by Holly Hughes
To take those little touches one step further, street vendors empower eaters with a table full of condiments, turning you into a sous chef of sorts. Too spicy? A squeeze of lime and a dusting of sugar should curb the burn. Lacking punch? A splash of fish sauce and a spoonful of fresh chilies should fix that right up. It’s an unspoken agreement between cook and eater: I give you these tools, if you promise me you won’t fuck up my creation.
It’s one of my favorite parts of eating on this side of the world: I find myself constantly tinkering, dusting a midnight pad thai liberally with dried chilies, cutting the funk of a breakfast bowl of boiled offal with a few squeezes of lime, goosing a Chinese-style stir-fry of water spinach and pork belly with spicy vinegar and fish sauce.
A few meals into a trip to a place like Bangkok you begin to wonder how it ever got so good, how they cracked the code on one of gastronomy’s most enduring challenges: how to make food fast, healthy, inexpensive and unthinkably delicious all at the same time.
It starts with the fact that these countries have the building blocks: fresh produce of exceptional quality, cooking techniques developed and refined over millennia, potent condiments that can be combined in thousands of different ways to create vastly different effects. But just having the right paint isn’t enough to make a work of art. The proliferation of street food—in Thailand and Vietnam, just like in ancient Rome and Athens—is, by definition, an urban adaptation. When the bulk of Thailand’s population lived in rural villages, most meals were cooked and eaten at home, but as people began to swarm towards the cities in the mid to late 20th century, domestic life underwent radical changes. Urban kitchens were ill equipped for family cooking and busier lifestyles left little time to stand around the stove. Plus the economies of scale made eating out every bit as cheap as eating in. And while Mom might make a mean green curry or tom yum, it’s tough to compete with the legions of street cooks who dedicate their lives to making the same dish over and over until its part of their identity.
On my last afternoon in Bangkok, standing in front of a dizzying number of street vendors besides Siam Center, I decide to play a game. With a bus to catch in 20 minutes and unable to find my preprogrammed location, I set out to deposit my remaining 300 baht (about $10) into the hands of as many cooks as possible. I start with dessert: an old man covers a flattop with a dozen mini crepes, toasting them to a rich mahogany brown. The crepe itself is as thin and crunchy as a candy shell, the warm savory filling evoking the sweet, salty comfort of an American diner breakfast. A few stands down, a plump middle-aged woman cooks chicken meatballs: smooth, pale orbs threaded onto bamboo skewers, grilled until gently charred on the surface, then dipped into a crimson vat of sweet chili sauce and served with a few slices of cucumber. Next stop, som tam, the ubiquitous northern Thai salad of green papaya, chilies, and dried shellfish, pestle-pounded into an electric mix of spice and sweet and ocean umami.
If the game is to eat one of the best meals of my life for as little money as possible, I’ve already won, but I keep going: I still have a wad of bills in my pocket and the last stand in the line of vendors is the most enticing of the lot. A mother and daughter work in a tight formation, pulling chicken parts from their fish-sauce marinade, dredging them in flour, then dropping them into a vat of burbling fat. The chicken emerges with a craggy coat the color of maple syrup. By the time I board the bus five minutes later, it’s still too hot to handle without a napkin.
And so I sit there, lips blistered with chicken crackling, fingers singed with pounded capsaicin, watching the whole of Bangkok sink into the horizon behind me, smilingly stupidly, wondering what to do with the last 150 baht.
Context and environment have a profound impact on how we experience food, but there is something else that makes this way of eating so vital, something beyond the scooter cries and the tiny stools and the mugs of iced beer. It’s the fate of the wok that has seared millions of meals into submission. It’s the fact that not one motion is wasted in transforming that pile of vegetables and meat into a beautiful plate of food. It’s the years of cooking the same dish over and over until the pan handles and the spatula rivets have worn away at your skin like a river rounding out the edges of a stone. That doesn’t travel; that doesn’t translate.
That stays on the streets, exactly where it began and where it belongs.
HOW TO COOK A TURKEY
By Molly Watson
From TheDinnerFiles.com
As a freelance food writer, recipe developer, and columnist (Serious Eats, About.Com), Molly Watson is immersed in the rich local food culture of her adopted hometown San Francisco. But sometimes, the down-to-earth Minnesotan in her bursts out—like, say, in the midst of a crazed Thanksgiving dinner.
I’ve cooked several lifetimes worth of turkeys. Being a food writer will do that to a person. Such vast experience has left me with no desire to cook one ever again. It has also left me with a remarkable ability to cook a turkey—blindfolded if necessary—and to do it well. Like, really well. People say things like, “Holy shit, this is the best turkey I’ve ever tasted,” and, “Why is this turkey so much better than every other turkey I’ve ever eaten?” and, “Molly, will you marry me?”
It seems wrong to keep this precious knowledge to myself, especially in November, when so many people are suffering, overwhelmed by what they mistakenly think is the Herculean task of cooking a turkey. That’s their first problem: they let the turkey get into their head. Like dealing with your drunken aunt’s insults at the dining table, cooking a turkey is primarily a mental game and you need to start from a position of confidence, with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Then, do as I do, and be the boss of that bird:
1. Salt the Shit Out of the Turkey
I know, you’ve heard all about this brining thing. If you want the hassle of creating gallons of brine and figuring out a place where your turkey can simultaneously be submerged in the brine and kept cold, knock yourself out. I stopped brining turkeys years ago. I just salt them. It’s easier, it makes a crazy delicious and moist bird, and you don’t risk overdoing it and ending up with something more sea sponge than poultry. On Monday, I work gobs of salt into every part of the turkey. I salt it inside and out. Instead of letting the turkey get under your skin, get salt under its skin. Then I plop it in a pan, cover it, and stick it back in the fridge. On Wednesday, I uncover it, pour off any liquid in the pan, and put it back in the fridge uncovered so the skin can dry out—all the better to crisp up! Early on Thursday I take it out to let off any chill, which helps it cook more evenly. Cooking a cold bird is the primary cause of The-Breast-Is-Dried-Out-But-The-Thighs-Are-Bloody syndrome. Food safety experts will tell you not to leave the turkey out for hours; you may want to listen to them or you may want a delicious turkey. The choice is yours!
2. Layer On Some Fat
Here’s another reason to let the turkey de-chill before cooking: an ice-cold bird is near impossible to slather with butter, and turkey rewards me with moist meat and crisp skin in exchange for said butter massage. If newspaper food sections and television cooking segments are to be believed, people around the country live in mortal fear of a dry turkey. I figure I’d mention this easy work-around.
I’ve also been known to lay slices of bacon or pancetta all over the breast to give it a bit of protection from the heat. This tactic also results in crackling turkey-flavored bacon for me to nosh on while finishing up the feast. You may choose to share it, but that’s fucking insane—Who’s watching football? Them! Who’s making this bird? You! So who gets the bacon? It’s simple math.
3. Put the Turkey Someplace Crazy Hot
For most of you, this is an oven. For me, it’s a grill. Wherever it is, make it hot. Really hot. The someplace hot may, if you’re a bit nuts, be a giant vat of oil because you’ve decided to deep-fry your turkey. Color me impressed.
Note: Grilling the turkey frees up valuable oven space for roasting brussels sprouts and re-heating all those crap dishes your guests insisted on bring
ing to “help.” If you’ve put the bacon slices on like I told you to, your yard and possibly even your neighborhood with be perfumed with the scent of cooking bacon and you’ll have something pithy to say if you’re gathered with people who insist everyone at the table say what they’re thankful for. I know I’m always thankful that “I’m grateful for a deck that smells of bacon” keeps me from saying, “I’m grateful for all the times I haven’t had to go around the table like it’s kindergarten saying what I’m grateful for.”
4. Cook the Turkey Until It Is Done
But how long do I cook the turkey, you’re asking. You’re pleading. You’re emailing and texting and tweeting me all Thursday morning. Such a question forces me to state the obvious: you cook it till it’s done. If you’re into gadgets, go buy a fancy digital thermometer. But while your fix-it friend is busy figuring out how to replace the batteries, you can just wiggle the leg. Does it feel loose? Like your son could pretty much rip it off and gnaw on it Henry VIII-style? The bird is done.
How big the turkey is, the temperature and size and altitude of your oven are all going to factor into the magical, mystical equation. Another important factor will be how often you and your nosey relatives open the oven door to check on its progress.
5. Give the Bird a Break
After all the salting, butter-massaging, roasting, and wiggling, your turkey is exhausted. The key to being a good boss is knowing when to push and when to let up. Let the bird hang out for awhile before you attack it. Give it at least half an hour. Yep. Just let it sit there and mellow under a cozy blanket of foil. The turkey will think all the fuss is over, relax, and let all its yummy juices settle back in place after their frantic attempts to escape the protein as it cooked. Plus, it will give you time to eat that bacon, pound back a Manhattan, and try to remember why all those damn people are in your house.
Home Cooking
AND BABY MAKES FREE-FOR-ALL
By Adam Sachs
From Bon Appétit
Bon Appétit contributor Adam Sachs—a.k.a. the Obsessivore—is also a travel writer for GQ and Travel and Leisure; he comes naturally to a globetrotting perspective on food. But when there’s a new baby in the house, sometimes just going to the food market seems like a major expedition.
“Sit,” the boy commanded.
I thought I detected an unfamiliar note of concern and tenderness in his voice. But my powers of detection were blunted by an interrogation level of sleep deprivation. It was a time of happy chaos within our growing household: The boy, not quite two years old, had just been joined by a girl whose age we still measured in days.
We sang nonsense songs all night and ate ice cream for breakfast. For a week, nobody went outside or wore pants.
Sensing a frayed fabric of life in need of mending, my son stopped me as I leapt by him on the way to fetch something infant-related in the kitchen.
“Dada, sit,” he said, indicating the seat opposite his high chair. He sounded serious. So I sat.
Typically at this point, he would ask to honk my nose or demand a Lego train car. But now he fixed me with an arresting look, forgiving but firm. We need to have a little chat, it said. Pay attention.
I recognized it as the kind of look I’d no doubt use on him in fatherly negotiations ahead. But now my son had the floor and was ready to make his case.
“Dada,” the boy said, “I want to have eat-eat.”
I was impressed. Nobody around here, least of all the nearly two-year-old, was in the habit of using full sentences.
And I knew what he meant. “Eat-eat” was more than the sum of its repetitive parts. It wasn’t food as fuel. Eat-eat, I’d come to understand, was a proper family meal. It was togetherness at the table, the boy sharing what we ate.
It was civilized—healthier and more fun than the kind of disjointed perma-snacking we’d fallen into. He wanted to yell “Cheers!” and clunk his milk cup into my wineglass.
We all wanted eat-eat.
The directive was clear, the tone urgent: Venture forth into the sunny world to hunt and gather (or at least shop and schlep) something nice for dinner.
So we all put on pants, except for the little girl, who dozed in her pastel muumuu-straitjacket. And we set out toward the farmers’ market with two strollers and bed head and a bag of wipes.
When the boy had first arrived, I’d been flush with joyful mania—and the need to make myself useful somehow. The miniature, mother-focused creature asked little of me in those early weeks, so I set my euphoric enthusiasm loose in the kitchen. I cranked up the oven and churned out piles of pizzas for visiting grandparents and friends. I made chicken salad for the new nanny and heaping bowls of nutty farro salad with tiny halved tomatoes and sweet beets for the new mom. I simmered and froze great quantities of chicken stock and meat ragouts for our bright and homebound future.
This time around, confidence had bred complacency. Until my son reminded me of the central importance of making sure we all ate well.
The question, then, was what to make? What to feed a growing gang when you’ve got work deadlines to meet and a son who knows you’re phoning it in; when it’s also brain-meltingly hot out and everybody’s already a little goofy from lack of sleep?
The answer is, you want something stabilizing that can be assembled—in stages—ahead of time without too much sustained attention; something that easily scales to mass quantities and can be repurposed for days.
At the market, I saw crates of green and wavy purple lettuces, peppery mizuna, and esoteric leafy things whose names I would never remember even when rested. Typically I’m not a salad craver, but I’d been living on ginger ice cream, lemon sorbet, and adrenaline, and these leaves, man, they were lookin’ real good to me. Across from the lettuce monger was the duck dude. He pulled some nice-looking smoked magrets from his case, and I knew we had the makings of a kick-ass eat-eat.
I spent a hot week in the Périgord region of southwestern France a few years back. Every lunch consisted of some variation on the salade Périgourdine, which roughly translates as “all the delicious things you can think of thrown together in a louche, duck-and-goose-fatladen manner not at all resembling austere American notions of a salad.”
My version, adapted to what I found at the market, may not be traditional, but it is true to its spirit. Not quite a recipe, it’s simply a reliable combination of things that shine together: sturdy, flavorful greens brightened by a mustardy vinaigrette; the sunsetty yolks of good eggs; the earthy heft and salt of the duck, thinly sliced; the crunch of walnuts; a bit of crumbly blue cheese.
The nice thing about a salad like this is that you can cook the eggs, wash and dry the greens, and whisk your vinaigrette whenever you want. (While others are napping, say.) Then assemble it—at room temperature—for lunch, dinner, or anytime in between (or after).
The nicer thing about a salad like this is that when I served it to the mother, whose soul had also been silently crying out for leafy things and smoky-salty protein and the satisfying crunch of bread nuggets crisped in duck fat, she let out a low purr of approval. Her look said, Now you’re pulling your weight around here.
My son inhaled the greens, hand to mouth, a natural. He ate the egg, cut up. I tore off a piece of the smoked magret and told him, “Duck.”
“Duck,” the boy said, taking it and seeming satisfied. After a thoughtful chew, he appeared to remember a bedtime book about lost ducklings and said again, a little scandalized, “Duck?”
“Cheers!” I yelled to change the subject. That was a conversation that could wait. The boy clunked my glass with his milk cup. Beside us in her cradle, the girl slept on, quietly. The important thing was that we were here together, seated and finally sated.
A French-ish Salad to Feed an Expanding Household
An assemblage of delicious things to be deployed in necessarily inexact proportions.
Leafy greens, the more peppery the better.
A mustardy vinaigrette. Whisk 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
with 1 teaspoon each Dijon and grainy mustards. Gradually whisk in ½ cup olive oil.
Fresh farm eggs. Slide into already-boiling water, cook for about 7 minutes, then put straight into ice water.
Smoked duck breast. Trim off some fat for frying the croutons, then thinly slice the meat against the grain. Order at dartagnan.com.
Toasted walnuts
Slivered red onion
Croutons. Fry torn bread in a combo of olive oil and rendered duck fat until crisp.
Crumbled blue cheese
Now, arm yourself with enough ingredients to feed everybody for a few meals. Toss some greens with vinaigrette. Top with the duck and halved eggs. While snacking on the croutons, scatter some around. Sprinkle the cheese, onion, and walnuts over the top; finish with Maldon salt and pepper. Bask in the admiration of your loved ones. Nap. Repeat.
SENSE OF SELF
By Erin Byers Murray
From FoodThinker.com
Ah, the underappreciated day-to-day job of cooking for a family. Growing up, Erin Byers Murray (managing editor of Nashville Lifestyles magazine, author of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm) took her mother’s kitchen routine for granted. And then fate intervened.
While I was growing up, my mother was a get-folks-fed, functional kind of cook. A teacher and mother of two, she always managed at least one meal (though it was usually three) each day, constructing well-balanced plates with a thoughtful array of proteins, vegetables, and starches. She was careful to avoid the things she knew we would reject (lima beans for me; steamed broccoli for Dad) and loved to toss in treats (butterscotch pudding for everyone). Lunches were made for school. Holiday dinners were a three-day affair that started with the heady scent of sautéed onions and ended with the sweetly fragrant spices layered into her pumpkin pie.