Khai look khaern

Eggs, as a dish, had never figured on my table in a Thai restaurant ever before. I had eaten all the regular Thai suspects — from green curries and red curries to various kinds of phads — but this was the first time I had something called the khai look khaern in front of me — a dish of crispy boiled eggs and sweet tamarind sauce, garnished — as in a korma — with fried onions.

“My mother used to feed us this dish,” recalls chef Veena Arora, the chef de cuisine at The Spice Route in The Imperial in Delhi.

“We loved it.”

I loved it too. One, for its delicious taste. And two, because I had never come across it in Thai restaurants. But the dish is popular in Thailand and is eaten by ordinary Thai people. I suppose it’s a bit like the dimer dalna: you won’t find it in a fine dining Bengali restaurant, but is a much loved dish of fried boiled eggs in curry that you’ll find being cooked in Bengali kitchens.

When a cuisine is introduced to a new lot of people, the emphasis generally is on the special dishes that the cuisine boasts of. The simple dishes cooked in homes tend not to make it to the High Table. And that’s why chef Arora had come up with a host of dishes that she remembered fondly from her childhood days in Thailand.

Her grandmother’s “recipe box”, she says, was full of delicious dishes cooked lightly but with the right flavours of chillies and spices.

Kieow tieow naam

The khai look khaern, for instance, is so easy to prepare that anyone can try it out. All that you have to do is boil three eggs. Peel them and deep fry them till they are golden brown. Now cut the eggs into two. Put 60g of tamarind pulp in a wok, add 15g palm sugar, 2ml light soya sauce and 5g white pepper powder. Boil till the sauce thickens. Slice 20g of onions and fry them till golden brown. Now pour the sauce over the eggs and garnish them with brown onions.

Chef Arora was born in a small Thai town, close to the sea and Malaysia. Her father was in Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army. He moved from Myanmar to southern Thailand and settled down in Phatthalung. “We were the only Indian family in this town. So, our family virtually lived on Thai food, which we cherished.”

It was as a toast to her growing up days that the chef, recently honoured as the “Best Lady Chef” by the ministry of tourism, organised a food festival called “9 memories of my childhood” at Spice Route last month. And the memories indeed were delectable little nuggets that were worth recalling.

Among them was a dish called kieow tieow naam — a rice noodle soup with chicken, bok choy and minced chicken wonton flavoured with crushed peanuts, chillies and vinegar — and phad phak bung fai daeng wok — fried morning glory with Thai soya bean paste flavoured with garlic and chillies.

These are Thai dishes that you don’t usually get in restaurants. And even those that you get — the green curry, for instance — taste vastly different when cooked in Thai homes. “I have always seen my grandma making green curry herself and not using paste available in markets,” says chef Arora.

Of course, I realise it is so much easier to use packaged pastes when you are cooking green or red curry at home. But chef Manav Sharma, who is a food consultant based in Delhi and holds interesting workshops for people wanting to hone their culinary skills, believes there are ways of making your Thai curry memorable even when you are using packaged pastes.

“I always advise people to use some fresh ingredients even if you are using a paste. Just add some fresh galangal, lemon grass and lemon leaves to your curry — and it will taste so much better,” he says. “The fresh ingredients enhance the flavours.”

Chef Manav is another great promoter of Thai dishes that are little known in India but are popular items in the Southeast Asian country. One dish that never fails to excite him is an oyster omelette.

“You just break an egg in a pan and add these fresh oysters to it. It is amazing and really tasty,” he says. “It’s not known outside Thailand, but is very popular there. It’s the poor man’s food.”

You won’t find some of the everyday soups in our restaurants either. Chef Arora’s kaend cherd kai sup — silky bean curd and chicken dumpling soup served with sautéed garlic and celery — is something that she grew up on. Her grandmother, she recalls, often prepared her soups over seven or eight hours on a stove lit with a charcoal fire. “Each sip carried an earthy and fresh feel,” she says.

Though the grandma I grew up with didn’t cook (and I didn’t really know the one who did), I can understand chef Arora’s nostalgia. The food of our childhood occupies a special place in our hearts. And there’s nothing quite like going back into time.

Phad Phak Bung (serves 1)

Ingredients:

• 250g morning glory • 10ml oil • 5g garlic • 5g red chillies • 5ml light soya • 5ml dark soya • 3g soya bean paste • 3g sugar

Method:

Mince the garlic and chillies. Wash and chop the morning glory (1.5-inch length). Pour oil into a wok. Add minced garlic and chillies into it and stir till light brown. Add morning glory and immediately add all the sauces and sugar. Add a few drops of water. Stir for a moment and remove from the fire. Serve.