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October 21, 2009
wat dong moon lek
Outside a temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
There are days when I wish I lived anywhere but LA. I can't face the traffic battle to my job in Beverly Hills, can't stand the looks from women with Botox-frozen faces and their tiny dogs, can't fight the tide of noisepeoplesmogmallscarsbillboardsmoney. It makes me want to find a small cabin in the woods and move right in.
But then I go somewhere like Wat Dong Moon Lek, a new Thai restaurant just a few blocks from my house, and remember there are no Thai noodles in the woods. It's a major flaw in my plan.
The chalkboard menu.
Wat Dong Moon Lek has been open for a few months, but since a write-up in the LA Times last week, business has exploded. I stopped by with Jessica, who has been talking to me about the place for several weeks, and the owner immediately recognized her and greeted us warmly. "You came here even before the article!" she told Jessica. On this Tuesday night all the tables were full, but service was speedy and exceptionally attentive.
Rambutan salad.
I had to get the rambutan salad, cool slippery orbs of fruit dressed with coconut milk and garnished with sesame seeds, sliced onions, Thai chilis and cooked shrimp. Rambutans are a pink, prickly-skinned, lychee-like fruit which I don't think I've ever even seen in the U.S., let alone eaten in a salad that so expertly balances the sweet and the savory. Tiny explosions of nuttiness and heat went off in my mouth as I chewed, the sweet rambutan flesh mingling with the salty coconut milk, and I was reminded of how when I was growing up my dad would fill a plate with sliced pineapple from the salad bar at Sizzler and eat it dipped in salt. Sweet, salty, sour -- it's a synergy even my nine-year-old self appreciated, though I still found the whole pineapple-with-salt thing super weird.
Wat Dong Moon Lek noodles with beef.
We both got small bowls of the restaurant's namesake noodles with beef, surprisingly large portions of medium-rare meat, rice stick noodles and bean sprouts swimming in beefy broth, garnished with thinly sliced lettuce and a sprinkle of white pepper. The broth tasted familiar though I had never before eaten this style of noodle soup, which is the specialty of a particular shop adjacent to a temple in Bangkok. I realized it reminded me of beef Cup Noodles, which sounds terrible but listen! Obviously the fresh broth in Wat Dong Moon Lek's noodle soup is worlds away from the thin, sad stuff you find in a paper-topped cup, with a body and intensity Nissin could never replicate, but to tell you the truth I loved beef Cup Noodles as a kid. And these noodles are like the grown-up version I never knew existed.
Chile peppercorn with pork.
I had wanted to round out the meal with khao man gai, Thailand's version of Hainanese chicken rice, but they had already run out so we ordered chile peppercorn with pork, tender pieces of meat in a dry red curry speckled with Thai basil leaves and a branch of soft green peppercorns. Each mouthful was a spicy, balanced blast of flavor and I found myself picking out the peppercorns to nibble on even after I was full.
Coconut smoothie.
Linda Burum's description of the sophisticated dessert offerings had my betsu-bara rumbling, but unfortunately they had run out of dessert so I had to content myself with the icy dregs of my refreshing, not-too-sweet coconut smoothie.
I couldn't be happier to finally have a good Thai place in Silver Lake. A GOOD Thai place with inventive food, friendly service and an exuberant turquoise interior complete with colorful chalkboard pictures of Obama and Elvis. The LA Times coverage has the small space bursting at the seams right now and a midweek visit is the way to go, but hopefully things will settle down soon. I'll be checking back for khao man gai and desserts next week.
(Psst...it's cash only, so bring your Hamiltons.)
Wat Dong Moon Lek
4356 Fountain Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 666-5993
Posted by anjali at 4:10 PM | Comments (12) | Categories: Restaurant | Silver Lake & Nearby
October 5, 2009
land of plenty
Preserved eggs with green peppers.
Don't tell my boyfriend, but I often daydream about moving to a foreign country noted for its cuisine -- say, Italy or Thailand -- and becoming fluent enough in that country's language to attend culinary school there. Fuschia Dunlop lived that dream, becoming the first foreigner to enroll in a professional training course at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu, China. I was excited when my cookbook club picked her Sichuanese cookbook, Land of Plenty
Before starting to cook, a few of us took a field trip to the 99 Ranch Market in Arcadia to stock up on staples like Shaoxing rice wine, wood ear mushrooms and Sichuan pepper, a strange, tongue-numbing spice that is an essential element in Sichuanese cuisine. Its numbing coolness provides an intriguing counterpoint to the spicy heat of the chiles used liberally in many Sichuanese dishes, kind of like jumping into a cold pool after a long sauna bake.
Spicy cucumber salad.
We met on a scorching summer day to eat some dishes from the book and talk about the recipes. Like many Asian cuisines, Sichuanese food is fairly straightforward once you have the right ingredients. Often dishes require just a few ingredients yet have a surprising depth of flavor, like the Zucchini Slivers with Garlic I made or Ellen's Spicy Cucumber Salad. Because the recipes are so spare, they demand the freshest, best-tasting vegetables, something I discovered after making the Haricots Verts in Ginger Sauce with green beans that were a bit tough and starchy. After a short blanching and light dressing with ginger, Chinese vinegar and sesame oil, the beans were tough, starchy and tasted faintly of ginger-sesame. Lesson learned.
Of the 23 flavors in the Sichuanese culinary canon, probably the most distinctive is "hot and numbing flavor" (ma la wei xing), a combination of spicy chiles and cooling Sichuan pepper. One of the first recipes I attempted was ma po dou fu -- tofu simmered in chile oil and a small amount of ground meat, sprinkled with Sichuan pepper -- and I was hooked on the odd, numbing sensation, as well as the comforting flavors of the dish. Strangely enough, the combination of chili bean paste and ground beef reminds me of bolognese sauce. In a good way.
Another flavor unique to Sichuan is "fish fragrant flavor" (yu xiang wei xing), which does not taste or smell like fish, but is based on the seasonings traditionally used with fish: Sichuanese chili bean paste, garlic, ginger and scallions. For the meeting, Lily made Fish-Fragrant Eggplants, buttery chunks of fried eggplant soaked in a chili-red sauce spiked with ginger and garlic. I didn't want to stop eating it.
While cooking through the book, I kept thinking back on Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper and wishing I was reading it at the same time, so I could figure out the stories behind the dishes. The two books should be sold together, a boxed set for those who dream of moving far away and cooking their hearts out, but can't because they love their boyfriends who have to stay in LA for career reasons. Or is that too specific a readership?
My recommendation: get both books. Read, cook and dream.
Posted by anjali at 7:38 AM | Comments (13) | Categories: Cookbook
