Day 2 was the chilli day. We started off with red chilli paste, which is a mix of dozens of dried and fresh spices all crushed together in a mortar and pestle. It’s a good half an hour of pestling. It has to be smooth and lump free for the best curry. You can liquidise it, but blenders are for pussies. Real men sit for half an hour banging rocks together – it’s in the genes.
The next was Panaeng curry – a thick sauce fried in coconut milk. We cooked with pork, just to mix it up a bit. It’s pretty difficult, you have to boil the coconut milk until you get the coconut oil, and the coconut oil will happily burn if you don’t control the heat properly.
It’s a sweet curry, so you add a few spoonfuls of palm sugar. If you haven’t tried palm sugar, imagine the sweetest thing you’ve ever tried. Then condense that to a teaspoon. Then add three to a curry. It’s served with rice, and it was delicious.
Next was deep fried fish with mixed veg. The fish was deep fried, and work had prepared me for boiling oil, and I giggled whenever the oil spat and one of my companions shrank back in fear. Oh, Schadenfreude. It was served with chopped and diced onion, sliced chilli and torn sweet basil. You fry it off, and then pour it on the fish. It was delicious, the heat and bitterness of the chilli and onion really sets off the fried taste of the fish, not to sound like a food tech wanker.
Finally we had a duel meal, stir fried sweet and sour vegetables with Chiang Mai curry. The sweet and sour is pretty typical, diced carrot, cucumber, sweet corn and tomatoes.
With more palm sugar and lots of lime juice for the sour bit. Though, Thai style has pineapple in, which was a bit weird. But then again, I don’t like pineapple with savoury. I’m bias. I also learnt my favourite trick so far, how to cut carrots in little heart shapes. It’s awesome.
The counterpart was Chiang Mai curry, which is a curry local to Slough used to commemorate special occasions. I’m lying about one of these. It’s a more classic curry, with cumin and turmeric powder.
Thai’s often used it for everything from weddings to job promotions to funerals. Then again, Thai’s love eating, they hardly need an excuse. This was our “official” lunch, the fish and Panaeng curry were just starters.
By this time it was getting towards the end of the day, and we finished off with two light dishes. One was spicy glass salad. In my opinion, this meal can go fuck itself. It’s a classic Isaan dish, which means I had it pretty much every week in Nong Khai. I didn’t like it then, and I can’t stand it now.
The other was delicious, black sticky rice pudding. Imagine rice pudding – this is the Thai equivalent. It’s naturally black, and is boiled in water with coconut milk. Then you add salt, sugar and coconut milk. Or in my case, coconut milk. I’m rebelling against the Thai norm of sugar in everything.
After this myself and Pon went to the Sunday Walking Street. This is an amazing market, I could walk in a £1000 and 40kg of free baggage space, and still leave thinking I missed something. There were some beautiful Chinese style prints, but they were way too heavy and bulky for me to bring home.
I brought some carved and hand painted chop sticks, woven and leather flip flops, the last of my gifts and a wooden teak belt. It’s awesome.
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