Like many people my age who are desperately looking for ways to procrastinate from pressing life issues, I have been following the “Where’s Kate Middleton?” discourse. I don’t pretend to have a wide-ranging or intellectual interest in this topic; I don’t care about how this adds to the latest “missing woman” trope popularized all the way back in the days of Wilkie Collins’s time, or even what this says from a PR management-in-the-time-of-social-media perspective. I just want something diverting to take up all my time from thinking about work.
All the same, while there are numerous hypotheses, some of them are pretty unsavory. I don’t want to write about those because it would make me look ghoulish, and those are not my colors (I am a “cool summer” person, in case you are probably not wondering). I would just like to say that we should step back, and allow her the time which is surely needed so that she can make her way back to 21st-century England after having touched a strange stone and transported herself to 18th-century Scotland, where she is currently enmeshed in a Highland War against the English. If that means that she is out of view for months and months, then it is what it is (also, I would not blame her if she decided to stay with Jamie Fraser, but I digress).
Alas, people are impatient, especially in the day and age of the 24-hour news cycle, so various parties have attempted to fill this void, with varying levels of success. Probably the most famous of these attempts is the “Mother’s Day” photo apparently made up of several different images. This hullabaloo only illustrates a time-worn and, unfortunately, true saying: There is no substitute for [insert the point you are making here, in this case the actual Kate Middleton].
As you may know, I am currently writing a cookbook, and in cookbooks — especially Thai ones — substitutions are often suggested for hard-to-source ingredients. Thai cooking has a lot of them, like galangal, makrut lime leaves, and lemongrass, none of which really can be substituted, if good Thai food is what you’re after. If you are allergic to these ingredients, we are sorry: your dish may be good, but not really really good. It’s just the way things are.
While doing research on Northern Thai food with my Aunt Priew, she made me a dish I hadn’t had before, out of the pomelos that grow year-round in her front yard. It’s called tum som o, a mix of flaked pomelo, bird’s eye chilies, palm sugar, sliced Thai eggplant, slivered lemongrass, shredded sawtooth coriander, dried shrimp powder, and fish sauce. However, the most important ingredient is nam poo, which is the black juice of pulverized field crabs. The color, if you’re not used to it, is alarming, but the taste — deeply umami, salty, with a shadow of bitterness — is what Northern Thai food is all about. If you don’t have it, sorry; don’t make this dish.
If you do somehow have the ingredients for this dish, here’s the recipe:
- 1 pomelo, peeled, segmented, and separated into flakes
- 1 head of garlic, crushed
- 2-3 bird’s eye chilies
- 1/2 tablespoon nam poo
- 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar
- 2 Thai eggplants, sliced
- 2-3 lemongrass bulbs, sliced
- 3-4 sawtooth coriander stalks, sliced
- 1 tablespoon dried shrimp powder
In a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic with the chilies until well mashed. Add palm sugar and pound to incorporate. Add lemongrass and do the same. Add your sauces: nam poo and fish sauce and mix well. Taste for seasoning. In a bowl (or still in the mortar), carefully add pomelo and mix with a spoon to incorporate the dressing throughout. Add sawtooth coriander and dried shrimp powder and mix with a spoon. Decant into your serving dish or bowl and serve immediately.
Filed under Uncategorized
