[jovial music]
- Okay, so, today's assignment,
I am going to be looking into
the Isan region of Thailand.
It's in the north-east region of Thailand.
[laid back music]
Six years ago, I went to
Thailand for about a month.
Not a planned trip.
[sighs] I'll give you the story.
I was living in this crazy
warehouse space in Brooklyn
that got shut down by the
DOB, Department of Buildings,
and that was unfortunate.
But I ended up just buying a
one-way ticket to Thailand.
I had never been before.
I loved the food,
and I fell even more in
love when I was there.
When I was there I took a
decent amount of photos,
and I haven't looked at them for a while,
so I'm gonna take a look now.
You guys wanna see them?
Some sum tom, me, that's,
I'm not gonna get into selfies.
Some khao soy.
This was incredible.
I think this meal cost
me like six dollars.
These are some shrimp balls
being made, my favorite.
But it was the food of the Isan region
that I really fell in love with.
All the flavors were kind
of heightened compared
to anything else that I had in Thailand.
It was punchy.
It was super, super bright.
The fiery heat that would just
linger on and not go away.
I'm gonna be going to a
restaurant in Manhattan
in the East Village called Somtum Der.
I'm gonna be working
with the owner, Supanee.
We're gonna cook through a lot of dishes
I'm familiar with,
and some that I'm hoping
that I've never seen before.
I imagine there'll
be some grilled meats, some fried chicken.
I'm like salivating
just thinking about it.
It is by far one of my
favorite type of foods to eat.
This is the restaurant.
This is the menu.
And this is the kitchen.
- [Worker In Kitchen] Go away!
[calm background music]
- Okay, we're in the East Village.
I'm at Somtum Der with the owner, Supanee.
[foreign language]
- [foreign language] [laughter]
[jovial music]
- I know we have a lot of
ingredients you've put out.
They represent the five different flavors
of what makes Isan cuisine so unique.
If you could take me through it?
- Sure.
We have five different flavors,
and the first one is sweet.
And then we have salty and spicy and sour,
and the last one is bitter.
One of the main
characteristic of Isan food
is that in one bite you can
taste all these five flavors,
so it kind of explodes in your mouth.
I say more compliment each other.
- [Andy] Some of the ingredients
I'm familiar with, some I'm not.
- [Supanee] So, the
first one is palm sugar.
- [Andy] It's very dense
and it's like a pellet
you have to break down.
This is just white sugar,
and this is brown sugar.
- Okay, so this is field crab.
This is fermented.
This mainly go to som tum,
especially papaya salad.
- [Andy] The green papayas, huh.
- [Supanee] Yes.
- Because it's a shellfish,
I would think it's like a salty flavor.
But you're saying it falls
under the kind of sweet pillar.
- Yes.
- It's actually really good.
It is a little salty, but
it's more sweet than anything.
And then this one over here.
- [Supanee] This is the
pickled garlic with juice.
We make a lot of sauce with this juice,
and sometimes we use the
whole piece of garlic.
- Its funny because I immediately,
I would think like it
would provide acidity
or be sour,
but it falls under the sweet category.
I'm gonna try-
- Sure.
- Just the juice.
[drum roll]
The liquid's sweet.
The next one.
- The salty.
If you're talking about Isan food,
you cannot escape from using fish sauce.
Also, another type of fish sauce
that we use is fermented one.
So this one is like pungent
and it's very strong.
- So, I'm feeling more familiar
with this fish sauce over here.
It kind of has that clear, deep amber.
How would you describe
the flavor difference
between this one and this one?
- The flavor, I think
this is more intense.
- I should try this one first?
- Okay, not too much.
It's very salty. [laughs]
[drum roll]
- Very, very concentrated.
That's a strong fish sauce.
- Right, yes.
- Is there anything else in this?
- You have anchovy, you have salt,
pickled garlic juice,
and, believe it or not,
they put the khao niao, sticky rice grain.
- Huh. This one almost has
like a sweetness to it.
Thicker consistency.
[drum roll]
I love it.
- You love it, okay.
- Yeah.
It's very strong.
It's very pungent.
The third is
- Spice
- Spice.
Heat.
Isan food can be very, very spicy.
So I guess you have two chiles here.
- This is the dried chile
And this is the bird's eye chiles.
- [Andy] When would you use the fresh one
versus the dried one?
- The dried one actually give
you different kind of smell,
and sometimes we also
put into papaya salad.
The fresh one we use in som tum
and many other ingredients, okay.
Also, sometimes, we ground it up
and put it in larb.
The bird eye's chile
here that we find here
is less spicy
- Than the one in Thailand?
- Than the one in Bangkok.
Yeah.
This is bigger, but it's not as spicy.
- This is for you guys.
[drum roll]
- [laughs]
- That was not a smart idea.
- No.
- [Andy] The next one is?
- [Supanee] Yeah, it's
of course the sourness.
Sour we get from lime.
And we also have cherry tomato.
This one is another important one.
- [Andy] Tamarind
- [Supanee] Tamarind juice.
Yeah.
- It could be quite sour,
then sometimes I find it
can be very sweet, too.
[drum roll]
That was a big bite.
It's actually a lot more sour
than I thought it would be.
But this almost has like
a sour apricot-y flavor.
This one would be the bitter flavor.
- [Supanee] Right.
- [Andy] And can you take me through?
- Sure.
This is eggplant.
This is Thai eggplant.
We put that in spicy papaya
salad and some of the soup.
And this one is roasted rice grain.
In a lot of menu,
we roast it up and then we pound it.
[drum roll]
- It has like a deeply toasted,
almost like a slight smokiness to it.
That's really delicious.
- [Supanee] And the last one:
This is actually from yanang grass,
or in Thai it's bai yanang.
It's very herby.
[drum roll]
- It's subtle.
It's not too,
I mean it's definitely bitter,
but it's not too astringent in that sense.
So I guess the last part:
Fresh herbs and aromatics that are used.
I know you have a few right next to you.
- [Supanee] Yes, the
first one is bai makrut.
And lemon grass, of course.
And galanga.
- It's so different tasting
it just raw versus cooked.
- [laughs]
- It's very intense.
It tastes like I'm eating pine leaves.
Pine and citrus, and
it's really in your face.
And quite a bit of bitterness.
- [Supanee] And I know
you guys call this dill,
but we call it Laotian parsley.
- And that's because Laos
is very close to Isan.
- Yes.
- I guess like there's
a few different tools
that are used in the Thai
kitchen in the Isan region.
I know one of them for sure,
and that's over there.
- [Supanee] That's the mortar and pestle.
- [Andy] Kruk
- [Supanee] Kruk and sak.
- And that's what you use to
make the som tum, correct?
- Right, yes.
- Is there any other kind
of like cooking equipment
that you would see?
- Sure, like things that you
see in a regular kitchen,
like a wok, deep fryers, and stove.
But for right now, everybody
use fork and spoon, okay.
A lot of people misunderstood
about chopsticks.
We don't really use in Thai cuisine.
Sometime we use it if you eat noodle soup.
- Soups, okay, yeah.
- You use the fork to push
the food into the spoon,
and then you take the
spoon into your mouth.
- Okay, I guess, I know we went
and tried a bunch of different flavors.
I guess, what are the dishes
we're going to be making today?
- [Supanee] Sa poak kai
tod der, gaeng om kai,
tum pu plara, larb ped, and soop nor mai.
And, also, we are going
to make some sticky rice.
- [Andy] Okay.
- I would say, originally,
Isan has khao niao a lot.
You know, because Isan people,
mostly they are farmer,
so they go into the rice
paddy and they work all day.
So, if you have khao niao
with you, it stay longer.
- Okay, so that, that'd
get a three out of six
I feel comfortable with.
Okay, so I'm here in the
kitchen at Somtum Der,
and we're here with Chef Jim.
[jovial music]
First dish that we're doing
is the fried chicken, correct?
- Yes.
- This is like one of the most
popular dishes on the menu,
and you guys have bone-in
skin-on chicken thighs.
And is this, like, very
spicy, this batter?
Or not too spicy?
- [Chef Jim] No, not too spicy.
- [Andy] I see there's ice.
So you put ice in with the marinade?
- [Chef Jim] Yeah, we marinate
and put ice and then we bake.
- So you make the batter
really, really cold
so that when it goes into the hot oil,
it gets really crispy
and crunchy all over?
- Yes.
- Ah, okay.
All right.
I haven't seen that.
I've seen like cold water or cold seltzer,
but I've never seen ice to do that.
And how hot is the oil?
- [Chef Jim] Ah, 350.
- 350.
And then it gets crispy really quickly.
- Hmm-mm.
- All right.
That okay?
- Yeah, it's cool. [laughs]
- Now it's going back into the hot oil.
That is perfectly cooked.
This smells so good.
- Okay, we're gonna cut.
- How do you cut it?
You cut it crosswise?
- Yeah.
I'm gonna cut like this.
- [Andy] Oh, through the bone.
[sound of chopping the chicken]
- [Chef Jim] This means everything,
the bone inside is cooking already.
- [Andy] Yeah, it's cooked
all the way through.
- And it's ready to serve.
- Okay, so I see that you're
using a cleaver to cut the chicken.
Is the cleaver the kind of knife
you see most often in Thailand?
Or not so much?
- In Thailand, we use two
or three kind of the knife.
This one we use for the chop.
We use chef knife the same there, yeah.
- [Andy] And what's the third one?
- [Chef Jim] Flay the
fruit or the vegetable,
we use the small one.
- A smaller paring knife, okay.
All right.
One, two, three.
- Yes.
- Right? Okay.
[chopping noise]
[laughter]
[chopping noise]
And so what is this?
This is the fried?
- [Chef Jim] This is the fried garlic.
These are roasted rice.
- And what's that?
- Fish sauce, chile powder,
tamarind juice, and lemon.
- So it's sweet, salty,
- Spicy, yeah
- Spicy,
Sour.
- Yeah.
- [Andy] That feel like
- [Chef Jim] And we put
[talking over each other]
on the top.
- And that's?
- Coriander.
- [Andy] Coriander?
- [Chef Jim] Hmm-mm.
- [Andy] So our fried chicken's done.
[calm background music]
I'm gonna take a piece
just by itself first.
[crunching on fried chicken]
It's so crunchy.
Just the texture is so satisfying.
I mean, I think it's perfect on its own,
but I'm very curious about the sauce.
- It's supposed to compliment each other.
[calm background music]
- I thought it might taste
a little bit more funky
and salty and spicy,
but it's actually quite sour.
- Oh, okay.
- It's spicy and sour.
- Right.
- I'm gonna steal the technique
of putting ice in with the batter.
It makes so much sense.
So we have this sticky rice going.
I know it's on the stove.
How long does it usually
take for the rice to cook?
- 20 minutes,
- 20 minutes?
- Make it 30 minutes.
- [Andy] So we have the
rice that's almost done.
The coconut milk here,
it's for the rice, correct?
- Yeah.
- And you mentioned there's
salt and sugar here.
- Yeah.
- So just regular white sugar, right?
- Oh no, this is salt.
- Oh, that's salt.
- Yeah.
- And sugar.
Be careful, musty.
- [Andy] It's so sticky.
That was good.
It feels ready.
And you move it around just
to kind of bring the temperature down?
- Yeah.
We're gonna make the blue sticky rice,
we have to put the coconut milk in here.
- [Andy] Should do all of it.
- [Chef Jim] Yeah, all of it.
- It definitely takes on a more
of a almost paste-like texture.
- [Chef Jim] When it cool,
we're gonna make like this.
- [Andy] Okay, so you
form it into these logs.
- Yeah.
It feel a little bit different.
- Yeah.
It's become a lot more sticky.
And where you bite into it,
you almost can make out any of the grains.
- A mango with sticky rice--
- Mango!
I was gonna say this is what
you can mango sticky rice with.
- Hmm-mm.
- So, we are gonna grill
the coconut sticky rice.
What's next for this?
- We're gonna prepare the eggs.
- So you dip it in the eggs?
- Yeah.
- So it's eggs and what else?
- [Chef Jim] And our seasoning sauce.
[noise of knife hitting the glass]
- This is Thai soy sauce.
It's kind of like a lighter version
of the Chinese soy sauce.
- [Chef Jim] Yeah, it is similar.
- So this is just gonna
get dipped all over.
You're constantly kind of turning it,
making sure it's not too brown all over.
It only takes a few minutes, right?
- [Chef Jim] Hmm-mm.
- [Andy] Okay, and then this would like go
with your som tum or
with your fried chicken.
Next is gaeng?
- Gaeng om kai.
- Gaeng om kai.
So, this is soup from the Isan region.
So what's this right now?
- [Chef Jim] Ah, water.
- Just water.
- Yeah, water and salt.
- [Andy] Okay, so these are
chicken thighs that are cut.
And so you're gonna add that to the water?
- [Chef Jim] Yeah.
- So the water is coming to a simmer.
What's this?
- This, we have the
roasted rice, lemongrass,
garlic, and red onion.
- Okay, this smells [censored
beep noise] incredible.
Sure, and then you're
adding some Thai chiles?
- Yeah.
And then we wait for a few seconds.
We're gonna put vegetable.
- The Thai eggplant just went in.
He cut it into wedges.
That's gonna take the longest to cook.
And then he's gonna add a few more other
kind of seasonings and flavorings.
[upbeat music]
- [Chef Jim] We're gonna put vegetable.
- So at this point, the
vegetables are cooking.
What's after this?
- [Chef Jim] That's it.
- [Andy] This is done?
- [Chef Jim] Yeah, it's done.
- It still is quite
pungent, like on the nose.
But I'm curious to taste
and see how it's different
from how we first tried it,
but I know we have one more dish
in the kitchen to cook
before we make the som tum,
and that's larb, right?
- Yeah.
- So what kind of larb
are we making today?
- We will make a duck larb.
Larb pet.
- Larb pet.
Water.
- [Chef Jim] Ground duck meat.
- [Andy] So you let this
go until the water is gone.
[upbeat music]
- [Chef Jim] We put the chile powder
and roasted rice.
- [Andy] So this is the fried duck skin
we're gonna be using.
- That skin there.
- Oh, you throw it in, okay.
- And lay it on the top.
- And lay it on the top, okay.
- Now we're gonna put everything in here.
And we're gonna put the vegetable.
We're gonna put red onion,
coriander, cilantro,
- Cilantro.
I love that, coriander and cilantro.
- [Chef Jim] Scallion, fresh chile.
- [Andy] Lime juice.
- [Chef Jim] Yeah.
Mix everything together.
- [Andy] This dish has the touches
on salty, sweet, spicy, sour, bitter.
It touches all those flavors.
You would eat it with
the sticky rice, right?
- Yes.
- [Andy] Ah, more crispy.
Crispy garlic.
- And then this is fried lime leaf.
- [Andy] Oh wow.
That's beautiful.
You see larb all over Thailand,
but this one is very
typical of the Isan region.
So you would also eat the--
- The khao niao, yes.
- The khao niao.
- Of course, everything with khao niao.
[calm background music]
- I love the amount of textures
and how fresh it is,
how spicy it can be.
The technique of just adding
a little bit of water,
that Chef Jim was doing,
and then adding the chopped duck,
and then cooking it until
the water has evaporated,
and then combining with a lot of the
- Roasted rice grain
- Roasted rice,
it does so much not just
for the flavor, but texture.
'Cause it almost adds a bit
of crunch to the whole dish.
- And did you know what
larb actually mean?
- Minced.
- Yes.
You're good [laughs]
- And then we have another
version of the khao niao,
but this is called?
- Khao jee.
- [Andy] Khao jee.
- [Supanee] Khao jee.
- [Andy] So this is something
that you would just see
and you eat on its own
or with other dishes?
- I would prefer eat with som tum
or, you know, something spicy.
- Would you ever eat this
with something sweet?
- Yeah, you can.
You can even eat with fried chicken.
- I find it very, very different
from, obviously, the regular khao niao.
The grains have really almost
become like a paste-like.
You get the coconut and
you kind of get the whiff
of the egg on the nose,
and just that very thin
layer of egg on the outside
creates this kind of lacy
shell that encases the rice.
This one, when I saw it being made,
I didn't know where it was going.
Is there anything in Isan or Thai food
that you really don't like?
- I don't think so.
- Really?
You're not a picky eater?
- No.
I can eat everything.
[calm background music]
It has like a deep, deep richness,
but there's a sweetness to it as well.
It's a lot more delicate
than I thought it would be.
Yeah, that is amazing.
It's so delicious.
But I love it.
It's like a perfect snack.
Okay, so now I guess we
can leave the kitchen.
We're gonna head and make a few
kind of the salads of the Isan region.
- Hmm-mm, yeah.
- Okay, great. Let's check it out.
We're making the som tum.
I know there's a lot of
different som tums in Thailand.
This one is with field crabs.
What is is it called in Thai?
- Tum pu plara.
- Tum pu plara.
- Yeah.
- Okay, great.
Can you walk me through the ingredients?
- The first thing I do the half garlic.
- [Andy] Just half?
- [Chef Jim] Yes, just a half of a piece.
- Not even a whole?
Two chiles?
- [Chef Jim] For a medium spicy.
And then, if you punch
with nothing inside,
the chiles come into your eyes.
So, we're gonna put sugar.
- [Andy] And this is just to
kind of tone down the heat to the chiles
and to add some sweetness to the salad.
- Punch.
[sound of mortar and pestle]
Yeah.
And the next one, you're
gonna put the tomato.
And the next one, Thai eggplant.
A little bit punch.
Now, we put lime.
- The whole thing?
- Yeah, the whole thing.
Yeah, and push.
[sound of the mortar and pestle]
[laughter]
- It's very hard to do it
when you're right-handed.
Make me look bad.
[sound of the mortar and pestle]
- Oh now that's okay then, put long bean.
[sound of the mortar and pestle]
- [Andy] This is the
fermented fish sauce, right.
- [Chef Jim] Yeah.
- Now, it's everything's
kinda looking like saucy.
Green papaya.
Here.
Okay, let's see.
[sound of the mortar and pestle]
- Okay, I got it.
[sound of the mortar and pestle]
- [Chef Jim] Now we put the crab.
- So, I think it's kind of like
you're crushing everything.
You're attracting all
the oil to the flavors
from the chiles, the garlic.
You're breaking things
down to release their oils,
their juices, their water so
that everything comes together.
And so it's not just singular.
- [Chef Jim] You're done.
- Done?
Okay.
- [Chef Jim] Look good.
- [Andy] Do you wanna eat it?
- [Chef Jim] Okay, let me try.
Can I try that?
- [Andy] Yeah, you can try it.
- Hm, not bad.
- Not bad?
- Hm-mm.
- Not bad.
So the next dish is the soop nor mai,
which is not a soup.
It's a vegetable dish,
and it's a cold dish.
I've never had this before,
so I'm very curious.
- [Chef Jim] Gonna stat with
- Sesame seeds.
- Sesame seed, yeah.
- So, I'm gonna stop you.
You gotta take a look at this.
The seeds are getting crushed
and almost becoming like a paste-like.
So a little bit of white sugar
and a little brown sugar.
Why do you use two sugars and not one?
- Because the other is brown sugar,
and we need the smell and color from that.
And the white sugar is more sweet.
[sound of mortar and pestle]
- So really breaking it
down to a paste, really.
- In this I have red onions
- [Andy] Red onion.
- [Chef Jim] Coriander.
- [Andy] Mint.
- [Chef Jim] Hmm-mm, mint.
- [Andy] And then this
is the bamboo shoots?
- [Chef Jim] Yeah.
Fermented fish sauce.
- I am so into this dish, by the way.
- Chile.
- Oh, and some chile.
- [Chef Jim] Just a little bit.
- [Andy] That's a lot!
- No, a little bit.
- Thank you so much.
That was a lot of fun.
So this is the som tum,
and you mentioned we
should probably eat it
with some khao niao, the sticky rice.
- [Supanee] Yes, khao niao
- And this is just the plain khao niao.
This is not the coconut one.
[calm background music]
This is the food that I kind of crave
because I didn't grow up with it
and it's what I kind of always
been wanting and yearning,
so this is very, very satisfying.
And it's very different
from the typical som tum that I've had.
Just the addition of the field crabs
and the fish sauce that has
a viscosity and it's thicker,
and just is a lot more complex.
I feel like it goes a long way.
I just wanna eat this.
- Go ahead.
[calm background music]
- It is so intense.
- Right, hmm-mm.
- [Andy] So this one, I
certainly never tasted before
and I've never seen before.
- [Supanee] Soop nor mai
- [Andy] Soop nor mai
is also very, very typical of the region.
- Very, very typical of Isan food.
When you think of soop
nor mai, the first flavor
that comes into your mind is salty.
- Salty?
[calm background music]
It still has a good amount of heat,
but you do get the salt
in the very beginning
because you get the two
different fish sauces.
- That's right.
- I love bamboo shoots.
It's like that wonderful kind of texture
that's a little bit stringy almost.
I'm actually gonna go
for a little bit more.
[calm background music]
It's also a kind of cooling, you know?
It's spicy, but the bamboo itself feels
like it's very kind of,
it's calming in your mouth.
- Isan people, you know,
they find ingredient
in the back of the house, like backyard.
So this is one of the
ingredient that the always find.
If you cannot find a green papaya,
then you use, you know,
you make this dish.
- I wanna thank you, Supanee,
Chef Jim, Somtum Der.
The Isan region has a
special place in my heart,
so I hope everybody kind of will see it
and fall in love with this food.
And, thank you.
- Thank you.
- I just left Somtum Der.
It was great to meet Supanee and Chef Jim.
Going in, I definitely
did have like a good sense
of what I was getting myself
into flavor-wise with the
different ingredients.
It was so great to kind
of try each ingredient.
So I think I'm gonna
make the fried chicken,
and I think one of the salads.
I dunno which one, but
definitely one of the salads.
I would like to also just kind
of play with the kruk again,
and try to get my technique down,
which is kind of sad.
I have to be honest.
I feel like I'm very comfortable
with a mortar and pestle,
but a Thai one is like
a whole other beast.
[laid back music]
Hey guys!
However, I'm back in the test kitchen.
I'm gonna be making
dishes from Somtum Der,
and today I have with me:
Amiel!
[jovial music]
A full meal.
- Just a snack.
Hi, Andy.
- Have you been to Somtum Der?
- I have not been to Somtum Der.
- How?
- But now I get to eat it right here.
- You get to eat it, yeah.
Somtum Der does a lot of
food from the Isan region
in north-east, northeastern Thailand.
And I'm gonna take you through
a few of the flavor profiles
that make up that cuisine,
and then we're gonna cook a few dishes.
- Great.
That sounds fantastic.
- Today, I'm gonna recruit you
So the first bit is the
sweet profile that you get
from regular white granulated sugar,
the brown sugar,
and then these are fermented field crabs.
Oh yeah, get in there.
- It is sweet.
- A little sweet, right?
- Like candy.
- It is really sweet.
- Really sweet.
- And then next is kind of the salty,
salt profile where,
which comes from fish
sauce, two different types.
And this is the unfiltered, super cloudy.
[laid back music]
I know, wakes you up.
- It's so good.
You know what it reminds me of?
It's like when you buy a tin of anchovies,
that kind of sludge at the bottom.
- Like around the side edges too.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Andy] Now we're moving onto spicy.
Bird's eye chile.
And this is just the dried, pulverized,
you can see the seeds are in there.
[coughing]
Are you okay?
- Oh, nailed it.
- Sorry.
Amiel snorted some chile flakes.
- Good though.
- Good?
Oh yeah?
- Yeah. [laughs]
- Going on sour,
you have just fresh limes, tomatoes.
Can be very acidic, are
very acidic, and so--
[sneeze]
- So sorry.
So sorry.
It's still in there, but I'm just gonna...
I got it.
- And then over here
you have their tamarind.
The last one is the bitter flavor.
- Okay.
- Which you get from the Thai eggplants,
which you use just raw,
just sliced up thin.
- You know, raw,
it has like a little
bit of spiciness to it,
like a nightshade-y sort of.
Yeah.
- So this is yanang grass juice.
That's coming from here.
It's in a can.
It's a leaf bai yanang extract.
It's a little more subtle, a little sweet.
Definitely has that
bitterness towards the end.
Toasted rice.
- So good.
It reminds me a little bit of buckwheat.
- Buckwheat.
- Also, like when at the bottom of the
- Popcorn!
- Popcorn.
- I love that!
- Tastes like home,
watching movies at home.
- First dish we're making,
just to get things going,
is their fried chicken.
Theirs is so perfect.
The batter is:
Aromatic wise, it's lemon
grass, cilantro root,
and crushed black peppercorns,
like maybe a little over a tablespoon.
Red curry paste, we're
gonna add two tablespoons.
And then six cloves of garlic.
Okay, I'm gonna add tempura flour.
[laid back music]
And fish sauce.
I think it will need a
little bit of salt as well.
[sound of blender]
- Okay.
So clearly, it's very, very thick.
The chicken, what they do
is they'll use bone-in, skin-on.
They'll separate the meat from the bone
just so it can cook
really nice and evenly.
I'm just gonna add the
chicken straight-on.
While the chicken's marinating,
we're gonna make the sauce.
The sauce.
I mean, the chicken
itself should be spicy,
but the sauce, I think,
definitely has a higher level of heat.
I'm gonna go with like half a cup.
Dried chiles.
We have toasted rice powder.
And then a little bit
of fresh lemon juice.
And then some fish sauce.
[laid back music]
- Yeah, it's great.
- Why don't we fry the chicken?
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
- So the ice has definitely melted.
Not completely, but--
- Well, it's thinning it out.
- It's thinning the batter.
Dip this one-by-one.
- Do you always do that
when you're putting things in the fryer?
The moving back and forth thing?
- I do, I do.
I have a habit of doing this.
I also saw him doing this
at the restaurant, too.
- Do a little dance.
- Yeah.
Sway, sway,
- Sway, sway
- Sway, sway
- Beautiful, relaxing.
- Amazing, crispy, sexy.
- Bubble bubble bubble.
- Toil and trouble
- Hm, sensuality.
- Hm, Mary Kate and Ashley.
What? [laughs]
I'm excited about this.
- What color are you looking for?
- They've went a little
bit darker than this.
- [Amiel] Uh-huh. Wow.
- [Andy] Let's drop this.
- [Amiel] And how long
are they frying on this?
- I would go another like minute.
Doesn't this look good?
- I'm back to the test
kitchen with my friends!
- Shape shifting.
- [Molly] Oh, they serve it sliced?
Love that.
Oh my God.
My mouth is salivating.
- [Andy] I know.
- Yum yum yum!
- Warm bowl full of herbs.
You love a mortar.
You love a pestle.
- I do.
I love a mortar and a pestle.
This is one of my many mortar and pestles
that I actually bought from Thailand.
- [Amiel] Oh wow.
- It's called a kruk.
And they'll make som tum in here,
but they'll also use the kruk
to several other types of dishes.
And one of them that we're
doing is the soop nor mai,
which is a bamboo kind of speck salad.
It's actually the spiciest
dish we're making today.
In this case, we're gonna
make the sauce first,
before we add the bamboo shoots.
Toasted sesame seeds, I'm
gonna add about a half of this.
So I'm just gonna grind
this up a little bit.
I'm gonna add the chile.
I'm gonna add the yanang
green juice, two tablespoons.
- So now it's starting to
form into like a real paste.
- I'm gonna add a little bit of sugar.
I'm gonna add half a small shallot to it.
The cilantro, some mint leaves.
I feel like this is where you switch
from using just a pestle and you use
the pestle and the spoon.
- Gotcha.
So you're compressing it
slightly, then lifting.
Compressing, then lifting.
- [Andy] Fish sauce.
This should brighten things up.
[festive music]
Okay.
- Ooh!
Oh, look at you, getting all cute with it.
- The final dish is gonna be
a som tum, a papaya salad.
- The namesake dish.
- Well, the specific som tum,
'cause there's so many
different types of papaya salad,
this is called tum pu plara.
This is the one with the field crabs.
I'm gonna start off with just one clove.
Give it a smash.
I'm gonna do two chiles.
We're gonna pound that
pretty coarse, like this.
I'm gonna add some sugar.
And then I'm gonna add a few tomatoes.
- It's cool.
So it's adding a bit of
juiciness to the equation.
- Yes!
- You're done with your dry ingredients.
- [Andy] A piece of lime.
I'll squeeze that.
We're gonna add the Thai eggplant.
This is just one long bean.
[sound of mortar and pestle]
Some fish sauce.
Green papaya.
- Can you do anything with the seeds?
- I would imagine, like,
same as papaya seeds.
Like, they're edible.
Yeah.
- No.
What did that taste like?
- Something very familiar.
- Very familiar.
- It's not coriander.
It's not peppercorn.
- This is gonna drive me crazy.
- I know.
It's so familiar.
Is it an herb?
What is it?
It's so familiar.
Not juniper.
What is it?
Gaby, please come here.
- It looks like a seed.
- Well, yes, it's a papaya seed.
But what does it taste like?
- Wait, I know this.
- I know, right?
- I know, juniper berries.
- No
- No.
- No?
- That's what I said.
It's not there.
It's not there.
Chris!
- Chris!
Chris, Chris.
- What does this taste like?
- Cyanide?
It manages to be like
both metallic, bitter,
and sour all at the same time.
Little bit mustardy.
- Yeah, yup, yeah.
- Little bit mustardy.
Like, oh!
That reminds me a lot
of like mustard greens.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah
- Yeah,
- Like mustard greens.
- Yeah, like mustard greens.
- The way that that can
be kinda sharp and--
- Yeah! That's it.
- Mustard greens, nailed it.
[cries of triumphant exasperation]
- Gee, that was driving me crazy.
- You did it!
Amiel, yay!
- I do think maybe it's poisonous
and I just have eaten a lethal dose.
- I dunno.
Can we look up if it's
okay to eat papaya seeds?
- Let's just move on.
Let's just,
if we can taste for you to go.
- [Andy] I'm gonna add
the field crab as well.
- So we
- So we
Are trying all the dishes now.
- Are trying the dishes now.
- We did get the chicken before
- We did get the chicken before
- With Molly
- With Molly
- We really destroyed it.
- We really destroyed it.
- Could you use this?
- Do that?
- Okay, so we're gonna
get into all these dishes.
And we did get into the
chicken because Molly.
- Did we ever.
- Did we ever.
[sound of enjoying food]
- This is so [censored beep noise] good.
- Anyways, where do you wanna start?
Do you have a preference?
- So how do you like to approach the crab?
Is it like take a bite and then?
- I'll take a bite of the papaya
and then I'll grab like a claw,
suck on the claw.
- You really taste the crab.
- You do?
The crab almost has like a sweetness
that tames everything else.
It's there, though.
You get it on your lips.
- Yeah, a Bill's and a Belle's
The eggplant is really
the big takeaway for me.
- It's kind of refreshing
when you get a bite of it.
- Yeah, it has like a
super aromatic quality.
- Yeah.
- I'ma taste it without the sauce.
- Yeah.
- Hm, that batter is so flavorful.
The chicken's so juicy.
The garlic is my favorite.
I love that sauce and I love
the way that it thickened up.
I let it sat with toasted rice.
I love that texture.
I feel like I have not tasted
anything like this before.
- There's like that shred-y,
ropy kind of quality to it.
- It really does remind
me of like jackfruit,
or something like that.
The heat's really creepin'.
We should probably stop eating.
- Yeah.
Thank you Amiel.
- Thank you so much for
showing me all this food.
- Thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
- So coming back and
testing those recipes out,
there's things I would
love to kind of try again.
To really understand the
movement with the spoon,
using the kruk properly.
But then also like nailing the ratio
of like the ice to the
batter for the fried chicken.
Trying to find that kind of
right balance for each dish,
I think like I would love
to kind of keep going
in a little bit deeper.
But it also just has
given me a deeper love
for Isan food and just
Thailand in general.
Like, I've always loved
the food from there.
I'm just planning to kind of
absorb and keep going with,
and hopefully you guys learned something.
