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The
Pitfalls of Som Thum
My second
night in Bangkok was spent in a restless, and tortuous sleep. A night
filled with successive nightmares of burglars and demons, conjured
up from my subconscious. They rose from the depths of my mind and
danced about in the dark, terrorizing me as I lapsed in and out of
sleep. My jet lag, compounded with my colon rebelling and rejecting
an earlier gluttonous lunch of a fiery hot salad called som thum.
A friend has taken my husband
Bob and me to a restaurant by a busy intersection outside of Bangkok
proper for a treat, or so it seemed at the time. It is famous for
its northeastern style grilled chicken and som thum. I should
have taken heed not to overindulge, for I had just barely arrived
one day before. I should have been less macho, and not consumed enough
chiles to burn a hole through my stomach. But I am a pushover for
som thum, and a real addict for the super spicy and sour salad, the
real thing, especially if it is truly from the northeastern province
known for the hottest and most highly seasoned som thum in
Thailand.
Having lived in
America for over forty years, I almost never ordered som thum
in Thai restaurants. I would not waste my appetite on a watered-down
Bangkok style laden with MSG. for flavor. It not only lacks the pizzazz,
but also the gutsy punch of the northeastern Thai version. When push
comes to shove, I would rather eat my own and only when I most craved
it. For even my som thum could not measure up to the real
thing. Mine is the milder Bangkok version sans MSG, made with a handful
of shredded unripe green papaya, American grown tomato that lacks
tanginess, and lime without the acidity, unlike the kind from Thailand.
My som thum also lacks the pickled salted baby crabs because
there’s none to be had in America. Instead, I would add the
second-rate dried shrimp available as the best one could find in an
Asian supermarket and a bit of fermented shrimp paste I bought back
from my previous trip to Thailand. To make it more palatable, I added
a tablespoon or two of dry-roasted crushed peanuts. I had to be satisfied.
But it was never good enough to curb my craving for the real som
thum. How I counted the days when I could be back in Thailand
to savor the real thing.
The vast restaurant
was a desert with the exception of one table filled with loud happy
juiced -up people. My friend is a true gourmet and I completely trusted
her judgment when she said their som thum is superb. She
ordered the restaurant’s famous grilled chicken. It has been
flattened and marinated with tons of garlic, white peppercorn and
salt before it is grilled. The crispy and slightly dried bird came
chopped in bite size pieces accompanied by two kinds of dipping sauce,
one sweet and a bit spicy and the other, salty and very spicy. With
it came a small plate of som thum and a basket of warm sticky
rice.
The som thum looked dangerous
and formidable. I was challenged, as I was quite hungry. It had less
shredded papaya than I expected, but instead was filled with ingredients
such as lime rinds, sliced baby eggplants, a sour and acidic fruit
the Thai called mah eng, sliced green beans, sour unripe tomatoes,
shallots, severed pieces of pickled and salted baby crabs, all heavily-dosed
with fermented fish paste, garlic and several tablespoonfuls of dried
and fresh chiles, and then slightly pounded. One bite of the som
thum temporarily distinguished my tiredness from jet lag and
kicked in my appetite. I ate my fair share. My friend ordered another
plateful of the same venomous stuff.
Right after the meal, it did not take
long for me to realize I had made a terrible error. For the rest of
the day, the after-effect of the som thum began to play out
its hand. It plagued my body, sending my stomach rumbling. Through
the night, between frequent intervals of bathroom visits it exorcised
ghosts and goblins from my worn-out psyche. Som thum, I learned,
no matter how much one loves it, is not recommended as a welcome-dish
to Thailand. Better leave it to the natives whose internal organs
have been bronzed by years of chile baths. As night stretched out
into eternity, I longed for a simple grilled-cheese sandwich.
— Su-Mei Yu |
| Kao
Soy
In
1988 my sister Marian and her husband bought a house in Lum Phon,
a small old provincial town north of Chiang Mai. Their lovely house
was set in the midst of rice fields, along a pristine creek where
farmers fished for conch shells, tiny crabs and fish.
During my visit, we marketed everyday
like the way the Thais do. Some days we would drive into the big
city, Chiang Mai, and shop at one of the numerous markets. While
at other times, we would drive into the sleepy town of Lum Phon.
The market is across from a magnificent ancient Buddhist temple,
built around 700 A.D., with its golden Mon style spiral sparkling
in the sun. I loved this small quiet country market best.
On one of our Lum Phon marketing trips,
Marian took me to a food stall over looking the river near the market.
A woman in her 40’s held fort at the tiny immaculate space
where she cramped her cooking implements along the narrow sidewalk.
Her one and only specialty was kao soy, the well-known noodle of
the north. Like noodle vendors I remembered from my childhood, she
served her noodles in small porcelain bowl decorated with an imprint
of a chicken. Even before tasting her noodles, I was already charmed.
Kao soy, with a curry-flavored
chicken sauce, garnished with fresh chopped shallots, pickled mustard
greens, minced cilantro, green onion, crispy fried noodle, and roasted
chile-in-oil, and then finished with a couple squeezes of lime juice,
is believed by some to have originated from the Muslim community
in northern Thailand. But some dispute this historical fact, believing
that it came from the Shan, an ethnic people who live in the eastern
mountainous ranges of Myanmar. For the word itself is of Shan origin,
with kao meaning rice, and soy meaning sliced,
an implication for the technique of making noodles.
Until my recent trip to Myanmar, kao
soy served by the woman vendor of Lum Phon was the one I was
familiar with. Hers was the measure of excellence I adhered to.
Her fettuccine-sized egg noodles were tender and slippery with a
little “give” to the bite. The curry sauce with chunks
of tender juicy chicken was sublime. It had the perfect consistency,
not too thick or soupy, with just enough pungency to it, while at
the same time not overpowered by the forceful aroma of the curry
powder. The crispy noodles was slightly salty, crackling, and not
greasy. But most of all, her roasted chile-in-oil with its fiery
bite laced with a smoky, slightly bitter taste was what made her
kao soy special.
Then I went
to Myanmar. One of the cities I visited with my husband Bob and
my friend, Vithi, was Nyaung Shwe, a city in the southeast of Myanmar,
home of the Shan people. We had an official woman guide named San
San. She is a Shan. We went on a speedboat across the Inle Lake
to a market famous for both real and imitation antiques. Among the
crowded wooden stalls overflowed with Buddha heads, jade necklaces,
and silver opium pipes, etc. were food stalls. My friend Vithi had
set his heart on eating the local Shan dish of cold glutinous rice
patties cooked with fish and tomato. It is obvious he has been there
before, because within minutes after starting his search he found
the stall and set himself up to order. I, on the other hand, wanted
kao soy. San San graciously asked one of the young boys from the
stall to go and buy it for me. While waiting, San San encouraged
me to try a snack made with custard-like tofu mixed with slivers
of fresh cabbage, coriander, green onion, crispy garlic, lime juice
and generous amount of chile-in-oil. She showed me how to dip or
rather scoop the content with a piece of crispy fried tofu and chase
it down with jumyit, fresh young crisp tender leek roots.
And then it came.
San San called the noodle khauk
swe. It came in a small porcelain bowl with the chicken imprint.
In the center of the bowl was fettuccine-size rice noodle coiled
in a perfect mound. It was topped with a sauce that looked more
like a stir-fry of bits and pieces of chicken in fermented bean
paste. The garnishes were the same as the Chiang Mai version, consisting
of chopped coriander, green onion, crispy garlic and peanuts. Tucked
at the side of the bowl was a tablespoonful of the chile-in-oil.
San San told me to mix and toss, in order to blend everything together
before taking my first bite. She then pushed a plate of pickled
greens and chiles toward and told me to take a bite of it after
the noodles. Not only did this khauk swe not look like
the Chiang Mai version, (the correct name of which I learned is
kao soy haw, after the Shan Muslim.) oddly enough it tasted
like one of my mother’s noodle dishes, a northern Chinese
noodle called ja jeang mein. The khauk swe noodle
was tender, buttery, slippery and slightly al dente. The chicken
mixture was not greasy, but slightly chewy, set off by the fermented
salty soybean paste. The chile-in-oil gave it the punch while the
fresh herbs rendered the refreshing scents. The pickled greens balanced
the dish with its crisp, sour and slightly peppery taste.
During my short visit, I was to discover
many variations of Shan noodle, or khowsen, all different
and delicious. Trying hard to keep both my mental and palatal notes
of each noodle dish I had eaten, I couldn’t wait to get home
and cook.
— Su-Mei Yu
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