The sorry state of an upcountry Chinese food shop and how to make some spicy sausages.

The sausage lady.

A couple of years ago a group of dedicated Chinese restaurant owners and chefs held a meeting in Holland in order to discuss the deplorable state of the Chinese restaurant cuisine in the Netherlands. They came to a resolution and formed a committee – what else – in order to study the problem and start an action to do something about it. Whatever came from this bold idea, I do not know, but I do know that Thailand is badly in need of similar initiative.
While travelling up-country a couple of weeks ago, I was once more impressed by the depressing state of the provincial Thai Chinese food shops. The situation is very sad indeed. The same goes for the majority of these eating places in Bangkok but there, at least, one has a choice, albeit it costs money. In these un-inviting, dingy, and seedy places – and there isn’t much else to choose from when on a visit, even in a large provincial town as Ubol Rachathani – one is served the most unappetising starch and MSG ridden fare. On dusty or greasy, cracked Formica covered tables, cluttered with sets of appallingly dirty bottles of condiments, the dishes are placed at the far end of the table, to be dragged by the customers towards the centre. This, lest we should think that the waitresses are available for baser things I presume. When the staff is asked to clean the table, in a nonchalant way the most disgusting rag is produced to perform the “miracle”. Fluorescent lighting is customary and cheap but its ghostly light kills the “ambience” and it makes the food look greyish and unappetising.
After having been in Thailand 36 years, the above outburst is one of despair. It may spark a lot of controversy and it took me a long time to decide to stir up this hornets’ nest and attack the holy shrine of Thailand’s idealised image as a Shangri-La of “haut” cuisine. As a food writer of long standing - whether good or bad is for the readers to decide - I do think I have a point and a right to criticise this abomination of one of the world’s most esteemed and renowned culinary traditions. I am a devotee of good Chinese dining as well as an occasional cook of this fine cuisine and I assure the readers that is has not necessarily to be expensive to be good.
I have often asked myself the crucial question, “Why do people put up with this rubbish?” Some of my expatriate peers will see no fault in anything that they consider genuinely Thai. It is the quaintness of it all that is important. It is coined T.I.T. (This Is Thailand). An excuse for the most outrageous shortcomings of Thai society.
I am quite sure that the majority of the Thai people resent being called quaint. Besides, it is not Thai food I am talking about, although many uninitiated believe it is. On the other hand, it is the Thai and local, ethnic Chinese customers of these “eateries” (a word I loath, but in this case appropriate) plus their occasional foreign friends who take the whole situation for granted. Instead of asking for quality, cleanliness, variety and a bit more “finesse”, they will hail and praise the “Couleur Locale” and rejoice at the unseemliness of it.
Chefs from the Celestial Empire, unite! Give us a real delicious “Sweet and Sour” and not something “icky”, made with a sauce out of a bottle which tastes like over-ripe papaya juice or prepared with tomato ketchup and lots of tapioca starch. Use real pepper instead of an adulterated version coming out of a cardboard box. Hold back on the MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate). This “wonder” powder, which irritates your taste buds into believing that the food is “mouth watering”. Clever and persistent advertising created its demand but it is not mandatory in good cooking.
What better use than culinary and sanitary education is there for the blaring omnipresent television sets. Placed in a position where they can not possibly be avoided, they are there for the main purpose of driving the patrons insane. The “soap”, the appalling quality of the sound, the moaning and ranting of the actresses and their paramours on the screen, combined with the roar of the traffic on the street and the yelling and hollering of the management, achieve just that.
Getting back to our trip to Yasothorn province which I discussed last week, the major attractions of the provincial town of Yasothorn are its people, which are, like most up country denizens, extremely friendly, helpful and altogether agreeable and its market right off the main artery, the Yasothorn-Ubol Rachathani road.
My Dutch friend was amazed when I pointed out the different delicacies of the region to her. There were the beetles, the locusts, ant’s eggs, the tiny toads, frogs, larvae and dozens of other unusual foods we never even dare to dream of let alone eat it. I showed her the varieties of ginger and basil, the numerous leaves from the forest eaten with the La’ap (a kind of spicy salad made from beef, pork or fish). The evil smelling but beloved corrupted fresh water fish locally called Pa Dek, or Plah Rah in Thai and the little bags with bile at the meat stands. She bought a small mortar and pestle for her kitchen in the Hague, after I told her how useful they were also in the West. No self respecting kitchen should be without one.
As I said in last week’s article, the Isarn country people live a life which must be very similar to the way their distant ancestors lived. I always maintain that when major calamities will strike the earth and mass extinction will follow, the urban and industrialised peoples will perish, the cities will certainly become morgues but the peasants of the North and Northeast of Thailand have a much better chance of surviving. They will still be able to sustain themselves with the produce of the forest. With the reservation that this wilderness has not become one big eucalyptus estate for the sake of the paper industry.
Another point of interest in Yasothorn’s market was the vendor of sausages. The North-Easterners produce many kinds of sausages. The most famous ones are the Chinese sausages from Korat called Goon Chaing. The quality and aroma of these is even better than those I bought in Hong Kong many years ago. Another type of sausage, also typical of Korat, is pork fermented with rice and called “Sai Krok Kao”. It was for the first time that I saw yet another kind, a more spicy sausage in Isarn which is similar to sausages produced in the North and also in Bali. The ingredients are slightly different depending on where you are. These pork sausages are delicious, especially when eaten with Kao Neeau or “sticky rice”.
Here is my version: