Ptipois

I am not surprised. Since the first opening of this place I've felt the chef was not entirely satisfied with it. I suppose he could use a better-designed dining space, and a more ergonomic kitchen. He probably wants to make the place better suited to what he intends to do with it. I hope the renovation is indeed the right solution.

Well, as a matter of fact, I do have a cold. Going down by about 30 degrees Celsius in twelve hours sure is hard. But that didn't prevent me from completing my khao soi tonight, after making the curry paste in the morning. I'll send you to my blog for all the photos, there's quite a few. It starts with a prologue introducing the belligerents. Then comes the pounding of the curry paste. And finally the making of the dish. You'll find the whole post here. Here's a summary. The curry ingredients: The pounding: The finished curry paste: Frying the curry paste: Stirring it with the coconut milk; Chicken begins stewing: Frying some noodles and chillies: Et voilà ! And the winner is?...

This one was bought in Nice and has already suffered the pounding of a good dozen aïolis. I wouldn't worry about it. But I still think that using a Thai mortar will be more effective. And I need to get one, anyway. I would email her allright but she seems to be inbetween California and Thailand now, so I don't know when I can actually reach her. I have very similar thoughts whenever a tiny masseuse digs her elbows into my calves in the Wat Pho massage room. I'll ask her. What do Thais say about sneezing three times?

Thabtim krob (or whatever it may be spelled) are small bits of fresh water chestnut rolled in water chestnut flour, then boiled and dyed red. I love them with a good dollop of coconut cream. I have a recipe for them somewhere, I have to dig it out if anyone's interested.

This certainly isn't over (Austin, what are you writing on your blog? The battle is NOT over!). Wait till I find my mortar, which is certainly waiting for me somewhere on a shelf on avenue d'Ivry... But even if I don't find it tomorrow, I'll use my Italian marble mortar, so don't consider yourselves safe yet. Also, to comfort Onigiri a bit, I believe things are a wee bit easier for Austin, with the availability and freshness of ingredients. I think cooking Thai food is not complicated, but you do have to get the right ingredients, and their quality and freshness makes all the difference. I would have liked to try khun Pim's recipe for red curry paste, but I can't seem to find it on her blog. She does give out her recipe for green curry paste though. I'll have to find another source and adapt it to my needs (I've already found out what cha ko is, and fresh turmeric, galangal, ginger, lemongrass, phrik khii nuu and makrut limes are dozing in my fridge).

Due to the fact that most food stores are closed on Mondays in France, I haven't been able to gather all ingredients yet. Also, I do need a proper Thai mortar and pestle to make the curry paste from scratch, and the ones I have found were all too small. Tomorrow I'll go hunting for remaining ingredients and the mortar. Sorry for the delay, folks.

Sure will. The text on my blog will be in French but I'll post a translated version here. And, believe me, ça va faire mal ! Hey. You won so far. Wait for my version.

In Paris, you can get everything necessary to cook decent Thai food. Produce is flown in from Thailand regularly and in abundance. An essential ingredient that we missed until recently was coriander roots, but now it is possible to find it. So basically everything is available. I haven't eaten Pim's cooking yet (too busy visiting Paris wine bistrots with her) but I do have a precious jar of her chilli paste. I treasure it. Still, I can't find any recipe for red curry paste on her blog so I suppose I'll have to use a ready-made paste. I think I won't make the khao soi for a couple of days. Jetlag, going out tomorrow night, and I'm not expecting to win the competition anyway (all the more since I still do not know how we'll find out who has won). You guys are certainly too good. But it's nice to play.

Wow... Some action! Love it. Since I'm the least qualified of you guys to make a convincing Khao Soi (I am a French girl not even living in Bangkok and I'm back home presently, not even there anymore!), with the added handicap that I've never made one in my whole life, let alone tasted one, I feel all the more eager to join in. So many obstacles, so much excitement. As a tribute to my dear friend khun Pim, I'll follow the recipe on her blog. I absolutely trust her cooking skills and knowledge. When Pim was in Paris recently, we missed a wonderful opportunity of cooking a Thai meal together and taking pictures. The missed opportunity was entirely my fault. I won't be doing this to make up for the loss, but as a symbolic way to compensate somehow. So I'll post my khao soi on my blog when I have gathered the ingredients, but here's my question: how do we judge the results of the contest? Edit: yes, of course I'll post the pics here too!

There are many kinds of squiggly things, aren't there? Some are made from tapioca flour, and some from a kind of bean flour and dyed green with pandan: I think that's the case of the green soft and very squiggly (even wormy) ones that are also popular in Viêt-Nam. Other squiggly things are colorless of pink, and judging by the texture I think they're made from agar-agar. I like studying Thai preparations, but when it comes to the squiggly-things-that-are-served-with-shaved-ice (and the sweet-salty coconut cream), I suddenly feel intimidated. I like them a lot, but the variety seems endless. I don't know where to start.

You'll have to do a little archaeologic research for that. Don't go to fashionable restaurants. Go to old-fashioned restaurants, outside of Paris. For some reason, modern restaurateurs have decided that it is uncool to serve scallops with the corail. I don't know where they got that silly idea. The only solution is to prepare them at home or go to the few remaining untrendy country "auberges" around Paris, at some distance (Oise, Yvelines, vallée de Chevreuse...). The kind of place where middle-aged married men take their secretaries to dinner and everybody speaks in a very low voice. If there is a décor of exposed woodwork, copper utensils on the walls, gladiola in flower vases, then you can almost be sure that the coquilles will have the coral on. However, they're likely to be a little overcooked. But they'll be yummy and unpretentious.

Thanks, Abra! It's a Thai salute with joined hands.

I think we've managed to identify the thing anyway. According to what Abra wrote in the first message, it is a soft and fluffy bread, containing raisins and a little cinnamon. And the pork topping is not apparently sold with it, but added before eating. The only soft and fluffy bread of that sort I could find was the classic Thai raisin bread of which I posted a picture of. Seems to fit the bill. Anyway I went back to Nonthaburi a couple of days ago. There's a lot of bakers on the covered-market side of the main street. I spotted an artisanal version of the raisin bread and here is the picture. I didn't taste it though, and I don't know about the cinnamon. Here's the pic: While I was at it, I spotted an interesting cake decoration in the display window: birds, some sort of pandas, bunnies and bananas. I identified it as genuinely Thai because of two details: the pandas are doing a wai, and of course the bananas. Oh, this cake seems to have raisins too. The funny thing is that, in the street nearby, some people are selling bunnies, and they feed them bananas.

I toss it with coarsely chopped garlic (no green onions) and some pine nuts. I always add a little soy sauce to the marinade and I don't marinate for too long. I don't use Asian pear but Comice pear, and I often skip the cucumber. I use beef tenderloin. I don't make the dish too hot, I think that kills the taste of raw beef. Yuk hwe is probably my favorite dish. It grows hair on the chest. At the Gompachi brasserie in Tokyo they make a red tuna version that is undescribably delicious.

I never liked that dish very much. I prefer "uncaned" shrimp. Yes, the shrimp were large, a bit like dried shrimp but shiny and translucent. I was so amazed by the sight that I failed to notice any green mangoes nearby. Thinking back, I don't think there were any. Of course I took a picture. Huh?

There is also munster, livarot, maroilles and vieux-lille. Plus some incredibly fragrant Belgian cheese I forgot the name of. But époisses (to me) takes on a particularly vicious aspect when it's overdone. Other cheeses I can cope with. Fresh munster is a rare delicacy.

I passed by two or three S&P recently and they always were out of pandan pound cake. It seems that people just pounce on it. They should make more of it, it's simply one of the best pound cakes I ever had. I regularly see the little pandan jelly rolls but I've never tried them. I'll taste one tomorrow and think of you... But can't you get some pandan essence, make some pound cake and add some? Well, I know it's not easy to make good pound cake. S&P's is very nice. I think they use a lot of butter. I often see street vendors pushing their dried cuttlefish cart near open-air restaurants. Why is that? Do they cater mostly to people sitting at restaurants, waiting for their food and having drinks? Or is dried cuttlefish considered some sort of dessert?

I actually saw, the other day, a mound of prepared shrimp on a Yaowarat stall that had a weird, translucent, syrupy deep pink look. I thought: oh no, that can't be candied shrimp in syrup! That was. I've only seen them once. I think you do see some weird things on Thai markets but Thai-Chinese markets beat them all. My roommate, looking for junk food to go with Chang beer, just decided not to buy a bag of crisp peanut bits with "cuttlefish flavor". I said: you should have bought them, they were probably very nice. I realize I am adapting to local tastes maybe more than my friends and family in Paris would probably wish me to. To go back to breads: there's a bakery chain in Bangkok called S&P I think, it has very very nice pound cake with different flavors: marbled chocolate, vanillla, and pandan. When I pass by I always look for the pandan and vanilla slices. They have been out of them for awhile. I suppose they go very fast. They're absolutely delicious. It's true that Thai sweets are very sweet indeed, but the traditional ones are interesting, and the newer ones are, well, worth exploring. What a land indeed... I think studying its foods could take a lifetime. And I'm only staying one month.

I think I may have found what you're looking for. It is — just bread. What I found is not exactly an exotic preparation, it's just white bread slices sold in plastic bags. And as Austin wrote, the bread is fluffy and light, and soft to the melt-in-your-hands limit. It is also rather sweet. Now there is a brand that makes two kinds of flavored breads, pandan bread (bay toey) and raisin bread. I bought a couple of bags this morning from he shop around the corner. Here are the slices: pandan to the right, raisin to the left. You can see that the pandan bread is slightly green, while the raisin bread has very few raisins. It is, though, slightly flavored with cinnamon. I believe the raisins are rolled in a little cinnamon before being added to the dough. I think this bread corresponds rather closely to what you described. It is very light and fluffy, with a bit of cinnamon, and of course it may be eaten with crisp shredded fried pork or the weird "pork cotton candy" that you buy in small bags here. I also tasted it, of course. This bread is actually very nice. For breakfast I made a grilled cheese sandwich using some sharp NZ cheddar with a very light smear of namprik pao (chilli paste), with a few slices of grilled Chinese garlic sausage to provide the sugary pork addition. The combination was very good indeed, though not light. I wouldn't eat that everyday. It was an experiment. I found out that the taste of this raisin bread goes very well with sweetened pork, though perhaps the Thai shredded pork specialties are a bit sweeter than that. The bread is obviously a product of industrial baking, but if you were asked to reproduce the recipe, I'd suggest you prepare the softest, whitest bread dough you can make, with lots of yeast and sugar to make it very light and fluffy, and add a few raisins rolled in cinnamon powder. Then ask your Thai friend what exactly she means by "crisp fried pork". There are several kinds available.

Thanks, Le Zouave! Everybody should see that blog. There are pictures of a chef in a g-string diving into a swimming-pool. Interesting issues, too.

Also, look for items by the Brittany-based publishing house Ouest-France. It has a long tradition of sturdy, no-nonsense books on various subjects, including regional cooking. Not only of Brittany. When you travel in France, do search local bookstores and maisons de la presse for small regionally-published cookbooks... well I realize John has given the same advice. Indeed I strongly recommend those books, which are accurate, informative, often with terrible photography and styling (which really earns my sympathy), and very far away from the uniformizing touch of urban food snobbery. Search the Internet and used bookstores for books published by the éditions Edicentre. They had a collection of fairly large cloth-bound books on regional food, as seen through the romanticized memories of old-time lady cooks ("mères"). They were often house cooks, employed by local bourgeois — solicitor, doctor, etc. or the curé. That's exactly where French food at its best was born and where it can still be traced. I always loved the book about Auvergne, "Margaridou". The ones about Provence ("Misé Lipeto") and Languedoc ("Fourmiguetto") are also very good. Here's a link: http://edicreer.homeip.net/Catalogue/CollectionsTerroirs.asp I guess they're still in print. I see they have another one on Norman cuisine, that one I'm thinking of ordering too.

http://www.recettes-et-terroirs.com/ theoretically has a collection of regional recipes, in fact it is not easy for the uninitiated to tell the regional recipes from the non-regional ones. But that's a good start. I'm still searching, actually I do know of a site for this, but I lost the URL.

Urban legend. Never heard of this. Edit: but that certainly should be forbidden. Epoisses is evil.

Well the principles of Thai taste (always a little sweet in the salty and a little salty in the sweet) are very interesting and play a large part in what is one of the most delicious cuisines in the world - but sometimes, when it comes to bread and baking (a concept that is initially not in their culture), their association of sweet and savory goes... well, a bit overboard. I saw some baked stuff with raisins yesterday at the Tops (a good-quality food supermarket) near the Sathorn pier.. But I looked closer and I think they were some sort of muffins. I still haven't seen anything resembling kanom pang. But I'm still searching.

Just that "cooking", as a concept and as a phenomenon, is not equal to "chefs".