To understand a culture, understand its food
By: Pat Tanner
West Windsor resident Tasanee Chaven has always believed that to understand a culture you must understand its food.
Ms. Chaven, who has a doctorate in linguistics, worked for two years with the State Department, training diplomats who were to be posted to the embassy in Thailand. She also spent two years doing the same thing for a private company in the Washington, D.C., area. Although she was charged with teaching them the Thai language, she always incorporated cooking and food into the curriculum.
This month, she taught a series of three Thai cooking lessons at the Princeton YWCA. I sat in on the second in the series, when she presented two traditional salad dishes. (The first lesson was on soups; the third, curry.)
Ms. Chaven, 46, was born to parents from mainland China, but the family had moved to Bangkok, Thailand, by the time she was born. She said her family of eight children, of which she is the sixth, was a traditional Chinese family.
“When I was young a lot of my experience growing up centered around food. We really appreciated eating good food and in Thailand, there is such variety. My father was the best cook,” she recalled, “but I didn’t get to learn from him. In a traditional Chinese family, a father is not that interested in training a daughter to cook. Instead, he trained my eldest brother’s wife, because she would be the one to live with him!”
In 1976, Ms. Chaven came to the United States to study linguistics at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. She received two master’s degrees there (in linguistics and ESL), then went on to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana for her doctorate.
While there she met her future husband, Suchart, a food scientist for a major food company in Parsippany. He is a native Thai, but his family came to the U.S. when he was only 8 years old. The Chavens have a daughter, Tissa, 12, who is in seventh grade.
While studying in the U.S. Ms. Chaven found she missed Thai food, so taught herself to cook by reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows. At home she cooks everything from Thai to Chinese to Italian food.
“We have such a mix of ethnic groups in Thailand, especially Bangkok, so you find a lot of Chinese dishes. Only very traditional curries and spicy dishes are truly Thai. If you look at Thai cookbooks, be aware that any non-spicy dishes it contains are actually Chinese in origin — things like noodle dishes and stir-fries.
For her first cooking series at the YWCA Princeton, Ms. Chaven limited the class size. In attendance for the class on salads were Karen Miller, Patty Koch, Liz Casper and Doris Stickel, all from Princeton, and Claudia Maxey of Cranbury.
All said they signed up for Ms. Chaven’s classes because they have a liking for and interest in Thai food. Ms. Miller said she wanted to know how to use ingredients like lemongrass and galangal. Doris Stickel said that she likes Thai food but has allergies to such things as shellfish and nuts, so it is imperative for her to know what ingredients are in which dishes.
Ms. Chaven began the lesson by reviewing the basic ingredients and techniques of both recipes. Students and teacher then parceled out the various tasks of preparing the ingredients. For both recipes, prep time far exceeds cooking and assembly times. All agreed that the dishes were so tasty, they were worth the extensive prep work.
Ms. Chaven explained that the two salads were very traditional. One featured green papaya, the other beef. A typical Thai meal, she said, would consist of soup, salad and curry, all served at once — with the soup in the middle — accompanied by jasmine rice or sticky rice.
All ingredients for the recipes below, such as palm sugar, fish sauce, lemongrass and snake beans — but with the possible exception of green, which is unripe, papaya — can be found at the Oriental Market at Mercer Mall in Lawrence, or at most Asian markets. Ms. Chaven has on occasion found green papaya in her local Pathmark, but she mostly buys it at Kam Man Foods, an Asian market at 511 Old Post Road in Edison.
Because some Thai ingredients, such as fresh galangal, can be difficult to locate, Ms. Chaven is starting an e-commerce business, she hopes by this summer, that will offer fresh and packaged Thai foodstuffs via the Internet. For more information, or to arrange private cooking lessons, she can be contacted at: [email protected].
Because the green papaya salad is customarily made to order by food vendors in Thailand, and because the ingredients are traditionally combined in a clay mortar using a wooden pestle, the quantities given below are for an individual serving. The recipe can be sized up and combined in a regular bowl, in which case Ms. Chaven advises using the back of a spoon to mash the garlic and chili and to crush the bean pieces in step 2 and using two spoons to combine the ingredients in step 4.
Ms. Chaven much prefers preparing the papaya by hand to using a food processor because the former yields slightly thicker strands. But shredding the papaya by hand takes some practice. She holds the peeled, whole papaya in one hand while repeatedly cutting into the exposed flesh with the blade of a large, sharp, heavy knife, using short, even strokes. When one side of the fruit is scored in this manner, she peels off a thin layer of strands and repeats the process.
1 large green papaya
1 small clove garlic
1 small Thai chili
1 long snake bean, broken into eight 1-inch pieces
½ tablespoon palm sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
4 cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 tablespoon dry shrimp, ground in a mortar
Lettuce leaves for lining the plate
1 tablespoon unsalted roasted peanuts, coarsely ground, for garnish
1. Prepare the papaya: peel the papaya, then rinse off the white, milky sap under cold running water. Cut the papaya in pieces, remove the seeds, and shred in a food processor. Place in a plastic bag and put in refrigerator until ready to use.
2. Place the garlic and the chili in a mortar and mash it with a pestle. Add the bean pieces and pound gently, flattening them slightly.
3. Mix in the sugar, fish sauce and lime juice and stir until sugar is dissolved.
4. Add 1 cup of the papaya, the tomatoes and the dry shrimp. Combine all the ingredients using the pestle and a spoon until they are thoroughly blended.
5. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves and sprinkle with ground roasted peanut.
Serves 1
A note on handling lemongrass: Remove the tough outer leaves, using only the tender, white part. Cutting is easier using a serrated knife.
1 tablespoon glutinous rice
1 pound steak, such as sirloin or strip
For the marinade:
½ tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon soy sauce
For the vinaigrette:
1 small clove garlic, mashed or finely chopped
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2/3 tablespoon palm sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/3 cup thinly sliced red onion
¼ cup thinly sliced shallot
1 scallion, chopped
½ cup thinly sliced red and yellow bell pepper
1/3 cup halved grape tomatoes
½ cup cucumber that has been halved, seeded, and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon lemongrass, white part only, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1-2 teaspoons ground dried chili, or to taste
Lettuce leaves for lining platter
1. Toast the rice: place in a saucepan over medium-low heat and cook, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes, or until rice is golden brown. Cool and grind in a mortar.
2. Make the marinade: Mix together the brown sugar, 1 tablespoon fish sauce, and soy sauce. Cover the steak with the mixture and marinate for 10 minutes. Grill or broil the steak to desired doneness. Set aside to rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Slice the steak thin and put in a large bowl.
3. Make the vinaigrette: Mix together the garlic, 2 tablespoons fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. Pour half the vinaigrette over the beef and set aside for 5 minutes.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients (except the toasted rice) and the remaining vinaigrette to the beef. Toss until thoroughly mixed. Place salad on a bed of lettuce leaves and sprinkle with ground toasted rice.
Serves 4