History that tastes great

FOR ANYONE WHO hungers for the taste of Thai food a hundred years ago – when there were few fancy restaurants (and certainly no home delivery) – fine-dining specialist Sumol Wongwongsri’s offers a chance in her latest book to try making it yourself.
Just published, “100-Year-Old Recipes” has many of the popular dishes of a century ago and the stories behind them.
“I love to eat and cook and I’ve always been interested in the history, the stories behind each specific type of cuisine,” Sumol said at the launch at the Foodie on Silom Road last week. She edits the food section of Gourmet and Cuisine magazine and has written several books about food and diet.
“I’ve had great opportunities to interview many chefs and restaurants owners as part of my job,” she said. “While tracking down the old recipes and home-cooking styles, I stumbled across many interesting people from several families that have mastered these unique, delicious and rare dishes. Some of the recipes in the book are over a hundred years old, and some of the dishes are almost extinct.”
Sumol said she doesn’t pretend to offer a culinary “bible”. “Other families might have cooked the same dishes, and the families I feature aren’t necessarily the creators of the recipes. This just gives you some idea of how food was prepared back then, how the kitchen worked and, most importantly, how good food was put together. I hope this book will inspire you to cook for your loved ones and let food create the wonder of bringing everyone in the family together.”
The glossy volume contains 60 recipes from 15 long-established families. You might have enjoyed some of the dishes at restaurants, even in office canteens, but the old recipes reveal on close study that the modern versions have been adapted to such an extent they’re simply not quite as good as they used to be.
“The big problem nowadays is the shortage of time, and cooking is time-consuming,” Pornpimol Cheevamongkol (nee Lamsam) pointed out at the launch. She comes from a Chinese Hakka family that migrated to Siam four generations ago and now owns and operates several multibillion-baht businesses.
The recipes they brought with them had to be “localised” by necessity, according to the ingredients available. The Lamsam clan’s notable yummies include steamed stuffed tofu and steamed pork balls. “Good food takes time because you need to ensure you have the right ingredients, even if you have to make them yourself,” Pornpimol said.
“For example, the steamed stuffed tofu found in yen ta fo noodles takes a lot of work. You need the best tofu you can find to make the shell and you have to season the minced pork right – not too much to drown the natural sweetness of the meat. And when we make meatballs, we don’t add starch – ever. It’s pure meat, kneaded and mixed properly until it’s sticky and glutinous. Cheaply made ones have lots of starch and, once you fry them, you have the unpleasant, rancid, stale smell of the starch. And they soak up the oil.”
The crunchy and refreshing winged-bean salad is not supposed to be sickeningly sweet, confirmed Prissana Ramasut, who honed her culinary skills by being her mother’s personal “sous chef” when she was a little girl. “It’s actually a dish made of leftover bits and what’s already lying around the kitchen. It should have a balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy, not just sweet, like you get in most restaurants.
“Immense effort must go into the preparation if you want the dish to be fresh and delicious. But the cooking, at least in my family, isn’t complicated. The most important part is using the best and the freshest ingredients you can find.”
If you think “fusion food” is a recent trend, the recipes from the Bunnag family will change your perspective. A family steeped in nobility, they arrived from Persia 400 years ago to serve King Songtham of Ayutthaya. Through marriage and other forms of association with both commoners and aristocrats, the Bunnag kitchen has long produced intricate Thai dishes with Western and Arabian flair.
One of them, “cigarette rice” (khao bu ree) is cooked with saffron, cardamom and other spices and served with yoghurt-infused roasted chicken. The family originated several sweets as well using milk, flour, eggs, spices and other basic ingredients.
Sumol’s book also features quite a few well-known dishes with traditional recipes. You can learn how to make massaman curry the original way, deep-fried shrimp cakes that require fewer than 10 ingredients, simple pork congee Guangdong-style, and Thai-style som tam that tastes and looks completely different from what you find in restaurants.
So, next time a foreign friend comes to visit, you’ll know better than to order out for chicken green curry or pad thai. You can cook authentic dishes from a bygone era.
We might not have the luxury of spending hours in the kitchen, but the supermarkets have most of what you need at prices you can usually afford. In fact, cooking these recipes could be a lot easier than trying to master lamb ragout, beef bourguignon or lobster bisque – because you don’t need elaborate kitchen implements or imported ingredients.
The preparation can be tedious if you do it alone, so recruit friends or family and make it a fun social event. Instead of heading out for a fancy meal, you can just stay home and create your own feast. You might even come up with something you can pass on as a family legacy of your own.

 A KITCHEN TREASURE
“100-Year-Old Recipes” is in Thai, published by Sarakadee Press. It’s in shops for Bt599.
Find out more at www.Sarakadee.com.