Flashback to March 14 - Where there are no Garduno's

March 14, 2012:

It would be hard to overestimate the power of today. I don’t know what significance March 14 holds in the annals of history, but for us, it will forever be the day when we gave over the cooking of Spanish rice to three Thai women who had no idea what they were making or what we were saying, but who know their way around a coal fire and a pot of rice so well that within a few seconds of comprehending what we wanted to do, they were well on their way to doing it for us.

And so it goes…. Today we had the day “off” from our PST work – ostensibly a day to spend with family and to spend packing our stuff for our big move on Sunday. (By the time I post this, it might be right about Sunday, but that’s how this delayed blogging thing works.) Our big move on Sunday will take us and all of our crap (more on that, below) back to the hotel in Sing Buri where we stayed when we first got here. On Monday, we swear in – a phrase that doesn’t quite capture, as it should, the enormity of what we’re doing, unless you really think about it. Although at some point we have probably seen the words to the oath, that hasn’t been much in our heads since we have been so wrapped up in PST. But on Monday, we’ll get a copy of the promise we’re making, to our country and to this one, and then, this shit gets real.

All that said, I digress.

If you didn’t absorb what I said above, please think about it again: we somehow managed to make enough Spanish rice to feed thirty people by giving over the process entirely to three of our 5 Thai mees, and letting them do the job for us. The day officially started with a seven a.m. trip to the market, where we purchased five kilograms of chicken breasts, plus the carcasses of the seven chickens (minus heads) that had donated their fine white meat to the fajitas cause. (I say officially because by seven I’d already put in a load of laundry and eaten a cracker and washed my face. In that order.)

550 baht. 11 pounds of meat. Plus some unweighed quantity of bones.

Then we bought onions. Cilantro. Prik. Lime juice. Tomatoes. We had to get the prik yaai mai pet (large peppers, not spicy) because there weren’t any bell peppers (prik waan, or sweet peppers) available at the market.

150 baht. I didn’t see the scale but I’m pretty sure we ended up with about 12 yellow onions, 20 prik yaai mai pet, which are like exaggerated cartoon versions of the super small and pointy peppers that light your mouth up. They say they’re not hot, but after removing the seeds and then wiping the sweat off my face about 20 minutes later, I can assure you that they will certainly burn your skin. Not too terrible on the tongue though.

We also had more tomatoes than you’d care to shake a stick at (what does that expression mean, anyway?) and a bunch of cilantro. Actually, 3 bunches, which, it turned out, were not for our fajitas (as we hoped) but were instead for the som dtam that was also being made at our house.

Once we got home, around 8, I’d guess (I took off my watch and didn’t put sunscreen on my wrist in order to even out my tan today), it was go go go. And oh no, wait. And, what? And yes, and no, and okay, and a lot of shrugging and pointing and peeling and chopping.

Josh started skinning and chopping the chicken. Mee 1 understands that the bones need to be boiled, so she pretty much took that over immediately.

I started cutting the onions. Mee 3 (or is she 2?) saw what I was doing and immediately started peeling, washing and chopping her own onions just like mine. Then with the garlic. Then with the prik. Finally (after we switched out bowls approximately 11 times), we ended up with a vat (yes, I mean a vat) of chicken and onions and prik. Josh was poised on the kitchen mat with a bottle of lime juice (and surrounded by the fish sauces, MSG, sugar and other various sauces we didn’t intend to use). The gasps of disbelief that arose from the crowd (our 14 year old neighbors, Ice and Beng) as Josh poured in half the bottle onto the chicken were hilarious. Followed with oil. Then pepper, salt, and cumin.

Then a bit more drama as we realized that it’s about 9 am and already about 99 degrees out. And the vat of chicken won’t fit into the fridge. And the guests aren’t coming till 2 or 3 pm. So Ice and Beng and I trot off to the corner to buy two bags of ice, which, after some more negotiation, we end up tucking into the vat of chicken, which then goes into the shade, i.e., that portion of the kitchen which happens to be in the house.
On to the salsa. Easy enough, except Josh was a little at a loss without the blender. Nevertheless, tomatoes, onions, prik, lime, pepper, salt, garlic, and love in a bowl, started to look like salsa. (And that bowl fit in the fridge.)

And onto the next thing… Josh brought up the rice, which as any good New Mexican knows, you have to fry first, with garlic and onions, before boiling in chicken broth and adding tomato paste and tomatoes. At first, the Mees were apprehensive about the idea of frying the rice. They tried at least three times to sell us on the idea of making the rice in the rice cooker. Josh at one point even thought he should give up on the idea. But somehow, he got across the process and the ultimate goal, and then Mee 2 (or is she 3) took over. Josh fried up the first batch of rice in a small wok with onions and garlic once the Mees got the charcoal fire going. He and I looked skeptically at the remaining rice, which Mee 1 had cleaned already, which was waiting to go into the pan. I’d already put all the garlic and onions I had prepared into the first batch. Josh and I were clearly each feeling the same skepticism about the rest of the rice: “if we make it, will they eat it?” and we voiced this to each other, each deciding separately, and then together, that we would probably forego trying to make the rest of it. But then, I noticed the Mees were cutting more garlic, chopping more onions, and taking over from Josh as they dumped more and more rice into the wok, combining it all with the broth we’d made, and setting it back over the coals to cook boil. To hell with us. They’d decided to finish the batch, and all we could hope was that someone showed up to eat it.

A few times we checked in on it. They added more broth, turned the pot, stoked the coals, and pretty much told us to go away. So we gave up on that, figuring they probably wouldn’t ruin enough rice to feed the whole village.

Finally, the tortillas. We had already bought the flour, baking soda, and Crisco (yup.) at the supermarket in town on Sunday. I had copied down two recipes from about 3 minutes worth of internet research. We had expressed our need for a hard round object to roll out the dough. (Rolling pin doesn’t translate, at least not in our rudimentary Thai.) We managed to get the dough into a serviceable condition, and I was provided with an empty and cleaned Hong Thong whiskey bottle to roll out the dough, along with a clean plastic mat to lay on the counter. As I rolled the dough into small balls and laid them on the counter, my audience of teenage girls grew. They seemed fascinated, but they didn’t want to help. I wonder, would I have wanted to, at that age?
The rice was finished and set aside, and the coals reappropriated for use with a small, flat-bottomed skillet (perhaps the only one on the block) to make the tortillas in.

The girls moved outside as I provided Josh with batch after batch of ready-to-cook tortillas. He sat by the fire, under a lopsided beach-like umbrella, metal spatula in hand, while the girls watched. I rolled tortillas. Josh talked to the girls. I rolled more tortillas. They came into the kitchen to deliver them to Josh. Finally, after I rolled about the 50th tortilla, I came outside. Josh was trying to explain the state of New Mexico and its unfortunate lack of a seashore. So I brought out the Atlas. (The size of the U.S. is always a crowd pleaser).

After oohing and aahing over the Atlas (it’s in Thai) a little bit, the girls grew bored. We mentioned limeade and suddenly a new flurry of activity erupted. I took over the tortilla making while Josh went to start frying up the fajita meat, onions, and peppers is a wok that’s practically large enough for you to sleep in. I was soon called away from the tortillas to start the limeade; somehow the women had juiced about 20 limes and lemons in a matter of minutes, and soon I was boiling water to make simple syrup and adding it to the lime juice. Our neighbor/little sister, Ice, couldn’t have been more delighted that I had another task to do. She immediately took over the tortilla making.

While she finished that, and after I set the limeade out to cool, I started chopping the cheese (yes, delicious, real cheese that we’d purchased three pounds of!) It’s hard to grate cheese without the proper instrument, so I spent about 20 minutes attempting to hack it up into small strips with a meat cleaver. Oh well.
Within about 5 minutes of finishing the limeade, the tortillas, and the filling, our friends started showing up. We began dishing out food, and then the real fun began.

After each of our family members tentatively accepted a plate of food, we watched a few of them go back for seconds, and even thirds. Even Nick’s family, who received a carry out bag of Spanish rice and chicken (tortillas and salsa were long gone by then), ate and enjoyed it. By the end of the day, we had gotten through most of the food (the rest was sent around the neighborhood or with our friends in small plastic carryout bags), and our mee’s were asking Josh to tell them the ingredients for each dish.

I wonder when they’ll next attempt a New Mexican meal… Maybe they’ll cook it for us when we come visit.