I haven’t spent as much time eating/standing/awake in Bangkok as I would like to — during my many trips there when I worked in corporate in Asia, I was either stuck in a conference room, or if there were any free hours, getting heavenly massages at the many wonderful spas there!  My company put us up at the Westin Banyan Tree which has an amazing spa and a wonderful buffet dinner spread (yeah, buffets are pretty popular higher end dining in Asia) and I loved walking into the buffet lounge lobby smelling the lemongrass incense and hearing the soft pounding sound of Som Tum being prepared.  The green papaya station is always my first stop at the buffet.  Ah, Sawadee!

Chef’s tip:  Green papayas are essentially unriped papayas.  You can get them at Asian food stores.  They often times wrap it in newspaper to prevent it from ripening.  Other finer points: “Som Tum Thai” has peanuts and dried shrimp mixed in, “Som Tum Bu” has small pickled crabs pounded in, or “Som Tum Lao Sai Pla Ra” has fermented mud fish mixed in it.

Dressing

4 Tablespoons fish sauce
4 Tablespoons palm sugar/ brown sugar
4 Tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 Tablespoon tamarind concentrate

Salad

1 green papaya, peeled – yields 4 cups shredded
2 roma tomatoes – yields 1 cup of sliced roma tomatoes or 1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 handful Chinese string/long beans (or baby haricot vert) – yields 1 cup
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2-4 small Thai red chilies, deseeded, finely sliced – number depending on heat level
2 Tablespoons dried shrimp – presoaked in water
1 shallot, peeled, sliced
½ cup peanuts, roasted

1 cup cilantro leaves

To prepare the dressing
1. Mix together dressing ingredients.  Taste.  Adjust if needed. Set aside.

To prepare the vegetables:
2. Using a food processor (medium grate) or grater, shred the green papaya flesh
3. Deseed the tomato and cut into long slivers (or if using cherry tomatoes, half them)
4. Cut the beans into 1 ½ inch lengths.  Blanch in hot water for 3 minutes or until bright green and quickly plunge into cold water.  Drain.

Assembling – make per serving.  Divide ingredients into 6 parts.
5. In a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic, chili and dried shrimp into a paste
6. Add the sliced shallots and pound slightly to bruise the shallots
7. Add the long beans and pound to bruise the beans.
8. Add the peanuts and lightly pound again to crush the nuts
9. Add the shredded papayas and lightly pound until it is limp and soft
10. Add sliced tomatoes and press gently to blend
11. Add dressing and toss to combine.  Garnish with cilantro.
12. Serve immediately.  Repeat per serving.

Serves: 8

Tags: salad, street foods, Thai.

Pho purists will probably pooh pooh over this faux pho since I used store-bought beef broth.  Horrors.  But before you click on to another page, give this a try.  For 20% of the work, you get more than 80% of the flavor.  Frankly, it’s almost as good as the real thing. I recently taught a class on South East Asian street foods at Sur La Table, and had 2 hours to do 5 dishes.  Given a decent pot of beef stock takes 5-6 hours, we had to use the boxed version.  It takes literally less than 15 mins to pull this noodle dish together.  How is that for a quick pho?

Chef’s tip: OK — if you want truly want the real thing, buy about 6 lbs or more of beef bones – shanks, oxtails…those parts with good marrows.  Place bones in a big pot of water, bring to boil and let boil 10 mins.  Pour off the water and rinse the pot and bones of scum.  Next, measure in 10 quarts of water, and bring to boil, then simmer 5 hours, while continuously removing scum and oil that form on top  Remove bones and any other solids.  Strain the broth.  Place in the fridge overnight, remove the solid layer of oil that forms.  Now, the broth is ready for use.  Move on to Step 1 below.

Broth:

8 quarts beef broth (unsalted preferably)
2 (3-inch) pieces ginger, skin on
2 small yellow onions, skin on, root removed
1 large white radish, peeled, cut into 2 inch chunks
8 whole star anise
6 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
Cheesecloth
¼ cup fish sauce, or more to taste
3 tablespoons sugar

1 ½ lbs dried 1/16-inch-wide rice sticks, soaked

1 lb beef sirloin or tenderloin

Garnish:
½ yellow onion, sliced paper-thin
½ cup scallions, chopped
½ cup cilantro, chopped
4 cups mung bean sprouts
16 sprigs Asian basil
1 serrano or jalapeno chili, cut into thin rings
2 lime, cut into thin wedges

Sri Racha hot sauce
Hoisin sauce

1. Bring the beef broth to a boil in a large stockpot.
2. Char the onion and ginger pieces over an open flame. Peel and discard the blackened skins of the ginger and onions, then rinse, cut into 2 and add to the broth. Add radish.  Boil at medium flame for 30 minutes.
3. Place all spices into a cheesecloth and make into a bundle.  Add spice bags into broth, boil another 30 minutes.
4. Add fish sauce and sugar.  Taste, and add more if needed.  The broth should be quite salty as it will be balanced by the noodles.  Remove spice bag, onion, ginger and radish.  If necessary, strain the broth.
5. Slice the onion paper thin.  Soak in cold water for 30 minutes, drained and pat dry.
6. Chop scallions and cilantro and mix together.  Set aside
7. Place bean sprouts, herbs, chilies and lime wedges on a central plate.
8. Soak the rice noodles in cold water for at least 20 minutes.  Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the drained rice noodles. Give the noodles a quick stir and cook until tender but firm — less than 1 minute. Drain immediately.  Use immediately.
9. Pop the beef into the freezer.  When slightly frozen, remove and slice paper thin against the grain.
10. To serve, place the cooked noodles in bowls.  Place a few slices of the raw sirloin on the noodles. Bring the broth to a rolling boil; ladle about 2 to 3 cups into each bowl. The broth will cook the raw beef instantly. Garnish with yellow onions, scallions and cilantro mix. Serve immediately with the platter of sprouts and herbs, and Sri Racha and hoisin sauce.

Serves: 8

Tags: noodles, street foods, Vietnamese.

Hokkien Char Mee is perhaps one of the most beloved street food in Kuala Lumpur …the city which is listed in NY Times top 31 places to Go in 2010 (which triggered off a tsunami of emails and Facebook postings from proud Malaysians).   AKA Hokkien Noodle, Fukien Chow or Black Mee, one can get into a lively and animated conversation with any non-halal, food loving KL-ites about which is the best hawker stall for the noodle dish.  I grew up with the “dancing master” in old town PJ – a big tall fella who does a jiggle of a dance everytime he does the stir fry, especially when he throws some meat into the hot wok and creates a huge fire flare which goes up 10 feet high.  I also recall fondly the newspaper-wrapped pyramid bundle of fukien chow that uses a banana leaf liner instead of plastic that my parents brought home for supper on their way back from an evening of tombola.  I have never been to the stall in Jalan Tun Perak, but I can sure smell the fragrant of that noodle even now.  Eatingasia has some pretty great pictures and writings on some Hokkien mee hawker stalls, if you’d like to get the full experience online.

Chef’s tip: The most critical ingredient to recreate the street flavor of Hokkien char mee is the pork cracklings and lard.  Without it, it’s just a regular noodle!  Thanks to David Chang, eating pork fat is now cool.  To find pork fat, you will need to go to an Asian or Mexican butcher and ask them specifically for it, and they may be able to slice off some fat for you.  Not a usual item, since they typically throw it out or process the fat into lard.  We need the whole piece of fat, not those that is already in a tub.

Another tip is to use fish sauce.  Some folks swear that if you add some dried “crooked mouth fish” flakes into the dish, you will get the authentic hokkien mee flavor.  Frankly, I don’t exactly know what’s the fish’s name is in English, I just asked for the crooked mouth fish in those dried seafood shops near the Central Market in KL.  So, back in San Francisco, I decided to add a dash of fish sauce.

Lastly, the ubiquitous dark soy sauce is critical.  The Malaysian version is thick and of the consistency of blackstrap molasses.  I looked at the label of my precious dark soy sauce my mom brought me from KL, and lo and behold, it doesn’t have soy in it.  Just caramel, salt and flavoring.  It’s a Malaysian version of molasses, I guess.  Use the Indonesian kicap manis, which is really sweeter than we need, but we can balance it with salt and soy sauce.

Sambal:
10 red Fresno chiles
2 Tablespoons roasted belachan
2 limes, cut into wedges

Sauce:
6 Tablespoons dark soy sauce
3 Tablespoons light soy sauce
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon blackstrap molasses
6 cups chicken stock

Pork marinade:
1 lb pork tenderloin, sliced
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil

½ lb pork fat, cut into medium dice

10 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb medium-sized shrimps, deveined, shelled
1 lb squid, cleaned, cut into ¼ inch rings
1 lb Chinese mustard “choy sum”, cut into 2 inch length

4 lb fresh thick yellow egg noodles (Shanghai style, udon-thickness)

Preparing the ingredients

1.     To prepare the sambal condiment, grind chile with a food processor till fine paste.  Add belachan and mix well.  Set aside with the lime wedges.
2.     Whisk sauce ingredients together in a bowl.   Set aside
3.     Marinade the pork tenderloin with the cornstarch, soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil.   Set aside.
4.     In a wok, render the pork fat till crackling forms.  Remove the cracklings and reserve.  Ladle out and reserve the lard.
5.     Bring a pot of hot water to boil.  Drop noodles into the boiling water, stir to separate the noodles and boil for 2 minutes or until noodles are cooked but not soft.  Remove and drain.
6.     Place the remaining ingredients mise-en-place, and roughly divide each ingredient into 4 portions

Cooking the dish – 2 servings at a time

7.     Heat wok on high heat with 1 Tablespoon lard.   Add 1 teaspoon garlic and a portion of shrimp and squid and saute until shrimp turns pink. Remove from wok and set aside.
8.     Add 1 Tablespoon lard and 1 teaspoon of garlic and 1 portion of the pork.  Sauté 1 minute until pork is browned, then add the sauce mixture and bring to a boil.
9.     Next, add the vegetable and noodles. Toss till noodles are well coated.  Cover to simmer on medium heat for 2 minutes or until all the sauce is absorbed.
10.  Uncover, turn back heat to high, add back the shrimp, squid and pork cracklings and toss to combine.
11.  Drizzle on a tablespoon of lard to finish.  Serve immediately with sambal and lime.

Repeat for each serving.  It is very important that the dish is cooked no more than 2 servings at a time for maximum “wok hay” (wok’s breath)

Serves: 8

Tags: Malaysian, noodles, street foods.