A Taste of Thai: dtom som hoi maleeng puu (mussel and ginger soup)

I'll get to the Ireland photos and details eventually, but for the moment, I prefer to let my memories of that green island linger deeply in the mind - if they rise close to the surface, the unending sun and heat of a Southern California summer threatens to burn them off. In the meantime, our friend's recent preparation of "soaked chicken" and the resulting aromas of lime, ginger and cilantro filling our kitchen led me to take down from the bookshelf a wonderful if imposing book of authentic Thai recipes and flip through for a suitably simple yet complexly flavored dish.

David Thompson is both an Australian chef and a food writer, and considered one of the finest ambassadors for Thai culture and food working today. His book Thai Food runs to nearly 700 pages and concerns itself as much with Thai society, culture and history as with individual recipes. To call this work a cookbook is to do it an injustice - it's more a survey of a country and a comprehensive explanation of how food helps shape a people.

I tend to eat most of my Thai food in restaurants, largely due to the fact that our kitchen reflects my European heritage, resulting in an over-abundance of ingredients and spices that can be easily carried over between ethnic lines (Italian today, Iberian tomorrow). The cuisine of Asia - China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, to say nothing of India - represents an entirely separate blending of flavors, ingredients, and cooking preparations. In fact, in order to prepare authentic or even near-authentic Thai dishes, one must practically accrue a separate and individual pantry. I've tried substituting ingredients in the past for Thai or Vietnamese dishes, and while the results were certainly edible, they had little to no relation to the richly seasoned dishes I'd sampled in restaurants.

So, a few nights back, I set about locating a recipe that required the smallest amount of "exotic" ingredients possible. The idea was to make a quick trip to the grocery store and not spend a fortune on small bottles or jars of oddly-named or -flavored substances that might not be used again anytime soon. Luckily, I stumbled upon a concise recipe for dtom som hoi malaeng puu, or mussel and ginger soup. Aside from the mussels, I counted only 3 seasoning ingredients not already in our pantry - palm sugar, tamarind water and coriander root. Along with a few other needed ingredients (ginger, shallots, baby bok choy for a side dish), my total at Whole Foods came to less than $30 - stunning, in a way.

I was skeptical of the need for palm sugar, assuming that the other varieties of cane and granulated sugar already in our pantry would offer a reasonably similar flavor profile. In the end, I caved in and grabbed a small bag of cane sugar off the shelf, going for less than $3.




And am I glad I did. Popping open the top of the palm sugar bag, I sniffed the contents and was instantly transported back inside one of our favorite area Thai restaurants, Kafe Yen. Ah, so these were the fragrant brown crumbles found in the lovely appetizer mieng kham, alongside the roasted peanuts, coconut and diced lime in lemongrass sauce! I can only describe the smell as being somewhat close to crushed graham crackers. At any rate, an essential ingredient. Of course, I later found out that even the variety of palm sugar makes a big difference in Asian dishes. The organic palm sugar I picked up was actually produced in Indonesia. Malaysia also produces palm sugar, as does Thailand. A helpful post on the food blog Chez Pim points out that the three varieties of palm sugar differ quite markedly, and that one should always attempt to use Thai palm sugar for any Thai dishes. Well, whoops (the post adds, however, that even regular cane sugar can be used in a pinch as a substitute for palm sugar, by adding a bit of maple sugar - something that, having tasted palm sugar, makes absolute sense).

Tamarind water was yet another ingredient our pantry was lacking, and a few Internet searches suggested that one could recreate the ingredient at home simply through using actual tamarind pulp. Whole Foods had neither tamarind water nor tamarind pulp, but it did have small cheap jars of tamarind paste. Surely, one could dilute this down with liquid to create a poor man's tamarind water....right?

Well, I'm not sure. I was able to mix the thick paste with some water, swirl it around, and let it sit as I busied about with the other ingredients, and by the time I was ready to add the concoction to the soup pot, it seemed to have blended nicely. Still, I'm sure my improvising violated at least one tenet of traditional Thai cooking.

As for "one teaspoon scraped and chopped coriander root" - I had plenty of fresh cilantro / coriander at home, but the roots had been removed, as seems standard practice for Western groceries. Seems like Asian markets value these roots far more than others, and I found more than one Chowhound forum devoted to inquiring where in various areas (from Orange County to Boston) one might find coriander roots. The general consensus seemed to be if one did not live near a large Asian grocery store, simply use the chopped stems of cilantro as an acceptable substitute.

So...that's 3 traditional and important ingredients, and 3 semi-strikes. Luckily, I already had gapi or shrimp paste, and plenty of fish sauce - two essential additions of Thai flavor (I'd be curious to hear from any vegetarians or vegans out there how they create their Thai dishes without recourse to either of these ingredients, which seem so evocative of Thai food).

The recipe for the mussel and ginger soup can be found below. I ended up mashing the intensely aromatic paste on our front porch, in order to escape the late afternoon heat of the kitchen. Within a few moments of scraping the chopped cilantro stems, salt, garlic, red shallot, ginger. shrimp paste and peppercorns, I knew I was on the right track. Later, as the soup stock cooked and bubbled, I removed the lid several times from the pot to deeply breathe in the thickening aromas. "It's starting to smell like the real thing, isn't it?" I asked Jane several times.

When the soup was finally ready, we ladled it into brand new bowls purchased in Ireland (nothing wrong with global fusion, right?). The portions were small, with only three mussels per person. Yet the size was perfect, especially given the strong flavors and copious amounts of ginger. The recipe said the soup "should taste equally sweet, sour and salty" - and it did. Even with my amateurish substitutions and total white guy ignorance, what came out of the pot was something I would have no hesitation paying $5.95 for at any favorite Thai establishment.

Dtom som hoi malaeng puu

Mussel and ginger soup

1 tablespoon oil

2 tablespoons palm sugar

2 tablespoons tamarind water

2 tablespoons fish sauce

2 cups chicken stock

1/2 cup shredded ginger

6 oz. mussels, cleaned and debearded

3 green onions, cut into 1 inch lengths

1 tablespoon cilantro / coriander

pinch of ground pepper

paste

1 teaspoon scraped and chopped coriander root (or cilantro stems)

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 tablespoon chopped red shallot

1 tablespoon chopped ginger

1/4 teaspoon shrimp paste

10 peppercorns

First, make the paste, using a mortar and pestle. Slowly and gradually pound the ingredients together until smooth.

Heat oil and fry paste over medium heat until fragrant and beginning to turn a light golden color. Add sugar and simmer for a minute, then add tamarind water and fish sauce.

Pour in stock and add half the ginger. When the soup comes to a boil, add the mussels and turn the heat down to a simmer. Cover for a few moments, until the mussels open.

Add the other half of the ginger and the green onions. Taste for seasoning. Serve, sprinkled with cilantro leaves and pepper.

This recipe made two small yet satisfactory servings.