EatingAsia

A Common Curry

Curry and rice - such a pedestrian dish, especially compared with all else that's on offer in the gastronomic playground that is Bangkok.

Sometimes though, it's a simple, old-time favorite like this that really hits the spot. Especially when served up in a simple, old-time shop in one of Bangkok's oldest neighborhoods.

This isn't red curry or green curry or jungle curry or Penang curry, just gaeng kari muu - pork curry. Mild, a bit sweet, loaded with lemongrass, it reminds me of a time way waaaaayyy back when, before I'd traveled to Thailand and begun to cook Thai food at home, when I thought 'curry' was a single flavor derived from a jar labeled 'Curry Powder'. That doesn't mean it's not wonderfully tasty. The pork is tender, the rice fragrant, and it's delicious eaten with a few pickled green chilies.

It's the sort of everyday, homestyle dish that flies under the radar, the kind of dish that culinary travelers to Thailand tend to overlook in their quest for 'real' Thai food. But real enough it is, a dish that, like plain old guayteow nam (soup noodles), locals eat all the time for lunch.

Nothing special, really. Except that, more than five weeks later, I'm still thinking about it.

Pork curry (beef 'stew' on offer too at this place), no-name shop at number 93/9210 Supamiwit Road, just around the corner and up the street from Bangkok's best Isaan restaurant, Nang Leong neighborhood, Bangkok. Morning through lunch. Closed Sunday.

The Naked Truth

At the end of last year in the Philippines, we were treated to lechon.

The pigs, two of them, were brought to the house the night prior to roasting. They were killed before dawn thirty feet from our bedroom window, behind an old granary on a concrete slab overlooking a field. Laying in bed, Dave heard frantic squeals right before the pigs met their end. It was quick, he said, just a burst of noise and then nothing. I'm glad I slept through it.

I'd planned to wake in time to see them prepared for the roasting pit. The food journalist in me was determined to watch the whole process - the killing, the bleeding, the removal of hair, the gutting, the anus-to-mouth skewering.

In fact, I missed most of it. I forgot to set my alarm. Or did I? By the time I got there the lechonero and his assistant were stitching up bellies, rinsing big floppy livers and coils of intestine and stomach, slitting bladders and emptying bile onto the grass. The pigs' faces wore sweet, peaceful smiles. Their hairless skins glowed pale pink, like babies fresh from a hot bath.

Four hours later I lay a piece of that skin on my tongue and savored its salty fattiness before shattering it with my teeth.

I've always eaten meat, but since moving to Malaysia my consumption has increased. Ironically, it's during this same period that I've also been closer than ever to my meat before it is meat. This is no alien concept to those of you who grew up with wet markets, with live chickens killed to order, whole pig halves hung on hooks, ox tails intact and sprouting hair, and whole skinned sheep heads displayed on tables, lifeless eyes bulging.

But where I grew up, in 1970s midwestern United States, meat was meat and animals were animals. The former, trimmed or chopped and wrapped in plastic or displayed in a sterile, refrigerated butcher case, had no connection with the latter, which one might see on TV or caress in a petting zoo. Meat was something you ate. An animal was something you might raise as a pet.

Pigs are intelligent animals, I know, at least as intelligent as dogs. I befriended one decades ago, when I worked at my agricultural university's large-animal veterinary facility. He recognized me after only two days - trotted right to the edge of his pen every morning when I entered the barn, pointed his snout up at me, and grunted until I scratched his bristled head. He had a name and came when called, turned around on command. Back then, I never gave him a second thought when, at home on the weekends, I tucked into my mother's pork chops. Lately I've thought of him every time I'm face-to-face with a lechon.

I love animals. I mourn for the frogs and lizards squished flat on the road in front of our house. I'll go out of my way to move a snail from a well-trod piece of concrete to a safe patch of wet dirt. I ache for homeless dogs and cats and over the years I've adopted many, not one of them a planned acquisition.

So how can I do it? How do I watch a vendor grab a chicken by its feet, suspend it over a barrel, and slit its throat? How do I watch its body jerk as it bleeds to death, and then turn around and carry its head-on, feet-on carcass home to the soup pot? How can I rub a cow's head and look into its limpid eyes, as I used to do when we hiked in northern California's parks, and then salivate over the thought of a grilled steak? How do I witness the indignity to which a pig is subjected when it's killed (or, if not witness it, read about it in gruesome detail) and still rub my hands with glee at the thought of lechon?

Lately, chefs and writers and farmers and food bloggers have been arguing for the importance of getting up close and personal with what's on our plates, formerly living protein included. In a piece about staying on a working farm in Tuscany in the February issue of Bon Appetit, Ann Hood writes about the satisfaction of witnessing the cycle that brings pig to the plate in the form of prosciutto (well, not all of the cycle - she wasn't there for the slaughter), noting that it's given her a 'new respect' for the meat she eats. She writes:

There is something about knowing the pig whose head you are eating that makes it more palatable.

Really? I have my doubts. If I knew an animal well enough to actually respect it, could I end its life (or have someone else do it in my place) just to fill my belly and satisfy my palate? Honestly, if I knew the pig whose head was on my plate I'd never put it in my mouth in the first place. I don't, and won't ever, eat dog or cat - or raise a pig as a pet, for that matter - for that very reason.

It's a very good thing, I think, that more and more carnivores are truly aware that pork and beef and lamb used to be pigs and cows and baby sheep. And it's a good thing that we know more about how they got from the one state to the other, if only because shedding light on the process might attract support for more humane living (and killing) conditions for the animals that we consume. But some arguments for looking one's dinner square in the eye border on the extreme, intimating that those of us who can't - or wouldn't even if we could - go the distance to know our meat aren't quite morally qualified to eat it.

Two weeks ago we visited a lechon shop in Mindanao, and watched the preparation of lechon post-slaughter to post-spit. At one point I wandered over to the pen in the corner of the shop where a few cute suckling pigs awaited their fate. I looked down at them, out the door at the spot where they'd soon be killed, and over at their brethren browning on the spits. And turned my head and walked away, quickly. And then ate lechon for lunch later that week.

I know that the seared-on-the-outside, pink-within slab on my plate used to be part of a living, breathing being. And that's as much as I want to know. When it comes to 'knowing' my meat, I'm going to buck the trend and admit that I have my limits.

From Boat to Market

Before it's kinilaw, tuna is just one of many catches of the day, here arriving at one of Surigao City's fish landings.

This landing is a small stretch of beach wedged between a wholesale seafood market and a disintegrating pier extending out into the water from a collection of stilt houses varying in condition from basic to decrepit. Not very far offshore are several islands - alluring masses of verdant green, some ringed by pearlescent sand.

 

While Dave is wandering around with his camera I speak with a man named Eric Estaban, owner of some of the boats unloading in front of us. He tells me there are several kinds. Banca are the largest, so large in fact that they have to weigh anchor offshore and pass their catch to smaller boats for transport to shore. (In more general terms boats of almost any size can be a banca, including passenger boats.) They're deep-sea boats with crews of about 30 men that spend 2 weeks at a time in the Pacific, returning with up to 7,000 kilos of seafood.

The medium-sized boats pictured above are called lawa-lawa. Many lawa-lawa carry spear-caught coral reef fish (some of them endangered, unfortunately). Spear fishing is done by 2 or 3 men at a time, at night with the aid of a torch.

Kaka are the smallest boats here. Some, outfitted with lights, are squid boats (lights attract squid to the surface of the water), and some are 'service boats' whose sole purpose is to accompany fishing boats and carry the catch. Squidding can be lucrative, Eric tells me. His boat, which cost 60,000 pesos (about U$ 1,500), usually brings in 8,000 pesos (U$ 200) worth of squid a day. From that amount, of course, he has to pay the middleman and his crew, buy fuel, keep the boat in good repair, and support his family. Still, at age 32, he's managed to make enough from the fishing business that he inherited from his father to grow it to 4 squid boats, 4 service boats, and 6 lawa-lawa.

When we arrive at dawn much of the landing's activity is already over, but every ten minutes or so a couple of boats pull to shore and are quickly unloaded.

Large catches are carried straight into the wholesale market, where they're watched over by the guys who hauled them in until someone makes a bid.

Bids are spoken here, not whispered as they are at some other Philippines seafood markets.

Once a bid is accepted (it's up to the fisherman) it's recorded by the market's managers, who act as middleman (and woman). They record each transaction in a couple of notebooks (no computers here!) and collect the money from the buyer, which is in turn passed on to whomever is representing the boat that brought the fish in, minus ten percent.

The product is then dispatched, via various modes of transport.

We found this tuna being packed into styrofoam coolers in preparation for its journey to a destination four to five hours inland.

While all this is going on a parallel process takes place out on the beach, where small-time vendors not registered with the market wholesale small catches from their portable tables.

What's on offer here can vary in size from a just three or four 6-inch squid to a good-sized single fish. As inside at the market, fishermen hang around their middleman waiting for an offer.

It can be a good place to pick up a recipe or two.

The seller of these slender squid advises turning them into kinilaw:

'Mix coconut vinegar with lots of chopped ginger, sliced red onion, chili chopped fine, and green onion leaves. Clean the squid and slice it, then add it to the vinegar mixture. Eat it with tomato. And eat it right away. If you leave the squid in the vinegar more than one or two minutes it will shrink and get hard. Then it's not tasty anymore.'

Eric tells me that most of the fisherman on these boats are from Hikdop, the largest island opposite this boat landing. By now it's 8am, the end of their day nine hours until they return to their boats and prepare to head out after another catch.

From Sea to Mouth

Or, in Butuan City, from shoulder to spoon.

The waters around Mindanao yield seafood the likes of which we've not seen before. Butuan City isn't a major fishing port, but it's located just two hours from Surigao City, which sees its fare share of good catch, and less than half a day's drive from General Santos (or Gensan, as it's usually called), a major exporter of blue fin tuna, many of which end up on the auction floor at Tokyo's Tsukiji Market.

We traveled to Mindanao to eat seafood, in as much quantity and variety as we could. The minute we stepped inside Butuan City's breathtaking seafood market we knew we'd come to the right place.

The place is as pristine as any wet market dealing in fresh goods can possibly be: gleaming white tile-topped cement stall after stall displaying delicacies from the deep. It smells like the water its products came from. Even late in the afternoon, when many fish markets would be in a sorry state, Butuan City's is hopping, with shoppers still thronging the stalls.

Specifically, we went to eat kinilaw, kinilaw, and more kinilaw. The word 'kinilaw' is derived from 'kilaw', which refers to a way of preparing food - usually protein and, very often, fish - in vinegar or another souring agent. We had our eye on seafood kinilaw (Philippine ceviche, if you wish), and who better to prepare a dish of raw fish than a man who makes his living selling the stuff?

Leo and his wife Eva sell blue fin tuna and malasugue/malasogi (which, depending on where you are, can mean swordfish, sailfish, or marlin) at the Butuan City market. They are specialists - it's tuna and malasugue only (and at home, they eat seafood six days a week). Locals come to Leo for sashimi, which he slices with a covet-able knife that he bought at a Japanese market in Cebu, and they come for kinilaw. Leo is the Butuan City seafood market's indisputable kinilaw master.

We ordered up half a kilo of tuna, to eat right there among Leo's big-eyed fish heads and meaty fillets and perkily upright tails, and Leo and Eva good-naturedly set to work preparing ingredients and lining a couple of plates with banana leaves.

Vinegar is a common kinilaw souring agent. Cane and coconut palm vinegars are found throughout the Philippines, but in Butuan the preferred vinegar is made from nipa, a multi-stemmed palm that grows in brackish water. The 'sap' that is collected from the palm's flower stalk is called tuba, and tuba left to ferment turns into vinegar (distilled, it becomes laksoy, nipa liquor).

To make his kinilaw Leo uses bahal, nipa liquid that's past the tuba stage but is not quite yet vinegar. It's the color of honey, sour but not puckeringly so, and has a slightly alcoholic under note. Kinilaw connoisseurs agree that the best kinilaw is one that retains the freshness of the ingredients (kinilaw should be eaten right after the fish is added to the dish), and Leo prefers bahal over vinegar because it flavors the dish without 'cooking' the fish too quickly.

Leo's tuna kinilaw includes sliced cucumber, daikon radish, red onions, scallions, tomatoes, chilies, ginger, kalamansi, and a super-fragrant local lime called biasong. He flavors his bahal with tabon-tabon, a brown hard-shelled fruit that's said to remove fishy smells and prevent stomach upset.

It was the discovery of tabon-tabon halves, in the proximity of fish bones, during an archeological excavation in Butuan City in 1987 that led to the conclusion that kinilaw is at least a thousand years old, a purely indigenous dish in a cuisine with many foreign influences. (Butuanons also claim a long history; a local saying goes, 'Before there was the Philippines, there was Butuan.') 

Sliced open, tabon-tabon looks a bit like whole halved nutmeg. The flesh is dry and firm, but easily scraped out of its shell with the back of a spoon.

For a half-kilo order of kinilaw Leo mixes the grated flesh of one tabon-tabon with about a quarter of the 1 cup of bahal he'll use for the kinilaw, massages it a bit into the liquid, then squeezes it in his hand to extract its flavor. (He uses the same technique, substituting grated coconut for tabon-tabon, when he makes malasugue kinilaw. 'Tabon-tabon for tuna, coconut for malasugue', he says.) Then he strains the flavored bahal into the unflavored, discarding tabon-tabon innards.

While an assistant trims the fish Leo slices and then places in a bowl daikon, cucumber, and red onion. Before slicing the biasong, or local lime, he taps them all over with the back of his cleaver. From several feet away, with a lot of fish between us, the almost flowery scent of the lime is as strong as if it were waved right under my nose. He grates over ginger, then adds finely chopped chili, a touch of sugar, and a pinch of salt. He squeezes kalamansi juice into the tabon-tabon/bahal mixture and then adds it to the other ingredients, then sets it aside to tend to the fish.

He carefully cuts the tuna into two-centimeter cubes, then adds them to the bowl and gives a quick stir

before turning the kinilaw out onto a plate, laying sliced tomatoes and scallion greens on its surface,

and finishing with a final flourish of grated ginger. It's at this point that Leo's nephew, who works elsewhere in the market and has been standing silently next to Dave watching his uncle in action, pipes up: 'He's a master, you know.' 

To go with the kinilaw, Eva sources cooked kamote (cassava) and banana from elsewhere in the market. It turns out to be a brilliant pairing - a balancing of the sourness of a dish with sweetness from fruit or vegetable eaten alongside that's very Filipino.

Standing there at 9am surrounded by the bustle of Butuan City's seafood market, eyeball to eyeball with fish heads almost the size of our own, listening to seafood-toting porters clear a path through crowded aisles with a 'sssst ssssst', and alternating spoonfuls of kinilaw so fresh it might have jumped off the plate into our mouths with gulps of briny sea creature-scented air, we didn't want to be anywhere else. Stallside at Leo and Eva's must be, we think, one of the best places in the Philippines to eat kinilaw, a beloved Philippine specialty.

Need I say it? Leo's kinilaw is superb. There's a reason Eva took more than a few orders for kinilaw even as Leo was bringing ours together, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the camera-toting foreigner and his wife hanging out at their stall.

If you make it to Butuan City, head straight for Leo and Eva's stall. Kinilaw is dished up (to go, if you wish, fish packed separately from other ingredients) from about 9am, Monday through Saturday and a half day on Sunday.

Never, Ever Live Next to a Bakery

That nugget of wisdom popped into my head a couple of weeks ago in Butuan City, as I sat patting my mid-section after all but licking the plate on which had sat, just a minute ago, a slice of sans rival.

Granted, it had been a week of non-stop eating (details to come). But it was really the sans rival that led me to the edge of the cliff and pushed me over.

Our host, you see, lives next to his sister-in-law Margie's bakery. Nearly every meal closed with a parade, literally from the bakery's door to his, of wickedly delicious cakes, cookies, pastries. Sometimes a new batch would appear on the table just as we were finishing the old one, sorely testing my usual take-it-or-leave-it view of desserts.

 

But it was the sans rival that did me in. Sans rival, 'without rival' - a Philippine confection that demonstrates the usefulness of hyperbole.

Made of layers of meringue sandwiching chopped nuts and buttercream, and frosted with more buttercream, sans rival is deceptively (and dangerously) light and airy. Margie's version incorporates lots of toasted cashews (I've also had sans rival with pistachios) and buttercream that's little more than butter and plain sugar - so buttery, in fact, that it melts if the cake is left out too long. It's as much nuts as meringue and shows a brilliant balance of saltiness to sweet. Our companion, who took to eating leftovers for breakfast, wished for more buttercream between the layers. My hips thank god for this version's 'leanness', if that's the way to describe a cake sporting an inch of dairy fat frosting.

Margie is an inspired baker. Everything her workshop turns out is stupendous. But it was the sans rival that lured me back for seconds. Every single meal.

If you're in Butuan City or Davao you can sample Margie's baked goods at her son Macky's eateries (accompanied, perhaps, by - wait for it - latte made with rich carabao milk), Margie's Kitchen (Butuan City) and Margie's. Or place an order with one of the bakeries and carry something wonderful home.

Margie's Kitchen, 1342 Sentro building, J. C. Aquino Avenue, Butuan City,Tel. # (085) 342-1980

Margie's Bakeshop, 393 M. Calo Street, Butuan City, Tel. # (085) 341-5046

Margie's Bakeshop, Door 3 Jatel building, Tulip Drive, Ecoland, Davao City

Margie's, Villa de Mercedez, Toril, Davao City

Yu Sheng Worth Eating

A strange title for a post, perhaps, but when I started researching my article on yu sheng I had trouble finding anyone to describe for me their ideal version. Most Malaysians and Singaporeans, it seems, are somewhat indifferent to this dish that is so integral to Chinese New Year in Malaysia and Singapore. Yes, it's lucky and yes, it should be a part of any New Year banquet, but the consensus seemed to be that it rarely inspires cravings.

And I know why. Most versions of yu sheng are, to my palate at least, gloppy, overly sweet piles of unidentifiable ingredients with little discernible flavor, a dish of vegetables and fish (yu sheng means raw or fresh fish) that tastes nothing like either. Having eaten a few versions, I was content to never try another. Until Sunday.

I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, to have been converted to yu sheng at Sek Yuen, an old-timer on the KL restaurant scene where much of the staff is original to the place and the kitchen is still fueled by wood. The restaurant began serving yu sheng in the early sixties, a year or so after it was popularized in Singapore, and they haven't changed a thing about the dish since.

The yu sheng is assembled at a lucky red-clothed, triple-tiered prep area at the front of the restaurant. Every ingredient is made or prepared in-house, making the dish an incredibly labor-intensive endeavor. Many restaurants have simplified the process by outsourcing some ingredients and leaving others out altogether.

Before the yu sheng comes together the staff marinates fish slices (jellyfish is another option) and ginger matchsticks in sesame oil. Then pickled ginger (two kinds - white and red), pomelo sacs, pickled green papaya, shredded green onion, pickled shallots, carrot and jicama strings, chopped peanuts, sesame seeds, julienned lime leaves, and chopped cilantro are heaped onto a platter and anointed with a drizzle of plum sauce. The lot is showered with strips of deep-fried won ton skins, garnished with lime wedges and green and red packets of white pepper and cinnamon, and served with the marinated fish.

It's up to diners to empty their packets of pepper and cinnamon onto the fish and give it a good mix before adding it to the other ingredients. Then, a squeeze of lime and much tossing with chopsticks, preferably while chanting a few lucky phrases to auspiciously usher in the New Year.

Sek Yuen's yu sheng is a textural marvel - the combination of six fresh and pickled ingredients, cut to almost exactly the same shape and size, culminates in one big, satisfying crunch. It's sweet from the plum sauce, but also boasts varying shades of tartness from pickles, lime juice, and fragrant lime leaves. The overwhelming flavors are of fish and vegetables, spiced up with ginger two ways (pickled and fresh) and white pepper. The cinnamon adds a subtle warm note. Won ton crisps (most other versions use colored crunchies of unidentifiable origin) - sturdy, grease-less, and wheaty - are delicious enough to eat on their own. Kudos to the restaurant for its light hand with the dressing and for its use of sesame oil; I've had more than my share of yu sheng drenched in plain old cooking oil - blech!

Balance, balance, balance. We eat at Sek Yuen at least twice a month, often more, and walk away from every meal wondering at the magic worked in that kitchen. The combined knowledge of the restaurant's chefs and prep cooks gives rise to dishes that are nuanced, complex, and always balanced. The yu sheng is no different.

The best illustration of the care taken at Sek Yuen, I think, are those red and green envelopes. They're wrapped by hand and their jagged, uneven edges suggest one-by-one, scissor-cut origins. Each year, Sek Yuen's staff cuts thousands of pieces of paper into rough squares, lays them flat on a table, spoons ground white pepper and cinnamon in their centers, and folds in the four corners. All this even though pre-filled packets can be easily sourced from a supplier.

For us Chinese New Year has always meant extra vacation days and a travel adventure. From now on, it will also mean yu sheng at Sek Yuen.

If you're in KL, you have two more days to try it this year.

Sek Yuen Restoran, 313-315 Pudu (almost at Jalan Pasar), Kuala Lumpur. Tel. 3-9222-9457 (though if it's busy your call may well go unanswered). Lunch and dinner, closed Monday. Serving yu sheng through this Thursday, Feb 21.

Manila's Dao Shao Mian Connection

It's been almost ten years since we last lived in China, and seven since I last visited. Still, there's something about Chinatowns that always say 'home'.

So, when we travel to Southeast Asian cities we invariably find ourselves in one. It's curiosity, partly - how does Binondo (Manila's Chinatown) compare to Yaowarot (Bangkok's)? How does it compare to China? Sometimes it's the caffeine factor - Chinatown coffee shops often have the best coffee. And there's that matter of feeling at home, like we always did in China, even when living there seemed like a royal pain. When we're overwhelmed by an unfamiliar city it's comforting to spend a couple of hours in an area where everything looks familiar, sounds familiar, and tastes - with variations country to country, of course - familiar. If, when we're wandering, we find authentic versions of our favorite Chinese dishes, so much the better.

Like dao shao mian, 'knife-cut' noodles. Hands down, our favorite Chinese noodle. We stumbled across the dish a year ago at Binondo's Lanzhou La Mien, a little shop dedicated to northern Chinese doughy specialties. A couple of weeks ago we returned. This place does dao shao mian right, down to the bowls of chopped scallions and cilantro, the tin of Sichuan peppercorn-tinged, red-oil la jiao (hot sauce), and the bottles of soy sauce, and black vinegar on every table. 

The noodles are cut to order in the tiny kitchen by a sturdy, smiling Lanzhou native. She wields her knife like a pro, shaving strips of dough and, with a slight flick of wrist, sending them flying into a pot of boiling water. Her lump of flour and water (and nothing else save for a bit of salt) is firmer and more elastic than most, making for a noodle with a lovely chew.

The shop serves a few versions of dao shao mian (chicken, beef). We go for the classic, noodles in a bowl of rich pork broth studded with tender pieces of meat and bok choy.

We've asked for it spicy, but of course we add more of that lusty la jiao at the table - drop drop, plop plop. Yeah, we're addicted, all right.

This may be the best bowl of dao shao mian south of the mainland. It's certainly outdoes versions we've eaten in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh.

It's the noodles, and thus the dough, that make or break this dish, and the Lanzhou lass's are beyond reproach, silky-soft yet toothsome, uneven jagged edges grabbing bits of scallion and la jiao en route to mouth.

There are a few other delightful northern specialties on offer here, like shui jiao (boiled dumplings, 15 to an order),

substantial but not-too-thick wrappers enclosing a filling appropriately light on pork and heavy on pungent Chinese chives. Served with shredded ginger in black vinegar, to which we add soy and - of course - la jiao.

The place is not called Lanzhou La Mien for nothing and if you order the specialty (choices include beef, pork, chicken, seafood, and pork chop or rib) you can watch the cook work her magic, turning a lump of dough into a skein of supple pasta with nothing more than a few bounces of the arm and twists of the wrist, through the window that divides the kitchen from the dining room.

Though we didn't opt for la mian this visit, we did enjoy a couple of bowls last year.

If you're a Chinese noodle and/or dumpling-loving Manilan get thyself to Binondo pronto. You don't have to adore la jiao like we do to enjoy the northern specialties at this place.

Lan Xhou La Mien, 819 Benavidez Street, Binondo, Manila.

Quiapo

In the Philippines, the Church is everywhere.

Catholic churches mark the central area of the built landscape of even the smallest towns. Their plaza are spaces in which mass is held, corn is popped, God is worshipped, motorcycles are parked, groceries are sold, picnics are held, tag and other games are played by rowdy children, naps are stolen, gossip is exchanged, homework is written, SMSs are typed, weary bodies are rested, courting is done, dogs are exercised.

Witness the plaza fronting Manila's Qiapo church, on a Sunday - a day of mass, a day of people enjoying the leisure time that, even on this day of rest, eludes many a Filipino.

Like the vendors who travel in from the provinces with their smoked and salted fish and fresh produce, stake out a bit of cement, and set up shop.

And the men and women who read palms and cards, predicting promotions at work, new loves, economic windfalls, bad marriages, pregnancies longed-for and otherwise, wins and losses, rises and falls.

(Professor Tommy is famous in America, at least according to his pitch.)

Or like the women lined up alongside and across from the church, seated behind tables heaped with gnarled roots and strange leaves and unidentifiable fruits and vegetables and barks and stones and dried seeds, herbal remedies for whatever ails.

Or the cigarette and sundries sellers, who move the sliding panel on their portable wooden displays back and forth (Tok-Tok!) to alert smokers to their presence. 

Or the balloon vendors,

the garlands-for-the-saints peddlers,

the men and women operating the Santo Nino stalls,

the watermelon cart men,

and the plastic bag kids, so many you wonder if any of them manage to make any money for their efforts.

And the jeepney drivers, idling outside the church's side door,

and all the people scraping together a living in the whirl of the plaza and its neighborhood on a Sunday, who nonetheless offer a hello and a smile to a stranger.

It can be overwhelming, even a little disorienting, this Sunday Qiapo chaos.

But never dull.

 

Bangkok's Best Isaan?

Quite possibly, yes. And it's not even cooked by Isaan natives.

Bangkokian Puang Paka (left, above) opened Benjarot ('five tastes') in Bangkok's Nang Leong neighborhood over thirty years ago. The building in which the restaurant resides (3 tables in the downstairs open-air section, more up, with air-con) belonged to her mother. Relatives wanted to sell it, but she disagreed. To justify keeping the building in the family she started a business on the ground floor.

Why not Isaan food?  she thought. She began alone, preparing the menu's two items - nya nam tok (grilled beef salad) and laab - by herself. As she cooked, she asked relatives and friends to taste and criticize, and her skill in the kitchen grew. Over time, she added other dishes: somtam, fried rice, fried chicken, 'exploded' catfish salad. As a boy her son, Thongchai Cheynim (right, above), helped out everyday from 4am. Now retired from government service he, along with his sister, cooks and waits tables and manages the day-to-day while mom keeps a watchful eye over everything.

Our dining companion, the man who steered us here, has lived in Nang Leong all his life, and he's been eating at Benjarot since it opened. We understand why. We've enjoyed - we think, since we've actually never journeyed to Isaan - spectacular Isaan fare. But the food at Benjarot is a cut above. There's close attention to detail here. Ingredients are pristine, of the highest quality. Benjarot elevates this easy-to-like 'upcountry' fare beyond hot, spicy, and filling to utterly sublime.

First up, somtam (green papaya salad). The flavors are clean, distinct - we taste the sugar and the lime juice and the fish sauce, and we can differentiate the acidic tang of the Thai plum tomatoes from that of the green papaya. I ask for 'phet-phriaow' (spicy-sour), and after tasting I suspect the owners go light on the 'spicy' because we're farang. Nonetheless, this is a standard-setting somtam.

Tom yam gung, sour and spicy shrimp soup, is enriched with coconut milk. Is this inauthentic? We've never encountered a coconut milk-thickened tom yam gong.

Who cares? Look at those shrimp (2 photos above) - huge, plump, cooked just long enough but not too long, so they retain just a little crunch. We know with our taste buds that the heads of those crustaceans have totally given it up for the broth, which is complex but not overwhelmingly fiery, silky rich but sour enough to balance the coconut milk. It's so divine that I find myself shredding kaffir lime leave and tough lemongrass stalks between my teeth, just to extract every last drop.

In Bangkok, a piece of fried chicken is a dime a dozen. Not Benjarot's bird, which is better even than that of my late Arkansas-resident great-grandmother. Breast pieces are usually to be avoided at all costs, but this white meat is moist, oozing savory juice, tender. The crispy skin is so devoid of grease that one wonders if there's someone in a corner of the cramped kitchen squeezing the oil out of each piece of bird after it comes out of the hot oil.

Apparently not.

The highlight of our meal is the catfish salad (bplaa dook foo). We've enjoyed many versions, but this one exceeds expectations (after a parade of fine dishes). We appreciate that the dressing is served on the side so the salad doesn't wilt before its time. We love the amazing uber-crunchy, candied-but-not-flossy texture of the catfish, and the toasted cashews are an inspired touch. Is this the ultimate 'Thai-taste' dish? Three kinds of crunch, raw-and-cooked, salty and sweet with a bit of sour and a saucer of chilies to add heat at will. We could eat Benjarot's exploded catfish every day, 7 days a week.

We arrive at Benjarot utterly stuffed, on the heels of a morning of intense snacking. But darned if we don't dip into every dish, and greedily at that.

Bad news for Bangkok-bound weekenders: Benjarot is open only Monday through Friday. But this is one experience worth extending your holiday by a day for. They just don't make Thai food like this outside of Thailand.

Benjarot, Thanon Krung Kasem (almost at corner of alley called Trok Nang Loeng 1), Nang Loeng, Bangkok. Mon-Fri 1030a-2p.

Working Hands

              Fish vendor, Pham Van Hai Market, Ho Chi Minh City