When my mother moved to America to marry my father, she brought with her Thai comfort food and a bright, unwavering smile. She is a woman who worries about her gray hair, and laughs almost too much. Wherever she goes she carries with her the idyllic air of Sridonmoon\u2014the remote village in Chiang Saen where she was raised. Both she and there are defined by a natural tendency to follow life\u2019s current, wherever it goes. To her, the tried ways are the best ways, and the recipes she uses were passed down through generations by mouth and memory of hand.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Lyle L:\u00a0 <\/strong>Let\u2019s start with where you grew up, Mom. Could you give me a precise location?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Noi L: <\/strong>I grew up in a small village in the valley, close to the Thai-Laos-Burma border, about an hour\u2019s drive from Chiang Rai.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n L: <\/strong>So the Golden Triangle, right?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n L: <\/strong>I know when I think of the Golden Triangle I think of food, but a lot of people think of drugs.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> *laughs* I know. Maybe we shouldn\u2019t say Golden Triangle and say \u201cChiang Saen\u201d instead.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L: <\/strong>What was life like living in Thailand?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N: <\/strong>I grew up around people and the gardens that they grew, got eggs from the chickens they raised, got fish from rivers nearby, got rice from the rice paddies.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:\u00a0 <\/strong>This was in Sridonmoon right?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N: <\/strong>That\u2019s right, but no one knows about Sridonmoon. I like to say I\u2019m from around Chiang Rai instead.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L: <\/strong>It sounds like the food was very fresh. What\u2019s the freshest thing you\u2019ve eaten?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> I loved the fish. We never bought dead or frozen fish. We bought fish directly from people in the village and it was always fresh\u2014catfish, snakehead, eel. Sometimes Grandpa fished but he barely caught anything. Oh, and tilapia. Grandpa has this huge pond where he raises tilapia.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L: <\/strong>So what was your favorite dish that Grandma made for you?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N: <\/strong>My favorite dish was nam ngio<\/em>. It\u2019s this spicy soup with shallots, tomato, chili, garlic, lemongrass, shrimp paste\u2014some people put in fermented soybeans. I like to use pork ribs making it but some people use ground pork. Grandma didn\u2019t make the noodles that go with it but there were people in the village who made it handmade from grinding glutinous rice.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L: <\/strong>Of course I remember nam ngio<\/em>. You always make these big pots and I know that there\u2019s a taste difference between the day you make it and the day afterwards. It was like two different dishes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N: <\/strong>*laughs* Yeah, I suppose.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> Okay, if you were to describe Northern Thai cuisine, how would you describe it?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N: <\/strong>The Northern Thai love fresh ingredients, something they can eat with a lot of vegetables. They\u2019re very fine and delicate\u2014like with shrimp paste, there are many little steps, and when they cut things they make sure it is cut into very small pieces. When they mash things they make sure it is blended very well. Everything you eat with sticky rice.<\/p>\n L:<\/strong> But we don\u2019t eat sticky rice at home.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> That\u2019s because it\u2019s so hard to cook! And sticky rice, in the sense, it\u2019s very heavy, and very unhealthy, but the reason the people over there eat it for three meals is because they have to work hard on the farms. That sticky rice is quite filling.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> So we both know there\u2019s this simple desert you make with sticky rice, coconut milk, sugar, and mangoes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> Some people sprinkle white sesame seeds too.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> Yes. A lot of Westerners who have been to Thailand seem to know this dessert, as well as other dishes such as pad thai<\/em> and green curry. America has sort of adopted this as \u201cThai cuisine\u201d. How do you feel about that?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> It\u2019s not really authentic. It\u2019s been modified to suit Western tastes. You know that Thai food is very spicy, and not a lot of people can handle that spice, so a lot of it has been adapted. And you know pad thai? Some fancy restaurants serve it but it\u2019s a street food in Thailand. Sometimes though they also cut tomatoes into flowers and put a lot of work into the look of the dish\u2014and I think this is very true to Thai food in general.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> I agree, though, you know I\u2019m only half-Thai, so I can appreciate this sort of\u00a0 \u201cwatered-down\u201d cuisine. Going off that, you\u2019ve watched Parts Unknown<\/em> with me, and there\u2019s an episode that\u2019s named \u201cThailand\u201d but it\u2019s really Northern Thailand. One of the hosts, Andy Ricker, has established several Northern Thai restaurants in Seattle, and I think this would be a great trend for the rest of America to pounce upon. Do you think food like that could ever be accepted?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> I would think Northern Thai restaurants will become more popular in the future. Like sticky rice with mu bing<\/em> and sai ua<\/em>\u2014people would really like it if they were more adventurous. Chicharr\u00f3n too, the Mexicans already brought it. I would really like it. If there was a restaurant here that sold sai ua<\/em>, I would go and buy it all the time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> I would like that too.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> Because you know, in areas of diversity, you\u2019ll find more people who will appreciate authentic cuisine. If you go to San Francisco or Chicago, there are people from different communities. They cook with a variety of spices and appreciate the spices of other countries.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n L:<\/strong> Okay, one last question to wrap this up. What is a dish you\u2019ve eaten that you think would be super weird to Americans?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n N:<\/strong> Snake soup. Normally the cook will make sure the venomous parts have been removed. Then they grill it so it\u2019s easy to take the scales off. Then they\u2019ll take the skin off and fry that skin for a garnish to use later. The snake is chopped up and put in a soup with lots of spice in there. And it tastes great!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my mother moved to America to marry my father, she brought with her Thai comfort food and a bright, unwavering smile. She is a woman who worries about her gray hair, and laughs almost too much. Wherever she goes she carries with her the idyllic air of Sridonmoon\u2014the remote village in Chiang Saen where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}