This is a similar soup to the first, which I've never seen on the menu of a Thai restaurant. It's peasant food from the northeast region of Thailand. I first tried it at my uncle's house behind the county jail complex in Conkan, Thailand. My aunt and uncle made amazing meals in their outdoors kitchen area, which was comprised of a glass-doored cabinet to keep away flies and ants from fresh food, a spigot and tub for washing up, one plug-in electric burner, and one wood coal-burning cylinder on the dirt floor, out of which spilled a little hill of gray ash and orange embers. They had a refrigerator, which was used mostly to keep the drinking water cold and to chill fruit. All of the ingredients were bought fresh at the nearby open-air markets -- gorgeous yellow het nang fa, oyster mushrooms which are called female angel mushrooms in Thai; fuschia dragonfruit with succulent snowy white flesh; wood-fired fish grilled to flaky perfection.
My grandma would come out for her once-a-day "outside time," slipping on the ubiquitous flip-flops which every member of every Thai household owns a pair of, and stepping onto the fine reddish dust of the "porch" area. My aunt would set up several dishes on the low wicker table which served as both chairs and dining table for the whole family, and later in the day, chaise lounge for grandma, under a straw mat overhang which did little to block out the fierce equator sun. My uncle would come out in his natty brown polyester jailer's uniform, my cousins in their neatly ironed uniforms of pilgrim collared white blouses and long, pleated navy skirts, and my aunt in her country wrap sarong and tank top. We all sat down with five inch Corelle plates to share our hearty breakfast in the relatively low humidity of a northeast Thai morning, reaching across the wicker for a hunk of hot sticky rice, or a little grilled fish, or some spicy bamboo stew. The molting pet chickens would come by, clucking and pecking at stones on the ground, trying to sneak a bite off of our plates and hurrying away, even if it was chicken they were stealing. (Chickens are not very discerning eaters.)
I loved dipping my ball of sticky rice into this hot, savory soup, crunchy with fresh herbs and full of incredible flavor. Chickens in other parts of the world just seem to taste better. They don't look like our white, hormone-pumped Schwarzenegger chickens. They're scrawny, a bit stringier, but one little chicken adds more flavor to a soup than ten Purdue specimens could. That said, use free-range chicken, organic if you can get it. This soup keeps fairly well -- just add more chopped herbs when you heat it up for the second day for that extra punch of freshness. Here, the tartness is provided by macam pieak, cooking tamarind, which can be found at the Thai and many Asian grocery stores. It comes in a little shrink wrapped 5x4" block in the dried foods section.
Swa
12 cups water
1 tasty chicken, cut into pieces
1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 3 inch pieces and pounded
5 double-leaves of kaffir lime leaves
1 3 inch piece of galangal, cut into 1/8" slices
3 shallots, sliced
1 finger-size block of macam pieak,cooking tamarind
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. uncooked rice
1 tsp. dried crushed red chili, plus more to taste
4 scallions, sliced thinly
handful of cilantro with stems, roughly chopped
handful of mint, roughly chopped
Fish sauce to taste
Boil the water. When it comes to a rolling boil, add 2 tsp. salt, lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal, shallots and tamarind. Bring to a boil again and add the chicken. Boil it at a rolling boil, skimming the scum. In another dry pan, toast the rice until it is the color of almond skin. Crush the toasted rice in a mortar pestle until it's pretty fine, like the texture of white sand. When the chicken is tender and cooked, 20 minutes, remove from heat. Add the crushed chili, the crushed toasted rice, the chopped herbs, and some fish sauce to adjust the salt level.
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I thought a lot about those poor chickens when the bird flu epidemic hit southeast Asia. This is a picture I took at dusk behind my uncle's house, when the roosters flew up into the lower branches of the tamarind tree to roost for the night. When I was there in November of last year, chickens were everywhere. Everyone had pet chickens, and the fully plumed roosters were kept under big straw domes in front of many houses in Ban Ponesawang, the tiny dirt-road village my mother grew up in. Every morning, starting at about 3 or 4 a.m., those roosters would start crowing as though someone were cutting their gonads off. Now I grew up sleeping through the sound of train horns blasting, the reverberations of the chugging wheels shaking the house; I've slept through snake-like lines of speed-freak cab drivers honking their horns incessantly at the corner of Bleecker and the Bowery; but I could not get any fucking sleep once these g.d. roosters started up at the crack of dawn. My mom went to visit Thailand after the bird flu forced a mass chicken-cleansing across the nation, and especially in my family's region. She said there were no chickens anywhere; no more roosters crowing in the morning, no more scraggly chickens to wave away at the breakfast table. I felt guilty for all of the murderous thoughts I had, lying awake in the mosquito-buzz mornings at my uncle's house. The moral of this story? Don't count your chickens before they're hacked. And eat more Swa while you can.
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