Video: Night + Market’s Kris Yenbamroong on his grandmother’s pig’s feet

The holidays are the only time Kris Yenbamroong’s whole family gets together, and that means there’s going to be a lot of food. His grandmother, whom he says taught him everything he knows about Thai-Chinese cooking, specializes in this dish made from pig trotters.

It’s old-school home cooking -- a series of very carefully executed steps. The trotters are seared over an open flame and then any overly scorched parts are scraped away. Then they’re cooked briefly in a Thai caramel sauce and finished with fish sauce, thin and dark soy sauce and an herb paste made with garlic, cilantro stems and white pepper.

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Finally, they’re braised low and slow with galangal, more cilantro and Chinese five-spice powder (cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel and, for Yenbamroong, white pepper). It’s better prepared the day before serving, so it can be chilled and reheated, which results in a flavor he describes as khao neuah, kind of like well-developed, or muscular.

“Parlow is a marquee dish for the holiday,” he says. “For our family and for a lot of Thai-Chinese families, it’s always going to be served either directly from the pot or in a big platter in the middle of the table. It’s something that’s so good it’s inherently delicious and everybody wants some of it. So it’s something we cook in the largest quantity and everybody takes at least two helpings of it and we’ll never miss a chance to do it.”

Night + Market, 9041 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 275-9724, thenightmarket.blogspot.com.

We asked Niki Nakayama from N/Naka, Eduardo Ruiz from Corazon y Miel, Kris Yenbamroong from Night + Market, Miles Thompson from Allumette, and Josiah Citrin from Melisse to let their imaginations go with the holiday flavors that meant the most to them. There are no recipes, just creative cooks thinking about food in a different way and then telling us about what’s important to them, but on the plate and in their homes.

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