I keep in mind being in Bangkok throughout one Thai New 12 months’s and watching a poor Western lady get utterly drenched — groceries and loaf of bread and all — in a tuk tuk that slowed down simply sufficient in order that revelers may pour a whole wastebasket’s price of water on her head. After witnessing this silent second of complicity between the tuk tuk driver and the water-splasher, I vowed to by no means get caught within the streets of Bangkok throughout Songkran once more. Which is why I’m right here, now, cowering on my sofa, using the vacation out till the final water gun has been emptied and consigned to a storage bin for subsequent 12 months.

Since this sofa is my residence for the subsequent two or three days, my ideas have been turning to my household, at present in Nakhon Nayok, the place they’re internet hosting my mom’s entourage of associates (like a rapper, she rolls 10 deep). These women, from my mother and father’ college days, take pleasure in 1. remarking on how a lot weight we’ve got gained or misplaced, and a pair of. warbling conventional Thai songs on karaoke. So it could not come as a lot of a shock once I admit that I’m pleased proper the place I’m, proper right here on this sofa in Bangkok.

If solely somebody would prepare dinner for me.

I used to be shocked a number of months in the past when my mom, throughout considered one of her uncommon reminiscences of her childhood, talked about her mom’s cooking. I had by no means heard of my grandmother cooking earlier than. In actual fact, my grandmother NOT cooking was a serious cause given for why my mom didn’t prepare dinner. And but right here we had been, with tales about my grandmother cooking. Now, I like my grandma, and go to her each time I’m in Chiang Mai (I get actually unhealthy goals if I don’t). All the identical, I used to be unhappy to have missed her meals. Though my grandmother lived to be 102 years outdated, she by no means cooked for me.

You see, my grandma was from Chiang Mai, however married a Central Thai man and moved to Bangkok, the place they often had Central Thai meals. Often, when my grandma was bored with all of the palm sugar and coconut milk, she would search consolation within the dishes of her homeland, with flavors that had been straight and true. My mom advised me a couple of prik nam pla that was Northern-style, made with grilled, peeled and deseeded banana peppers doused in fish sauce seasoned with garlic and lime juice. She additionally advised me a couple of pork dish cooked just for Northern Thai aristocracy referred to as moo hoon, or pork with a number of turmeric and lemongrass (a recipe that might be in our upcoming cookbook!)

After which my mom mentioned she would make her personal nam prik kee ga (crow’s poo chili dip), which I believed to be Central Thai till the second when my mom advised me this story. My grandma would make it with prik chee fah, or goat/spur chilies, uncooked garlic, and salt, pounding it herself and consuming it with sticky rice, alone. These had been the one dishes she made.

So, caught in my home because the water wars raged outdoors, I sought to comply with in my grandma’s footsteps and make some crow’s poo of my very own. First, I needed to get some chee fah chilies, which I purchased a number of days earlier than Songkran in preparation for this very second.

I lined a baking tray with aluminum foil, turned my oven grill as much as full energy, positioned a handful of spur chilies of every shade on the tray and slid them in when the oven had heated. Then I readied my work station for the one exercise I used to be prepared to do this day:

I pounded three cloves of uncooked garlic with a teaspoon of sea salt in readiness for my chilies. It took them about quarter-hour to get correctly softened and frivolously charred, after which I peeled them whereas they had been nonetheless scorching, grimacing and flailing like a serial groper on a Tokyo commuter practice throughout rush hour.

As soon as peeled, they appeared pathetically meager, about 3 Tablespoons price of chili “meat” — simply sufficient for lunch.

So I caught them within the mortar and pounded, and, actually, it was extremely straightforward. The chilies, by now completely depressed by the course through which their lives had taken, merely gave up after a number of loud thumps, and the chili dip was prepared in seconds.

I tasted it and located it simply salty sufficient (although my housekeeper Tai, ever the critic, complained it was too salty). We ate it for lunch with just-boiled eggs, stir-fried snow peas, kaokay moo (pork bits left over after rendering pork lard, stir-fried in roasted chili paste) and, after all, freshly steamed rice. My Central Thai husband mentioned it was good.

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