Slowly Making Tamales etc., Part IV

If you want your tamales to be light and fluffy and to taste right, you must use lard. Sorry, it’s not my fault, it’s just a fact of nature, and there’s nothing you can do about it but kick back and render up some hog fat. Because the local Thai pork is raised more naturally and from fattier breeds than we would find in the States, I’m expecting to end up with especially tasty lard. This might strike some of you as a contradiction in terms, but I implore you to challenge yourself to rise above society’s bias and to accept lard as a necessary ingredient for some dishes, albeit one that ought not to be used every day.

Fresh animal products in Thailand are particularly delicious. The tiny chickens have a rich flavor belying their bantam size. The beef cuts may not be as tender as their American counterparts, but all the more justification for slow-cooking some top round for the most succulent country-style steaks I’ve ever tried. There’s also a sun-dried beef product that’s more moist and perishable than American-style jerky; it’s savory if a little gamey and a good snacking match when sipping beer on the rocks. But for my money, the best meat in Thailand is the pork, which tends to be well-marbled, tender and full-flavored, as opposed to those quick-drying, low-fat loin cuts we find packaged in the States. If a Thai pork chop is tastier than the American version, I’m hoping for similar results from the lard.

In the past, I’ve made my own lard from the long strips of backfat my Hawaiian in-laws let me take after helping out with the annual luau. On a wimpy American stove, rendering is not big deal as long as you’re patient with the low heat, but as mentioned in Part I my ferocious Thai stove will not oblige the use of this method. Enter the slow-cooker. I’ve never tried to make lard in a slow-cooker before, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems the perfect method.

One more consideration when home-rendering lard is what you intend to use it for. If you’re going to make a flaky crust for a fruit pie, you want white lard. If you want to make tamales or refritos, you want your lard to be light golden brown. The difference is in how long it cooks: the longer you render, the darker the lard; the darker the lard, the more flavorful it becomes. In any case, even the white lard you make at home will probably look better than the ghastly pasty white found in highly processed supermarket lard.

Sunday. Moved the beans to the fridge, set the crock to soak for easier cleaning. During yesterday’s trip to the megamart, I procured a small sheet of fresh pork fat for about fifty cents. Right after waking up today, I put the package in the freezer to get firm, had a cup of coffee, then washed a molehill of dishes including the crock. The pork fat was now a little more solid and that much easier to cube. Again using the crock’s high setting, I started to render the cubed pork fat at about 10 am.

I Skyped the Momster and had another cup of coffee. By noon, the pieces of fat were bubbling away, submerged in their own liquid lard. I stirred it up to separate the pieces and turned the heat setting on the slow-cooker to low. Then off to the market for some more filling ingredients. Then off to the lake to soak up some rays and some beers. Then to the hospital for a check-up on my shoulder.

When I returned home around 7 pm, the white fat had changed to golden brown cracklings. After straining the liquid through a sieve, I’m thinking the color might be a little too dark, and I’m a bit concerned that the flavor will be too strong. But tomorrow will be a busy cooking day, so rather than waste more time getting to the market and rendering a new batch, I’m going to bed so I can forge ahead in the morning.

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part III

Saturday. While waking up in the late morning, I drained and rinsed the pinto beans, put them into a crockpot, and filled it to the top with water. With the crockpot covered on high heat, I made a pot of chai masala and started working on organizing the 1500+ pictures of my students I've been taking over the last three weeks. After a couple hours I stirred the beans and found they were still hard - no worries, mate, good food takes time.

Frijoles de olla is one of the simplest and yet most satisfying contributions to world cuisine, and preparing them in the crockpot is pretty much no-fail. However, past experience has shown that if you’re lazy about scraping beans off the sides of the pot during the occasional stir, they will eventually stick and char a little, especially on the high setting. But not to worry - even while drinking beer and getting lost in the virtual world, your senses will remind you that it's time to stir. Beans are attention-starved little bitches sometimes: hey, smell me; hey, listen to me bubbling and farting away; hey, where's the chips 'n' salsa? Stirring the beans about once an hour will ensure a smoother consistency and more even cooking.

When the beans got mostly tender, after about 5 hours, I added three generous pinches of salt and ½ tablespoon of ground roasted cumin. I mashed some of the beans and let it simmer for another hour. Time for a taste: the bean juice was almost salty enough, but the beans themselves not nearly so. I added another 2 large pinches of salt, then mashed away. As I stirred, the smell of the beans was making my mouth water, so I decided to go out for dinner and shopping; while I was gone I left the lid off the crock so the beans would thicken up.

First stop was Carrefour, the megamart about a 20-minute walk from my house. They tend to have good prices on supermarket items such as sugar, chips, vodka, and boxed juice. Before the surgery, when I could still ride the motorcycle, I preferred to buy my fresh meat and vegetables from the local markets, but now that I’m on foot even the closest fresh market is difficult to get to.

Behind Carrefour’s parking lot, on Fridays and Saturdays a vibrant night market jams the back streets. In addition to six blocks of stalls selling shoes, clothing, toys, and electronics, there are two blocks of food stalls. Sadly, I found that the “turtle egg” vendor (see Part II) had already left or simply wasn’t there. But I still found plenty to eat: a small bag of fried chicken rinds (like pork rinds but made with chicken skin) to be dipped in namprik num (a spicy eggplant dip); spicy sausage salad; grilled pork with sticky rice; an ice-cold can of Leo beer, which rapidly warmed to spit-temperature as I tried to drink it down; and a novel presentation of the classic Thai soup known as gaeng juet or dtom juet (“plain soup”).

I’ve been coming to this market once or twice a month since I moved to the neighborhood last June. As well as I think I know all that it has to offer, I still manage to discover new dishes there. The “plain soup” is one of the few Thai food items that don’t scorch a delicate foreigner’s mouth with spice; Thais love it because it so successfully compliments rich and spicy curries. It’s one of the dishes I like to prepare alongside panang curry for my show-off menu. Usually it features chunks of soft egg-tofu or small meatballs, sometimes mushrooms and bean thread noodles, almost always a combination of carrot and cabbage. I had never before seen the version I found this night. In addition to the expected carrots and cabbage, this soup had strips of blade-cut pork with a crowning jewel: a whole small cabbage head hollowed out and filled with seasoned ground pork.

When I got back home two hours after leaving, the beans had cooked to the perfect consistency for my taste, that is thick and creamy. I turned off the heat, slapped the lid back on, had a couple cocktails and went to bed ready to dream of the next steps….

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part II

Six weeks after shoulder surgery, I can use my right hand for light duty, but nothing more demanding than slicing veggies or washing dishes. I can scratch my face and my groin but not my head. I haven’t been cooking much lately, which hasn’t been as difficult as I expected – if there’s any place in the world to live without a kitchen, it’s Thailand.

There are thousands of food stalls and dozens of fresh markets in Chiang Mai alone, and my walks to and from work take me past an array of options that makes me drool just thinking about it: fried chicken, fried bananas, fresh-cut fruit, grilled chicken and pork and squid, noodle soups, hanging ducks, stewed pork leg, oyster omelets, sweet iced tea and coffee, and a newly discovered favorite translated as “turtle egg” or some kind of “bird egg,” which is a fried ball of semi-sweet dough that’s crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Almost as ubiquitous as the food stalls are small family-run restaurants offering both made-to-order and steam-table dishes; for about a buck a person you can have a nice lunch of fried noodles or green curry or pad gra pao on rice. And I finally figured out how to order online a pizza for delivery. All of which means I’ve been perfectly content to let others do the cooking for me.

However, the desire not to waste the dry goods I have left, coupled with the increasing need for physical activity, has drawn me back to the kitchen to whip up more exotic fare. More than any other cuisine, I’ve missed Mexican-style food the most. Although Chiang Mai has a couple Mexican restaurants with adequate Mexlike dishes (www.miguels-cafe.com and www.thesalsakitchen.com), they tend to be overpriced and not nearly as delicious as what I can make for myself. As mentioned in Part I, that sack of masa harina is calling to me: ¡Ey, gringo, hágate tamales pronto!

In Part I, I mentioned the slow-cooker, which behind the hot-water pump and the toaster oven is the kitchen appliance I use the most. Slow cooking with an electric slow-cooker should not be confused with the “slow cooking” advocated by the Slow Food movement, founded on the idea that good food and “fast food” are all too often mutually exclusive. Being under-employed by American standards, I’ve had the luxury in Thailand of taking my own sweet time when I cook and of having time to think about How Slow Food Can Save the World from Itself. Ultimately I have found that Slow Cooking is a lifestyle choice, one I will be loathe to give up when I come back to the States in May. Anyway, I like to think of myself as a Slow Cook who enjoys using the slow-cooker….

The tamale feast I have planned will be four days in the making.

Friday. Before my 45-minute walk to work, I picked through ½ pound dried pinto beans, removed a molar-crushing pebble, and covered the beans in several inches of water. Man, that was hard.

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part I

After a long hiatus from any kind of writing, and an even longer break from weblogging, I’ve decided to come back for a few days. I can’t write a travelogue because I’m not really traveling, and I know everyone gets tired of hearing about other people’s daily routines. So what you’re looking at is partly a cooking journal and partly a last-ditch effort to describe this ex-pat’s lifestyle. This type of cooking project is what passes for adventure these days. I have set out to make a tamale feast as authentically as I can, taking as much time as I need to, savoring some final idle days as the number of my weeks in Thailand dwindles toward single-digits.

I need to start using up the dry goods in the cupboard. One of these items is a sack of masa harina for tamales, which I brought here from my last visit to the States.

Some notes about using the slow cooker…. Mine is an Imarflex brand, so I shouldn’t properly call it a “Crockpot,” although I probably will out of habit. The stoves in Thailand are almost always run on propane. The one I have delivers a mighty jet of flame, which is great if you want to boil a pot of water or stir-fry a dish, but not so great for slow-cooking. On the lower settings, the flame is still hot enough to scorch a pot of beans, or else it gets so low that it gutters out. The solution is the electric slow cooker.

Known throughout the world as a convenient appliance for the working family, a slow cooker allows us to toss in a hunk of meat and some seasonings, slog off to work, and eventually return home to a savory-smelling home and a hot meal. Since I moved to Thailand, I don’t have to rush around so much, so for me the slow cooker justifies my aimlessly dicking around the house all day because I can surf the internet, listen to music, drink beer, and still say I’m cooking.

There are already hundreds of thousands of recipes for the slow-cooker, so I don’t pretend that I will contribute much in that area. Instead, I would ask you to consider this limited series of weblog entries as a description of the good life, or at least a version of the good life. This is a siren’s call to my wage-slave friends, to opt-out from the rat race, to sell off your house and your car and if necessary your children, and to abandon yourself to the temptation of sloth, the easiest of all the deadly sins….