Som Roi Yod Beach Bar-B-Cue

 

This is a meal – a trio of simple recipes, comprising a spicy salad, some meat kebabs and sticky rice, with a sauce for garnish.

Pig sticking

After many trials and errors, it is as close as I can get to the food served by the beach grill restaurant, on the beach opposite the Krua Chom Thale resort, Dolphin bay in Som Roi Yod, southern Thailand. The restaurant has no name, and no menu, no address. I was unable to communicate effectively with the chef to the level of cooking methods and ingredients, despite the willingness of both parties.

Here is a meal that won’t break the bank or the belt, but which breaks the taste barrier with a thunderous explosion.

 

Calories and Costs

Salad only, no peanuts: calories 150, cost £0.93

Lean Chicken + Salad with no peanuts, no sauce: calories  375 cost £2.31

Full meal, with Pork: calories 1100, cost £3.10

Priced in pound sterling 7/6/2014

 

Calories courtesy of http://www.nutracheck.co.uk

Costs courtesy of http://www.tesco.com (and others)

 

“Papaya” Salad. (Alias Linda’s Thai Courgette Salad)

Preparation time, including dressing: 15 minutes

Papayas were disappointing. Especially the unripe ones used in this salad were often watery and tasteless, eminently replaceable with a light vegetable with a bit of crunch and a subtle, agreeable flavour. With the spices involved here, courgettes fit the bill superbly.

Ingredients for One Person:

• One medium courgette just-picked (c 150g)
• Carrots (c 150g)- as sweet and crunchy as possible – e.g. chantonnay
• Handful of Peanuts – omit to reduce calories. I just use ordinary, cheap salted ones.
• Handful of Fresh Coriander, chopped
• Portion of Thai Salad Dressing. See below

I don’t bother peeling the veg. Just wash, dry and grate the courgette and carrots together in a bowl and roughly mix them. I coarse-grate them by hand along the grain; mechanical graters can’t seem to do this, producing pieces that tend to be too short with a tendency to disintegrate when mixing. The salad should be crunchy and light not soggy and flaccid.

Place the peanuts in a transparent, clean plastic bag. Crush them with a rolling pin or end of a chopping board, until there are no whole ones left.

(Just before serving) pour over the Thai Salad Dressing and toss thoroughly.

Sprinkle first the crushed peanuts over, then the coriander.

Serve.

 

Thai Salad Dressing

Keeps in fridge for at least 24 hours.

For 1 person:

• 1 dessert spoon of Soy Sauce. I use Healthy Boy brand Dark Thick Soy Sauce. Avoid the ones that contain molasses unless you are fond of that flavour – it is very strong.
• 1 dessert spoon of Fish Sauce. I use Squid Brand
• 1 dessert spoon of fresh squeezed lime juice. You can substitute wine vinegar if you are on war rations
• 1 medium garlic clove, crushed
• 1 heaped teaspoon of soft brown sugar. Use more than this if you wish, not less
• 1 red Thai chilli, including seeds. Remove seeds first and chop the chilli as finely as possible. Use both seeds and chopped chilli. Fresh is best, but I have been using thawed ones from frozen– I can’t tell the difference once finely chopped.

Combine all the ingredients except the chilli and stir well to mix.

Taste test (easier without the chilli), and potentially add more sugar or lime juice.

Add the chilli and its seeds and stir well to mix.

 

Som Roi Yod Kebab Marinade

Exactly the same as Thai Salad Dressing, but use wine vinegar instead of lime juice which can produce bitterness when heated.

 

Som Roi Yod Kebabs

The beach grill served pork or chicken “satays”.

The pork was belly meat, 50-50 fat to meat. It was sliced to about 3mm. Not floppy; thick enough for a 2.5 cm long piece to remain roughly horizontal when held at one end.

Buy some good quality stuff; something Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would use.

150g is generous for a single serving.

Remove the rind. Cut the meat into 2.5cm pieces. Mix well with the Som Roi Yod Kebab Marinade. Leave covered in refrigerator for at least a day. For a Saturday bar-b do this Thursday or Friday night.

For chicken use skinless breast fillets, cut across the grain 4-5 mm thick. One breast per serving (150g). Marinade in the same way.

At least 2 hours before grilling, soak some bamboo or wooden skewers in water. This keeps the meat juicy and makes it easy to remove from the skewer.

Thread the meat onto the skewers. Should be about 3 skewers per serving. Don’t overload – these are going to grill quickly.

Grill close to glowing hot coals for probably not more than a minute each side. Timing is not an exact science – a good bar-b master will know. The kebabs should be lightly caramelised each side.

Serve with sticky rice, “Papaya” Salad and “Nam P’to” sauce

 

Sticky Rice.

Staple feculant with grills in Thailand, this is “Glutinous Rice” or “Sticky Rice” (Oryza sativa var. glutinosa)

Paddy Pot – Sticky rice in tuperware container

It needs to be soaked before cooking, for as long as possible. Fill a large tupperware pot or jam jar about ¾ full of the rice grains. Fill it to the top with water. The grains expand and soak up the water. Check the next day and top up if necessary. Leave for at least a day; Preferably 2. If you are planning this bar-b-cue, prepare the rice on the same evening as the kebab meat and marinade.

I keep pot of soaking sticky rice permanently in the fridge, ready for whenever I need it.

Like me you may not have a rice steamer.

Carb-O… rice arrange in a ring to allow steam to percolate around…

Find a fine mesh metal strainer and a saucepan into which it fits snugly. Hopefully the lid will fit over the ensemble and create a good seal. The better the seal, the quicker the rice will cook. With a good home-made solution, the rice needs about 60 minutes. Put about 2 cm of water in the pot and bring it to a rolling simmer. When loading the strainer, concentrate the rice in “clumps” leaving gaps. This facilitates the circulation of steam and also makings turning easier. Place the strainer with the soaked rice clumps over the simmering water and cover.

Turn the rice over half way through, as the rice below will cook quicker that the rice above. Once half cooked the rice is easy to manipulate.

When the rice is cooked it becomes translucent, so loses the milk white colour it starts with and becomes slightly grey. It can be rolled easily into tight balls without sticking to fingers. It is chewy between the teeth. If there is still a floury or grainy “bite” to it, steam it for another 15 minutes.

Leave it to rest (without removing it or uncovering your steamer) for 30 minutes before serving.

Thai restaurants serve this rice at room temperature.

 

 

“Nam P’to” Sauce

This is my best rendition in Latin script of the sauce we were served with this meal as pronounced by the chef. I can’t find it anywhere on the internet.

Exactly the same as Thai Salad Dressing, with the lime juice, but with the addition of plenty of chopped coriander. Important to taste test this and get it right.

 

Sam Roi Yod

 

Sam Roi Yod Beach shack

There is no Paradise on Earth, as folk are fond of saying.

And even in Sam Roi Yod, there are things to complain about. In the first beach shack we settle down in, the owner bemoans the villa that is being constructed across the track from him, right on the beach itself. It is true, that part of his view between the palm trees across beach and the glittering Bay of Thailand beyond, is now obscured by a pile of breeze blocks and girders. We sip Chang and knit our brows in sympathy.

Across the way, massage ladies are waving to my companion. “Madame you want Thai massage?”. Tourists, especially European females, are often seen lain on the beach massage tables receiving the treatment as they stare across the blue bay.

Mai, kap khun ka. Lazer-beam Thai grins… “Maybe tomorrow?”… “Yea maybe” Who knows?

Who knows what will happen tomorrow in Sam Roi Yod?

Sam Roi Yod Beach: Coconut palms

Actually everyone here can tell you that with considerable certainty and confidence.

Tomorrow in Sam Roi Yod there will be 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night-time. The daytime temperature will reach around 35oC. Twice, the waveless tide, looking like a trillion tonnes of blue hair gel, will advance up the magnolia coloured sand towards the coconut trees, whose tousled fronds the breeze will ruffle. It will then recede, exposing the scent of seaweed, salt and catworms to the whispering air. On the white pickets that surround some of the villas, bee-eaters the colours of the maddest of circus clowns will catch wasps and hornets. But the beach diners’ lunch will pack just as sharp a sting.

Bee-eaters

At 11:30 in one of the best restaurants on Earth – nameless, menu-less, palm-roofed, sand-floored and free of electricity and mains drainage – brown fingers will flick a cigarette lighter at the bottom of a half-oildrum. Thirty minutes later the first marinated pork-belly satay will be slammed onto the grill as lip-licking clients begin to occupy the bizarre furniture strewn on the uneven, shaded ground. As the odours of grilled meat waft across the beach, ownerless, sandy-coloured beach dogs with sand-filled pelts will raise their noses to the breeze and peer at the expectant diners out of deep camouflage. Freezing cold beer will change hands. Tepid sticky rice in individual plastic bag servings will be dumped on tables. Ferociously spicy papaya salad topped with crushed peanut, squeezed lime and chopped coriander will be doled out… lunch will be served. No bank, no tycoon, hedgefund nor oligarch could ever buy that view… just for lunchtime, it is all theirs.

Sam Roi Yod Beach: Beach Restaurant

That’s what will happen tomorrow on Sam Roi Yod beach… and like Paradise, it is practically impossible to get to… but well worth the effort.

Next post, how to recreate a Som Roi Yod barbecue.

Sam Roi Yod Beach. Pork belly satay…

 

 

 

Bangkok Street Food

Outside a 7-11 store in downtown Bangkok a family runs a pavement restaurant in sweltering heat. Great-Gran

Bangkok Street Chefs

and Gran in the kitchen, Mum greeting new customers and taking payment, little 9 year old bringing cutlery, washing up and generally providing cuteness. There is a lot of communication. Approaching farangs much discussed even before we present ourselves. Thai grins in quad.

Table for 2? Big sparkling Thai Grin. Anywhere.

We alight on seats like upturned buckets at a table that looks like it was recovered from a rubbish dump. It is scrubbed clean

Feeding the city… 4th. generation

though.

Menu for you! Kap kun, krap…

A huge list of items in Thai script dreadfully translated into English.

Phad Thai, rice and chicken, 2 beers? So sorry no beers. You buy here..

The pointing finger indicates the 7-11. Of course, no refrigeration, no electricity, no licence, no drinks. In the shop I buy a beer and an iced tea for 60baht.

Returning to the table, lunch is already served. Steaming hot straight from the wok, these dishes are spicy, citrusy, salty and with a hint of sweet. The phad thai is sprinkled with crushed peanut and coriander. You wouldn’t get a better lunch in any London restaurant.

The bill for food comes to 100baht for the 2 meals. So including drinks that is GBP 3.20 or GBP 1.60 per head. Could one produce such a meal at home for the same outlay, including the stove gas?

Fascinated, I begin to take photos and ask questions.

What is this here? And what is that? Can I watch? OK to take photo?

Gran is making the sauces, Great-Gran does the rice and noodles.

Gran has the kind of array of herbs, spices, syrups, pastes, sauces, sugars, chopped roots, nuts, vegetables and pickles that only tropical diversity can provide. All this arranged in old margarine tubs on the half meter square top of her steel trolley. She has a metal spatula, and a wok above a gas flame. Battered straw hat (1); toothy-peg grin (1), happy attitude that exceeds the mass of the visible universe (1). She is immensely pleased by my interest, although linguistic communication is nil.

On her daughter’s signal she cooks, loading up her metal spatula from the array of tupperware pots in front of her, each with its own spoon. In less than a second a primed wok is full of sizzling ingredients.
The four larger pots immediately in front of her are clearly significant. Snail’s pace communication reveals that these are the 4 signature Thai flavours: Tamarind (sour), soy sauce (salty), palm sugar syrup (sweet) and red chilli (hot). She can call on each of these with the flick of a spoon. If cookery were orchestral it might look like her trolley: bass, tenor, alto and soprano choir immediately in front, then at the flick of a baton holy basil, coriander, mushrooms, chopped shallots, chopped peanuts, galangal, chopped lemon grass, kafir lime leaves, limes and the rest of the orchestra arranged around.
Bangkok’s Karajan cooks and grins a gappy grin.

Bangkok

Aperitif, Nr Thewet Pier

Friday 24 Jan.

English winter blues and maladies melt in honey tropical sun. Cold beers and thai snacks. It’s 29oC and the scent of the river mixes with fragrant mesquite street grills, fried shallots and chilli. In this “quiet” part of town, individual tuk-tuks are audible – there being little background din. Jetlag, beer, weird birdsong, unknown plants.

We snack on prawns deep-fried in pastry and a mix of toasted cashews with chopped spring onions and chillis.

Steve’s, Thewet Pier, Bangkok

Friday 24 Jan.

Across a footbridge and along a very narrow canalside footpath the way leads through some folks’ back gardens. White skin, weird blue eyes, bizarre mousy hair, “You MUST be lost; where you go”. “Steve’s”, “Aha  yes – aroy aroy”, big buddhist smiles. It seems the locals approve of this restaurant and indeed of any seekers after its pleasures; they point the way ahead. There is no disappointment. Tom kha gai, massaman curry, prawns in

Steve’s: Dinner is served…

tamarind and a veg dish translated as “morning glory”. There is a chance the kitchen Gods and Goddesses who prepared the food may not be linguists. There is no need for someone who cooks the way they do to be good at anything else at all.

Anyone who has been to  Bangkok and didn’t like town, please go to Steve’s riverside restaurant next visit and then write a full and complete apology to the city on tripadvisor afterwards. You will feel the need to. It’s not just the food, or the blissful sight of sundown across the river from the terrace or the delightful service. It’s the approach to the place past kids playing street football, grandma watching tv with window open, someone rounding up chickens, stepping over stoned looking dogs in pink tea-shirts as you go. Real Thai folk live round here…

The massaman curry (chicken) contained one single whole piece of chicken. The dish was served about room temp. The meat came off the bone so easily (no knives were provided) I deduced it had been slow-cooked in the curry sauce. It was outstanding. Are all the recipes wrong?

Tom Kha Gai. Not as creamy as mine. Plenty of stock, and very citrusy without being sour. Lemon grass?

The food came to 650bh.

Preparations…

We plan a trip East in search of warmth, ambrosial food and tropical gardens and fauna.

Itinerary:

Bangkok, Penang, Melucca, Singapore, Ha Noi, Da Nang, Saigon, Hua Hin, Chiang Mai

On the wishlist: food, cookery lessons, fishing trips and the tropical gardens of the former Malay Straights Botanic Gardens and Forestry department.

Faunawise, we understand the Penang gardens are run by a troop of long-tailed macaques, for example. We have a visit to an elephant rescue centre slated for our Chiang-Mai stage. Tigers, Leopards, Crocodiles… in the mega diverse zone we are visiting, indigenous animals recall childhood visits to zoos; exotic, dangerous and beautiful animals will be around us somewhere, but in their own space.

Waiting at Calcott bus station with England’s damp January winds whistling around the sarong and tugging at the chinstrap of the pith helmet will be chilly, but half a day later sultry conditions will prevail and we will be glad of our light packing.

As our 6-week Grand Tour ticks past, the Earth will tilt, and we hope for friendlier days when we return.

At 54 excitement can be a rare sentiment, but I am enjoying a frisson of anticipation as like many of our ancestors, we voyage East in search of spice…