Spicy Corn Salad from Bangkok cookbook by Leela Punyaratabandhu. Photography by David Loftus
Earlier this year, I was listening to BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme episode about Thailand’s Royal Project. The Royal Project, started in 1969, was an idea of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej to transform opium-growing land into sustainable agricultural crops that produced more income for the growers than their opium trade produced, and to replace expensive imported produce with locally grown versions. Listening to how this project has transformed the variety of food available in Thailand enabled me to more fully understand the story behind author Leela Punyaratabandhu’s recipe for Som Tam Khao Phot (Spicy Corn Salad) in her recent cookbook, Bangkok: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand. Usually I look forward to summer’s corn so that I can make creamed corn, one of my absolute favorite dishes. This year, Spicy Corn Salad moves to number one! –Kristina
Why Leela loves this recipe: In the context of Thai cooking, fresh corn has traditionally been used almost exclusively in desserts and sweet snacks. I can count with one hand the traditional savory dishes that has fresh corn kernels in them. Here in America, however, it seems the opposite is true: fresh corn is considered a vegetable and nearly always used in savory applications. When a Thai sees a corn cob, she thinks, “ice cream topping!” or “sweet rice pudding with corn!” or even “yogurt topping!” On the other side of the globe, you see corn cobs served as a side dish or with a crab boil.
But things have changed. People have become more open and creative. American chefs are making ice cream with fresh corn. Likewise, fresh corn has popped up in more modern savory Thai dishes. This version of som tam featuring sweet corn wasn’t what my grandparents or parents grew up eating. But it’s wildly popular and found all over Bangkok and all of Thailand these days along with the less traditional and more creative iterations of this classic spicy salad.
This recipe also demonstrates that even though green papaya is by far the most popular and the most common ingredient for som tam (so much so that the dish has come to be referred to in the West as ‘Thai green papaya salad’), it’s by no means the only ingredient the Thais use. Several sorts of fresh produce can be used to make som tam, and fresh corn at its peak—sweet, plump, and juicy—works very well here.
Photography by David Loftus
Spicy Corn Salad from Bangkok cookbook by Leela Punyaratabandhu. Photography by David Loftus
Reprinted with permission from Bangkok by Leela Punyaratabandhu, copyright © 2017. Photography by David Loftus. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
About Leela: Leela Punyaratabandhu is the author of the award-winning blog She Simmers and the book Simple Thai Food. She was recently included among the Epicurious list of the 100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time. Her writing has appeared on CNN Travel, Serious Eats, Food52, and in the Wall Street Journal. Dividing her time between Chicago and Bangkok, Punyaratabandhu writes about Thai food in the United States and Thailand. Follow Leela on Instagram here and on Twitter here. Bangkok: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand is her most recent book.
from Design*Sponge http://www.designsponge.com/2017/07/in-the-kitchen-with-the-bangkok-cookbooks-spicy-corn-salad.html
from Home Improvment http://notelocreesnitu.tumblr.com/post/163254968244
No comments:
Post a Comment