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….