MEMORIES OF MY FIRST JOURNEY TO PATTAYA AND A BOTTLE OF “NAM PLAH”

Fried chicken wings with garlic and “Nam Plah”

At the end of 1961, shortly after I had decided to make Thailand my home and rented a house off Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, I was invited by the minor wife of a Thai boxing promoter to accompany her and some of her friends to Pattaya for a few days. I had never heard of Pattaya, but accepted, as I welcomed any opportunity to see some more of the country and the local colour.
The journey in those days took more than three hours, as the Bangna Trat highway had not been built. We had to drive via Bang Na to Pak Nam and along a most picturesque Klong with numerous shaky bridges to Cholburi, from where we went on to the fishing village of Pattaya, where - if memory serves - we stayed in the “Moonlight on Sea” bungalows. The road was dusty , undivided and extremely perilous to say the least. It kept me for the greater part of the journey in an acute state of stark terror.
In those days air conditioned cars were a rarity and Thai ladies travelled with scarves around their heads to protect their hairdos from collecting dust, while on their strict orders, car and bus windows stayed hermetically closed. Squeezed in between two of the gift-wrapped ladies, with one child on my knees in the rear seat of the car, the driver - a friend of the family - his wife, and another youngster in front, I soon noticed the most peculiar fishy odour pervading our supply of still breathable but already
stale air.
Meanwhile, my friends were giggling and laughing as if they were telling each other the most amusing stories, which they probably did, but as my knowledge of the Thai language at that stage was negligible and their knowledge of English was non existent, I was kept in the dark about the source of the pungency of the atmosphere which became quite unbearable after a while. When we finally stopped at a market just before Cholburi to buy the usual viands Thai ladies habitually buy to keep everybody snacking away for the next few days, I was shown a bottle of “Nam Plah” (fish sauce) in the luggage compartment which had broken during the bumpy ride. Consequently the contents had seeped into our personal belongings so that we were in the perfect mood for the delights of the beach and the rich fishery grounds of the Gulf of Thailand. Everything in our suitcases smelled most peculiar and I never used mine again, after we had returned to Bangkok.
It is astonishing how important “Nam Plah” is for Thai cuisine. Thai food just isn’t Thai food without “Nam Plah”. Considering that I was assured by a major “Nam Plah” producer in the town of Cholburi that it was only introduced by the Vietnamese during the latter part of the nineteenth century, one wonders what a “Tom Yam” for example, tasted like prior to that happy event. Albeit I have my doubts about this piece of information, a fact is that “Nam Plah” is now so important in the Thai kitchen, that it is used for savoury dishes in lieu of salt, the latter only to be used for pickling and added to sweets as well as fruit juices to make them more “sweet”, as incredible as this sound.
“Nam Plah” is made from small, or slightly corrupted fish which are not saleable. It is covered with salt in large concrete containers and left in the hot sun for several months to ferment. A clear tea-coloured liquid will form on the surface and this is drained off, bottled and sold as the first quality “Nam Plah”. What is left in the tanks may be mixed with water, boiled and drained again to be sold as the second quality.
Nowadays some un-scrupulous producers even make “Nam Plah” without the “Plah”, by using chemicals and bones of slaughtered animals. The best “Nam Plah” is the liquid drained from the shrimp paste processing. I used to buy it in Samut Sakorn or Mahachai west of Bangkok whenever I was coming back from the south or the west of the country. Very few things are truly new in this world - although most Thai people think that almost everything favourable is unique to Thailand and everything else is Farang or “Kek” (other Asians either of the Muslim religion or with a darker skin). “Nam Plah” or the Vietnamese “Nguoc-nam” is certainly not unique to Thailand or Vietnam but introduced to Vietnam by the Chinese and the old classic Greeks made a similar sauce quite independently which they called “Garon”.
The Romans learned how to make it from the Greeks and used it in great quantities in their food, at least as much as in contemporary Thai cooking. They called it “Garam”, “Garum” or “Liquamen”. Even the recipes for these fish sauces, made by the ancients, have survived and they are amazingly similar to those of our “Nam Plah”. One of the recipes I found in my library is the following: “Take two pints of salt to the peck of fish and mix well to have the fish impregnated with salt. Leave it overnight, and then put it in an earthenware vessel which you place open in the sun for two or three months. Drain off the liquid from time to time which is the liquamen or Garum.”
In the “Roman Cookery Book” - attributed to that great gourmet Gavius Apicius, a contemporary of Tiberius, who supposedly drank poison after he realised that he could no longer keep up with expenses of his lavish life style - I found another recipe. It says that some people added wine to the “Liquamen” and that the best quality was called “Haimation”. It was made like this: “Take the entrails of tunny fish, its gills and blood, and add sufficient salt. Leave it in a vessel for two months at the most. Then pierce the vessel and the ‘Garum’ called ‘Haimation” will flow out.”
Just in case it is unavailable, here is a recipe for a “quickie”. “Take brine and test its strength by throwing an egg into it to see if it floats; if it sinks, the brine does not contain enough salt. Put the fish into the brine in a new earthenware pot, add origan (presumably ‘oregano’) put it on a good fire until it boils -i.e., and reduce it to almost half. Some people also add defructum (boiled down must of grapes). Let it cool and strain it two and three times, until it is clear. Seal and store.”
I am quite sure that the results of the “quickie” recipe will not pass the approval of the Mae Bahn (house mother) in a Thai household.