I came to good food late in life, all things considered. I was in college before I tasted my first Pad Thai, negi-hama maki, chana masala, tsebhi dorho...hell, just about anything more thrilling than carne asada burritos and the six-taquito special. (Not to put a bad spin on either, both of which can be transcendent. In fact, I defy any foodstuff to taste better at three o'clock in the morning, while a quarter bottle of Wild Turkey and some kind of pink pill are vying for control of your central nervous system, than half a pound of grilled steak, pico, guac, pinto beans, and Mexican rice wrapped in a warm flour tortilla and soused with salsa picante. All right, all right. There is probably one thing: golden sterlet caviar eaten from the naked thigh of a swimsuit model, chased with straight shavings of white Umbrian truffle and high-grade Columbian flake, washed down with Krug Clos du Mensil Blanc de Blancs drunk from a plastic sippy cup. But I can't say for certain, as I've only done that once. And, as I recall, the carne asada burrito was a close second.)
Anyway, since I didn't have a whole childhood to ease into good food, I took to the subject with a vengeance, trying to make up for lost time. What I ended up with was a very catholic, very uninhibited palate. To this day, I don't need more than a single hand to count the things that I don't like to eat. Artichokes come to mind, as does eggplant, although carciofi alla giudua and baba ghanoush give this the lie. And to tell the truth, I don't love to eat a great big steak, but this is more a reluctance to eat a whole meal of any one thing in particular than an aversion to good beef. And few meals can compare to the parilla at La Cabrera in the Palermo Viejo barrio of Buenos Aires, where the bife de chorizo comes to the table, spitting hot, bejeweled with coarse salt, and weeping oily tears on its wood plank, flanked with the most succulent mollejas (veal sweetbreads), likewise seared on the parilla, mayonnaise of quail eggs, cherry tomatoes in vinaigrette...But I digress. Back to the subject at hand:
If you push it further, I suppose, I probably don't need more than a single finger to count the foods that I don't care for (real food, I mean, which expressly excludes splendid performance-art creations like the Mango-Lentil-Chow Mein Enchilada and Blue-Cheese Meyer-Lemon-Chicken Bokwurst Spring Roll Appetizer OktoberFiesta Platter at Applebee's.) But back to the discussion at hand...
The consequence of this liberality of taste is that I have something of a jaded palate. I have eaten and enjoyed so many gastronomical extremes, that means, be they ever so golden, tend to bore me into a stupor. Give me searing spice, puckering sours, hair-raising bitters. Pack me in salt until I look like Lot's wife. The only things I don't love in excess are sweets, which even in small doses are not my favorite. Yes, this includes chocolate, which I can take or leave. In fact, I'm continually perplexed with most of your obsessions with the stuff--but that is for another post.
Don't get me wrong: I totally regard my impatience with simple, subtle food as a personal failing, a weakness of character. Some nights I pray that I might, like MFK Fisher, swoon over the segments of a tangerine, preciously dried on a Parisian radiator on a lonely winter afternoon. Or that, like Thich Nhat Han or Jon Kabat-Zinn, I could languish over a single nectarine or raisin for hours, mindfully soaking up its essential suchness. I dearly love to be transported by broccoli rapini, hours from the field and steamed to perfection or chicken skin that explodes like a Pringle on my tongue. And I am, often. But only for a few bites. Then I'm off to the kitchen for the Tabasco or the chilli flakes, the fish sauce or vinegar.
In my defense, James Beard, the doyen of Real American gastronomy (that's Real with a capital R) was so afflicted. Remember his injunction to cook with "acres of garlic" at a time when most American recipes, if they included that holy bulb at all, called for it to be rubbed unbruised against the walls of the salad bowl and then discarded?
To make a short story brief, I have a serious yen for "vivid" food, avalanches of flavor. And no one does vivid like the good people of Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea (and Mexico, but that's another episode.) These three cuisines balance cooked and raw (vive Levi-Strauss!), the hot and unctuous, the sour and bitter like no other. Sadly, after a decade or so of screaming, loud and proud Ring-of-Fire specialties, even the most sublimely balanced cassoulet or blanquette de veau, well, leaves me yawning. (Incidentally, my lack of a sweet tooth is no liability in any of these three cuisines, any any dessert freak at a Thai, Vietnamese, or Korean restaurant will lament to you: mugwort cake, anyone?)
So when I'm standing in the market, trying to figure out what to put on the table on a Tuesday evening, what comes to mind? To my lovely wife's distress (a woman with a fine and subtly tuned palatte who would eat fettucini a la carbonara and lightly dressed mesclun each night of the week if I weren't in the picture), my mind jumped to Thai beef salad. This, of course, just makes it all the harder for me to return to Western flavor temperance the next day--but that's just how it goes.
Yam Neua (Thai Beef Salad)
This is a rip off of the stellar beef salad at Soi 4 in Oakland, a very nice little place that dishes up some progressive Thai dishes in a hip and comfortable atmosphere. One nice touch they add, which you'll find below, is the addition of roasted rice powder to the salad. This adds an unmistakable and very pleasant crunch to the finished product.
For the best seasoning in the world:
fresh green and red Thai chillis
fish sauce
Slice the peppers thinly and float in fish sauce. Don't touch any woman (you care about) in an...intimate way for literally days after you make this condiment. And don't kiss any woman (you care about) in an...intimate way for, well, ever again after eating this condiment. It may seem like a lot to give up at first---but seriously, you need to taste this stuff.
For the dressing:
4 limes, juiced
1/3 C. fish sauce
1/3 C. sunflower seed oil
1 T. toasted seame oil
1 T. brown or palm sugar
3 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste
a decent piece of fresh ginger, grated, with juice
Combine in a small bowl and set aside. Mix a couple of times while preparing the rest of the dish to ensure that the sugar is disolved.
For the beef:
1/2 C. white rice (jasmine, basmati, or something else that smells nice)
1 pound grass-fed skirt steak (or hanger, butcher, or flank)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a decent piece of garlic, grated, with juice
1 T. fish sauce
2 T. toasted sesame oil
1 T. dark soy sauce
1 T. five-spice powder
Put the raw white rice into a small pan or skillet. Toss of high heat until the grains turn gold and have a nutty fragrance. Be careful not to overcook or burn. Turn rice out into a bowl and cool. Then grid fine in using a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle. Set rice powder aside.
Cut the beef into managable pieces. If you use a thicker cut, butterfly the beef so that it will cook quickly. Toss together marinade ingredients to combine. Add beef and mix to coat well. Set aside for as long as practical: moments to days. Get your grill as hot as possible. When you're ready to grill your beef, slap it on the hot grill and leave it be until it takes on a lot of color. Flip once. You're shooting for good char at about medium rare. Let the meet stand after it comes off the grill, and then slice it thin against the grain. Toss in rice powder.
For the salad:
2 shallots, sliced thin
sunflower oil for frying
1/2 small head white cabbage
2 small heads butter lettuce
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch mint
1 sweet red onion, slice thinly
1 C. mixed cherry tomatoes
1 C. mung bean sprouts
2 scallions, sliced thinly on an extreme bias
Fry the shallots in oil until crisp and crunchy. This takes time. Be patient. When you're done, save the oil. It's wicked good, especially in vinaigrettes.
Cut the cabbage into eights, leaving a little stem intact so that the wedges will stay together. Set aside. Wash and dry lettuce, cilantro, and mint. Combine with other vegetables.
To assemble the dish:
Dip the cabbage wedges in the dressing and arrange, compass rose-esque, in a serving bowl. Toss the remaining dressing with the vegetables. Arrange the vegetable melage among the cabbage wedges. Top with the rice-powder spiked beef. Top this with the crispy shallots. Serve with the love-limiting Thai-chilli condiment. Eat until you ache.
A note: I served with with a grain that I have only recently discovered: white rice tinged with bamboo juice. It's very good and very unusul, with a lovely color and an aroma reminiscent of--oh, I don't know. Bamboo? That's pobably too easy, but it's accurate. If you'e ever chewed up a toothpick from a Chinese restaurant (which seem, universally, to abjure the softwood toothpicks that feature at every Western restaurant in creation), you know what this tastes like. Pretty damned good, in my opinion.
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