Nam Kao Tod

[CarrotStick]

This is my favorite dish from Lotus of Siam restaurant in Las Vegas. Does anyone know how to make it? The menu description (which is pretty accurate on how it tastes) is:

"Minced sour sausage mixed with green onion, fresh chili, ginger, peanuts, crispy rice and lime juice."

I dream of this dish but can't find it anywhere else!

Thanks!

[ecr]

Your major problem will be finding the naem (sour sausage) --- unless you have some very well-stocked Thai grocery stores nearby. I think that Thompson's Thai Food may have a recipe for it, if you want to try it at home.

[ExtraMSG]

I'm looking to make a similar dish. Thompson does have a recipe.

Pim, also has a version in the recipe gullet, which is better formatted on her blog: http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2003/07/n...d_kaotod_n.html

Not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for. A local Thai place here makes something they call nam sod which is a lot like you describe, essentially a larb with different flavoring. Here's the recipe from an online source I'm looking at (minus the pork skin):

http://importfood.com/recipes/naemsod.html

[Busboy]

A couple of years ago I lived in Denver, where there were no good Thai restaurants at the time. But, fortunately, work brought me back once a month to DC, where my wife and I had become addicted to Nam Sod, which sounds exactly like the dish you're describing. I was working on an internal television production for my company, which aired each month at noon, Eastern time, and I'd usually try to catch the 4:30 flight back. This left me about three and a half hours to wrap the show, speed into town, feed my jones and get back to the airport in time to turn in the rental car and make my flight. These monthly dashes from Tyson's Corner to Dupont Circle and back to Dulles made me something of a celebrity at Sala Thai. I'd pick up a variety of dishes, but always, always, always between four and six servings of Nam Sod, which we'd load into an empty beer case and I'd stow in the overhead bin during the flight.

On day I leveraged my status to get back into the kitchen and get an unsettling little lesson in the fine are of Thai cookery, Nam Sod chapter.

First, they mix shredded ginger, pork, chilis and crispy rice into little meatballs.

Then, and this seemed to be the key, they stick the meatballs into a plastic container, covered it with foil, and leave it next to the dishwasher for a day or two -- at kitchen temperature, mind you -- to ferment.

Then they deep fry the meatballs to get the crunchy outside texture while maintaining a moist and succulent center, before crumbling it a bit and tossing with lime, peanuts and what have you.

The results are so good, I still eat the stuff, even after learning how it's made. In fact, I am now desparately craving a batch or two -- though I am sadly out fo their delivery area for the next month or so.

I seem to recall Ms. Busboy stumbling across a recipe and pre-packaged spices for this, perhaps she'll stumble across it and post it under my name later today.

[mamster]

The naem you're looking for is not the same as what you make in pim's (excellent) recipe. I've never seen it for sale in the US; I'm sure they make their own at Lotus. You can do so too, with Thompson's recipe.

I've been working on an article about this sausage approximately forever; this discussion has prodded me to make another batch and report back.

There is a small but genuine risk of botulism here. So far I'm unscathed.

[ExtraMSG]

I just posted on the larb thread the version of nam sod I've had (more or less):

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=12302&st=420

Thompson has the sour sausage as "naem". I think that I've had the sour sausage at a local place, but they call it a non-Thai name: Heavenly Ring. It was sourish and didn't taste like other Thai sausages I've had. I don't think Thompson has this salad that I've had.

But working with Thai transliterations are a pain. "Naem" is the sausage, right? But "nahm" means water, right? Is there also a "nam" that rhymes with "lamb" that means something else? And what's "sod" mean? What specifically does the kao tod part refer to?

[ecr]

"Naem" is the name of this type of sausage, the uncooked fermented type. ("Saikrawk" means sausage in general --- saikrawk Isaan = Isaan style sausage). The original poster mistakenly used "nam" which means water. The "ae" in "naem" is pronounced a bit like the "e" in "bet", but with the tongue closer to the pallet and mouth pulled to the sides. There's no "nam" that rhymes with lamb .... there's no hard, short "lamb"-like A in Thai. Though the "ae" in naem is somewhere between the "e" in bet and the "a" in lamb. Come to think of it, position your mouth and tongue to say "a" as in "lamb" but try to say "e" as in "bet" instead --- that's a Thai "ae".

Confused yet? The problem with transliterating Thai is there is no agreed-upon system, as with pinyin and Mandarin.

"Sod" (sometimes transliterated at "sot" or "sodt") means fresh or uncooked. Kao tod (alternatively khao toot, khao tawt, khao tawdt -- the "o" rhymes with "yawn" not "no" or "not) means fried or deep-fried (but not stir-fried, which is "phat") rice (khao=rice, tawt=fried, deep fried).