Bangkok food a dventure

MANILA, Philippines — Pour scrambled egg into a giant wok, and swirl it around a bit. Before it sets into a paper-thin crepe, toss in rice noodles, mung bean sprouts, toasted peanuts, some shrimps and a bit of that special spice paste with tamarind that gives this dish its distinctive taste. Fold the crepe around everything and slide the dome onto a plate, and there you have it, Thailand’s national noodle, pad thai.

This domed one is the modern take, with the noodles yellow-orange from shrimp fat. Whether modern or classic, pad thai is served with lime. On the typical Thai table are fish sauce, shrimp paste, sugar, fresh or sun-dried chilies, perhaps holy basil and cilantro. Those who associate Thai food with everything hot can ask for a side dish of chili. There are various types of Thai chili peppers with different degrees of spicy heat on the Scoville scale.

Thailand doesn’t have the world’s hottest peppers, which are found mostly in the Americas and India. But during a visit this month to Bangkok, I accidentally bit into Thai chili that instantly cleared my sinus, and it felt like steam was blowing out of my ears. It wasn’t the Carolina Reaper (2.2 million Scoville heat units) or the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (2 million SHU) and not even close to India’s Ghost Pepper or Bhut Jolokia (1 million SHU).

Compare those numbers with our siling labuyo or bird’s eye chili – from 80,000 to 100,000 SHU – and you get the idea. Philippine bird’s eye chili is said to be hotter than its Thai counterpart. But I’m pretty sure the Thai chili that I accidentally ingested was of a variety that would merit pride of place on the Scoville scale.

I bit into the chili while scarfing dinner at a hole-in-the wall in Bangkok, described as a “secret place” in the food tour package that my kid brother and his family booked online. The tour in open tuk-tuks – the sleeker Thai version of our tricycle – is better taken at night, when Bangkok is cooler and there are fewer vehicles on the streets that rival Manila in traffic jams.

Fresh lime juice took out the sting of the chili, but the best antidote to high SHU intolerance, we were told, is milk.

As in many other Asian countries, however, the Thais aren’t big on milk, except in their coffee, prepared in a similar way to the Vietnamese – strong brewed, and sweetened with warmed condensed milk.

Use your coconut

Taking the place of cattle milk in many Thai dishes is coconut milk. Thick in its first pressing or diluted with water, used in curries and soups or ladled over savory dishes and desserts, or boiled into hard coco sugar similar to Pinoy panocha, coconut milk is a key ingredient in Thai cuisine.

All over Bangkok we kept running into mobile food carts selling sticky rice with the Thai “barracuda” mango – longer and narrower than our “carabao” mango, with the pointed tip slightly curved like a shark’s snout. It’s a richer and justifiably pricier version of our mangga at suman. The mango is expertly scooped out in front of you. One “cheek” is arranged on top of the sticky rice and sliced. Thick coconut cream is ladled as sauce and the dish is served in an easy-to-eat package. Prices per serving range from 50 to 90 baht (about P78 to P140) depending on the location, but the delectable taste is almost invariably the same.

Its distinctive cuisine is one of Thailand’s top tourism draws, and the country makes sure its visitors are not disappointed. The country has an Evaluation Board for Standard Thai Cooks, which helps preserve the quality of its world-renowned dishes.

If you order tom yum goong, you can expect the hot and sour prawn soup to taste generally the same in different establishments except in the degree of spicy heat, with the distinct flavors of lime juice, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and nam prik pao or Thai roasted chili paste.

Even with standardization, however, some restaurants still manage to shine, and they are not five-star establishments.

National noodle

For pad thai, our tour took us to Thipsamai, reputed to be the country’s most famous restaurant for the noodle dish. On its walls are displayed the raves the restaurant has received over the years for its pad thai from mass media, including foreign organizations such as Britain’s The Guardian and CNN International.

On the sidewalk outside the restaurant on a Sunday night, there was an endless queue of mostly foreign visitors watching the cooks expertly flipping the egg crepes to encase the noodles, creating delicate yellow domes that were quickly slid onto plates for the modern rendition of the national noodle.

Pad thai’s status as a “national noodle” is no joke. As locals tell foreign visitors, their military dictator in the late 1930s, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, wanted to wean Thais from Chinese influence, including in their cuisine.

Field marshal “Phibun” held a contest to develop a “national noodle” proudly made in Thailand. Instead of the typical wheat-based Chinese noodle, the winning entry was made of rice. Other countries such as Vietnam have made rice noodles for ages, and really, how many variations can you make with long, thin noodles? But the combination of ingredients and flavors in the winning entry was unmistakably Thai.

The national noodle was born, and it was called pad thai. Locals readily took to their national noodle dish, and pad thai is now featured in restaurants all over the planet. Any food tour in Thailand will include background information and sampling of the national noodle dish.

Secret places

Obviously, there is more to Thai cuisine than pad thai. During our trip, we sampled a wide range of dishes. At the “secret place” – the first stop in our nighttime food tour – I savored what looked like pla-pla or giant tilapia, stuffed with aromatics and grilled with a coating of rock salt that locked in the flavors and kept the fish moist but not salty. The coating was later peeled away.

At the Ann Guay Tiew Kua Gai restaurant, diners can watch the cooks firing up chicken fried noodles in woks along an alley before sitting down to a feast of the dishes topped with eggs in different stages of doneness. The restaurant, air-conditioned but nothing fancy, is recommended by the Michelin guide and is packed with locals and foreigners alike even near midnight.

Thai street food, clean, affordable and presented in attractive servings, never disappointed us. Their barbecues have tender meats bursting with flavors. Near the Reclining Buddha Temple in Bangkok and outside the World Heritage ruins of Ayutthaya, the old capital, we could buy luscious coconut ice cream from carts. It’s the Thai version of our dirty ice cream, except theirs may be topped with bits of pink flavored water chestnuts and decorated with a small orchid.

The Thais make full use of their agricultural products in their cuisine and their robust food processing industry. They export snacks flavored not only with barracuda mango but also rambutan, durian, green tea and, why not, spicy tom yum. The flavor of tom yum is everywhere, including a version of KFC chicken. The Thais are selling canned mangosteen, dried jackfruit and pumpkins to the world. Their chicharon is thin, crunchy and flavorful.

Thai cuisine is renowned for the attractive presentation, bursting with colors and food carving. The papaya salad, a favorite starter, is simple but a delight to both the eyes and the palate. Their version of the halo-halo includes a wider array of ingredients and combinations than ours. With a combination of colors and flavored coconut cream, they have turned even the bland water chestnut into a popular iced dessert.

Mealworms, yum-yum

For the adventurous, there are not-so-secret places where you can nosh on fried insects and worms, seasoned with Thai pepper powder and Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, with bits of chili and holy basil tossed into the wok.

In addition to crickets and grasshoppers, which are also eaten in the Philippines, mealworms, cockroaches, coconut tree larvae and scorpions are popular snacks in Thailand. The insects are said to be highly nutritious and rich in protein, and you can bring them back to Manila in sealed packs. Tourists wash them down with beer.

But we weren’t that adventurous and we were quite happy to snack on spicy crackers, tiny unripe mangoes dipped in Thai bagoong and small but sweet and crunchy pineapples.

We capped our meals with Thai coffee, which may not appeal to purists who prefer their espresso with the crema. But Pinoys may like the Thai coffee with condensed milk.

It’s a sweet, invigorating ending to a hot food trip.