Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Before I moved back to Australia permanently (and a life based around work and reality tv shows), I was treated to a final family farewell feast.

Unlike the family feasts on SBS*, at my Chinese family feasts no one is slaving over a hot stove. Here you do not learn to cook. That is for the kitchen staff at the Chinese restaurant you have chosen and inevitably have vouchers for. Here one learns to eat and possibly dispute the bill.

Ten courses...two tables...four hours.....lots of tea

We started with soup. I think it was crab (no shark fins anymore....seems my family has decided to shun the delicacy)

Goose feet noodles





Fish Cakes


Peking Duck




Fish with preserved ginger and plums (Chinese umeboshi style)


Sizzling prawns with spring onion, garlic and corriander


ummmm...can't remember


Minced Peking duck as a side with congee



congee also accompanied by stir fried veges and omelette...just count those dipping sauces


Dessert...sweet plus cripsy biscuit thingy


Family portrait


It was a very sweet farewell dinner. For a family which by culture I would not describe as particularly expressive of their emotions it was quite an overwhelming display of affection. I was laden with compliments and gifts. My aunties all hugged me and my uncles passed on some of my late Ama's jewellery. One of my cousin's searching for something nice to say told me I had a lovely voice. I left feeling sad to leave them all behind.

*Oh and also, if you happen to be reading this and work for SBS I have a crossover reality show idea for you - My Family Feast meets Border Control. Large ethnic families have to try and make it into Australia with all the authentic ingredients they can without having them all confiscated by customs....the family with the least number of substitutes wins!!!!

Every innovation in noodle technology brings us one step closer to souvlaksa: the ultimate Greek-Malaysian fusion food. Jay Rayner spots doner kebab flavoured instant noodles. His thoughts:

There was a moment, a taste echo, that reminded me of belching half an hour after having eaten the real thing – stop grimacing, for god's sake; this is a doner kebab flavoured Pot Noodle we're talking about. What did you expect? Proust? – but it was soon gone. Instead all that was left was that sickly-savoury, chemically-enhanced indeterminate flavour that all of them have.

I'm never sure if the aftertaste is a flavour or just salt and umami overload.

Noodles are serious business...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVKUHfwhi3U

This snippit is from Ly Bun Yim's classic 1972 film អន​អើយ​ស្រី​អន ("An Ey Srey An"), and has been cited by Loakruu Frank Smith in comments to posts here and here as being possible inspiration for the noodlefight video by Preap Sovath.

Deathpower already pointed this out and posted the two videos side-by-side, but I thought it worth posting again here just because the clip is so awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOsvbCR-rBs

Thanks to Al for the tip!

Update: I was so delighted by the video itself that I nearly overlooked Alison in Cambodia's tasty post on cooking nom banchok!

One of my favourite food sites is Blue Lotus. It's a simple review of home cooked meals that I find quietly riveting. I find that there is something restive about looking at photos of what other people eat on a daily basis, in the same way that checking out someone else's trolly at the supermarket is mildly interesting.

I've been cooking a lot lately to try and use up all my dry store of goods. So if you too are a food voyeur, here is what I have been cooking and eating lately.

Spring Rain Noodles


This is bean thread vermicelli, soaked in hot water and then tossed with fried pork mince, dried shitake mushrooms (soaked in hot water for 30 mins), bean sprouts, spring onions, diced eggplant (salted and rinse to remove bitterness) and Chinese chili bean paste and ginger. Basically you add pork and fry off then all the other ingredients. Then in a side bowl mix tblspn or so of light soy, xiaosheng rice wine, chicken stock or water or mushroom juice (1/4 to 1/2 cup) with 2 teaspoons of corn flour. Add to pork to make it all saucy then add noodles and toss. Finally flavour with some sesame oil and sprinkle with corriander and beansprouts. You can make a vege version of this minus the pork and chicken stock using mushroom stock or water.



I served the noodles with this really yummy tomato salad of sliced tomato, sprinkled with corriander, sichuan pepper corns and cumin seeds and a sauce made of spring onions, rice vingear, pinch of sugar, salt, crushed garlic, and sesame oil.

All noodle stands close on Mondays in Bangkok for the purpose of street cleaning and repairs which often leaves me in a dilemma. What to eat? I love noodles and can eat them happily everyday and I usually do. But on Mondays I am left to my own devices. It was on Monday the 11th of August that I devised this exceptionally yummy bastardisation of tom kha hed and kanom jeen. Usually served cold or rather at room temperature I had mine hot because I couldn't be bother waiting for them to cool down.

I took one packet of tom yum ingredients available at all Thai food supermarkets. It contains a knob of galangal, 3 stalks of young tender lemon grass, saw tooth corriander, chilis, lime, kaffir lime leaves and shallots. Slice and tear as appropriate and add chilis as desired



One pack of tom ka paste.


I used lobo

Cup of coconut milk (canned, the way it was meant to be)

Water

Fish Sauce (optional)

Rice noodles dried or fresh, (not vermicelli made from bean starch)

Assortment of herbs including dill, mint, thai basil

Mushrooms, oyster, shitake, black cloud, etc


tablespoon of sugar

Bring noodle water to the boil and cook rice noodles

In a small-ish sauce pan bring can of coconut milk to the boil with tom yum fresh ingredients and packet. Add water if needed. I added about a cup. Add mushrooms. Season with sugar and fish sauce to taste. Cool (or not)

Ladle soup over noodles.

Serve with the following condiments fish sauce, fresh herbs, pickled chinese vegetable (optional), green beans, boiled eggs, bitter melon sliced and raw green beans and bean sprouts.

It was yummy, and I later emailed Hock about it to tell him to make this bastardisation for his menu...turns out he had already thought of the same thing and was writing a more funked up recipe for it......he's my twin food soul and together we signfy the death of all that is good and "authentic" in Thai food...he he he he he

Since doing my fieldwork back in 2005-2006, I have ever more mused on the idea that many people, academics included, over estimate the dominance of modern food and supermarkets. This is of course subject to much debate and could be the topic of the PhD thesis in itself.

That's what excited me about meeting Nalika at a PhD conference a couple years back on agrarian change. I had read her PhD proposal, which was aimed at studying such change, through consumption patterns in Thailand. Most people tend to study such change from the production end, not the consumption end. Although she has since changed her research topic, we obviously both maintain a special interest in the subject of food consumption.

What I specifically liked about Nalika's proposal is that it challenged the assumption that the world of food contains two diametrically opposed organisational forms in terms of food marketing: large global food chains dominated by multinationals and small farmers and/ or food artisans struggling to survive and on the forefront of traditional/alternative food networks. Instead it recognised that Thai people, like so many of us source food from a variety of places including supermarkets, local stalls, fresh markets, 7 elevens, friends gardens (except apparently those living in "food desserts" a terrifically horrifying thought indeed). This idea was reinforced to me later in a book I read when the author noted that many of these debates over economy and trade are necessarily misleading for the sake of argument. The author emphasised how except for on the very margins of human existence do people only source their goods and services from one place only. Extreme autarky and/or food desserts are the outlying ends of most people's consumption experience. There is multiplicity in most economies as their are in most people's daily consumption.

But from my own perspective and surroundings in the urban hub of a middle income newly industrialising country, the idea that there are only small local farmers/ artisans vs large multinational food giants, to a large extent misses the middle. A lot of people who live and toil in Bangkok, both rich and poor buy, eat and source their daily food at hawkers stalls.



Tasty, spicy bowls of noodles, are decent, healthy, and cheap and is what feeds the urban masses. There's also grilled fish, meat sticks, salads, coffee hawkers, fresh fruit hawkers and even road side bars for variety. Produce from these stalls appears to be sourced from a range of places, including wet markets and supermarkets. A common assumption by many a falang is that these stalls are run solely by the people who man them, as some sort of extension of their home economy...some are in fact run as a sideline family business out of the front of homes or as an additional money maker. But if you've ever tried to make a bowl of noodles at home, you soon realise that its a lot of effort for a solitary bowl

I made pho bo the other day, 24 hour long process of making the stock, brining it to the boil, tipping off the first boil, then boiling again with spices over 24 hours to get the flavour. Making these noodles, I fast realised that noodles are one of those dishes that is pre-disposed to large scale production, maybe not industrial because there is a point at which I'm sure noodle production gets too large and looses flavour but at least medium to large. Plus at the price point that exists here in Bangkok, 25 baht per bowl, you need to sell a lot of noodles for it to make sense as a business proposition.

Recently, Hock noticed one of our local noodle stalls setting up for the day. A large brand new pick up truck drove up to their spot and delivered the ingredients for the day. This particular stall sells kanom jeen. They then drove on to do more deliveries to other stalls. It seems certain that this operator has several road side branches, operating on a fairly large scale. The stand is open from early in the morning to late at night and there appears to be shift workers.



Franchised noodle branches in Thailand appear to have reached its greatest heights in "chai see" (four men). Four Men noodle stands are ubiquitous in and outside of Bangkok. They are everywhere announced by a big yellow sign, bowl of noodles with a number 4 above them. These are not the best noodles but as Aong said, "if you're hungry, you'll eat them"

The tendency towards franchises and branches has of course counter resistance. Many restaurants now declare "mai mee sakha", "don't have any branches". An announcement made with pride that is meant to inspire loyalty and acceptance of slightly higher prices. Where once the Thai government's "good clean food" sign signalled that the stall wouldn't make you sick, the current new wave of food convention appears to be self-regulated, not government regulated and elicits market competitiveness through conflating small scale production with quality and care. Which, when you think about it is the opposite of previous government perceptions of smaller vendors that inspired the "clean food" seal of government approval in the first place.


Source

I'm yet to understand the dynamics of the hawker economy fully. On Sukhumvit Soi 11, which is close to my house I notice that hawkers change rather frequently, or they change their carts. Recent construction on the street has seen a lot more Isaan food turn up, to cater to the mainly Isaan construction workers. Some carts are manned by the same hawkers who seem to be able to swap carts around from noodles, to grilled meat with great ease. Most carts are overseen by the soi police. Most soi's have their own local patrols, aside from extracting bribes, I'm not sure exactly what their role is, but Hock seems to think that Masta Grilla moved on due to police harassment.

Master grilla seems to have moved on indefinitely and so has my mushroom soup guy only to be replaced by mushroom soup lady who moves between soi 11 and 19. Mushroom soup appears to be a new addition to the hawker stands. There was a great chicken noodle soup on the street a while back but the lady swapped to sweetened coffee. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I like to see the hawker stalls near my street as a sort of signifier of the dynamic changes taking place in Bangkok.

With all this flexibility at hand, the ability to change carts according to the ever shifting migrant population, changing tastes and food preferences, whilst remaining cheap and accessible and also able to take advantage of economies of scale, it will be from, my understanding, a long time before Thailand sees the cannibalisation of its hawker markets by large multinationals, supermarkets and fast food outlets. For now they appear to co-exist quite well.

How appropriate. Over the weekend, Hock and I went to Bankara Ramen on Sukhumvit Soi 39, on a tip from Austin. And had their ramen with lots and lots of raw garlic.



It was tastey but a little pricey for a bowl of noodles by Bangkok standards. There was a queue of Japanese people obviously waiting for their fix of ramen, with lots and lots of garlic and scallions too.




I had read about Bankara in the Guru magazine, it is said to be the first ramen outlet of this particular chain outside of Japan....is Thailand being food colonised by Japan? With Thai-style sushi now turning up at night markets in outer lying provinces, is this the death of Thai food as we know it? Or the beginning of yet another era of bastardisation?

Haven't seen any Thai-style ramen turning up at street vendors, but its early days yet

Anyway, I still recommend Bankara and would go again. Don't do what I did and put five cloves on garlic in your soup and spend the rest of the day breathing death. Hock also warns against getting funky and ordering the ramen with creamy soup. Just keep it real and go with the original soup or miso. The "sauce applying" looked good, the menu is vaguely amusing on a japanglish tip.



Ra Men Bankara, Sukhumvit 39 (Inside the small arcade called ‘The Manor’ which is on the right hand side about 300 metre from the Sukhumvit entrance. Parking available in the premises. Daily 11am-11pm. T: 02-662-5162-3.

... by Yano Akiko.



Simply one of the best food songs I know.


Ramen tabetai (I want to eat ramen)
Hitori de tabetai (I want to eat it by myself)
Atsui no tabetai (I want to eat the hot one)

Ramen tabetai (I want to eat ramen)
Umai no tabetai (I want to eat the good one)
Imasugu tabetai (I want to eat it right now)

Cha-shu wa iranai (I don't need cha-shu pork)
Naruto mo iranai (I don't need naruto either)
Zeitaku iwanai (I am not picky)
Kedo (but)
Negi wa iretene (please put the scallions)
Ninniku mo irete (put garlic also)
Yamamori irete (put heaps of it)
.
.
.

I have been wanting to go to a phat thai place in Bangkok, which my Thai friend told me about some long time ago,,, where they put big shrimps and wrap the noodle in a thin omelette.

I forgot which friend told me and didn't remember the name or location.

With my blurry memory, I googled around and decided it was probably Thipsamai.

I wrote it down before I was headed to Bangkok to see off my Thai friend who was departing to Germany to study.

After seeing my friend off at Svannaphumi airport with a bunch of her relatives, I took a ride with her cousin and her husband.

Although it was getting late, they offered to drive around a bit to show me the Royal Palace lit up at night,,, which we couldn't get near because the roads were blocked because of people protesting against Thaksin.

Then, the wife said she was hungry and suggested we'd stop for a bite.

They parked the car right in front of the very Thipsamai!

I didn't ask them to take me there, what a sweet coincidence.

We had their "superb" phat thai, their signature dish that is cooked with shrimp and shrimp roe and comes wrapped in a thin omelette.

Honestly, I wanted to like it, but I don't do great with shrimp roe.

I still ate it and I can imagine that people are hooked with this signature dish. It was a lot sweeter than phat thai I had elsewhere. You can also table-cook it as you please with all the regular garnish of lime juice, chili powder, crashed peanuts, sugar and so forth.

Maybe I will give it a second try to their "regular" phat thai with no shrimp roe on my next occasion.

The husband had a courtesy to tell me AFTER we finished the meal the story of what people call "pratuu pii", a door of ghost, around the corner from Thipsamai.

According to him, there used to be a prison, and death sentences (then done by shooting, now done by lethal injection) were made, throwing the expired convicts out of the door.

I also found another version of the story, though, that when many people died of cholera, dead bodies were piled up in the nearby temple Wat Siisaket, and the door to bring in the bodies was called pratuu pii.

Anyone knows which story is correct?

Thipsamai
5.30 p.m. - 1.30 a.m.
313 Mahachai Rd. Samranrat, Pranakorn, Bangkok 10200
02-221-6280

At Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, there is a cute outdoor restaurant under a big tree.


It's a part of a project, Pun Pun, which means one thousand varieties in Thai.

It started with a Thai husband Jon Jandai and American wife Peggy Reents team. Their homeground in Thailand where they maintain a sustainable farming, earthen house, and seed saving center is in Mae Taeng, approximately two hours from the city of Chiang Mai.

I met Jon and Peggy early last year at one of the open talks about sustainable agriculture and movements against GMOs.

A couple of months later I bumped into them at a vegetarian center operated by Santi Asoke, a Thai Buddhist group that supports sustainable living (to make it short), and learned that they were opening a restaurant at Wat Suan Dok.

I stopped by when they were preparing to open, and painted some of the signs :-)

..and I also visited them at their farm in Mae Taeng.

This is one of the earthen houses they have built.
... and a hut I slept in.
... and a view from the hut.


At their restaurant at Wat Suan Dok, they offer one of the best cost performance lacto-ovo vegetarian food in town.

They use as much produce as possible from their farm where they do not use chemical inputs. When they are short of supplies, they obtain supplies from other regular organic markets in town.

The chef, lung (uncle in Thai) Wat used to work in Bangkok hotels, but decided to work with Jon ... and he knows how to make an eye-catching presentation.

For instance, this is "super salad"
...with salad leaves, beans, dragon fruits, tomatoes, carrots, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, scoops of avocado and sweet corn niblets, with pumpkin or sesame or avocado dressings to choose from.

Phat Thai served on a banana leaf.
You can even request brown Phat Thai if you can wait a little longer, because brown noodles take longer to soak.


Fried rice with fried egg on top.
The rice they use is by default brown rice.

Most of their menus are between 30-40 baht range.

They also have lovely smoothies and juices.

For instance, I like their banana/mango/yogurt lassi and beetroot/ginger juice with no sugar added.

They also make lovely soap-based shampoos with kaffir lime, which, according to Maytel, Hock really liked when I brought a bottle once.

Pun Pun Restaurant is now closed on Wednesdays.
Opens all other days from 9am ish to 6:30pm or so.
Bring repellent if you are popular with mosquitoes, like me.

Ok so after watching people stack food on animals, I ended up spending the morning watching Japan's most famous chimpanzee and his dog board trains and do sit ups and plant rice!

I even learnt how to make udon noodles.....

They prefer hard bread and vegetables. And no, NOT as crostini and antipasto.

On the 25th December (a day after most people celebrate Christ's birthday in Germany), we went out to Erik's dad's place in the village of Urft in the area of Eifel, to have dinner and stay the night. It's my 3rd Christmas together with Erik's family.

Erik's aunt Resi always does all the cooking. I think she enjoys doing it, in a frantic sort of way - or maybe everyone just assumes she enjoys it. Anyway, she's good at it.

For starters we had turkey broth with little noodles in it. I asked Erik how often he would have this broth as a kid - he said a lot: "Whenever there's poultry, there's soup."

Erik's nephew Luis (note the little raindeer candles that gothically burn from the head downwards):





Erik's dad Erich caught in the act of serving turkey-broth with noodles. (The noodles are cooked seperately so you can specify how much noodles or if you want them at all)



Turkey, raised by a neighbour in Resi & Toni's village (Rinnen), cooked to perfection: we suspect, in one of those big black covered roasting pans called a 'saftbrater' (juice-roaster)? There was an unused one in Erik's dad's basement so we took it home.



Definitely the juiciest and most flavoursome turkey I've ever had - i know I'm wont to compare meats to other meats but this was so brown and - um- meaty, it almost could've been suckling pig. Served with a mushroom sauce made from the juices and a bit of cream. And, of course, lots of apple sauce on the side.
The noodles are quite plain tasting, but all Germans love them. They're called Spaetzle - originating from Stuttgart. A wet sheet of dough is draped over a board and then they're chopped very fast into boiling water with a knife.
Resi always makes this very yummy christmas dressing for the salad that is very herby and has pomegranate seeds in it.



Kids (and adults) love apfelschorle - usually you mix up the apple juice and fizzy water yourself, but it turns out, the premade version is pretty cool.



Dessert was a gingerbread mousse, but I wish I'd only eaten a mouthful or two. Very rich and alcohol spiked. The brave of heart also had ice cream. "Love your arteries." Then it was all washed down with a fancy Spanish brandy, rather like Cognac.



Boxing day breakfast the next morning is my favourite part about Christmas. It's the only time in the year when we get all traditional German on our asses (so to speak). Fresh rye rolls (crisp outside, soft inside), sourdough bread again made by Resi, black forest ham, shortbread-macaroon cookies and nuss-ecke ('nut corners' dipped on one side in chocolate) made by Erik's cousin's partner Sylvia; a very nice selection of cheeses, a boiled egg, orange juice and loads of fresh drip coffee brought to the table in a thermos. The little boys Luis and Henri love to have leberwurst (liver pate) on rolls. For me the best thing: salmon with creamy white horseradish on a fresh rye roll. Every morning should begin with a wasabi style kick like that. But salmon is not eaten without guilt. Forgive me, Jesus...

For the last few years my father-in-law has talked at length about the famous "duck noodles" of Saint Louis, Bangkok. He has promised many a time to take Maytel and myself there to try a bowl, we came very close to sampling these mystical noodles a few months back but our attempts failed as the shop was closed and we had to settle for an excellent bowl of fish ball noodles .

As with all good vendors in Bangkok THEY choose when to open.

As my father in-law's partner is out of town and mine is getting wasted on sake in another country, we have had extra time to hang out and bond (meat eating is usually what we base our outings around) so finally after three years, I got to eat the duck noodles of St Louis.



Is the guy in the white shirt praying to that roasted duck? Most likely.






No verbal orders are allowed. You have to write it all down, even the little things like to have bean shoots or not. An excellent strategy to keep out those pesky foreigners. So you will need the assistance of your Thai partner or friends unless of course you are Thai or some super nerd who knows how to write Thai (ahem) otherwise sorry no noodle for you!


Plate of braised livers and gizzards, pretty good.


"3 year duck noodles"

They were worth the wait a yummy scented broth with super tender and flavoursome duck and perfectly cooked noodles with bean shoots of course.



Pepsi, grease cutter.