On our last Chef’s trip to Thailand we where able to source the knowledge to be able to craft the revered ‘Yum Tha-Wai’ Salad and add it to our latest menu.

This particular Ancient, Royal Salad comes from the aristocratic households of days past in Thailand, where thoughts of quotas, time and profit margins where foreign to the ladies who dedicated their lives to Royal Thai Cooking.

It is a sophisticated salad with great depth that consists of a large number of Asian vegetables being blanched in coconut milk, drained, then topped with finely hand- shredded or gently torn chicken. It is then dressed with the deep and sophisticated curry-relish like sauce, which is sour, salty and sweet with a vivid tone of fresh herbs, fused together with smoked fish.

Finally the salad is then sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds and crispy shallots. The end result is certainly a unique, interesting take on the term ‘Salad’ and packed full with rounded flavour.

Not only is this snack deeply embedded in Thai gastronomy but also in the culture. In Thai folk law tradition there where 4 items a Thai woman should be able to craft that in turn gave her prestige and increased her dowry. These consist of: Beatle Nut Rolling, peeling the fruit – Marion Plum that is extremely soft and requires a steady controlled hand and mind, making the delicate time consuming Royal Thai Dumpling – ‘Kanom Jeeb.’ And lastly the crafting of ‘Kanoom Buang’ where again a controlled hand and mind is required to smooth the mix evenly and to the exact elegant thickness on a hot, cast iron hot plate. With a wooden circular spatula called a ‘Kraja’.

‘Kanom Buang Thai’ consists of two versions: one Sweet and one Savory. At Classical Thai we decided to delve into and learn the savory version. I fell in love with the idea of this snack about 8 years ago but disliked the sickly sweet version so readily available at street stalls all over Bangkok. So we kept our eyes open for someone who sold a savory ancient version that we had read about in old Thai cook books. About a year ago this search payed off and we found our modern day craftsman down one of the many crowded narrow ‘sois’ or streets in Bangkok. The craft has been in his family for almost 200 years. He cooks at home and gives out paper thin business cards whereby you ring and place your order.

He can be booked out for days in advance, so you are filed into a schedule within his brain and told when to pick up your order. We organised to learn off him for 6 days in January 2012. We offered him payment as any craftsman deserves when sharing his knowledge and he flatly refused. This proud and at the same time carefree attitude is what inspires you as a cook to pursue your craft and concentrate on it and trust in your honest quest to make the dish you are crafting better and better.

The origin to his skills started with his great grandmother making kanom beung in the palace. After she left the palace’s employment she decided to open a store of her own selling her specialist dish. Due to her craft carving up the competition and becoming a huge success, it continued to be passed on from generation to generation. Our generous teacher is the 4th generation in his family to devote himself to keeping the traditional Royal Kanom Buang alive and well.  Each morning he starts by making fresh flour comprised of rice mixed with roasted mung bean and jack fruit seed, than puts them through a mill for the fresh dough. It is then carefully smeared with a type of meringue mix. The topping condiments begin with the coconut being shredded by using a traditional hand coconut grater. Dry persimmon is than added and fresh minced prawn. The whole process is time consuming with great attention to small details which is an attitude that is at the heart of Royal Thai Cuisine.

Tinned Coconut cream cannot separate and release its oils and perfumes due to stabilizers and whatever other rubbish they put in it to make it last an eternity. The end result is far removed from the flavor of fresh coconut milk.

There are three components to achieving greatness in a curry. Coconut Milk Consistency, Curry Paste Balance and Seasoning.

Coconut Cream / Milk:
Only the white coconut meat or flesh is used to make milk and cream. 1 Coconut gives about 250g of meat and you want to mix this with 200mls to 1 liter of warm water and let it soak . It depends on what curry your working on, your audience, and what ingredients your cooking in the curry.

Cream is only the bright white layer that rises to the top once you squeeze it through a muslin cloth or we have a hydrolic pressing machine at the restaurant which takes the hard work out of things. It also allows us to use no water whatsoever when a really thick cream is called for.It does not matter how much water you use, a single coconut will yield the same amount of cream. The only thing that will change is when you use less water to the weight of the meat, the coconut cream will become thicker but than it becomes harder to extract.

The extracted cream is used to fry the curry paste in.You want the correct amount of cream to curry paste your frying. To much and it will tend to stew and not fry-off the paste.  To little and when the uncooked paste absorbs the cream it will not release enough of its oils to fry the paste and it will scorch.

When speaking about the amount of water you use to coconut flesh, this is in relation to the thickness of the milk and how strong you want the perfume and taste of coconut to be.
Some get confused between milk and cream. Coconut cream is not what you get from the first pressing and milk from the second. What could be said is you will get most of your cream from the first pressing. The more times you press the coconut flesh the thinner the milk becomes. Don’t concentrate on the number of pressings but rather how thick you want your milk to be for the particular curry your working on. To thick and the paste becomes cloyed and the particles of herbs and flavors become trapped in pockets. To thin and the curry becomes watery, course, prickly and unrounded. When too thin a coursness is produced where the garlic, galangal and genrally speaking ‘heat’ swamps the rest of the more subtle herbs and flavors contained in the curry paste. This is the most common mistake found today when dealing with fresh milk. Why? Because the thinner the milk the less coconuts needed. It comes down to labor and cost saving. Many than make up for this by pouring in extra fish sauce and sugar. So the end result is a curry that tastes of sweetness, saltiness and heat but lacks any body or depth of flavour. The better cook may even balance this seasoning and heat correctly. But where is the coconut flavor and perfumes that weld everything together and the multitude of fresh herbs contained in the paste???

Seasoning:
You want your seasoning to be somewhere within the range of 5% to 20% of the total milk and cream used. Generally speaking. Depending on what curry your working on and try not to substitute white sugar for palm sugar. It may be easier to work with but it has no depth and body of flavor like palm sugar does.

Pastes:

Curry pastes require alot of trial and error and becoming very familiar with the Thai herbs flavors and what particular time of year it is. Certain curry’s require a predominance of a particular herb or group of herbs or shrimp paste etc.

How herbs and dry spices play off one another can only be learnt by passing years and tasting, smelling, tasting. I like to nibble on the paste with my front teeth and gently dab my tongue back and forth as I’m making the paste. To get an idea of how the paste is developing. There is no exact fixed rules but there are guide lines. The overall goal is to learn the craft of making pastes so you can achieve the flavour that you as a individual want or what you feel you audience wants. With tins the decision is already made for you and its not going to be in your favor.

The correct amount of curry paste to cream and milk must be used so as to provide thickness and strength of flavour.

These are a few general points that break off into a multitude of decisions and skills to be learnt when your designing and shooting for a curry that has the ability to really be enjoyed. Regardless of what culture your from, when you taste a Royal Thai standard curry or a modern day adaption that has obeyed these old principles, then you will know it. The same as a good painting, a classic car or a great piece of music sang in a foreign language.

New to the menu at Classical Thai: This is my all time favourite Salad. Its spicy, sour, salty and palm sugar sweet. But the main ingredient ‘galangal’ is what lifts it above other salads. Pulverised galangal gives it an added earthy, citrusy, slightly woody-cider flavour.  Tossed with lime leaf, mint leaves, saw tooth coriander, basil leaves and lemongrass, its a highly flavoured herb bomb. The roughly pounded bitter peanuts and fried eshallots gives it an added cruncy texture. Finally, sweet creamy textured Crystal Bay Prawns from Northern Queensland are tossed through the salad.

Classical Thai Cravings.

Ingredients:

200 gram of blanched pork neck, sliced

200 gram of cooked prawns, peeled and devained

1 cup of coconut cream

2 cups of coconut milk

1 cup of beansprout, tailed off

6 sneak beans, cut into about 1 inch long pieces

1/2 banana flower, finely sliced

1/2 cup of lemon basil leaves

Salad Dressing:

3 Long red chilli (Fresh)

6 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup of fish sauce

2 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of lime juice

2 tbsp of tamarind juice

Salad dressing:

• Put long red chilli, garlic into a mortar and pestle. Pound until smooth. Then season with fish sauce, sugar, lime juice.

Method:

• Simmer coconut milk in a pot then blanch pork.
• blanch beansprout in the same milk and remove from the heat and set it aside.
• Do the same with the sneak beans then the banana flower in the coconut milk.
• In a mixing bowl put pork, prawn, beansprout, sneak bean, banana flower and coconut cream together.
• Then add salad dressing and lemon basil.
• Gently toss and mix. Than serve.

New to the menu

 X.O. Sauce

New to the menu

Steamed dumplings with chilli oil & black vinegar that has been aged for 10 yrs. Topped with fresh ginger & cracked black pepper.

New to the menu

“From the mid 19th century this dish took firm roots in Northern Thailand to the modern day. Originating from the Yunnanese, Muslim – Chinese caravan traders.” new to the menu

Classical Thai Cravings.

Some other “Lons” add pork, prawn, fish and an array of differing ingredients. They are tremendously layered in there delicate complexity.

A Lon is in-between a curry and a soup but more ancient, more delicate and subtle then its sister dish’s. Its ancient brother would certainly be the wide array of Nahm Prick relishes that are far more robust. Lon is a dipping sauce or could be called a relish but we have chosen to renovate it’s ‘use’ to a degree and utilize it as a sauce for Steamed John Dorry Fillet.

Classical Thai Cravings.