Our two-day masterclass with Chef Ying at Somrom House on Samui began inauspiciously, to say the least. Having taken a taxi from our resort, we discovered ourselves — driver included — stumped on the place precisely the cooking area was positioned. Having turned down a dust highway, we had been confronted with a sharply steep slope that our intrepid driver, replete with Burmese-style sunscreen and large solar visor, had severe reservations about driving down, however did so anyway.
What became a slight patter of rain became an all-out downpour. Trapped on a muddy dust highway on the backside of a hill, our little white Honda grew to become inundated with mud. Earlier than lengthy, its wheels had been caught in like Moo Deng in her mom’s meals bowl. By the point we had lastly reached Ying on the telephone, we had been making an attempt to push our automotive backwards out of an enormous, juicy gap because the wheels spattered mud onto our pants.
For sure, we extricated ourselves, simply as I used to be getting nightmare visions of getting to purchase this girl a brand new Honda. We even discovered our solution to Ying, whose place was simply past the muddy highway, proper on the primary highway. We had been greeted by a platterful of elements that we’d be utilizing that day, some beautiful pandan-scented water, and the baleful glares of three improbably fluffy cats. It ended up being a fantastic begin to two days and 7 new (to us) dishes.
Now, these of you who know me, know that I’m probably not a lot of a cook dinner. That’s as a result of I’m extremely lazy. I prefer to throw issues into the oven as my important methodology of offering meals for a crowd. Typically I’ll make pasta.
Thai meals just isn’t the type of delicacies meant for that type of cook dinner. When accomplished appropriately (as Ying does), it’s painstaking, laborious, and detailed. You don’t simply throw a bunch of torn-up makrut lime leaves right into a stewing pot, willy-nilly; you choose the most effective ones (not too outdated and inexperienced, and never too younger and yellow), take away their spines, after which throw them willy-nilly into your soup. You don’t simply dump coconut milk and curry paste collectively; you break your coconut cream, ensuring it seems like a white doily earlier than including your paste (evidently, this paste is hand-pounded) to combine rigorously earlier than including the thinner coconut milk afterward. Clams are opened and their meat pried out to be used, however not the raggedy ones which can be torn on the edges. Ying is as exacting as any 3-Michelin-starred chef.
We began with a yum of native Samuian seaweed (rai kor), crunchy and salty like samphire. This could be blanched and added to slices of recent fish cured with lime juice, then blended with high quality shrimp paste and never one, however two native inexperienced leaves (tree basil and sea paracress (bai sab suea)), each of which resemble one another and virtually each different leaf hanging from a tree in Thailand (I’m not a tree particular person). The leaves added a pleasant bitter counterpoint to the deep, earthy flavors of the seaweed, fish and shrimp paste. For sure, we thought it was successful, and I even mustered up sufficient braveness to strive a hand at my very own (an excessive amount of lime juice).
We then made a Southern Thai-Muslim-style chili dip (nam chup) manufactured from flaked recent coconut toasted till it turns a deep, later-stage-Donald-Trump-at-a-rally darkish chestnut (greesae). Greesae is an ingredient that we encountered earlier than with Mon on Koh Lanta the place it was used so as to add a subtly candy, nutty taste to curries. The reality is that you’ll find this in lots of dishes all through the South, the place it often finally ends up as a supporting participant to different elements, however hardly ever takes heart stage.
The greesae is blended with dried chilies, garlic, shallots and extra shrimp paste, deep-fried in oil earlier than they’re pounded (a Malay method). The lead to salty, fatty, bitter and barely sweet-and-spicy, a combo that Ying says is completely offset by recent produce like guava, sator and Thai eggplants in addition to one thing daring and meaty like prawns grilled with turmeric, garlic and peppercorns.
We completed with a Southern Thai-Muslim curry referred to as “gang dtomae“, which boasts many alternative variations all through the South. Even so, it’s a disappearing dish, pushed apart in favor of extra “glamorous” dishes like massaman and penang. It is a mistake, as a result of this dish — significantly Ying’s model — is a revelation for me personally. Not solely did I recover from my worry of cracking coconut cream (look, everybody has to begin someplace) however I additionally acquired to stuff my face with the end result: unctuous and wealthy like butter rooster however so a lot better, festooned with a fats tranche of large trevally, okra, and curry leaves from Ying’s backyard. I’m ashamed to say I don’t have a superb photograph of this dish, as a result of I ate all of it, coupled with rice steamed over a charcoal brazier in an earthenware pot because the flames had been fanned by hand (due to course).
The following day, we didn’t get misplaced, and there weren’t even any sudden downpours. We started working washing our hoy klang (blood cockles) with the leftover dried remnants of yesterday’s rice, placing new which means into the phrase “leaving nothing to waste”. From the coconut bushes within the yard Ying minimize some fronds and we original skewers out of the frond’s spines. Then we made a marinade out of coriander seeds, dried pink chilies, ginger, shallots, garlic, salt and brandy (it was Thai Regency model and no, I didn’t drink from the bottle) earlier than frivolously blanching the cockles, threading them on the skewers and coating them within the sauce. After marinating for a few hours, they had been grilled within the yard as Thumee the cat watched close by, jealously.
We then did a neighborhood variation on the soup “tom som” utilizing toddy palm vinegar and honey from Songkhla province. Though toddy palm is an ingredient very a lot related to Petchburi, it may be discovered all through the southern half of the dominion, seemingly introduced by way of migrating elephants who pooped half-digested toddy palms in all places they went, fertilizing the land as they traveled.
I’ve all the time considered “tom som” as a sweeter model of “tom yum“, however Ying says it’s nearer to “tom kloang”, a positively historic soup flavored with tamarind juice and leaves that some argue predates tom yum. Right here, it options the very Chinese language addition of vinegar alongside tamarind, in addition to honey as a substitute of palm sugar. There’s additionally loads of turmeric (that is the South, in spite of everything), which turns the broth and fish a beautiful golden colour.
We then moved onto a dish that I’d been eyeing because the starting of this 12 months, the explanation why I contacted Ying within the first place. It’s referred to as “pad lorgor” (“lorgor” is the Southern Thai phrase for papaya) and I can’t actually clarify precisely what made me so wanting to discover ways to make it (in order that I may eat it). It options half-ripe papaya, glass noodles (“sen nohm“) and pork stomach; the combination appeared so incongruous once I first noticed it (type of like cleansing out the fridge) that I needed to style all of these issues collectively.
All of which is to say, it’s completely scrumptious. There are additionally wooden ear mushrooms and garlic, palm sugar, darkish soy sauce, fish sauce and floor black pepper, and it’s sometimes served at large occasions like funerals or home warmings alongside water buffalo curry (which we didn’t discover ways to do).
Lastly, we ended our class with one other soup that Ying realized solely final 12 months whereas purchasing for elements at her native market, the place most of the distributors are Thai-Muslim. They taught her their model of “tom yum”, made with dried chilies, shallots and garlic which can be deep-fried in coconut oil earlier than they’re pounded right into a paste. The soup additionally contains greesae and holy basil, plus what you’d count on from tom yum (lemongrass, galangal, makrut lime leaves, chilies, lime juice, fish sauce). The featured protein was a super-fresh barracuda that Ying had discovered out there solely that morning. The end result knocked our socks off in additional methods than one: large on dried chilies and holy basil, bitter and salty, with a spicy kick. I referred to as it “assertive”, however Ying most well-liked “fiery” as a result of “assertive” appeared like Jane Fonda taking part in a put-upon secretary within the film “9 to five”.
All in all, we had a extremely nice time at Somrom House, if solely as a result of our efforts instantly yielded the prospect to strive all of those unbelievable dishes. If you’re (and I imply actually ) in Southern Thai meals, I’d recommend you discover your solution to Samui as properly.
