Austin Bush - The Food of Northern Thailand

Copyright 2018 by Austin Bush

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

crownpublishing.com

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CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN9780451497499

Ebook ISBN9780451497505

Cover photographs by Austin Bush

v5.3.2

prh

To the people of northern Thailand, whose kindness and generosity know no bounds

To Kathy, who was there from beginning to end

And to Bob, who was there in spirit

Contents

Introduction

Im driving a rental car, navigating the 1,219 curves of northern Thailands so-called Death Highway. The nickname stems from the challenge the road has presented to car brakes over the years, a fate Im hoping to avoid while on the way to Um Phang, a tiny village tucked between mountains near the border with Myanmar. Ive been to Um Phang a few times before, for both work and pleasure, and know whats waiting for me there a dish of northern Thaistyle laap . Combining finely minced beef, sliced offal, herbs, and a fragrant spice mixture that threatens to numb the tongue, its a world away from the spicy, tart larb found in Thai restaurants abroador even in Bangkok. Indeed, accompanied by a bamboo basket of steaming sticky rice and a platter of herbs, vegetables, and bitter greens, these are ingredients and flavors that are really only available in Thailands north. For me, its the kind of meal thats worth the risky drive.

Ive been visiting places like Um Phang since I moved to Thailand in 1999. I originally came to the country on a scholarship at Chiang Mai University, where I learned to speak, read, and write Thai. After I was done studying, I landed a job teaching English. During school breaks Id travel the country, going to remote places, camera in handan effort, I suppose, to wrap my head around the place where I was living. But it didnt take me long to realize that food is almost certainly the best way to learn about Thailand. I was both overwhelmed by and obsessed with Thailands cuisine, but I also found food a way to improve my language skills, meet people, and learn about the culture. Since then, Ive worked as a writer and photographer, having contributed to more than twenty books for the travel publisher Lonely Planet and other publications. I started an acclaimed blog about Thai food, and shot the photos for Andy Rickers Pok Pok cookbooks.

For most of this time, Ive lived in Bangkok, epicenter of the pad Thais and green curries that have made Thai food so famous worldwide. Yet it took traveling outside the capital to learn that Thai food is anything but a single entity. Nearly twenty years of eating in just about every part of the country have taught me that, from region to region, Thailands flavors, ingredients, cooking methodseven for staples like ricediffer immensely. And its these uniquely regional dishesa fish curry at a roadside stall on an island in southern Thailand that was so intensely spicy I was, momentarily, high; an unexpectedly sweet and fragrant salad of raw minced buffalo eaten at the edge of a rice field in Thailands north; a crunchy, intensely herbal stir-fry of dried cobra served from a shack in central Thailandthat Ive found myself most frequently drawn to.

Yet of Thailands vast spread of regional cuisines and dishes, I find that I keep coming back to those of the countrys north. The food of northern Thailand is a world away from the highly refined, royal court and Chinese-influenced style of cooking associated with Bangkok and central Thailandthe Thai food that most of us are familiar with. Its a cuisine with its own distinct identity, one that is rustic and earthy, meaty and fragrant; one with roots in the Thai repertoire but with branches that extend beyond the countrys borders; a cuisine that manages to feel ancient and contemporary, domestic and foreign, all at the same time.

Led to remote destinations in the course of work, Ive had the chance not only to eat northern Thai dishes in every province in the region but also to talk with northern Thai home cooks, restaurateurs, and academics. I have photographed rural markets and cooked with locals. I have spent time in libraries, poring over old texts and recipes, and hours in the kitchens of food vendors and housewives. From these experiences, I have assembled a body of knowledge and photographs of a cuisine that few in Bangkok know much about, let alone those in the English-speaking world.

What, then, is northern Thai food? We have the rest of this book to explore that question, but for now, my mind flits to sitting on the floor, cross-legged, at the edge of a short, squat table, plucking sticky rice from a bamboo basket. I think of rolling that rice into a ball with my fingers and swiping it into dips that are smoky, spicy, and salty. Im reminded of soups packed with so many herbs that identifying a single one is an almost impossible task. Of hazy grills stacked with mysterious banana leaf packages, coils of sausage, and unidentifiable pork parts. And of home cooks preparing food from muscle memory, not recipes. To me, northern Thai food means dishes made from raw meat that are as delicious as they are intimidating. And noodle soups that are so fundamentally, effortlessly tasty that theres no barrier to entry; theyre just plain good , no matter what you grew up eating.

Death thwarted, I pull into Um Phang, but only to find that the laap shack is gone. Instead, theres a shiny new 7-ElevenUm Phangs firstby far the brightest and most modern building around, drawing the towns hungry like moths to a flame.

Nearly two decades of documenting food in Thailand have also instilled in me a sense of urgency. The way people eat is changing rapidly and profoundly. Across the country, modernization and increasing wealth are having a huge impact on Thai food. A Western-style diet is becoming the norm, and these days, hot dogs can seem as common as tom yam . Likewise, Thailands local cuisines are becoming increasingly homogenous, and the current generation of cooks is probably the last who will have been direct witness to the full vastness of the countrys culinary diversity.