Hot Outside, Asian Inside

It’s a strange fact: when the temperature soars, the only kind of food I want to eat is Asian. Generally from the sub-Continent. Often from Vietnam and Thailand. Sometimes from Gujarat and Mumbai. I still haven’t figured out why this is, except for the fact that this food makes me actually feel good. It cools me down, which is probably why I also crave it when I’m a little under the weather, which I seem to be right now.

Susan is a good egg about this, because she loves food from that part of the world, and now we’re planning a visit (Vietnam? Cambodia? Thailand?) for two big birthdays we have coming up in a few years. She often goes on about the Burmese restaurant that she used to frequent when she lived in Philadelphia (I was simultaneously dining at its sister restaurant in NYC long before we even knew each other. Kismet?); she talks a lot about eating spectacular Vietnamese food in Seattle many years ago; her eyes will go all glassy when she speaks of the lamb chops at Suvir Saran‘s Devi in New York, the way mine do when I conjur up Prasad Chirnomoula’s bhel poori from his restaurant, Thali, in New Haven. We recently signed up for the new cooking channel on cable TV, and the other night watched a travelogue about this guy who eats his way through the street stalls in Saigon. We looked at each other and decided that there might not be anything better in the world than street food in Saigon. Which is kind of a crazy thing to say, since neither of us has ever been there.

The thing is, though, I don’t think about Asian food as being just what’s for dinner; I could eat this kind of food morning, noon, and night. The hell with bacon and eggs: I wake up dreaming of sweetened poha with yogurt and fruit (a cheap, no-cook breakfast in a bowl that involves soaking flattened rice flakes in tap-hot water for about 10 minutes or so); of rice cooked with mustard seed, cumin, cayenne, and turmeric; of Singapore noodles with tiny, briny shrimp; of paratha wrapped around a few spiced potatoes. By noon, it’s easy to focus on less surprising dishes: sitting at my desk in the middle of a long writing day in the summer, I think about pho. I daydream about Bo La Lot, Vietnamese beef-stuffed shiso or betel leaves that are rolled like dolmades, skewered, and then grilled. At around 2, I call Susan and ask: Do you want Bun Chay for dinner? Or Uttapam? Or Ban Xeo? Should I make that great Kenny Lao Rickshaw Dumpling recipe? Do you want Goan shrimp curry? Chang Mai noodles? Vegetarian Banh Mi with tofu? Kichuri topped with a poached egg?

Silence on the other end.

“Maybe I should just grill some chicken,” I say.

“Are you insane?” she replies. And that’s pretty much that.

I can’t put my finger on when this Asian infusion hit at my house; we were forever cooking French and Italian and often a little bit Greek and sometimes Middle Eastern. But a few summers ago, back when I was suffering from some bizarre and as-yet undiagnosed illness that left me a little queasy and unsteady on my feet, all I wanted was curry—hot, Goan curry, which I learned to make from Suvir Saran’s great Indian Home Cooking, and which has become the basis for a thousand riffs. Months later, I was reading Yamuna Devi’s incredible Lord Krishna’s Cuisine from cover to cover (all thousand pages of it). Then came Andrea Nguyen’s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, followed by everything Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford and Nancie McDermott (whose books I strongly recommend to any neophyte Asian cook; they’re spectacular) have ever written. And then came winter, and I was back into my Chez Panisse and Richard Olney books again. Is it because I associate Mediterranean cooking with warmth and sun and Vitamin D, and all those things I actually need during the winter? Do I return to my Asian fixation in the heat of August because all of those ingredients—the green papaya, the mint, the mango, the roasted cumin, the fiery chile, the squeeze of cold lime—are cooling?

Honestly, I’ll never know for sure. What I do know is this: I woke up yesterday morning craving Chiang Mai noodles, and that craving didn’t go away until I made them.

I feel much better now. And a whole lot cooler.

Simplified Chiang Mai Noodles

(adapted from Nancie McDermott’s Quick and Easy Thai)

Real Chiang Mai Noodles are topped by a crispy noodle tangle that serves as a crunchy counterpoint to the velvety curry and slippery egg noodles submerged beneath it. I’m going easy on the fried stuff these days, so I omitted that step. Instead of  fresh chicken breast, I used leftover Asian roast chicken which I hacked into cubes. The entire dish took me half an hour to assemble, and about eight minutes to eat.

Serves 3-4

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 tablespoons red curry paste

3/4 pound boneless chicken, cut into chunks (I used leftover skinless chicken)

1 14 ounce can coconut milk

1-3/4 cups chicken stock

2 teaspoons ground turmeric

2 tablespoons Black soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

1/2 pound dried Chinese-style egg noodles

1/3 cup coarsely chopped shallots

1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion

1. In a medium sauce pan set over medium heat, warm the oil until it begins to ripple, and then add the garlic. Cook for about a minute and add the red curry paste, stirring it to soften it, about a minute. Add the chicken and cook for about a minute, tossing to combine it with the curry paste. Add the coconut milk, chicken stock, turmeric, soy sauce, and sugar, and stir well. Bring to a slow boil, and lower the heat to bring it down to a simmer. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the flavors have begun to meld. Stir in the lime juice, remove from heat, and cover to keep warm.

2. Cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling water, for about 7 minutes, until tender but firm. Drain, rinse in a colander under cold water, drain again, and divide the noodles among serving bowls. Ladle on the hot curry, and sprinkle each serving with shallots, cilantro, and green onions. Serve immediately.

Tagged as: Asian food, Chiang Mai Noodles, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese