100 square feet: how much larger our current temporary housing is than the last place we lived in.
8: Times I’ve gone swimming since we got here.
55,000 yen/ 700 dollars: train fare spent in four weeks.
7: Nomi-hodai is all you can drink for a number of pre-determined hours for a set price. I’ve already been seven times.
1: Number of times I’ve been to the DMV.
1: Bank cards that have decided to stop working for no apparent reason.
24: days out of the 34 that we have been here that I have biked more than 10 kilometers through Tokyo.
24: Dollars I accidentally spent on a single glass of beer when I converted the exchange rate incorrectly.
3: Friends I’ve made outside of the Embassy community.
7: Possible starter Friends. Cruel, but fair.
80,000: Number of times I’ve given my “getting to know you life story elevator” speech to people I’m meeting. I’ve narrowed it down to this: “I was born, and now I’m here. How about you?”.
1: Job I applied for that I did not get.

80 bajillion: Number of forms I have filled out and filed with some arm or another of the State department to ensure that we have running water, sheets, electricity, health insurance, that our stuff from the US arrives, that the stuff that isn’t arriving stays in storage, that paychecks get deposited, that I can get a set of license plates for the car, so that I can have an embassy ID, so that I can deposit checks with the cashier, so that I can have a Japanese bank account. So that I will be allowed to continue existing (that one has to be filled out in triplicate).

After living in Osaka for three years, I stepped onto a Chinese ferry on a cold spring day in 2005 and left Japan. At immigration in the ferry terminal, the immigration officer asked kairanai-ka (not coming back?). Kairanai. Not coming back. Passport stamped, residency registration cancelled, Japan exited. I haven’t been back since then except for some transits through Narita airport and two fun nights spent in a friend’s tiny Tokyo apartment when I was awaiting seats on an onward flight to Bangkok — not because I don’t like Japan, but just because it never happened. Fast forward through a spring and summer of packing, moving, studying and working, I stepped off the transpacific flight in Tokyo a diplomat’s wife, basically. One with a full beard and a healthy appetite for beer and grilled meat, but a diplomatic spouse none the less. Redefining what I do and how I go about doing it is an ongoing challenge. But that’s a discussion for another day.

We landed last Thursday and stepped out into Japan; it’s exactly as I remembered it, down to polite vending machines, taxis with automatic doors, uniquely uniformed crossing guards and too many layers of formality. Passing through immigration we were repeatedly directed away from the diplomatic line by well meaning Japanese ladies until we actually pulled our diplomatic passports out to prove we were in the right line. What, diplomats aren’t normally pierced, bearded gays? America, represent! Our first night was surreal, surrounded by advertisements as familiar as they are foreign, in an izakaya ordering food we loved last time we were here, drinking nomi-hodai (all-you-can-drink) beer, again. Deja-vu, except we’re older and not a stupid as we were the first time we did it.

Hisashiburi is a word you use in Japanese when you haven’t seen someone or experienced something in a long time — the English equivalent is “It’s been such a long time!” or “Long time no see!”. In response to hisashiburi, one says natsukashi-desu which means literally “nostalgia”, but roughly translates as “Those were good times.” Natsukashi can be used with sincerity or sarcastically. It’s hard to tell when Japanese people are being sarcastic because they don’t do it much, and when they do, it’s so gentle that the rebuke only hurts days later when you realize you’ve been told about yourself. When Japan said Hisashiburi, Brock-san!, I enthusiastically exclaimed Natsukashi-desu!.

I’m still not sure how I used it. We’ll wait a few days to see.

That strategy has not worked quite the same here. For one, I don’t speak Thai well enough to be jocular. A grinning mute I can manage, just barely. Also, my kitchen staff is all women. The bakers are all men, but they work the night shift and I don’t see them that often. At the last place I worked at it was almost all guys, and anytime things got too hectic someone would just snap a towel at someone’s ass and then mime something inappropriate. Thai’s love a joke, but my face burns red with the imagined shame of snapping a towel at my (female) pantry cook and then humping the mixer. It’s not that kind of crowd. And then, there’s the face. So much face to save in the Thai work place. Directness is not appreciated, which contradicts the “there’s no crying in the kitchen” culture that I’m used to, where everyone yells at everyone else and it’s well understood that it is not only not personal, but normally not even true, so just ignore all yelling. Here, all yelling is taken to heart, and it shames families for generations.

So! Not one to shy from a challenge (and also: this is the only staff I’m going to get here, so make some lemonade already, people are hungry), I’m adapting. Changing. Being culturally sensitive, which, as all people who make their home in a foreign culture know, means suppressing everything until you can vent with unfettered verve in an appropriate venue.

Hello, lovelies. Did you know you were going to be used as a venue? Mind the verve. Hope you’ve made yourself a drink.

I’d been missing being in a kitchen: a professional kitchen with real stoves and cooks and a walk in freezer and a budget to buy awesome food. I missed the heat and the excitement of a busy service and the ability to try new techniques, and then have other people want to buy it and tell you how great it is. I missed the validation, as a chef, to be honest. If you don’t cook professionally anymore, are you still a chef? Or just someone who likes food a lot? The distinction is small but the implications are not, especially if you are as insecure as I am. A bagel bakery and deli had recently opened in Bangkok, and I met the chef there. She contacted me out of the blue just a few days after we met and she offered me the chef position at the deli. Her mother was ill and she wanted to return home — and she was going in a matter of days. I went in for what I thought was an interview, but was actually an orientation, and just like that was handed keys to a bagel bakery and deli. I agreed to work part time until the writing project was finished, something I estimated would take six weeks. Smiles all around.

At this point, I had two jobs. The writing people contacted me to let me know that my counterpart in the travel writing project wasn’t going to be able to devote as much time as they had thought to the project, and wanted me to write a larger section of the research for a larger fee. Make it rain baht, Bangkok, right onto my head. I said yes, because (1) I cannot say no to people I am trying to make like me, (2) based on some fairly optimistic (actually, stunningly optimistic, possibly delusional) estimates by the travel editors about how long it takes to do the kind of research and writing they wanted completed, I figured I could both be the executive chef of a new restaurant and finish this project (also providing them with two blog posts a week), (3) apparently, I spent all of March either drunk or delirious about the number of hours in a day. Six weeks was not nearly enough time. Queue ominous music, and gathering storm clouds. Make the clouds cartoony and holding angry lightning bolts.

As you can imagine, things spiraled out of control. I spent most of April, May, and June working at the deli, and then riding around on my motorcycle bothering hotel staff to look at their rooms and taking pictures of parks, food carts, river ferries, and bars, and then coming home to sit in the dark, velvet, late-night heat writing up the places I had just seen.
Here we are now, on the other side, with the travel writing project laid gently to bed and the bagel bakery and deli running well (now with house cured meats! And sauerkraut! And full sours! And rugulach! And so much delicious Jew food! Also we serve Snapple, which I don’t understand but people seem to love.) I’m eating and cooking a lot of Thai food, but definitely not at the pace I was when I had zero jobs. If writing is about a true thing and blogging is about the current thing, then the past focus of this blog (mostly food, a bit about Thailand) is obviously going to change (more about working in Thailand, but still about food). But change is good. Plus, I fired someone by text message and that’s a story that cannot go untold.

Boon Maa is our maid. I call her Older Sister (pii), and she calls me Younger Brother (noong). I’ve held out writing about Boon Maa for months now because, being from the Midwest, I carry quite a lot of guilt with me. Shouldn’t I be cleaning my own bathroom? Isn’t that what gives us our humanity? If we force that off onto another person, aren’t we saying “you are less important than me having a clean shower” and “you should miss you children growing up because I need fresh underpants.” I tried to discuss this guilt with my Thai teacher a few days ago, and she interrupted me saying “WAIT? YOU PAY HER HOW MUCH?”

That’s when I realized that Boon Maa might have been taking me for a ride. Well played, Pii Boon Maa. I salute your entrepreneurial spirit.

Boon Maa lives off the tiny alley that connects our road to the main road next to the temple (note: being “temple-adjacent” is prime real estate in Thailand; convenient merit making for all!). Boon Maa comes and cleans twice a week, and takes our dirty clothes away, returning them with fresh clean clothes. It’s magical. Actually, to be completely objective, she’s crap at cleaning and she’s quite sassy as well, so all-in-all not really an ideal maid candidate. She loves to tell me I’m doing it wrong, and emotional blackmail is her daily bread.

So what do I get out of this bullying, advantage-taking relationship? Well, for one, I don’t have to wash my own pants any more. But also, I get “The Lamenting Hour”. Everyday during The Lamenting Hour (that’s right- not just the days she is supposed to come, but everyday) Boon Maa comes over to complain about everything: her stupid kids (her words), her house, the price of cooking oil (there’s a shortage in the Kingdom right now). In turn, I tell her about things that I don’t know how to do, and she tells me I’m stupid because they are so easy to do, and then she explains how to do them (like how to get someone to fix the leaking tap, or how to get the guy at the gas station to change the oil on your motorbike). Then we move on to having an argument about how much dish-washing detergent should cost, and how she thinks I should buy her a new pillow or a towel or a pot. I promise to take that under advisement. Next she asks for more money and I say no. Then she jokes that maybe I should leave Josh and we should be girlfriend and boyfriend. I say I’d consider if she had a brother. She is falsely scandalized.

Ritual completed, we both walk away feeling we got the better deal; I don’t clean the bathroom any more, and she earns more in two hours than a factory worker earns in an entire nine-hour shift. Game, set, match. Advantage: everyone.

Last night it rained so hard that the rainwater drains backed up, flooding our balcony. The balcony is about two inches lower than the floor in the apartment, so when the water was threatening to flood into the apartment we MacGyver’ed some plastic tubing into a syphon by throwing it over the edge of the balcony and sucking the water off the floor. Some times living in a tropical paradise is gross.

New Tour Dates for 2011!

• April 27 – May 7
• May 18 – May 29
• June 22 – July 3
• July 20 – July 31
• October 5 – October 16
• November 2 – November 13

Check out our itinerary or read the daily posts from the last trip!

Thailand is having a crisis of conscious with it’s culinary tradition right now. Foodish people are asking “What is Thai food?” Lines are being drawn, and they are being drawn arbitrarily. Food touched by non-Thais is being considered un-Thai, even if it is the strictest of “old-school Thai” cooking. Food that has coconut gets a raised eyebrow. Food from isaan: really Thai food, or bleedover from Khmer and Lao traditions? What is traditional food? Is Northern Thai food really part of the Thai tradition, or is it Lanna (a kingdom that fell to Thailand hundreds of years ago and was absorbed). What about the south? Suspiciously close to Malay food, one might say.

The best explanation of the evolution of Thai food that I have ever found comes from Chef Sirichalerm Svasti, better know as Chef McDang. He throws out the idea that only old food is traditional, or that only food that comes from a written history, or only food that came from the court.

There was the Sukhothai period, the Thai alphabet was developed and people started recognizing themselves as part of the same kingdom. Starting a kingdom and fighting off all of your neighbors is hard work, so food was pretty crappy. As the kingdom became more stable, food quality improved, but it was a pretty limited menu, focusing on curry pastes, vegetables, fresh water fish, rice, very little meat, no coconut milk, and no noodles.

Then the Ayutthaya period started when Thailand got rich. The newly wealthy and confident court began trading with other nations in the region, borrowing from their food traditions and combining it with their own, bringing the tradition of fish sauce from southern China and using coconut milk in curries from South India. Eggs were also introduced as food, borrowing from European traditions brought by the Portuguese, who also brought with them the new world foods that we can hardly imagine Thai food without today: cilantro, chilies, eggplants.

The modern-era of Thailand saw a huge influx of Chinese immigrants from Southern China, that brought with them the wok, stir-frying, tofu, and noodles. Like mixed-race kids that turn out so much more beautiful and perfect than their parents, so did Thai food. So Thailand- relax. It’s yours. The whole long, dirty history of Thai food. Run with it.

Hor Mok Pla is Thai food tradition writ edible. Fresh water fish is scraped from the bones and combined with red curry paste, fish sauce, coconut milk, and aromatics, and bound with duck eggs. Placed into banana leaf cups, it is steamed until the mousse sets and then eaten warm or at room temperature. The gently cooking leaves the chunks of fish tender and moist, bound together in an aromatic spice provided by the red curry paste.

Hor Mok Pla
adapted from “The Principles of Thai Cooking”
makes 16 hor mok

• 1 # | 450 g boneless, skinless white-fleshed fish meat, cubed (Basa is a good choice)
• 3 tablespoons red curry paste
• 1 duck egg, cold (can substitute regular chicken egg)
• 2 1/2 cups coconut cream, cold (divided)
• 1 teaspoon palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 cup thai sweet basil leaves
• 1 teaspoon rice flour
• 10 kaffir lime leaves
• 2 large red spur chili peppers (any large, mildly spicy red pepper will work)
• 16 banana leaf cups

If you have a food processor, place the bowl, lid, and blade in the freezer and skip on to the next section. Take half of the fish and place it in a pile on the cutting board. Holding a good chef’s knife in one had, chop the fish meat finely. Turn the cutting board 90 degrees and chop through the pile again. Continue until you have a fine fish paste- the pieces of fish will start to just form a mass with no identifiable chunks. Reserve and chill very well.

Mix 2 cups of coconut milk, red curry paste, duck egg, fish sauce, and palm sugar together, whisking until smooth. Refrigerate until cold. While chilling the mixture, make a fine chiffonade of the kaffir lime leaves. Reserve two tablespoons or so for garnish, and then finely chop the rest of the kaffir lime leaves into tiny peices. Remove the stem and seeds from the red peppers. Slice into very thin slices. Reserve two tablespoons for garnish, and then chop the remaining peppers very finely.

If using a food processor, add half of the chilled, cubed fish to the bowl and process until it starts to form a mass in the bowl (it should look shredded and sticky). Add the egg/curry paste/coconut milk mixture as you process, pausing to scrape the sides of the bowl down. The mousse should turn fairly smooth and silky. Reserve in the refrigerator. If preparing by hand, add the finely chopped fish to the egg/curry paste/coconut milk mixture. Using a whisk, beat the mixture together. It should go from being quite liquid to a rather thick mousse- still spoonable, but no longer a liquid. When you’ve reached this stage, stop, so as to not overwork the proteins in the mousse and make it tough. Return to the refrigerator.

Mix the remaining 1/2 cup of coconut milk with the rice flour until smooth. Place in a small saucepan and heat over a medium flame, stirring, until it comes to the boil and thickens. Remove from heat and reserve.

To assemble the Hor Mok, fold the remaining cubed fish into the mousse, along with the finely chopped chili pepper and finely chopped kaffir lime leaf. Line the bottom of each banana cup with a few leaves of Thai sweet basil and fill the custard to the top. Spoon a generous teaspoon of the thickened coconut cream onto the top of the custard, and garnish with a few slices of the red chili and a sprinkle of the chiffonade of kaffir lime leaves.

Steam for twenty minutes- the mousse will start to puff just a touch when it is set. Remove and let cool a few minutes. Eat immediately, or let cool and eat at room temperature.

Tomorrow: How to make banana leaf cups. Key ingredient? Stapler.

This salad is amazing. I don’t often rave about salad (except when I do), but this is savory, spicy, crunchy, and above all, crisp and fresh. What’s more amazing is that it has no fat in it, aside from the peanuts. Do not be tempted to take away the peanuts in some misguided attempt at January waistline piety; they are the unifying element which becomes the crunchy, fatty yin to the crisp and fresh yang of the mango and lettuce. This recipe has gone through a couple iterations–it’s great with jicima in place of the mango, or tart apples, or peaches in the summer–but I’ve learned that a tart fruit of some kind is what makes this sparkle. Choose mangos that are still firm and crunchy for the best texture.

Green Mango and Lime Salad
serves four as course in a meal, or two as an entree

• 2 green mangos, peeled and coarsely shredded
• 3 cups very finely shredded Chinese cabbage
• 1/2 cup finely sliced red shallot
• 12 cup roughly chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup peanuts, raw, without skins, unsalted
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
• 1/2 lime, juiced (reserve juice for dressing)
• 4 cloves Thai garlic, peeled (or two western cloves)
• 5 birds-eye chilies (or 1 serrano chili)
• 1 teaspoon palm sugar
• 1-2 tablespoon(s) lime juice
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce

Roast the peanuts on an ungreased baking sheet in a 350F oven until just golden (eight to ten minutes), stirring occasionally as they toast. Reserve when done. While the peanuts toast, heat a heavy skillet over a medium flame until hot. Add the sesame seeds and toast, stirring constantly, until they are golden brown and smell nutty. Immediately remove from the skillet and reserve.

In mortar, pound the chilies, garlic and palm sugar until the garlic and chilies turn into a paste (you can also blend in a blender). Add the lime juice and fish sauce and mix until the sugar has dissolved. The dressing should be very strongly flavored, with a saltiness tempered by the acid of the lime juice and rounded out by just a little bit of sweetness. Taste and adjust as needed.

Take the half lime and remove the membrane and as much of the pith as possible with a spoon–you basically want to hollow out the half of lime. Cut the lime skin into very, very small pieces. Combine the lime with the mango, cabbage, shallot, and cilantro in a large bowl and stir with your hand until well mixed. Add the dressing and mix it in well, kneading and massaging to bruise the vegetables a little bit, allowing them to absorb the flavor of the dressing.

Serve immediately, garnishing the salad with the peanuts and sesame seeds. I love this salad most when the peanuts are still warm and crunchy.