Joe said we should meet for dinner at Thai Aree. You may all remember Joe for his helpful advice on J. P. Graziano's, but I still wasn't sure whether I trusted him completely. l rattled off a few alternatives, slyly attempting to change his mind, but he insisted. "The food is wonderful and the prices are great too." Fine, whatever. I didn't really have the courage to admit that I didn't really much care for Thai food.
Thai food and I have a boring history. Much like bad buffets ruined my introduction to Chinese food, I OD'd on syrupy pad thai and thick coconut curries before I reached the age of 23. I'm just not very excited about the stuff.
So imagine my surprise when we start ordering things, and the majority of the dishes are cool salads. A dish called nam tok contained beef grilled over charcoal served on a bed of cabbage with a tart lime dressing and loads of mint. It tasted almost like sipping on a mojito while eating steak on a July 4th weekend.
Even better was a dish called pork larb, which combined minced pork, cool lettuce, singeing chiles, mint, and lime. I lost it. It was cool and quick, and yet made me start sweating almost immediately (which ultimately cooled me down even more). These two dishes erased dozens of bad Thai meals away from my brain in the span of one minute.
I can't get these dishes out of my mind. When I learned that Thai Aree was closed for lunch on Saturday, I braved horrific traffic from a Cubs game to make my way to Sticky Rice in North Center, which is where all the pictures are from. While it wasn't as brazeningly hot as Thai Aree's, it was still all there. What it honestly reminded me of was the great balance of Mexican cuisine. Spice was balanced with acidity, raw vegetables were added for crunch, and the meat helped give it body. I can't imagine a better dish for summer.
It's all magic and wonder at this moment. Much like an innocent crush, I don't really know the person and right now she can do no wrong. So I wanted to write about the first rush of inspiraration, and then come back to actually getting to know the dish to see if we have that much in common. Plus I need some help. I think I'm going to start with pork larb, but I worried about finding toasted rice powder, or something like that, for the dish. Any help, or links to good sources would be much appreciated.
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Hmm. I’ve never been a big fan of Thai. I love Vietnamese, but just haven’t really liked any of the dozen or so Thai dishes I’ve tried, but that steak dish up there certainly looks like something I could be in to.
For the toasted/roasted rice powder – I’m just outside of Philadelphia, and we have a bunch of Asian grocery stores that have things like that. If you don’t have any locally though, it looks like it’s pretty simple to make – it just needs a skillet, some glutenous rice, and a coffee grinder
http://www.shesimmers.com/2009/04/khao-kua-how-to-make-toasted-rice.html
Larb and green papaya salad are my standbys for Thai food. I like a lot of other things, too, but these dishes are the ones I crave. I’ll be watching this post closely so that I, too, can make some delicious larb.
There’s a clump of good Thai restaurants on Western, near Lincoln. Spoon Thai, Opart Thai House, Thai Oscar, and on Lincoln near Western, Rosded. Sort of like all the delicious Vietnamese places on Broadway near Lawrence.
For the toasted rice powder you can make it yourself pretty simply. Toast some white rice (usually long grain I think) with a bit of oil in a skillet till its a nice deep brown. Then you just grind it up in a mortar and pistil, spice grinder, or pepper mill.
Ok, I don’t have much in the way of helpful information, but when I first read the name of the restaurant, I thought it was called Thai Agree. Which sounded really terrible, and I could completely understand your hesitation. Thank goodness it wasn’t called Thai Agree. Puns have no place in restaurant names.
That is all.
Thai Agree completely!
(sorry)
I had gotten a little bored of Thai until I was given the cookbook Simply Thai Cooking (by Wandee Young). The dishes were all ones I recognized, but when prepared, they ended up being savory with hints of sweetness, unlike the cloyingly sweet/coconutty dishes I’m all too used to getting. Perhaps one of the best recipes is the green mango salad–super refreshing!
Look for a book by David Thompson – Thai Food. It’s really comphrehensive and covers Thai Food in detail. Not for the faint hearted though.
Welcome to the party. Just wait until you get into the whole world of Indochinese cooking and the cross over polyglot of french and asian where some real food magic happens.
As far as ingredients go to chinatown and do some wandering around. There should be a few specialty markets that have Thai/Vietnamese and Philippino all mixed together with Chinese ingredients.
some recipes here that look pretty good
http://www.thai-food-online.co.uk/thairecipes.asp
Ross: Yeah, I’ve been reading about a few ways to make it at home. Doesn’t seem too hard.
bristlesage: Yeah, I’ve been to Spoon Thai and liked it. I’d be a little more adventurous next time I went.
Ryan: Thanks, I’ll try that tip.
Laura K and Ross : Ha! If only that were true…
Laura T: Awesome, thanks for the rec.
Eliz: Checking the local library very soon.
Brant: I’m ready to jump completely into the scene. I’m sold.
If it’s magic and wonder then you should become obsessed (in a good way) with your crush’s “wardrobe.” Go to the Broadway Market and roam up and down the aisles and check out everything that makes up her ensembles. There are sauce components, starches, wrappers, marinades, pre-made sauces, produce, proteins, spices. There are even tools and accessories that can get you immersed in her world–things like a Chinese mandolin, a coconut shredder, a wok. One of the great things about Asian cooking (in my opinion) is that many of the ingredients are inexpensive and you can stock up an entire pantry for a surprisingly modest amount of money. I’ve never had any formal training in Thai cooking but I have had a little training in Vietnamese and have picked up on some similarities. You touched on the idea of sweet, hot, sour, salty bitter being well represented in Thai cooking as it is in Mexican food. Mexican cuisine has a tendency to add straight lime juice to foods for sourness, fruits like raisins and orange and raw sugar for sweetness, a plethora of chiles for heat, salt for saltiness and chocolate and cilantro for bitterness. Thai cooking uses fish sauce not only for saltiness but in conjunction with lime juice and sugar to make a sort of general purpose salty/sour seasoning for hot and cold dishes and thai chiles for heat. It’s amazing what you can do with that sexy little concoction. Thai cooking also uses Thai basil liberally which in it’s whole-leaf form identifies it as Thai and also is provides a little bitterness. I’d say, start with a list of ingredients and some basic recipes and give the relationship a try–you may get burned out eventually but it will be fun.
Make your own Pad Thai and you’ll instantly forget the greasy, oversweet takeout variety. Plus it’s fun to make since there seem to be a bunch of steps that you do in rapid succession (good mise en place is a must!)
I’ll admit that I’m madly in love with red coconut curry.
Roasted rice flour can be obtained in any South Indian store. Look for roasted “Puttu Podi” which is the flour used to make several breakfast items in south india, including Puttu, string hoppers, etc.
Ok, it’s probably going to make me look bad, but when I first started making larb, I was living in a small cow town in the mid west, with no Asian markets.. and I decided to just use a little corn starch, and it worked just fine. Not a lot, just the teensyist bit to give the left over liquid a bit of body. Everyone loves my larb, and they actually rate larb they’ve had at authentic restaurants with mine, so I don’t sweat it.
Go see Appon’s Thai Food blog (http://www.khiewchanta.com/). She has explanations of ingredients as well as recipes for any and every Thai dish she knows, and she knows heaps. She even adds ones she doesn’t like very much, just to make the collection more complete.
Toasted rice is really simple. You can do it without the oil. Simply toast it in a hot cast iron skillet until fragrant. Let it cool and grind in a mortar.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet is a good jumping off place to start. Covers all of SE Asia, not just Thailand.
David Thompson’s Thai Food is a Bible and I agree, not for the faint of heart.
Have fun. Thai is great. And larbs are wonderful summer meals!
My Family LOVES Larb! It’s the most requested dish at my house. I even have friends request this one when they are coming over! I usually make it with breast meat chicken – cooked in a pan large fry pan and than chopped with a hand held food chopper. Also, because this is a regular dish around my house, I have purchased an inexpensive coffee grinder, that I use to grind the toasted rice into a very fine powder. I sometimes add fresh chopped basil too and always use finely diced shallots. For easy prep, use a scissors to cut up all the herbs and scallions.
Our local Thai restaurant serves it WAY spicy hot, with sticky rice and a couple cucumbers slices. I serve the Larb with little to no HEAT as my 1, 5 and 7 year old kids, don’t like it quite as spicy as my husband does! We eat it with lettuce like lettuce wraps, use small sweet peppers as “chip” like scoops, cucumbers slices and white rice. We always serve it with hot chili sauce for individual heat and Hoisin.