In the Bangkok area, southern food is not hard to find, but kitchens that do it justice are rather rare. Some restaurants - Ung-aang Talay is thinking of dining rooms on Fuang Nakhon Road and in Bang Sue - that served memorable southern dishes just a few years ago are gone now, and visits to recommended newer places on Rama IX Road and near Chatuchak have not really filled the vacuum. So when a casual chat about southern food ignited a craving for it in U-a T and Nym one evening last week, a decision was made to head back to a place that had made a strong impression during a visit five or six years ago, Dao Tai, near Phran Nok market in Thon Buri.
Daotai is a small food shop, open to the street, with a glass case full of curries, soups, stir-fries and other dishes set near the entrance. A few tables and chairs occupy the rest of the ground-floor space, and there is a second, air-condtioned dining room up a flight of stairs.
Daotai opens at 7am and all of the dishes on the menu are available until around 4 pm.By the time Ung-aang Talay and Nym arrived in the evening,the selection was smaller but there was still a wide choice from which to assemble a good meal.Orders were placed for kaeng yawd makham pla yang (curry made with grilled fish and tender tamarind shoots), kaeng kai sai kluay dib (chicken curry with unripe bananas), phad phrik kradook muu awn (pork bones stir-fried with chillies and seasonings), kaeng lueang thoon pla nam dawk mai (or awdib in regional dialect - a hot, soup-like curry made from a local fish and vegetable) and nam phrik makham sod. A stir-fry with sataw beans would have been welcome, but they were out of season. They show up in quantity at the beginning of the rainy season, around May.
The tamarind shoot and grilled fish curry looked like other spicy southern dishes of its kind made with coconut cream, except for the feathery tamarind leaves floating in the turmeric-yellow sauce. This dish, creamy and fragrant with an aroma of herbs and grilled fish, was new to both U-a T and Nym. Part of its appeal lay in the slight sourness from the tamarind shoots, and in the way these same leaves soaked up and held the coconut cream sauce to give the dish a feeling of richness different from that of any other curry U-a T had tasted before.
Its flavour blended tamarind sourness, sweetness from the fresh coconut cream, and the savour of grilled fish. The fish had been cut into small pieces that were the same size as shreds of banana flower that had also been cooked into the curry, and that contributed both astringency and crunchiness. Strongly recommended.
The blow-your-head-off heat of the kaeng lueang hit right away, but didn't overpower the flavour of the fresh turmeric and chillies that had been pounded together to make the paste. Porous stems of the aroid locally called thoon had been cut into bite-sized segments that had crisp skin but were soft inside, and that soaked up the curry sauce like sponges so that it squirted out as they were chewed. The firm white meat of the fish was also fully flavoured by the sauce.
A southern standard, not as interesting as the tamarind shoot curry, it appealed with its careful balance of sourness, saltiness and chilli heat. A southern Thai meal wouldn't be complete without it, and tasting Dao Tai's version gave a clue to the kitchen's approach to southern cooking in general.
When eating blast-furnace dishes like kaeng lueang there is the temptation to gulp down water to quell the blaze. It doesn't work; the thing that does is fresh vegetables of the kind that are set on the table in a basket with every meal in a southern Thai restaurant. U-a T and party followed these with some nam phrik makham, a mild, paste-like chilli dip sauce made from unripe tamarind, with its taste that combines mild astringency and sourness with a slight nuttiness. The tamarind is pounded together with seasonings and with finely chopped, fatty pork, then fried in a wok. Dao Tai's fine version was served with whole bird chillies sprinkled on top for those who want something more assertive.
The phad phrik kradook muu awn was so dark in colour that it was hard to tell just what kind of meat was involved. The pork cartilage had been fried with kaffir lime leaves and southern-style curry seasonings so slowly and thoroughly that the curry spices had permeated and blended with it completely. The flavour was mildly sweet and only slightly spicy, a contrast to the other dishes on the table.
The final selection, and another one that caught U-a T and Nym off-guard, was the kaeng kai sai kluay dib. Its appearance, and the taste and aroma of the yellow, coconut cream-based curry sauce, didn't differ much from that of the tamarind shoot curry. The thing that made it special was the raw bananas cooked into it. They had the soft, slight mealy texture of boiled potatoes.
The bananas used to make it have to be unripe southern kluay leb mue nang because their pleasantly astringent taste and firm but tender texture suit the dish ideally. As served at Dao Tai, they gave character and a touch of the unexpected to an item that otherwise had the potential to be heavy and perhaps too similar to other southern coconut cream curries.
We arrived at Dao Tai too late to order any of the dishes listed on the "specials" menu. The time of year also took a toll on the range of recipes that could be prepared, as important vegetable ingredients were out of season. But the trip across the river was well worth the time spent. All of the dishes sampled made it clear that the cooking at Dao Tai had lost none of its artistry since my last visit years ago.
credit: Ung-Aang Talay and Nym Korokot-Bangkok Post March 14, 2008
