Out of Gas

I have fond memories of eating rice porridge for breakfast when we visited Bangkok several years ago (although the first iteration came with an enormous amount of pork in it). Rice porridge is called chok (โจ๊ก) in Thai and the version we ate came with sliced chillies, ginger and pathongko (ปาท่องโก๋) - deep fried dough - which added bite and crunch to the dish.

I couldn't replicate this in the kitchen this morning, but had a go at chok hed horm jay (โจ๊กเห็ดหอมเจ) - rice porridge with shiitake mushrooms (hed horm). Jay means vegetarian, so ahan jay is vegetarian food (อาหารเจ).

I boiled jasmine rice (thriftily using the leftovers from last night) with the mushrooms, morning glory, and tofu. The flavour came from soy sauce, sweetened fermented yellow soy bean sauce, fried garlic, lime. I dropped a raw egg into the bowls at the end, which barely poached in the hot soup.

Healthy Boy soy sauce & fermented yellow beans

The special sauce that added a salty-sweet savouriness to the soup was fermented yellow bean paste cooked briefly with some palm sugar until it darkens.

We took a walk around town and to the end of the pier. Refreshingly, the pier is just a pier, as opposed to British piers that seem to double as amusement arcades - as though losing one's money over water were inherently more enjoyable than on dry land. A quiet stroll to the end afforded us a nice view back onto the island.

Lanta Old Town pier

At home, we made firmer friends with the lizard with which we share our kitchen. We have dubbed him Lazarus. With our arrival he seems to have stopped eating insects and instead gorges himself on the scraps left on the chopping board.

Lazarus the lizard

I have been attempting to learn some Thai, but this is thwarted a little by the redundancy in the alphabet (44 consonants that make only 21 unique sounds, the rest being duplicates for historical reasons). Also, as a male, there is the discomfiting expectation that I say krap at the end of pretty much every utterance. This is ostensibly to make it sound more polite. As a female, K gets to say the much more pleasing ka at the end of her sentences. Kob-khun-ka (thank you), sa-wad-dee-ka (hello), check-bin-duay-ka (the bill please). To my ears, these all sound less polite with the equivalent male particle at the end.

The Thai language is derived from Khmer, and there are many similarities between the two languages. Even the word for language (ภาษา, phasaa) is very close to the Khmer (ភាសា, phsar). Look closely and you can see the derivation of the script. The complicating factor is that Thai, unlike Khmer, is tonal and has five tones that determine the meaning of a word. Unlike Vietnamese, another tonal language which uses unambiguous diacritics to indicate the tone, Thai determines which of the tones (low, mid, high, rising, falling) to use by the consonant types, vowel lengths and (if present) diacritical marks.

Suitably confounded by the language, I made us both a coffee shake with sweetened condensed milk to perk up our minds.

I am still getting used to the new kitchen and its foibles. The hob has an unusual combination of two gas rings and one electric. The latter is the old-fashioned style that takes an hour to heat up and double to cool down again, by which time I have become distracted and whatever it was I was cooking has long since boiled dry. The gas burners are more responsive, but on this occasion I noticed it was taking a while to get the oil to temperature. A quick check revealed a spluttering blue flame followed by the sound of an emptying propane tank.

We organised for the tank to be replaced, but given that it was already late, we shelved the dinner plans, putting the half-cooked food into the fridge, and made alternative arrangements.

The town was quiet, but Fresh restaurant had drawn a small crowd. Joining the other diners, the temptation to order the toothsome vegetable spring rolls was irresistible. To complement them, K had a cashew pad thai. The reason for the expense of cashew nuts, as I learned in Vietnam, is due to the low yield. A single fruit on the tree - about the size of an apple - produces only one nut (technically a seed).

I enjoyed a vegetable panang (พะแนง) curry, which was a veritable medley of mushrooms, sugar snap peas, cauliflower, baby aubergines, and more in a savoury curry sauce. I wouldn't wish to cast aspersions on the authenticity of this recipe, but the sauce lacked in the fiery spiciness that I believe marks this dish out, and tasted strongly of fenugreek used in curry powder.