EatingAsia

Crouching Diner, Hidden Vendor

The joy of eating street food is rooted not only in the flavors, but also in the experience. Sometimes it's more about the latter than the former.

This curious establishment was on the 'hit list' that a friend passed to us before we drove to Hat Yai and Songkhla last June. It resides under a stage erected in the courtyard of a temple smack in the middle of the city's Chinatown. The place is an institution; if you were to ask anyone on the street about 'noodles under the stage' they'd point you here.

The vendor has worked out of her cramped quarters for many years, and her specialty is yen taa fo, a rice noodle soup colored red by a sauce that incorporates preserved bean curd.

 

Hers features a light pork broth and bone-in meat and/or meat balls, a blood cake if you wish it, bean sprouts, and a loose knob of boiled pakbong (kangkong or water spinach).

'Oh, I wish you'd come earlier. She's run out of meat balls,' a local said as we carefully lowered ourselves onto a dollhouse-tiny wooden bench. 'Her pork balls are famous.' The heads of other diners nodded in agreement.

I wish the same. I wasn't too excited about this bowl of noodles, with its anemic broth and incredibly chewy pork. The tongue-singeing, brightly tart homemade chili sauce was its only high note.

 

That said I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Watching other diners (many of whom were much shorter than we -- and most of whom were amused by our bemusement) hunch over to scuttle under the stage and then carefully rise from their chairs, bent double again, to retrieve their noodles made for great lunchtime theater.

(The vendor stays mostly seated, assembling orders and washing and rinsing bowls, chopsticks, and spoons in a couple of pails at her feet. She's got diners busing and wiping their own tables.)

 

Why here? She lives on the temple grounds, she said, and the temple rents the space to her for next to nothing. She'll never be rich, but business is steady and she makes enough to get by.

It's a living, under the opera stage.

Yen taa fo vendor under the stage, Thanon Nam Ngan, Songkhla town. From 9-ish. She seems to run out of pork balls around 1:30p or so.

On Islam, Politics, and Hidden Pork Stalls

A few weeks ago we sat at a table in a rear corner of Songkhla's morning market, nursing kafe booran ('ancient coffee' - the magic words that just might land you a non-Nescafe caffeinated beverage in Thailand). Halfway into my second glass, as neurons and synapses sprang to life, I focused on the scene in front of me.

A row of pork stalls: ladders of ribs and tenderloins dangling from hooks, pig heads propped on wooden counters, the notched surfaces of butcher blocks made from thick sections of tree trunk littered with odd pink bits. Behind me a butcher used a blowtorch to burn the hairs from a pyramid of pig's feet.

These stalls stood side-by-side and back-to-back with others displaying fresh vegetables and southern Thai kitchen staples like naam budu (super-fermented fish sauce along the lines of bplaa raa), palm sugar, taramind, and chilies. Behind each stood a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman.

As the (male and female) butchers and Muslim vegetable and sundries sellers worked they bantered back and forth, sometimes vacating their own stalls to hang out at their neighbors' for a few minutes. Muslim shoppers carrying bags spilling leafy greens ambled down the pork row, stopping in front of mounds of snowy fat to chat with the pig meat purveyors.

Nothing special, right? Well...

In Malaysia pork stalls are concealed, hidden away so as not to offend. Most every Malaysian wet market has one, but they're tucked down an alley, segregated behind corrugated metal walls, housed in a separate building, or - in the case of our neighborhood market - located in a far corner of the basement car park.

Many of southern Thailand's - and the majority of Malaysia's - residents are Muslim. So why the pork segregation in the one, but not the other?

For an obvious reason. Maybe.

Thai Muslims may comprise a relatively large portion of the population in southern Thailand, but they are a small minority in the country as a whole. For whatever reasons (and this post isn't about that) Bangkok has refused to recognize this population's language, culture, and Malay ethnicity; it's this non-recognition that's often cited as one of the drivers behind the deadly insurgency that plagues Thailand's south. In southern Thailand Muslims may be numerous, but it's most certainly vegetarian and pork-eating Buddhists (contrary to belief in some quarters, to be a meat-eating - and cooking - Buddhist is not so unusual, at least not in this part of the world) who run the show.

So I suppose you might say that Songkhla's - and southern Thailand's - Muslims (unlike Malaysia's) have had no choice but to accomodate, and that that accomodation is reflected in the market's lay-out: Muslims and pork, cheek by jowl (pun intended). Maybe.

But wait.

In Jakarta's Glodok (Chinatown) pork is also sold right out in the open, pig butchers sharing lane space with Muslim mutton, kuih (sweets), and vegetable sellers. In an alley nearby, Muslim vendors prepare gado gado and rujak to order within whiffing distance of the porky steam that rises from the wok of Chinese Indonesians pan-frying pork dumplings. As in some parts of southern Thailand, it appears to be an easy coexistence.

This certainly is not a case of a Muslim minority forced to accomodate. Far from it. Economic success aside, many Chinese Indonesians feel that they are second-class citizens  - a status that was, in fact, codified until recently.

Yesterday I lunched at Yut Kee, an early twentieth-century Hainanese establishment. At a nearby table sat three older Dato types ('Dato' is a Malaysian honorific title), two Chinese and a Malay (in Malaysia to be born Malay is - by law - to be born Muslim). While the latter tucked into his lamb chop his companions slurped beef noodles and shared roti babi, fried bread filled with pulled pork. A Malay eating in a non-halal establishment is something you rarely see here, though Malaysians of a certain age tell me that it wasn't such an unusual thing thirty or so years ago.

As a non-Muslim living in Malaysia who's lived and traveled extensively in neighboring countries with sizeable Muslim populations I can't help but draw comparisons. As a former political scientist I can't help but think about politics and politicians (and terrorists and insurgents) and their uses of religion. And as a food writer I can't help but focus on, well, food -  and reflect on the way that, in southern Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia politics and religion and the ways in which they influence each other are played out at the market, in restaurants, at table, on the plate.

I've been pondering all this for a few years, actually, but more so recently as I've been working on a couple of projects - one that's partly about food as an expression (or not) of identity, and another about Muslim self-expression in Malaysia and Indonesia.

I haven't yet come to any great understanding. I'm throwing this out here to see what bounces back. I'd love to hear from anyone with something to say; leave a comment or send me an email.

A final thought that springs from a snippet I read a few months ago, can't remember exactly where.

The author wrote that in Malaya a few decades before Merdeka (independence), to be Muslim wasn't akin to making a political statement. It was during that era - centuries ago - that Chinese traders / immigrants to what is now peninsular Malaysia and Singapore married local (ie Malay, Indian, and Thai) women, giving birth to Peranakan (Baba Nyonya) culture and its exquisite fusion cuisine.

That, I think, is one culinary revolution that could not happen today. At least not in Malaysia.

Note: When I first published this post, a couple of hours ago, it wore a more benign title: On Hidden Pork Stalls. What I'd originally typed were the words that the title line now bears; I changed themright before publishing. Now it's back the way I thought, at the outset, that it should be. Hm. Why did I 'dumb down' my title in the first place? Not quite sure, really.

Note: Thanks everyone for your comments (a record, in fact), and keep them coming!  When you add yours it will not appear on the post page, but on a subsequent comments page. To view your comment after you've added it click on the two small orange arrows at the very bottom of the page - this will take you to subsequent comment pages.

Isaan in Southern Thailand, By Way of Bangkok

The Photographer is settling in at a hilltown in northern India's Kullu Valley, and I'm deskbound, weighted by deadlines and unfinished tax returns. Feeling a bit sorry for myself, to tell the truth.

But it's nothing that a half hour of mind-travel won't cure.

Hard to believe that we were in Hat Yai jTypePad - Edit Postust over two weeks ago. Our last visit to that southern Thai city  was 15 years prior. Then, we'd arrived via Trang, sweaty, dazed, and little ill after two hours crammed into a gold metallic hot-rod share taxi driven by an amphetamine-addled speed demon. It was evening, and we soothed ourselves with an a/c room in a cushy hotel. I'm not sure we even ventured out for dinner. The next morning we flew to Bangkok. I can't remember a single bite from that Hat Yai visit.

This time is different. Again we've just one night, but that can mean three or four meals, and we've come with a list of recommendations from a Thai-speaking Kelantanese food lover. Oddly - given that Hat Yai lies in the land of curries and roti - the top spot belongs to Bann Khun Bpuu, an Isaan restaurant. Back in KL we're as deprived of authentic Isaan fare as we are of gaeng massaman, so we stroll over for dinner, salivating in anticipation of grilled pork neck, properly sour and spicy som tam, maybe a plate of sup nawmai (bamboo shoot salad).

Alas, we've unwittingly timed our Southern Thai road trip to coincide with a two-day public holiday. It's only 8pm but Baan Khun Bpuu's sold out, closing up for the night. The smells of grilled chicken, tamarind chili sauce, and fresh herbs taunt us. Gam, the portly, pony-tailed owner seems genuinely distraught by our disappointment. He apologizes, recommends another place around the corner (which turns out to be excellent), invites us back. 

So, though we'd planned to be on the road early the next morning, we decide to stick around for lunch.

Gam, it turns out, is from Bangkok. Why Hat Yai, why an Issan restaurant? Gam is too busy with the lunch rush to answer all our questions, but he tells us this: "Thais, every Thai, loves Isaan food. I love it. You can eat it anywhere, anytime. Why not Hat Yai?"

This makes perfect sense.

We start with a grilled pork neck salad (above). The meat is smoky, pleasantly chewy, its meaty opulence balanced by sour tomatoes, slivers of tart green mango, and plenty of tamarind in a dressing that also includes ground toasted rice, chilies, and lime juice.

Sup nawmai (bamboo shoot salad) displays its usual split personality: slightly off-putting and addictive at turns as the bamboo's fermented funkiness does a duet with lime juice, dried red chilies, slices of red onion, and clean, cooling mint leaves. The fact that this is an Isaan dish served in a decidedly southern Thai, ocean-proximate setting is reflected in the curled slices of squid balanced on top of the salad.

Yam mamuang bplaa dook foo ('exploded' catfish with mango salad) isn't actually made with catfish, but with snapper, Gam tells us. The dressing's a bit sweet for my taste but the crunchy fish 'floss' is delicious.

These - and an aggressively meaty-spicy pork laab with odd bits - go down well with sticky rice and fresh herbs and vegetables.

Baan Khun Bpuu's 'dining room' is a wide alley between two cement-walled buildings that, by virtue of loads of potted plants, wind chimes, and a rigged roof, has been transformed into a green and pleasant  little wedge of rural Thailand. Long and narrow, it's backed by a wood and charcoal-fired cooking area.

Too far into our meal someone fires up the barbecue and soon gai yang (grilled chicken)-scented smoke is wafting over our table. Pure torture, for we haven't an inch of room left. Then, shortly before we finish eating an auntie starts in on a batch of gaeng som (sour orange fish curry).

It's enough to make us predict that Hat Yai will be more than just an overnight stop, on the next trip.

Baan Khun Bpuu, east side of Pracharak Road between Prachathiphat and Suphasarnrangsan Roads (no English signage - look for the packages of crispy pork rind for sale out front, across from a school), Hat Yai. 1030am-dinner, closed Wednesday. Our lunch, with water, cost THB 157.

Last Thursday Morning in Songkhla...

...was probably much like any other Thursday morning in Songkhla, except for the two bleary-eyed foreigners wandering the southern Thai city's 'old town' in search of caffeination (the sun rises an hour earlier there than it does in Kuala Lumpur, and so does the photographer).

We find it in the living/dining room of an elderly woman who earns a few extra baht by straining Thai grounds through a sock filter and serving the inky brew sweetened with condensed milk. Not the best kafe booran ('ancient' -- 'real' in other words -- Thai coffee, as opposed to Nescafe) we've ever downed, but good enough to get us rolling.

We'd arrived in Songkhla two days before and immediately fallen in love with its scrappy fishing port and semi-crumbling 'old town'. Finding the city's Thai Buddhist and Muslim residents to be extremely friendly, we're feeling quite at home.

After coffee we move on in search of something more substantive. The metallic slap of spatula against griddle lures us down old town's Thanon Nang-ngam to a corner tea shop - little more than the veranda of an old wooden house sheltered by a corrugated metal roof, really - where a Muslim vendor is serving up fresh roti  from her cart parked to the side of its entrance.

Here we find ourselves in 'same-same but different' territory. The hot tea is reminiscent of Malaysian teh tarik, but is more orange and stronger tasting, with that slight - and appealing - bitter bite that we associate with Thai iced tea. When rolling our her dough the roti vendor employs the same 'bubble' technique we observed in Kota Bahru (northeastern Malaysia), but her final product is lighter, more pillowy, and sports less grease than its Malaysian cousin.

And her burnt orange-hued lentil curry -- which she calls nam gaeng, or 'curry water' -- is sweet and barely spicy, mellow like the residents of this sort-of beach resort town, and all in all a more gentle introduction to the day than the angry red, sourish and incendiary curries that accompany many an Indian Malaysian roti.

As the sun moves around the corner of the building, we find the tea shot the perfect spot from which to watch the town awake. Patrons come and go; some regulars are obviously parked for the whole morning.

Across the street another vendor sets up her stall. As soon as she's open for business a queue forms which means, of course, that we must investigate. She's selling coconut sticky rice (plain white and yellow, colored with turmeric) with a variety of accompaniments, deftly wrapping each order in a banana leaf.

We sample the lot. The rice is masterfully made, extremely fragrant but neither moist nor heavy, each grain distinct and a wee bit al dente.

Yellow rice with naa gong (dried shrimp cooked with coconut milk and palm sugar) and mapraow (shorthand for coconut cooked with palm sugar) is our favorite combo. Shrimp and sugar may seem an unlikely combination, but the shrimp'ss brininess balances the opulent butterscotchy-ness of palm sugar cooked with coconut milk; slivers of lime leaf lighten the richness.

As for the mapraow - let's just say that if she encased this coconut-palm sugar mixture in chocolate and sold it in the US she'd be a millionairess.

We also enjoy white rice with more of that coconut-palm sugar mixture, and a cap of sangkaya, a rich homely egg custard made with coconut milk and more palm sugar.

We finish (see opening photo) with more white rice, another - yes, another - blob of coconut-palm sugar, and a dribble of the vendor's take on curry water. It's sweet, barely spicy, perfumed with lime leaf, and studded with fantastically fresh tiny shrimp, and goes brilliantly with the coconut rice.

Before we know it an hour and a half have passed. We're more than full but don't regret a single bite. One more cup of tea and we're on the road, plotting our next visit to Songkhla.

Teashop and roti vendor, south end of Thanon Nam-ngan, Songkhla old town. Sticky rice vendor, right across the street from about 7:45am (usually sold out by 10am, she says).

Hands-On In Northern Thailand

I've been cooking from Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford's books (Hot Sour Salty Sweet; Mangoes and Curry Leaves; Beyond the Great Wall et al) for over a decade. So it was kind of weird and very wonderful to find ourselves covering their first culinary class/tour in northern Thailand last February for Wall Street Journal Asia. Read my article in today's edition of the paper's 'Weekend Journal' it here, and check out Dave's accompanying slideshow. (More out takes from the story here.)

                             The makings of a Shan meal

To say that this class is 'hands-on' would be an understatement. Students did the wet market shopping and the cooking -- in traditionally Thai low-tech kitchens (think charcoal braziers instead of cooktops, two knives and a chopping block instead of a meat grinder, and good old mortar and pestle rather than a blender or food processor) -- from Day One.

 Khun Mae ('Mother') teaches students how to make rice flour dumpling sweets

To teach the class the couple brought in locals, only one of whom speaks fairly fluent English and none of whom are tourism or culinary professionals; the main 'instructor' was a 70-something-year-old grandma from Fang, north of Chiang Mai (by the end of the class everyone was calling her 'Mother'). Two days were spent in Fang where, in an outdoor kitchen on a beautiful lychee farm, a young Shan woman introduced students to her ethnic minority's cuisine.

Students were given shopping lists, but no written recipes, so they learned as Jeff and Naomi do when researching their books -- by watching and doing, and finding ways past language barriers to communicate with local cooks. Meals outside the 'classroom' were taken on the street, at markets, and in local restaurants.

                                  Shopping lists yes, recipes no

Culinary courses are, by their very nature, staged experiences, but this cooking class felt as 'true' as a cooking class could possibly be. Naomi and Jeff told me that they hoped to challenge course participants both inside and outside of the kitchen, to nudge them beyond their culinary and cultural comfort zones. Judging from students' comments they succeeded in this; though a few students acknowledged feeling like fish out of water that first morning in the wet market, by the last day of the class everyone seemed to be riding a high.

Oh, and did I mention that we ate exceedingly well?

              Students enjoy the fruits of their labors on a lychee farm in Fang

Details on the next class, to be held in January 2010, can be found here. 

Retro Thai Sausage Salad

Not 'retro' as in 'a sausage salad that was eaten in Thailand back in the day', but 'retro' as in - a Thai sausage salad that we ate back in the day.

About twenty years ago (that qualifies as 'retro', doesn't it?) we were grad students in Boston, living in a long, narrow South End walk-up. It was a great apartment, on the third floor of a gorgeous old building, lovingly refurbished by our photographer landlord. The kitchen was huge, with reams of counter space. But it was in the center of the apartment, which had windows only at the front and the back. In short - no natural ventilation. No air con. No ceiling fan.

In the summer, when the sun beat through the skylight, the kitchen temp hovered around 86F (30C) degrees. As cash-poor grad students we normally cooked every day, but that summer we spent as little time at the stove as possible. We made sandwiches. We grilled gai yang (Thai grilled chicken) on a mini 'cue on our fire escape. We ate a lot of zaru soba (Japanese chilled buckwheat noodles) and pasta salad with tuna, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and capers (snicker all you like - it's fantastic). We discovered sliced cucumbers napped with chilled thick garlicky yogurt at Nadia's, a cheap Lebanese resto around the corner.

And we ate a lot of Thai sausage salad, which - if you're competent with a knife - takes about as long to pull together as it takes to steam rice in a cooker. It's perfect hot-kitchen food: few ingredients, minimal prep, maybe 2 minutes in front of the stove. And it's spicy-sour-sweetness and mix of textures (chewy and fatty-crackly Chinese sausages, cleanly crisp cucumbers, crunchy scallions) are just the thing to excite an appetite numbed by the heat.

History repeats itself. Our current place is almost perfect - great location, just the right size, pet-friendly, fits the budget. But the kitchen - oh, the kitchen. The ugly fake dark timber cabinetry and black countertop I can deal with. Ditto the refrigerator, the smallest we've ever had. But the heat is something else. No ventilation. No air con. No ceiling fan, and no room for a standing fan. KL is suffering a miserable heat wave, with no end in sight. In short, cooking means sweating, in the form of big, fat drops falling from my forehead.

So last month I pulled an old favorite from the recipe box. We're eating a lot of Thai sausage salad these days.

Perhaps my timing with this post is off. It's not quite summer in the US, well into winter in Australia. But I'm willing to bet that, somewhere in the world, it's as hot as my kitchen.

Thai Sausage Salad (Adapted from Thai Home Cooking from Kamolmal's Kitchen)

If you've ever wondered what to do with those wrinkly Chinese sausages (which, by the way, keep forever in the fridge), here's one possibility. Though they needn't be fried (you could boil or steam the sausages instead), browning them in a pan brings out their sweetness and gives them crackly-crispy charred spots that are a delicious contrast to the chewy rest of them. Proportions are pretty loose here - make the salad spicier, more sour, or sweeter according to your own taste, add more or less cucumbers or sausage. In Boston we used to use jalapeno chilies rather than Thai bird chilies, for the flavor. Use whatever type of chili suits you. Do serve this with steamed rice; the coolish salad with hot rice makes for another wonderful contrast.

Interestingly, we didn't encounter this exact salad, incorporating browned and crisped Chinese sausage, in Thailand until our last trip up north in February, when we found it at a Teochew restaurant in Lampang (photo above).

6 Chinese sausages

4 large cucumbers

1/2 cup sliced red onion

4 scallions

3 fresh hot chilies (or more or less to taste)

2 Tbsp fish sauce

1/4 cup white vinegar

2-3 Tbsp fine granulated white sugar

2 tsp black soy sauce

handful of coriander sprigs

1. Slice the sausages on an angle (see opening photo) - this will expose the maximum amount of surface to the pan's heat. Fry them over medium heat in a dry skillet or wok until they start to blister. A few black spots are fine, but don't let them burn. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel
2. Peel the cucumbers or not, as you please. Sliced them thinly. Halve the scallions lengthwise (white and green parts) and then cut them cross-wise into 1-inch pieces. Chop the chilies finely (remove the seeds first if you want less heat). 
3. Place the onion in a large mixing bowl and pour the vinegar over. Leave it aside to soak for 5 minutes.
4. To the onions, add the sausage, cucumber, scallion, and chili.
5. Mix the fish sauce, sugar, and soy sauce, and stir until the sugar's dissolved. 
6. Add the dressing to the onion-sausage-cuke mixture and toss. Taste for seasoning and adjust as desired.
7. Transfer to a plate, top with coriander sprigs, and eat with hot rice.

Street Food - Off and On the Street

We generally avoid malls and mall food like the plague. So it was a little disconcerting last year to find ourselves spending a lot of time in the region's shopping center food courts for a feature article in today's Wall Street Journal Asia 'Weekend Journal' (the annual Food Issue) on street foods cooked and served 'off the street' (a few out takes here).

I have to admit I accepted the assignment with some ambivalence. For me eating on the street is an integral part of travelling (where street food is available, anyway). It's such an easy and delightful way to connect with locals and immerse yourself in local culinary (and other) culture.

But I also realize that there are lots of travelers who, for whatever reason, just can't go there. And I do not turn my nose up at you. Street food is not just about the food, it's about the experience, and while the experience can't be recreated in a shopping mall food court or restaurant (though Saigon's Quan An Ngon comes pretty close), in the course of our research for this piece we found that - sometimes - the food can.

So I say, to those who just can't bring themselves to eat on the street or in a market: I'm glad that there are places like this, where you can find at least an approximation of the street's flavors. (I also say, put yourself in my hands for a day and I'll have you converted. But that's neither here nor there.)

For this article we visited malls and standalone restaurants in Bangkok, Jakarta, Saigon, and KL (we had help in Singapore) . And we found something interesting, a little tidbit that hasn't entered the debate about the desire of some regional municipal governments to sweep foods off the street: places like Jakarta's Kafe Betawi (a chain) or Tanah Abang food court may actually become repositories for some tastes of the street, as certain street foods disappear from their natural habitat.

The owner of Kafe Betawi, who is really very passionate about street foods, told me that she tries to conjure, in her restaurants, approximations of  street foods she remembers from her childhood that are now nearly extinct on the street. And on the 8th floor of Tanah Abang, a massive textile market, we found a street specialty - kerak telur, a sort of rice and egg 'omelet' with coconut and palm sugar - that we'd been searching for in vain. It was even cooked old-style, over charcoal.

***

That said, for us the street is still where it's at. I mean, just have a look at that opening photo: com tam (broken rice) topped with grilled pork, sweet-tart cucumber-carrot-daikon pickle, a fried egg, and scallion greens (fish sauce-chili dipping sauce on the side) taken with a glass of inky iced coffee at a tiny, low-to-the-ground beaten metal table, at 7am on a Saturday in an alley in Saigon's District 1. 

It's a dish we often overlook, common as it is to nearly every Saigon city block in the a.m., but it's so delicious. The broken rice is fluffy, light, almost couscous-like, the pork slightly sweet and smoky, the pickles a sharp counterpoint to the richness of the meat. The egg's yolk, broken to spill over the rice, pulls it all together. And the dipping sauce, with it's lightly sugared, fish-flavored chili punch, is the flavor of Vietnam itself. What a way to wake up. (That, and the coffee.)

But this meal isn't just about the deliciousness of what's on the plate in front of us. It's about being out and about when Saigon is at it's best, when the buildings still cast long shadows and the air is a bit cool and as close as it ever gets to clean; when the motorcycles, relatively thin on the street, speak a soothing purr instead of a deafening roar; and when locals, fresh from a night's sleep and not yet worn down from all the crap that a day in Saigon can throw at them, are at their friendliest.

(Smiles and nods also come from the sight of a couple of tall foreigners perched on kiddy stools hunkered down over a plate of com tam. Don't ever underestimate the power of partaking.)

 

It's about the aromas that waft about in that alley, the good ones: the comforting, enveloping smell of steamed rice, the hint of sourness rising from the vendor's jar of pickles, and the meaty smoke snaking up from the grill that taunts your growling belly while you're waiting for your plate of com tam and then, after it's delivered, stokes your hunger even as you're eating.

 

It's about the tinkle of bicycle bells and the honk of motorcycle horns (at the end of the alley sits an apartment building, and at 7am residents walk or ride by your table on their way to work, school, the market, breakfast, coffee), and the nods and high-fives sent your way by other eaters, many of whom probably breakfast here every single day. It's about the vendor's smile as she sets down your plate, the coffee lady's laugh at your pronunciation of 'cafe sua da', the privilege of watching your meal prepared right in front of you, and the pleasure of tucking into something so luscious yet so ridiculously cheap.

In short, this fantastic plate of com tam is about everything - the whole experience rolled into one tasty package. 

And that's why, given the choice, the street is where we eat.

Com tam, alley behind the opera house, Saigon. Starts early, closes when she runs out.

Sowing Seeds, Planting Futures

The small northern Thai town of Khun Yuam sits amidst a landscape so gorgeous you can't help but bound out of bed at first light.

After watching the sun erase the mist blanketing the valley we look for local coffee - no easy task in some corners of Thailand, these days (more on that later) - settle for Nescafe before stumbling upon cappucino, of all things (this is a small, out-of-the-way town), and then set off away from Khun Yuam's main street. We head down a motorbike-wide road, past Burmese temples and wooden houses, and ten minutes later we're looking at fields so bright green they hurt the eye. 

It's Saturday, quiet, only a few people working.

And then, in the distance, quite a lot of people working. An extended family? we wonder. An entire village working a piece of land together?

A few clues in front of buildings set close to the road tells us this is a family of a different kind.

Buddha Kasetna School is an organic farm cum combination boarding school (for rural children whose families are too poor to support them) and orphanage (for homeless children). Kids find their way here via local farm associations, wats, and NGOS. Some are rescued from the sex and drug trades, others from the street, still others from abusive family situations. Some lack Thai nationality. The lucky ones have families to return to when they are old enough to carry their weight back on the farm.

Principal Anchalee Langpamun welcomes us, and Dave's camera, with warmth. A native of Nakorn Sawan, she's been with Buddha Kasetna since its inception over twenty years ago. She's proud of the school and of her 150 students, who range in age from five years to eighteen.

The school owns two subsistence farms, one devoted to vegetables and one to rice (one harvest a year, 5,000 kilos). Monday through Friday, in addition to attending school in the morning and afternoon, the kids spend two hours on one or other of the farms learning how organics works. All Saturday morning too, is spent with the plants; Saturday afternoons and Sundays are free.

With the help of twelve teachers who live on site Khun Anchalee supervises the kids, who are divided into teams, each charged with a different farm-related task. After we spend some time in the fields Khun Anchalee invites us up to the school and its dormitories, which sit on a hill above.

It's late in the morning and as a couple of teams finish up in the fields another is sorting waste plastics and other materials to sell for recycling ('We really try to waste nothing,' Khun Anchalee says). Others are dehulling rice,

making compost,

and, in the kitchen, cooking Saturdays-only kanom (sweet and savory snacks).

Khun Anchalee walks us around the 'campus'. In addition to the two farms there's also a mushroom house and a large plant nursery - all run by the students. Further up the hill, next to a huge, meticulously manicured playing field ('All the students are out here in the evening, running, playing soccer, badminton, having fun,' she tells us.) sit the classrooms, computer room, and library, in two new buildings donated by the Singaporean Embassy.

Nearby is another classroom where female students learn to sew and make the students' school uniforms. 'Girls need to leave us with a skill,' Khun Anchalee says. Almost none of the students are able to go on to higher education, she tells us. While it's possible for boys to find manual labor on farms or in urban areas, girls without a marketable skill have a harder time getting by and, lacking work, might fall into prostitution. 'They must be able to take care of themselves,' she continues. 'And they must be able to take care of their own children by themselves, if necessary.'

I wonder if the children arriving from difficult circumstances don't have trouble adjusting.

'They do, at first,' answers Khun Anchalee. 'But later it's OK. Because as soon as they arrive here, they have 149 friends.'

 

If you happen to find yourself in Khun Yuam, the Buddha Kasetna School welcomes visitors (best outside classroom hours, 9a-12p and 1-3p Mon-Fri). Ask anyone in town and they'll point the way; it's about a ten-minute walk. The school, which receives very limited funds from the Thai government, also welcomes donations.

Where Am I?

That's what I think to myself as I drink in this gorgeous view: a winding river backed by low mountains, trees showing their limbs while others sport various shades of brown, all of it lit by a weak sun, and not a coconut palm in sight. I could be taking in a summer day in northern California (where, by the way, summer occurs when much of the rest of the US is sliding towards winter).

That was our favorite time of the year when we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, so it's a sweet bit of fortune to find it here in on a February day in northern Thailand. Yesterday we drove from Lampang to Mae Chaem, a scruffy village on a diversionary road off the Mae Hong Son Loop. It's a relatively short journey - just 2 1/2 hours - but the last leg cuts through Doi Inthanon National Park, home to Thailand's highest peak, and for the final ninety minutes or so the road is all twisty turns.

We drove with our windows open (something we never do at home in Kuala Lumpur) and, at the road's highest point, gulped in wonderfully crisp air as the sun began to fall behind the mountain. As the elevation dropped the air heated and the scents of dry brush, dead leaves, and deliberately-set fires filled the car. When we arrived in Mae Chaem, which is nestled in a parched (at this time of the year) valley, the temperature was on that delicious cusp between daylight sauna heat and moist, nighttime coolness. After finding a room for the night we walked to the wet market (what little of it was still up and running at half past seven) and celebrated our arrival, seated roadside at a rickety table, with Sang Som and soda poured by a boiled peanut vendor.

 

There's not much to Mae Chaem and we'd rather be at higher elevations anyway, so this is just a pitstop - but we want to make the most of it so we're up early, to take in what little there is to take in before the valley heats up. At seven the market is surprisingly quiet, just a few vegetable and kanom vendors and others selling pork, beef, and chicken in a glassed-in 'meat room'. There's no real coffee either, so we down our Nescafe with our noses scrunched as if it were medicine (and in a way, it is) and then walk for a bit along the river before turning into village's 'suburbs', a neat grid of residential streets.

Sleepy doesn't begin to describe the dozey feel of this place, but the residents are friendly and the roads are lined with some lovely old wooden houses.

 

When we return to the market an hour later it's bordering on kind-of lively, with more vendors of prepared foods and a woman at the back cooking up laab khua to order.

 

She flavors her laab not with spice paste but with ground chili, a powdered spice mixture heavy on the prickly ash, and fish sauce; her laab is chunkier - the meat and 'parts' cut into larger pieces - than most, and it's studded with plenty of generously sized pieces of crackling.

 

We pad our breakfast with a spicy chicken, vegetable, and mung bean vermicelli gaeng purchased from a nearby vendor, and grilled, banana leaf-wrapped fish sourced from another.

 

The former is wonderful but the latter I can't abide. The tiny fish are too bony and the paste they've been mixed with before grilling contains an ingredient that puts me off somehow. This is frustrating and very unusual  - I can't recall the last time I tried something that I couldn't bring myself to continue eating. But Dave is happy to finish it off by himself.

At the far end of our table a woman chops pork fat into big chunks and tosses them into a huge wok. As we eat we admire the patience of one Mae Cham resident for whom hope springs eternal.

Please Dress Politely

   

Guys (and gals), leave your tank tops back at the guest house; its shirtsleeves only if you want to eat at Chiang Mai's Thanawm Pochanaa Restaurant (and, if you're in Chiang Mai, you really should eat there). I know it's hot out, but hey, the three sisters who run this tight ship have eased their requirements substantially: they previously banned shorts and flip-flops as well.

We were directed to Pochanaa by our friend W, immunologist by day and architectural preservationist/oral cultural historian/animal rights activist nights and weekends. This Chiang Mai native, whom you might mistake for a prim aunty should you meet her on the street, also finds time for serious chowhounding. She and her husband roadtrip just to eat. We're pretty sure our meeting her a few years ago was the result of an act of divine intervention.

 

'You must try Pochanaa before you leave Chiang Mai,' W urged over a lunch of Yunnanese food, right after she'd regaled us with descriptions of a two-table operation on the edge of town well worth the trek (we didn't make it there).

The restaurant has been around for years, and it really is run by three middle-aged sisters. And it's remarkably eat-off-the-floor squeaky-spotless. Pochanaa is probably the cleanest eatery I've ever been in in Southeast Asia - and that includes Singapore. We usually don't pay much notice to these sorts of things, but when you walk into Pochanaa you're practically blinded by the gleam of the windows, tables, chairs, the prep area. By the looks of things Pochanaa is the territory of some ferociously attention-to-detail cook-owners, an observation that's confirmed when the food arrives to table.

The dishes served here are central and Chinese Thai. Following W's recommendation we ordered gaeng kiaow waan gai ('sweet' green chicken curry), a dish that usually elicits nothing more than an 'eh' from me. Pochanaa's is simply exquisite. The chicken, though boneless and mostly white-meat, is tender and incredibly moist. Though coconut-y, the curry manages to be not too heavy, and the natural sweetness of the coconut milk is well balanced by a wee bit of heat and the bitterness released when one of its many pea eggplants pops between the teeth. Lots of Thai basil here, and lemongrass, galangal, and wild lime leaves as well, but also other (to me) unidentifiable, seasonings that really places this version high above most others I've eaten.

Nam prik gapi - slightly sweet, fairly spicy, and certainly fish-flavored (no doubt about it, you've really got like shrimp paste to appreciate the merits of nam prik gapi) - is served with long beans, chunks of cucumber, fresh bamboo shoots (wonderfully crunchy), and fried horse mackerel, which is the small fish you find beautifully displayed in baskets in the salted goods section of Thai wet markets. I'm a relatively late convert to these specimens, having only become enamored of fresh mackerel a few years ago while we were living in Saigon. Now I can't get enough of them. They're bony, but the meat slides away from the bones with the merest prod of a fork. The flavor of the fish's meaty flesh is not at all harsh, and the crispy tails make fine eating as well, bones and all.

We're glad that W insisted we order the muu op, or roast pork, which arrives as a mound of paper-thin slices of tenderloin doused with a soy-based, anise-scented sauce that begs for a plate of rice (I also fantasized about piling layers of the meat on a Vietnamese baguette).

A plate of pak beung (water spinach) perfectly stir-fried with minimal garlic (the sisters won't cook your pak beung with fermented soy sauce and chilies for that Thai green veg staple pak beung fai daeng, so don't even ask) rounded out the main meal, which is where we planned to stop ... until we noticed every other patron was finishing with Thai cendol.

And quite a good version it was too, boasting toothsome rice flour noodles (all too often those green pasta 'worms' are mushy) and very fresh coconut milk. No palm sugar here - that's the Malaysian version - and the fact that us palm sugar addicts didn't miss it says something about the deliciousness of this sweet.

Pochanaa has an English-language menu, but we recommend you walk up to the display case and ask the sisters what's on offer that day (or just point, if you don't speak any Thai - believe us, no matter what you order you're unlikely to be disappointed). We understand that you'll always find muu op, gaeng kiaow waan, and red curry with catfish, but other items come and go. You can also have any of the curries over rice or kanom jeen as a one-dish meal. The only beverage available is mineral water but - here again is the attention to detail - it's served ice-cold.

Thanawm Pochanaa, across from the walled city's Tha Phae gate, Chiang Mai. There's no sign in English, so look for the blue and white awning and a 'No Shirt No Service' marker on the door. And go for lunch - the restaurant is only open till 5 or so. Closed Sundays.