Flo's Top Three Dishes from Bangkok

Although Chiang Mai is reputedly Thailand’s food capital, my top three Thai dishes are actually from Bangkok. That probably says more about gastronome Ollie – who owns Silvalai Place hotel, than it does about Bangkok, since she has given me the best insider’s edge imaginable.

The first time I came to Bangkok I wanted to get away from the Khao San road and experience a little Thai neighbourhood. I found Silvalai Place and booked an apartment. I met Ollie back then who kindly took me round the same market she took Elle around, when she stayed there last year. We quickly bonded over our love of food and she let me in on some of Bangkok’s best-kept secrets. When I returned for a few days either side of Chiang Mai, I simply had to go and find these dishes again!

Thipsamae – Pad Thai

Pad Thai is one of those ubiquitous dishes that one doesn’t really question but having been so wowed by Thipsamae’s rendering of it, I did a bit of digging and found it was heavily promoted by Thailand's fascist government in the 40s as part of campaign to promote Thai nationalism and reduce how much rice was eaten so that more could be exported!

Thipsamai’s has to be the best Pad Thai in the world. I really hate exaggerations like that since I obviously haven’t been all over the world sampling every Pad Thai but sometimes when you taste perfection you know that it can’t possibly get better. There have been long queues of Thai people outside it all 5 times that I have ever been, both in 2012 and 2014, which surely says a lot.

The menu consists of around 8 different Pad Thais for around 80 baht (£1.50) each, along with incredibly tasty orange juice. The best ones are the traditional pad thai which comes recommended on the menu, as well as the one wrapped in an egg womb!

Wang Lang - MassamanCurry

This isn’t all that easy to find but it is definitely worth the hunt. Wang Lang pier is also relatively near Wat Arun – my favourite Wat in Bangkok – so if you are out and about in the area, its not much further along the Phraya river. Wang Lang is a pier with a market so if you ask a Taxi driver of Tuk Tuk for Wang lane you will be dropped off opposite an alleyway surrounded by market stalls selling food, clothes and all sorts, that leads down to the pier. This bit has some good food around it but the better food stalls are further up, on Wang Lang Thanon. All you need to do is face the river, turn left up the road, until you meet Wang Lang Thanon, then turn right down it, until you meet another row of stalls.

There, you should be able to find this man and his divine Massaman curry. Hunt him down and you most certainly will not regret it. The curry is one of the best things I have ever eaten, humming with cardamom, cloves, blade mace, cassia and coconut, it is so finely balanced that its humble provenance is almost hard to believe. This man is a genius; I want to know his secret.

There is also a great selection of other snacks and puddings, including a favourite of mine - thin crispy pancakes with a dollop of meringue mix and a sprinkling of sweet shrimps – delicious - and not photographed since I ate them so quickly!

Mmm, crackling!

peanut filled sweet dumplings

Unnamed Seafood Restaurant

This restaurant is of Thanon Arun Amarin, close to Thonburi Hospital. I am afraid you'll have to ask Ollie for better directions since my navigational skills are somewhat lacking. Unlike the last two places, this was new discovery this trip. Ollie took Theo and me there for dinner. You can get all sorts of seafood to order with an incredibly spicy and delicious sauce, that I learnt how to make during my cookingclass in Chaing Mai.

Ollie and Theo

Mud crab curry

My favourite thing however, has to be the mud crab curry. It isn’t exactly the most beautiful of dishes but the soft flakes of crabmeat in that delicately flavoured sauce is pure heaven.  

Cooking up a Storm in Chiang Mai (my cookery class experience)

Theo and I were pretty lucky to have booked our cookery class on the only day when there was a non-stop storm. It was dramatic cooking under a tin roof with huge drops of rain pattering down and sonorous peals of thunder.

The reason we were doing the class that day was that I had procrastinated and procrastinated booking anything because it was so difficult to choose which course would be right for me. 

There are literally hundreds to choose from and the reviews are so positive that it leaves it difficult to know how one stands out from another, or how advanced each one might be.

My predicament was that although I am very much a home cook, I have forayed into Thai cooking quite substantially with David Thompson’s incredibly thorough tome ‘Thai Food’ and didn’t want anything too basic. I have spent 6 hours perfecting his Massaman paste so know how much work can go into some dishes! One thing I found when looking into these courses is that in many of them you don’t even make your own curry paste, which to me renders the whole thing pretty redundant as I am sure that the same quality and variety of curry pastes just isn’t available at home.

I was clearly taking this very seriously!

This blog was particularly helpful and enabled me to narrow down my list to Dot Thai Cooking and Classic Home Cooking. Dot’s class is only affordable if you stay in the affiliated guesthouse and I wasn't organising this in advance so I went with the Classic Home Cooking course. If I return I would probably go for Dot as her class seems more advanced.

The classic home cooking class is great, and much more flexible than many others. I wanted to try some Northern dishes since I was in Chiang Mai after all, and had really enjoyed some of the street food (see my guide here)so flexibility was important. With this course, you get to choose 4-6 dishes to cook (depending on whether you go for a shorter or longer day) and shop in Thanin market for the ingredients together before learning to cook what you have selected. I was a bit skeptical about this part as I thought I had a pretty good grasp of Thai ingredients already but there were some new, strange things to see (and inquire about), and it was pretty good fun.

I chose to make red curry paste as the base for Khao Soi (a traditional Chiang Mai coconut curry noodle dish) and Gaeng Hang Lay (a Burmese-style Thai curry). Seafood sauce (a chilli and coriander based sauce that is served in most seafood restaurants), Pad Thai and a seafood salad.

The recipes were relatively rustic and I might have preferred something that revealed a few more tricks of the trade but it is a ‘home cooking’ course run by a charming couple so I can’t really complain. The most valuable things I got out of it were:

·      A couple of the recipes I hadn’t come across before (Gaeng Hang Lay and Seafood sauce)

·      Perfecting my pestle and mortar technique

·      The difference between an aluminium wok and an iron wok (iron is better for stir fries whereas aluminium is good for curries)

·      Understanding the difference between regular garlic and Thai garlic – Thai garlic tastes mellower and is used with the peel on

·      How fried Thai garlic is a delicious addition to Thai salads (you just fry whole cloves with the skin on in oil until they are lightly bronzed)

·      How to use the end of your knife to roll across a chilli until it bursts and the seeds fall out – these ‘rolled’ chillies can then be used in Thai salad dressing

The Gaeng Hang Lay was the most delicious thing we made, along with the seafood sauce so I will share those two recipes with my additions from what we did in the class. Thai meals usually consist of a curry, salad and noodle dish all served together so in that context each recipe serves 2 small portions but as a single main meal, each recipe serves 1.

Red Curry Paste – base for Gaeng Hang Lay

It really is best to use a pestle and mortar here since it releases the oils and merges the flavours properly. However this is only worth doing if you have a proper, heavy duty stone mortar with a big heavy pestle – not the miniature versions most of us have for grinding the odd spice here and there. Otherwise a food processor will do.

Ingredients (makes 1 heaped tablespoon of paste):

·      6 dried red chillies, chopped and soaked in cold water for 5 minutes

·      2 Thai garlic cloves, skin on (can substitute small regular garlic cloves)

·      1 teaspoon of shallots

·      ¼ teaspoon galangal

·      ¼ teaspoon of kaffir lime peel (can substitute for ½ tablespoon regular lime peel but if you are in Chiang Mai this is a great thing to bring home)

·      1 tablespoon lemon grass, finely chopped

·      10 black peppercorns

·      ¼ teaspoon dry coriander seeds

·      ¼ teaspoon dry cumin seeds

·      ¼ teaspoon shrimp paste

·      For Gaeng Hang Lay: add ¼ teaspoon Burmese masala (if you are in Chiang Mai, be sure to bring tonnes of this back!)

Method:

Finely chop your shallots, lime peel, galangal and lemon grass. The better you do this, the less you will have to exhaust yourself with your pestle and mortar

Put your coriander seeds and cumin seeds in a pan and dry fry lightly until ever so slightly bronzed

Now put all the ingredients into the mortar and pound until you have a fine-textured paste

This paste can be packed in an airtight container in the fridge and last 3-4 months so its great if you do a bigger batch

Gaeng Hang Lay

I usually like Thai curries with coconut milk in them the best but this one really doesn’t need it. It is deliciously fragrant and rich on its own and one you really should try to make yourself. I liked it so much that I am sure it will soon become one of my classics at home. It has some flavours in common with a Massaman but is much simpler. It makes a delicious meal served with jasmine rice steamed with desiccated coconut, and some stir greens on the side. I particularly like this Pak Choi recipe as an accompaniment for lots of Asian dishes

Ingredients (serves 1 as a main):

·    1 tablespoon red curry paste with Gaeng Hang Lay spice mix

·      100g pork belly

·      2 bulbs of pickled garlic cut into quarters (optional) 

·      2 x 1 inch long knob of ginger (will need to make 2 Tablespoons of shredded ginger)

·      1 teaspoon of palm sugar, to taste (different palm sugars have very different strengths so err on the side of caution and add more at the end if necessary)

·      1 ½ cups (360ml) water

·      2 teaspoons of fish sauce (or more to taste)

·      3 tablespoons of tamarind juice (you can buy this in Thai supermarkets or make it yourself)

·      ¼ teaspoon of chicken bouillon / ½ a stock cube

·      ½ teaspoon of thickening flour e.g. rice flour or corn flour

·      1 teaspoon of roasted peanuts, whole

·      1 tablespoon frying oil (vegetable or sunflower)

Method

Cut the pork belly into bite sized pieces and shred your ginger into thin strips.

Carefully dissolve the stock, corn flour and palm sugar in the water, adding it little at a time and stirring. Depending on the type of palm sugar you have sometimes it helps to soften it for a few seconds in a microwave.

Put your wok on a low heat and add the oil and curry paste straight away. Stir as it heats up for a few minutes taking care that it doesn’t burn.

Add the pork. Stir until all sides of the meat are sealed.

Add the stock flavoured water and raise the heat to medium. Add all of other ingredients except for the peanuts and simmer until the pork is cooked (around 5 minutes). Check your pork by taking a piece and cutting it in half.

Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary – add salt, palm sugar or tamarind for increased sourness.

Add the peanuts at the end and serve.

Thai Seafood Sauce

This simple sauce is the Thai equivalent to salsa verde. It goes beautifully with steamed or fried fish, or any seafood for that matter. The recipe below is not for the faint hearted but if you half the chilli dosage it still makes a delicious sauce with a stronger coriander flavour. Again recipe is for a small pot, probably enough for just 1 person

Ingredients:

·      2 regular, skinned garlic cloves

·      8 birds-eye chillies

·      2 coriander roots (can substitute for 20 coriander stems)

·      2-3 teaspoons lime juice

·      ½ teaspoon palm sugar (or more, to taste)

·      ½ teaspoon salt

Method:

Finely chop your garlic and coriander root / stalks

Cut the chillies into 2/3 pieces and crush in the pestle and mortar for a good few minutes until they make a rough-textured paste

Add the garlic and coriander to the mortar and crush, followed by the palm sugar and salt.

Now add the lime, mix up, taste and adjust seasoning if necessary

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