EatingAsia

World's Most Glorious Grilled Chicken?

Within two months of moving to Bangkok, we'd settled into a Friday night routine. After walking the dog up and down our noisy litle soi, we toasted the end of the week with a pop or two in front of a half an hour of Jamie Oliver on UBC Series (yes, I agree, the ever-perky Mr. Oliver can be a bit annoying - but there's no denying that the man knows his food). Drinks drained and appetites stoked, we'd amble up the soi to the main road and hop in a taxi, bound for one of the most humble of Thailand's myriad culinary pleasures - gai yang (grilled chicken).

Our gai yang purveyor of choice was one of two side-by-side eateries on Narathiwat Road, the establishment closest to Sathorn Road (I'd love to recommend it here, but a visit last year found that ownership had changed hands and standards had dropped.). I suppose you could call it an indoor-outdoor eatery, since three quarters of the tables were protected from the elements by slabs of sheet metal, while those dedicated to al fresco dining were lined up curbside. Cooking facilities consisted of two charcoal grills - fashioned from halved steel barrels - that turned over a steady supply of whole burnished birds, salt-crusted whole fish, crispy pork neck, and charred beef strips (the latter two for yam - salads), and a wok-and-prep area for yam assembly and stir-fry.

Arriving at this gai yang hotpsot on a Friday night around 8 o'clock was like joining a big party. All but a few tables were filled to capacity, and most customers - casually dressed families, couples on dates, big groups of coworkers sporting office wear that became increasingly disheveled as the night wore on - were well into leisurely dinners accompanied by big bottles of Chang beer and glasses of Thai whiskey and soda. An unchanging cast of hopeful soi dogs wandered among the tables, unaggressively seeking leftovers. Bouncy waitresses in Heineken or Chang or Carlsberg promotional gear smilingly solicited orders and proffered food and refreshments within minutes. For us this place, oozing cheer and fellow feeling, utterly relaxing in spite of its situation next to a busy eight-lane road, was the only place to mark the start of a weekend.

Oh, did I mention that the food was fantastic?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assert that nobody, but nobody, does grilled chicken as well as Thais do. I think it's in their blood. The simplest of dishes, yet one of the most difficult to execute flawlessly, gai yang - originally an Isaan dish - is abundantly available on the streets of any city or town in Thailand. Lightly marinated, expertly grilled, browned-and-crispy-skin-tender-and-juicy-meat barbequed chicken. And the dipping sauce!

With sentimental memories of BBQ Chicken Fridays dancing in our heads, it was only natural that our first meal in Chiang Mai be grilled bird. In response to our request for an intro to the "best grilled chicken in Chiang Mai" the owner of our guest house sent us to a quiet moatside street on the outer edge of the Old City. There's no sign and the place is a bit hard to find, he told us. "Just look for the rotating chickens on spits."

When we arrived, close to 9pm, the shop appeared perilously close to shutting for the night; only two lonely chickens twirled above the coals. We snagged one and grabbed a table, preparing to pass judgment.

 

I'm not sure that this mobile phone photo can do the bird justice. It was heavenly, perfect, just what we'd been dreaming of since our last visit to this country of uber-talented chicken grillers.

I've never been a fan of the sweet dipping sauce (nam cim waan) lower right, but it's always proffered to foreigners, Thai-speaking or not. It's worth asking for a saucer of brick-red, spicy-sour-garlicky nam cim phet (above right); the more asssertive flavors are a made-in-heaven match to the bird's char.

This shopfront, like most any grilled chicken hut in Thailand, offers Isaan-origin sides: rice both plain and sticky; nya nam tok (rare grilled beef salad); somtam (sour and spicy green papaya salad), Thai-style with dried shrimp or Isaan-style with pounded pickled crab; and sup nawmai (a "wet" salad of boiled bamboo shoots, coriander, mint, and shallots dressed with chilies, lime, and pungent fermented fish sauce - pla raa). The latter is one of my favorites, and this version skillfully walked the fine line between full-flavored and fishy to the point of funk. It also boasted plenty of ground toasted rice (the whitish bits barely visible in the abysmally blurry shot below), an ingredient absolutely essential to a good sup nawmai.

What a way to start a holiday! The only way to follow up a meal like this? A rollicking tuk-tuk ride back to our temporary digs (top photo).

Gai yang shop, Thanon Sri Poom between Moon Muang and Ratchaphakinai streets. Inside the moat, Chiang Mai Old City. If you're on Thanon Sri Poom at the corner of Moon Muang and heading towards the Chang Puak gate, you'll pass one soi (alley) on your left before reaching the shop. If you hit a second soi you've gone too far. Keep any eye out for the spit, at the front of the shop but a bit tucked in, away from view.

"When You See It, Eat It,...

...for who can say if it will be there tomorrow."

It's a motto that Dave and I travel by. A sort of gustatory version of "Seize the day." And it's meant that most of our journeys have been marked by countless culinary pleasures, and a few surprises too.

Occasionally our day-to-day throws up the stone to be unturned, the opportunity not to be missed. Such was the case a few Sundays ago as, after a satisfying lunch of bak kut teh, we idled at a long red light on our way out of Klang. In front of us a gentleman carrying a girth hinting that he appreciated the delicious things in life herded three young boys. They were hurrying. As I turned to watch them pass I noticed not a few other bodies - families, singles, couples, young and old - walking briskly from other directions. Like rivulets to a stream, all were converging at a single point: a nondescript, open-air stall.

Bak kut teh lingered in our bellies. (Truth to tell, we'd just shared an ice kacang as well.) We weren't hungry in the least. We had no idea what was being dished up at this no-name stall. But when would we be in Klang again, and at just this time of the day? Clearly, the situation warranted investigation. When the light turned green Dave made a U-turn.

As we approached the stall we could see that every table was filled, every seat taken. Waiting customers clustered outside or hovered over the chairs of those still eating. All were waiting for a most common dish, something that's found in every other Malaysian coffeeshop: wonton mee.

But what wonton mee!

Springy noodles tossed in a dark soy-based sauce, neither especially sweet nor markedly salty, that lubricated and only lightly seasoned the springy strands. I caught a whisper of pig, suggesting that lard played a part as well. On top, slices of tender, exceedingly smokey barbequed pork and a couple of stems of green vegetable. Accompanying wontons in a rich, caramel colored meat broth sported silky skins thicker than those we sampled in Kampar, and a pleasantly chewy pork filling.

Perhaps the best wonton mee in the vicinity. The folks crowding the tables around ours - many working on multiple bowls of noodles and dumplings - certainly seemed to think so.

Wonton mee stall, Jalan Mantin in the general vicinity of Courts Mammoth, Klang. Till 8pm or so.

Carry-Home Khanom

In a perfect world we would have flown back to KL, from our northern Thailand driveabout/eatabunch, packing a good three months' supply of all those coconut creamy khanom (desserts and sweet snacks) that Thais do so well. But our suitcases were bulging, my carry-on weighed a ton, and with a load of photo equipment and a travel guitar Dave was already exceeding his take-aboard quota.

Besides, fresh coconut cream goes sour after a day or two. No, it's not a perfect world.

That's not to say we came home empty-handed. Fresh curries and dried chilies (whole, ground, roasted and then ground), spices, and portly plastic bags of cashews and peanuts stir-fried with kaffir lime leaves and chilies and shallots (my favorite gap klaem - food to go with drinks) found their way into our embarassingly large and weighty bags. And for our sweet tooths, the three pre-packaged khanom pictured above, scooped up during a last-morning sweep of Chiang Mai's Warorot Market.

Many Thai khanom - like Malaysian kuih - feature coconut in one form or another, along with palm sugar (though Thai palm sugar is lighter in color and less rich and smoky in taste than Malaysian). Khanom miang (upper left) are moist, chewy balls of shredded and roasted fresh coconut, peanuts, and fresh ginger bound together with palm sugar. To the right lie slabs of a puffed rice treat known as kayasaat. For this khanom, rice is lightly pounded to break some of the grains and then cooked. The tender cooked rice is heated on a flame to dry it out, and mixed with peanuts, sesame seeds, ribbons of thickly grated fresh coconut, and palm sugar, and then spread in a pan to harden. Kayasaat is brittle-like in taste, but not in texture; perhaps it's the tropical heat, but it remains soft and can be bent almost in half without breaking.

Below the khanom miang lies khao dtaen, cooked rice that's been pressed into a flat round mold and left to dry in the sun for two or three days, then deep-fried. Traditional khao dtaen is decorated only with a thick, loopy rope of melted palm sugar, or with nothing at all, and is made with either red or white rice. You can find it most anywhere in Thailand, 6 or 8 discs to a cylindrical plastic bag for 10 baht (about 25 US cents) a bag. I'm not sure how I feel about this fancy newfangled version. While the raisins, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and cashew nuts that cloak its face are tasty enough, they detract from the earthy, grainy flavor of a traditional khao dtaen (I'm partial to the ones made with red rice), and almost hide the treat's palm sugar goodness. This will probably be my last foray into "tweaked" Thai treats.

All made it home with minimal breakage, taste intact. Enough to last till our next trip north? Not a chance.

Meals on Wheels: Mesmerized by Mutton

It's hard to get too worked up about soup. If I'm looking for a streetside meal on the go (or a meal to go) I'm thinking noodles, popiah, perhaps a sugary kuih or too. But plain old soup? Frankly the thought of a bowl of hot and steamy liquid with the odd chunk or three in it just doesn't rock my boat.

Or at least it didn't until we stopped in at this Bangsar soup cart after a gluttonous morning in Kampar. It wasn't planned. I was across the street at our favorite fruit shop and Dave was engaged in Malaysians' third favorite pasttime (after eating and shopping): double parking. While I palpated papaya, picked through pineapple, and eyeballed jackfruit Dave, feeling the need to stretch his legs, stepped out of the car -- and right into a fragrant cloud of soup steam. At that point our fate was sealed.

This soup stall (which may or may not actually be on wheels, but it is mobile so I'm gonna say it qualifies) is probably known to most any Kuala Lumpur-ite who's shopped in Bangsar, because for over thirty years it's been the source of an intensely aromatic sup kambing (mutton soup) and a less olfactorily seductive sup ayam (chicken soup). The vendor inherited the stall, and countless loyal customers, from his father (who on this day, he proudly told us, was in Mecca for the haj).

Following the lead of the customer ahead of us - who walked away with ten orders of the stuff - we chose the mutton brew to go. Soup, packaged separately from solids, is dished up into plastic bags from a big stainless steel cauldron that's been on the boil, we were told, for at least five hours. Mutton meat and bones stay behind in the pot, continuing to leach flavor into the coriander seed- hued broth.

Customers have their choice of cooked meat: assorted innards, ribs, or tongue. The latter, though photogenic enough, did not tempt. We went for the squat, meaty ribs instead.

If ever anything justified a sheep's slaughter this soup, eaten at home the next day (Kampar and its delicacies stuck with us long after the dinner hour), is it. Thick enough to silkily coat the back of a soup spoon, the broth is so rich one might be tempted to infer the presence of a wee bit of coconut milk. But further tasting and serious contemplation leads me to the conclusion that the soup's unctuousness is wholly attributable to meat and fat essences and an intriguing blend of spices that call to mind Indonesia, India, and the Middle East all at the same time. Turmeric is a definate presence, as are coriander seeds, cardamom pods, and black pepper. At first taste the soup is intensely spicy, but it's a strange sort of chili heat that quickly migrates from the tip to the back of the tongue and then - poof! -dissipates altogether.  Rib meat that slides easily off the bone, nearly tender enough for a toothless baby, is icing on the cake.

A little slice of mutton heaven, at just 10 ringgit (less than 3 dollars) a bag, including meat - enough to stuff one glutton or satisfy two "normal" eaters.

Soup kambing/sup ayam stall, Persiaran Ara Kiri (or sometimes around the corner), Lucky Garden, Bangsar. Evenings from about 4ish.