidable (and profoundly delicious) in Portugal, and I reckon I had at least one or two every day, sprinkled with cinnamon and consumed with uma bica (espresso).  With a direct link to Southeast Asia are the various egg yolk-based desserts - ovos moles, fios de ovos - believed to have been introduced to Thailand via Portuguese traders during the 16th century. These were somewhat less common, and I mostly encountered them in the way of fillings or toppings for a variety of pastry-based treats and not eaten on their own, as they still are in Thailand.

For a taste of Portugal's café culture, click on the below to see a slide show of random images of pastelarias and sweets I encountered while there.

Tripe eaters

Reverence for food appears to run deep in Portugal. The residents of the northern city of Porto are known as Tripeiros, ‘tripe-eaters’, for their love of the local dish, tripas à modo do Porto, Porto-style tripe. The dish is apparently so important that locals are willing to deface one of their city's most famous landmarks:

in order to advertise that the dish be added to a list of world culinary heritage:

My first experience with tripas was also my first meal in Portugal. Taken at an informal café in the centre of Porto, the dish was served in a way that now strikes me as very Portuguese: on a stainless steel platter or bowl with an abundance of starch, in this case, rice:

The tripe was relatively minimal and instead the dish was dominated by a white beans, with salpicão, a type of salted beef, what appeared to be pork belly and a salty broth that had hints of cumin. The dish cost, if I remember correctly, 3 Euros, and I ate it at the dining counter with a mini-bottle of the house red.

My second experience with the dish was at a restaurant named, appropriately, Restaurant Tripeiro. This was a much more upmarket version of the dish, costing several times as much and being several times larger in volume, but containing roughly the same combination of beans, tripe, salted beef, and in this case, a variety of sliced sausages and a few slices of carrot. It was served in a slightly more upmarket stainless steel container (illustrated at the top of this post), in, as is seemingly the case in all restaurants in Portugal, cheap or expensive, a dining room dominated by a blaring television:

I ate it with a delicious red vinho verde and a dish of olives, and because I feel foolishly obligated to eat as much of my food as possible, I walked around Porto feeling extremely full for the next six hours.

Pedro Dos Frangos

Forgive my lack of blogging, but I’ve been on something of a whirlwind European Tour. Istanbul, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Barcelona; they've all been eye-opening and heaps of fun, and of course, have involved lots of amazing eats. For me, there was nothing more exotic than eating baklava in Istanbul or encountering real tapas for the first time in Barcelona, and I’ll try to post on some of those experiences soon. But to be honest, I’m most excited about eating in my current destination, Portugal, and want to try to blog about it while I'm here.

I’ve fantasized about visiting Portugal for a while now, and since my last trip to Macau, specifically, its food. I’ve been in Porto a couple days now and just as I suspected, the food hasn’t been as sophisticated as Spanish food or as exotic as Turkish, but somehow it feels just right.

Portuguese appears to be a real meat-and-potatoes kind of cuisine, as exemplified by one of my first meals, frango no churrasco, Portuguese-style grilled chicken. The restaurant, Pedro Dos Frangos, was recommended by the nice lady at the tourist information office, and was typical of most of the restaurants I’ve encountered here so far; delightfully old school, mostly masculine and with a buzzing dining counter (the man next to me ate his entire meal - chicken soup, a ginormous slice of pudim molotov and an espresso with a shot of booze - standing up).

I sat at the long stainless steel counter and ordered a half chicken, which was skewered and grilled over coals:

The bird was crispy and well seasoned, although I reckon it could have done with some brining (a must for chicken dishes, I’m now convinced – see here for details). The traditional accompaniment is deep-fried potatoes and the traditional topping is molho de piri-piri, olive oil steeped with dried chilies. It was a pleasure to finally get to sample these dishes on their home turf, particularly since I'd tried making them previously (I'd say we came pretty close). The meal was coupled with a couple glasses of cheap and very drinkable vinho regional, and dessert was chunks of soft, buttery queijo flamengo and marmelade, quince paste:

It was heaps of fun, and I found a lot in common with dining in Thailand: the lack of pretension, friendly restaurateurs, the full-flavouredness and the low prices.

Am looking forward to more meals in this country.

Pedro Dos Frangos Rua do Bonjardim, Porto 222 008 522 Lunch & dinner

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Pa Tong Go/ปาท่องโก๋

Pa Tong Go is a longstanding (open since 1933), open-air place in Bangkok's Banglamphu neighbourhood, a couple blocks away from Khao San Road.

The restaurant serves a pretty predictable repertoire of Chinese-Thai/Bangkok-style dishes, from noodles to rice topped with crispy pork belly (illustrated above). They're OK, but the restaurant's specialty, and the real reason to eat here, is the paa thong ko (ปาท่องโก๋ - the menu calls them "Grilled Chinese Donut") deep-fried bits of dough:

The difference here is after being deep-fried, the paa thong ko are briefly grilled, making them even crispier than freshly deep-fried paa thong ko. The sangkhayaa (they call this "coconut jam") is fragrant and not too sweet, and they also do a savoury version, well as a dish of paa thong ko served with ice cream.

And if you still haven't reached your paa thong ko limit, you're withing walking distance of Paa Thong Ko Sawoey.

Pa Tong Go Cnr Th Phra Sumen & Th Sip Sam Hang Lunch & dinner

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Khao Hor Bai Bua Lung Chu/ข้าวห่อใบบัวลุงชู

Thanks to leads from both Kin Rob Krung 2 and my buddy J, I was recently pointed in the direction of Lung Chu, a shophouse restaurant selling a short-list of Chinese-style dishes. They do a variety of steamed buns, dumplings and noodles here, but the specialty is khao hor bai bua (ข้าวห่อใบบัว), rice and other bits steamed in a lotus leaf. I sincerely needed pointing in this direction, as I was never previously a fan of this dish, having found previous encounters with it heavy, sweet and oddly enough, somewhat waxy.

Lung Chu's version is still somewhat heavy (I think this is probably impossible to avoid), but this was tempered somewhat by the addition of a delicious vinegar- and crushed fresh chili-based dipping sauce. In addition to rice, the lotus leaf packet includes tender marinated pork, mushrooms, lotus seeds and a salted egg yolk, and is both well seasoned and fragrant. If you're sharing, it's the perfect savoury snack.

Lung Chu also serve some very nice salapao (ซาลาเปา), steamed buns (seen in background of pic above), although I suspect that they've simply sourced these from another vendor. They're light without being dry or paper-like, and the sweet bun (ใส้หวาน) in particular had a deliciously fragrant sweet bean filling.

Khao Hor Bai Bua Lung Chu 2818 Th Rama IV, Bangkok 02 240 1812 8am-midnight

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Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek

Yen ta fo, noodles (typically rice, but sometimes wheat noodles) served in a slightly sweet broth with fish-based dumplings, is one of the most popular dishes in Bangkok. Stalls selling yen ta fo are just about everywhere, and over the years I've noticed that many of them claim a link with Wat Khaek - the somewhat derogatory name given to the Hindu temple at the corner of Th Silom and Th Pan. Yen ta fo is Chinese in origin (I suspect it has links - at least linguistically - to yong tau foo), but the name-dropping suggests that the dish may have been introduced to Thai diners from a shop or stall near this temple.

Origin speculation aside, today there's only a single yen ta fo restaurant near Wat Khaek. And although I don't know if it's the original of Bangkok-style yen ta fo restaurant, the aged interior and rustic bowls of noodles served here suggest that it's been around for quite a while.

The yen ta fo here is good, but not exceptional. The broth, which is made from chicken:

is balanced but bland, and needed more than a bit of fish sauce and dried chili to liven it up. There were lots of veggies and fishy dumplings, both supplemented with crispy salted squid and cubes of blood. This being a classic version of a classic Bangkok dish, I expected it to be much sweeter, and actually missed the tinge of sweet and the punch of garlic of a truly outstanding vendor like Yen Ta Fo JC.

Even more than the yen ta fo, I enjoyed khanom jeen kaeng kai:

chicken curry served over fresh rice noodles. The former was pleasantly salty and spicy and was supplemented with eggplants, basil leaves and fresh chilies.

Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek also serve a few other characteristically Bangkok-style Thai/Chinese dishes such as khaa muu, stewed pork leg and popia sot, fresh spring rolls.

Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek Th Pan, Bangkok 9am-4pm Mon-Sat

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Somsak Pu Op

I've finally got a bit of free time and have been investigating the restaurants and stalls recommended in a handful of Thai-language food guides I bought months ago. Most recently, Kin Rob Krung 2 ('Eating Around Bangkok 2') led me Somsak Pu Op, a streetside stall in Thonburi, across the Chao Phraya River from Bangkok.

Somsak specialises in pu op wun sen, crab 'baked' with wun sen (glass jelly noodles). In fact, they essentially only do this dish, if you don't count a variant using prawn, as well as a couple steamed shellfish dishes. On my visit, the crab was cashed, so we went with the prawns.

As is the norm with this dish, the seafood is put on a bed that includes a liberal chunk of pork fat, lots of garlic, black peppercorns and Szechuan pepper:

These ingredients are then 'baked' (the op in the name) in a lidded clay or heavy metal pan, with the noodles and a sprinkling of fresh herbs.

Somsak does this in stages, cooking the prawns first:

before seasoning (with Maggi and a bit of water) and adding the noodles, followed by a final topping of green onions. The downside with this method is that the prawns tended to be a bit overcooked, and the noodles undercooked - ideally the latter should be slightly dry (even a bit crispy at the edges, if you ask me) and seasoned by the pork fat, garlic and pepper. This isn't the case here, but any any lack of seasoning is made up for by Somsak's delicious Thai seafood-style dipping sauce, which was intensely tart and spicy.

Probably not the most balanced version of the dish, but satisfyingly rich, and at 200B, relatively cheap.

Somsak Pu Op Cnr Soi 1, Th Lad Ya & Th Charoen Rat 5-11pm Tue-Sun

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Daeng Racha Hoy Thot

Located in a quiet side street in Bangkok's Chinatown, this family has allegedly been selling hoy thot, a type of crispy mussel omelet, for 80 years - the last 30 of these at the present location.

The hoy thot is pretty good: crispy, eggy and well seasoned, with fat, fresh mussels:

The or suan, oysters fried in a sticky batter, didn't quite live up to that of my favourite vendor, and was pretty oily, although the oysters were nice.

Daeng Racha Hoy Thot Soi Sukorn 1, Bangkok 8.30am-2.30pm

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Sam-Ang Kulap

The area around northern Bangkok's Victory Monument is home to several restaurants selling kuay tiaw ruea, 'boat noodles'. The restaurants are known for serving exceptionally cheap - at little as 5B - bowls of the dish,  and are the legacy of a tradition that previously saw the noodles prepared and sold from small wooden boats in a nearby canal. Today, the canal is fetid and mostly empty and all the shops have moved to land. The restaurants remain quite well known, but aren't particularly tidy or tasty, and their setting at the edge of a stinky canal isn't very inspiring.

Luckily, a couple blocks away on a slightly more pleasant stretch of the canal, is, Sam-Ang Kulap. Having served boat noodles for more than 40 years now, they claim to be among the first of five boats to have sold the dish in the area. According to a history of the restaurant that's printed on the wall, a that time a bowl cost 1B, and it wasn't until the late '70s that they began to sell the noodles from land. They remain in the same location today:

In 2011 a bowl of boat noodles will set you back 15B (US$0.50), but the despite the low price, the noodles here are solid, and in my opinion could serve as the archetype for a well done, balanced bowl of a boat noodles. The broth is rich, round and meaty with relatively little spice flavour or spiciness, and is supplemented with a few cuts of tender meat (beef or pork), blood, and/or meatballs. The bowls emerge from the boat-shaped prep station with amazing speed:

perhaps a legacy of the boat era.

Ask for a bowl of par-boiled phak bung (a crispy green vegetable sometimes called morning glory) and you have a delicious and balanced, Bangkok-style meal.

Sam-Ang Kulap Soi 18, Th Ratchawithi, Bangkok 8am-5pm

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Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung

I'm pretty amazed when I scroll through this blog and see the pics of all the food I've eaten in Thailand. Quite frankly, I've eaten a lot of stuff. And just in case you're wondering, I do mean this in the boastful way that it sounds.

But I also mean it in the literal sense: I eat a lot.

As illustrated above, my recent visit to Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung, a longstanding restaurant off Th Charoen Krung, was an example of the latter.

Despite my previous declaration, I haven't actually eaten much khao khaa muu, Chinese-style stewed pork leg, so I'm not the best judge of the dish. But I enjoyed the version sold here. The pork was fall-apart tender and well-seasoned. As is the case with this dish, it was accompanied by a vinegary dipping sauce studded with fresh chilies - a necessary divergence from all the fat and meat. I would have liked more of the crispy pickled veggies, but this was somewhat made up for by the tasty soup with bitter melon. The only real weak point was the muu krob, crispy pork, which seemed to have been poorly seasoned and clumsily deep-fried several hours previous.

And just in case this wasn't enough fat and cholesterol, just across Th Charoen Krung is a popular vendor of sticky rice for mango and/or durian sticky rice:

which of course, I visited.

Like I said, I've eaten a lot of stuff.

Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung Trok Sung, Th Charoen Krung, Bangkok 10.30am-7pm Mon-Sat

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Pratu Chiang Mai

It may look like a scan of a strip of film, but the above image is actually composite image stitched together from 22 separate exposures taken at Chiang Mai's Pratu Chiang Mai night market (click here for a bigger version).

It's not perfect - if you look closely, there are some perspective issues that I'm not clever enough to resolve with Photoshop, not to mention 3/4 of a bicycle and some mysterious twins. But if all goes well, the panorama will be used to decorate one very long and presently blank wall at the new Portland, Oregon restaurant, Pok Pok Noi.

MasterChefs Chiang Mai

I recently spent a few days up in Chiang Mai eating and cooking with some pretty knowledgeable and and talented folks. There was Andy Ricker, chef/owner of Pok Pok, in Portland Oregon; JJ Goode, a writer based in New York City, with whom Andy and I will be embarking on an exciting and soon-to-be-announced project; and Sunny:

Sunny, a longtime friend of Andy's, is a native of Chiang Mai who grew up in a household that was always cooking, both professionally and domestically. Like many Thai cooks, he cooks without referring to recipes, and appears to have an encyclopedic knowledge of northern Thai cooking. I suspect that much of what is served at Pok Pok has most likely, directly or indirectly, been influenced by Sunny, and understandably so: while in Chiang Mai, I got to sample several examples of his handiwork, including a very refined salad of green mangoes, a northern-style stir-fry of longbeans and eggplant, and a yummy kaeng som, all of which were delicious.

But the most delicious and interesting dish - at least for me - was Sunny's northern-style pork laap:

I suspect that I risk overplaying northern-style laap on this blog, but I really do find it one of the most satisfying of Thai dishes. And despite its deceptively simple appearance, it's also one of the more nuanced and complicated Thai dishes I've encountered. And observing firsthand the fluency and confidence with which Sunny prepared it reminded me that, despite more than a decade in this country, I still know very little about Thai food.

A good laap starts with a good spice mixture, which Sunny's sister makes (in fact, it's the very one used at Pok Pok). But this time Sunny decided to made it himself, from scratch. Starting with a specific mixture of dried spices that included makhwaen, peppercorns and deeplee, he dry-fried them until fragrant, then, with JJ's help, pounded them paste along with galangal, dried chilies, shallots and garlic:

After this was finished, shallots and garlic were fried until crispy, and pork offal (specifically skin, heart and lower intestine) was boiled along with some lemongrass, shrimp paste and turmeric, until tender:

The next step involved mincing raw pork, blood and fresh herbs with a machete-like knife (illustrated at the top of this post). This was done for a long time - at least 20 minutes - despite the fact that we were already starting with ground pork. Obviously we needed a big strong man to do this, and since I was busy taking pics, we settled for Andy. Andy's both a talented cook and a modest guy, which is why I find it a bit strange that he insists on wearing his James Beard medal whenever he cooks:

After being fried in oil until fragrant:

the curry paste mixture was then blended with a bit of the broth left over from boiling the offal, seasoned with salt and stirred into the raw meat along with the sliced offal and the deep-fried crispy shallots and garlic. At this point - at least if you're making a real northern-style raw meat laap - the dish is done:

I ate some (actually, quite a bit) of the raw laap, and it was delicious, with a smooth texture (undoubtedly the result of all that chopping) and a rich flavour. Sunny then took the remaining meat, and working it in a saucepan with a bit more broth and some oil, made the more approachable laap suk or laap khua, 'cooked laap':

We then took both laaps, a cooler of sticky rice, a bucket of greens and some grilled chicken to some of the most appreciative diners I've ever encountered:

Eating at, photographing and writing about restaurants and stalls in Thailand has given me something of a warped perception of the country's food - one that in some ways contrasts with the food that Thai people cook and eat at home. It's always an eye-opening and rewarding opportunity to be able to eat the food of and learn from talented home cooks, and I wish I could do it more often.

Worth eating in Pai

The tiny town of Pai is one of northern Thailand's most popular destinations. And understandably so: it's laid-back, cheap and beautiful:

Unfortunately - at least if you travel to eat - there are very few places to get local food. There's some tasty Chinese food, innocuous and backpackerish Thai, and a couple OK places selling Israeli standards, but if you're interested in trying northern- or Mae Hong Son-style eats, you're pretty much limited to a handful of restaurants. Luckily, two of them are exceptional.

Laap Khom Huay Pu specialises in mostly meaty northern-style dishes such as laap khua and kaeng om (both pictured at the top of this post). The laap khua, northern-style fried laap, is probably my favourite version of the dish in Thailand, and successfully balances meaty, spicy and aromatic. The laap gets its dark colour from the addition of blood, and comes accompanied with a variety of fresh herbs, some spicy, some bitter, which change with the seasons. The kaeng om, a meat-and-offal-heavy soup, is almost curry-like in its thickness here, and is correspondingly rich and spicy, with tender bits of tendon, intestine, heart and liver.

Laap Khom Huay Pu 9am-6pm Rte 1095 (the restaurant is on the road to Mae Hong Son, about 1km north of town, on the first corner after the turn-off to Belle Villa and Baan Krating), Pai

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Khanom Jeen Nang Yong, an open-air place in 'downtown' Pai, sells khanom jeen, thin rice noodles served with various curry-like toppings:

Particularly worth seeking out here is the khanom jeen nam ngiaw, a northern-style noodle soup with pork bones and tomatoes as its base. Again, quite possibly my favourite take on the dish, the broth here is dark, rich and spicy, and is even tastier when accompanied with the restaurant's excellent pork rinds. There's no English sign here - simply look for the clay pots that are set out in front of the shop every afternoon.

Khanom Jeen Nang Yong Th Chaisongkhram (in the same building as Pai Adventure), Pai Lunch & dinner

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If you have access to silverware and plates, you could always pick up to-go local eats at the town's evening market - but at your own risk:

Pai's evening market - a short, eminently walkable strip of road just outside of the centre of town - is the most annoying example I've encountered of people showing an extreme reluctance to disembark from their motorcycles to buy things, even if this meant blocking entire stalls, cutting off pedestrians (namely, me) and emitting exhaust and noise.

At least some folks still choose to walk:

although they appear to be limited to a particular demographic.