Love at First Thai
That childhood taunt, “Why don’t
you marry it!” might actually be worth listening to if the love professed is a
kind of food. Things seem to be working out well for Nick Sherman, a Maine-born
salesman for a residential building company, who loved cooking and eating
fusion food. When living in Seattle, he followed the fusion master Tom
Douglas’s every move through his Seattle
Kitchen cookbook. But three years ago last April, back in Maine working
long hours in preparation for a vacation, he didn’t have time to cook, so he
went out nightly at Chinese, Korean and other Asian restaurants. “It was fast
and good,” He said about the food. One might say the same about the
relationship he was about to discover.
In his single, dining-out
adventures, he crossed paths with a striking Asian woman, the tallest he’d ever
seen. She was 5’8’’ and lean, with straight, long, black hair, an open
demeanor, and an outwardly curved nose. He introduced himself, and discovered
her signature high voice full of rough but sweetly brave English. Her name was
Rattana. She was a textiles engineer from Bangkok, Thailand, who was traveling
in the U.S. for six months, visiting friends and extended family. He asked her
out on a date. She was sorry, she was leaving Maine the next day to live with a
friend in Chicago, but he could drive her to the airport if he wanted to.
It must have been one car ride. A
month later, over phone and email (her writing was fluent), they decided she
should fly from Chicago back to Maine to go on another date. They went to a
lighthouse. Then she cooked Thai for him in his condo. I can’t say how love
made it’s way so quickly through the language barrier, but I can tell you that
the red curry chicken Rattana made for me was good enough to merit some kind of
proposal. Mine is “Cook for me again, Rattana?” His was slightly different.
Inside her pretty white china bowls
with a periwinkle pattern of hexagons along the outside rim, the generous sauce
around the rice is the lightest shade of pink, made not of dairy and tomatoes
as in Indian curry, but light coconut milk, simmered with red chili curry base,
eggplant, fish sauce, palm sugar, chicken, kaffir lime leaves and at the last
minute, whole leaves of fresh basil. The triangles of eggplant (in my mind a
texturally challenged vegetable) are somehow gracefully soft and yet full of
structural integrity.
She showed me some tricks. Dunk
whole basil leaves under the simmering coconut milk, and they don’t turn black,
but an even brighter shade of green. She gets the ingredients from the Asian
market at the intersection of Congress and St. John St., where the coconut milk
is the right texture and sells for 79 cents a can (as opposed to $2 at the
supermarket), and the red curry base is good (as opposed to “not good,” like
the kind she tried from Shaws). She picks kaffir lime leaves, unavailable even
at the Asian market, from a potted plant her Auntie sent her from Virginia,
which has been flourishing, surprisingly, in her Maine dining room.
The taste of it all radiated in my
mouth, into my belly and into my head with paradoxical rich openness. I look
around: Rattana and Nick’s beautiful new house, built by the company he works
for, is decorated with Buddha statues, gold-flecked Thai linens, and pictures
of two lovebirds: on their second date in front of a Maine lighthouse, and
then, three months later, in wedding gown and suit.
Thai Red Curry Chicken
Serves 4
1 c. white rice
1 can coconut milk (Chaokoh brand preferred)
1-2 Tbsp red curry base (Maesri brand preferred)
6 fresh kaffir lime leaves, sliced thinly
¾ small-medium eggplant, skin on, cut into 1/2” thick
triangles
1 can Asian cultivated sliced bamboo shoots
1 lb. bite-sized raw chicken pieces
2 Tbsp palm sugar
15 basil leaves
2-3 Tbsp fish sauce (Squid brand preferred)
1 tsp salt
Cook rice as you would normally (in saucepan or rice
cooker). Put coconut milk into medium saucepan on medium heat. Add curry base
and stir until incorporated. Add kaffir lime leaves. When simmering, add
chicken pieces, eggplant, bamboo shoots, palm sugar, fish sauce, 1 Tbsp water
(if desired for thinning). Once chicken and eggplant are cooked, add 15 whole
basil leaves, making sure to push each under the coconut milk. Add salt and
more fish sauce to taste. Serve in bowl with lots of sauce over white rice.
