Love of Food | To Bangkok, for Som Tam Salad and Thai Green Curry

Street vendors make some of the best som tam salad in Bangkok, shredding the green papaya fresh and pounding each ingredient with a mortar and pestle. (Representational image: Streets of Food via Unsplash)

Twenty-five years after leaving Bangkok, my nomadic soul still searches for its Som Tam and Thai green curry elsewhere.

Sadly, no Thai restaurant in any city of the world, including the ones run by Thais, have been able to replicate the delicious explosion of flavours that these dishes offered in Bangkok.

I have talked to number of Thai chefs who point out that the locally sourced ingredients are never 100 percent true to what is available in Thailand. So, in the unlikely event of finding makhua phuang aka pea aubergine in the green curry, I know I would be ecstatic, never mind the fact that I would fish them out in Bangkok because of their bitterness.

Makhua phuang might not be for everybody but they do give the dish that extra oomph. Then there is the Thai basil, the fiery Bird eye chillies and so much more which goes into making either of the two stellar dishes I crave from Bangkok.

But first, a disclosure. As a vegetarian, I had thought that the inherently fish and seafood-based dishes may not be as enjoyable or authentic as the original.

In Bangkok, that assumption is untrue – local recipes do complete justice to the ‘jeh’ (vegetarian) versions of the dishes (I checked with those who have had all the versions). But be sure to specify (in Thai) that you don’t eat fish (plaa) or shrimp (goong) for those are added even if the dish is ‘vegetarian’.

Som Tam

The best version of this salad is found on the streets. No one could possibly make it better than the street vendors who use a mortar and pestle to churn out the dish by the plate loads. This fiery salad is a culinary wonder which, although vehemently denied, may have roots in Laos. Som Tam is hot, sour, sweetish, and citrusy, all at once.

In her iconic blog She Simmers, author Leela Punyaratabandhu writes that som tam or the Thai green papaya salad is called so because it is made in a mortar. However, she points out that there are several versions of the salad including the more friendly peanutty version which happens to be the most prevalent outside Thailand. There is the Northeastern version with fermented fresh water fish, the smell of which “could send the uninitiated running for their mommies”, versions flavoured with pickled fresh water crabs featuring “severed and crushed body parts of brined decapod crustaceans peeking through strands of green papaya”, some made with vegetables other than green papaya (sour green mangoes, for example), and some made entirely out of fresh fruits (like pomelos).

(Photo: Markus Winkler via Pexels)

The som tam street vendor prepares the salad in a ritual that’s akin to performance art. They hold the green papaya in one hand and shred it vigorously with a knife held in the other hand yielding coarse shreds. All the ingredients are added one at a time into the mortar, as the pounding with the pestle continues nonstop.

In go the snake beans or the yard long green beans, cherry tomatoes, one or two Thai bird’s eye chillies, dry-roasted peanuts, garlic, palm sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and dried shrimp. If you are a vegetarian, you need to respond lightning fast if the vendor reaches out for the shrimps and fish sauce from force of habit. A fraction of a second delay, and these are inside the mortar.

Explore all versions of som tam at different places, from the street food carts, smallish streetside restaurants to swanky joints. My favourite was a vegetarian restaurant in Soi 0 of Sukhumvit Road. Once you leave Bangkok, you will be forever searching for the perfect som tam that is done so routinely there.

Recommendation: Som Tam Nua (Central World) in Siam Square, Som Tam Jey So on Silom Road and most of the food carts on Sukhumvit Road

Thai Green Curry

It is harder to find a complete vegetarian version of the Thai green curry, considering that the saltiness of the dish comes from shrimp paste or fish sauce. Nevertheless, food vendors are known to take orders for a sanitized vegetarian version without blinking an eye.

The green curry or kaeng khiao waan, is popular for its green colour which comes from the chillies and its creamy coconut-based gravy seasoned with lemon grass, galangal, shallots and garlic, not to forget shrimp paste and fish sauce.

Apparently, the curry was first invented by a lady-in-waiting at Bangkok’s royal court who later went on to compile the first cookbook of Thai recipes. Curries, of course, featured majorly and most of them, including the kaeng kiao waan, are built from scratch with a paste usually pounded in the mortar.

Award-winning author of It Rains Fishes, Kasma Loha-Unchit, calls a Thai curry the sum of its parts, and advises to use commercial curry paste if even one of the fresh herbs required to make the paste at home is not available.

But in any restaurant or in one of the locally popular rice-curry shops (ran khao kaeng), this dish is available in different versions and consistencies, some good, some excellent and on rare occasions, average.

(Photo: Andrew Jones via Pexels)

There is the right amount of spices, fresh turmeric, galangal root, coriander and cumin seeds, peppercorns, lemongrass, makrut lime zest, garlic, shallots, green chillies and shrimp paste in the green curry paste.

For the curry itself, usually there’s chicken or beef – unless it is a southern version which uses goat, coconut milk, palm sugar, green beans, purple and Thai aubergines as well as pea aubergines.

The authentic curry uses Thai basil leaves, makrut lime leaves, fish sauce, and red bird’s eye chillies. Elsewhere, more vegetables are added, from mushrooms, baby corn, carrots, peas, snow peas, to a version which had only tofu.

Depending on what floats in the kaeng kiao waan, you get an idea where the dish is recreated – baby corn and a sweetish curry seem American-inspired but I have seen cauliflower, potato and broccoli in an Indian Thai restaurant. Ask for rice although at some places, they serve it with roti.

Recommendation: Sanguan Sri on Ploenchit Road