Thai : MARKETS : The Big Bang Market

When you walk into Bangluck Thai Market’s newest branch in Pomona, the constant high-pitched beep of bar-code scanners and Thai convenience foods in shopper’s baskets make the store seem a million miles removed from Thailand’s traditional markets. But Bangluck hasn’t lost touch with typical Thai shoppers.

In the old country, Thais for centuries bought their food at colorful “floating” marketplaces. Vendors in long, narrow, flat-bottomed boats hawked a kaleidoscopic array of tropical produce, seafood and flowers. Along the country’s network of interconnecting rivers and canals, selling prepared foods and specialties was a thriving business. Rice from the countryside was transported down the Chao Praya River to Bangkok’s central market at Ba Khlong Dalat on huge, flat barges linked together like a train.

Today most neighborhood shopping areas in Thailand are on dry land. Many of the waterways have been covered over and turned into highways. At Ba Khlong Dalat, trucks, which are swiftly replacing the rice barges, deliver their cargo to the market’s landward side. Thailand has supermarkets now, but there are still open markets run by independent merchants and filled with the tempting scents of curry dealers and stands peddling all kinds of cooked foods. “If you really want to eat well,” Thais will tell you, “try the noodle vendors and Chinese barbecue stalls at the night market.”

So when Bangluck’s owners opened their first store in 1985, they included a Chinese barbecue on the premises and next door a California version of market noodle vendors and rice-plate sellers that they called Sanamluang Cafe. To help customers feel at home, they also installed, at the corner of the parking lot, a beautiful Thai spirit house encrusted with a mirror mosaic (so people could pay respects to their ancestors) and next to that, a Thai bookstore.

That first Bangluck store opened at the center of the oldest Thai community in Hollywood--a neighborhood where you find Thai cabarets, after-hours rice-soup shops and other restaurants catering to Thais. But Thais began moving out of the congested Hollywood area to seek more affordable housing. And in 1987 Bangluck’s owners opened a second store, in North Hollywood near Wat Thai, the Thai Buddhist temple. The newer store also had a Sanamluang Cafe and a much larger B.B.Q. Heaven in a separate shop next to a combination newsstand, video rental and cookware store.

That market was extremely successful, according to Topin Punyodyana, general manager of all three stores. Next the partners looked around for another location, which they found in a former Alpha Beta in Pomona.

“There was room for live fish in tanks and a 45-foot seafood and fish counter,” Punyodyana said. The fish, which can be bought deep-fried to order, started to attract a rather international crowd from the neighborhood.

The owners responded by stocking more varied ingredients. The Pomona Bangluck is the first to carry an extensive selection of Mexican foods, including Mexican cornflakes. An Indonesian section, filled with all sorts of sambals and sauce mixes called bumbus , is much larger than at the other two stores and even includes a few Dutch items. The Filipino ingredients go way beyond the basics. And since Thais cook Chinese dishes and use Chinese ingredients in their own food, you find just about everything anyone would want for Chinese cooking.

The new Bangluck may be near an off-ramp of the Interstate 10 instead of a graceful canal in Thailand. It may have a ‘90s look to it, and by now the clientele is accustomed to American-style supermarketing. But Bangluck hasn’t forgotten that Thais love to eat at the market. So they’ve built an even bigger food facility at the Pomona store--a combination B.B.Q. Heaven and Sanamluang cafe where you can get great Thai food. You can also hear lots of Spanish, English and Tagalog as people polish off their rice combination plates and bowls of Thai noodles.

SHOPPING LIST

* Coconut Milk: The liquid squeezed from fresh coconut meat gives a wonderful richness to certain soups, curries and Thai desserts. In Thailand, coconut meat scraped from the shell by a mechanical rotating scraper is sold fresh. But preparing coconut milk from whole coconuts--as many Thai cookbooks suggest--is an arduous task. Fresh-frozen coconut milk, however, is quite satisfactory, and in a pinch a good brand of canned will do.

At Bangluck, look for frozen coconut milk packed in flat plastic bags. Thaw it unwrapped in a bowl overnight in the refrigerator. If a recipe calls for coconut cream, chill the milk, undisturbed, in an open can or bowl for several hours, then skim off the rich portion that floats to the top. If this cream is too thick, simply stir some of the remaining liquid into it until it has the consistency desired.

Some cooks in Thailand eliminate even more liquid from the cream by squeezing it in a cloth to get a very rich substance that’s almost like butter. They use this to fry curry pastes before adding the remaining coconut milk and other ingredients to the dish.

Canned coconut milk is particularly variable in quality. But International Pacific Foods, Bangluck’s Vernon-based importing company, packs its own brand according to strict standards.

* Lemon Grass: The fragrant lemony undertone you taste in many Thai soups comes from lemon grass, also known as citronella, one of the most common herbs used in Thai cuisine. Lemon grass gets pounded into curries and shredded for some salad-type dishes. The “grass” is actually a cluster of long, slightly bulbous stalks with long, pointy fibrous leaves similar in shape to green onions. Because it has such a woody, fibrous texture, lemon grass is seldom eaten except when it’s thinly sliced and pounded to a pulp in a mortar with other curry ingredients.

It’s always best to buy lemon grass fresh, writes Nancie McDermott in her cookbook “Real Thai” (Chronicle Books), because dried lemon grass has lost nearly all its flavor. She suggests freezing fresh lemon grass when you find it at a good price. Remove the green leaves and any dry outer sheaths of the stalk just as you would before using the lemon grass for cooking. Wrap the stalks well before freezing.

* Bai Makrut (or Magrood): The aromatic, slightly bitter citrus flavor that’s so familiar in hot-and-sour shrimp soup and many Thai salads comes from the Kaffir lime leaf or bai makrut ( bai is Thai for “leaf”). Makrut leaves always seem like Siamese twins--identical leaf-shaped ovals stuck together on their branch. Not so long ago you would have had to substitute local lime leaves for bai makrut and the flavor would have been noticeably different. But locally grown bai makrut leaves are now available almost all year round in Bangluck’s produce section.

* Kha (Galangal): This milder-tasting relative of ginger has recently become available fresh in California’s Asian produce sections. Galangal, known as kha in Thai, is shaped like ginger but has smooth, cream-colored skin with pink rings at intervals. The interior is also cream-colored and smooth. Like lemon grass, kha is tough and fibrous and is not eaten, although you’ll often find whole slices floating around in tom kha gai (coconut-chicken soup) or hot-and-sour shrimp soup. Kha also gives a subtle but recognizable flavor to many curries. Although it’s also sold dried, you’ll find its delicate taste has almost disappeared.

* Nam Priks: Technically nam prik means pepper water or juice, but most mixtures called nam prik are thick pastes of crushed chiles blended with other ingredients. Unlike the curry pastes located beside them on Bangluck’s shelves, nam priks are never used with coconut milk.

You will notice from their ingredient lists that nam priks are often made with dried fish, shrimp paste, fermented fish or crab. They evolved when the only way to preserve the country’s main protein source--the seasonal freshwater fish and shellfish caught July through September--was to dry it. Farmers seasoned the fish with lots of chiles and other flavorings such as tamarind or garlic. When the seasoned fish dried, they ground it into storable pastes. For impoverished farmers, nam prik and rice often constituted a whole meal. They are more than mere flavoring; even small quantities of fish with rice provide balanced protein, and the paste’s intense flavor makes plain rice palatable.

Farmers carried their rice and nam prik to the fields. As an accompaniment they would harvest a few fresh herbs--basil, mint and fresh coriander--from beside a rice paddy. They might also gather green beans or cabbage leaves from a nearby field. Even today, when nam prick and rice is eaten in a modern high-rise apartment, these items usually accompany them.

Storable, portable and always ready for a quick snack or meal, the pastes are Thailand’s answer to peanut butter. Many Thais enjoy them spread on toast. A Thai friend suggests: “ Nam prik is really delicious with scrambled eggs.”

Every village and, indeed, every good cook has a special formula for nam prik , and that’s probably why there are dozens of regional varieties available here commercially. In northeast Thailand, the region closest to Cambodia, dried freshwater fish is mixed with rice hulls and fermented to create a nam prik that’s definitely an acquired taste. Some of the basic nam prik mixtures have been fancied up with such ingredients as eggplant, roasted garlic and onion.

* Coconut Sugar and Palm Sugar: Less intensely sweet than cane sugar, palm and coconut sugars are coarse and brown with a definite caramel flavor. Thai cooks have told me they prefer that taste and that the sugars melt more easily into other ingredients in a recipe. Extracted from the coconut palm or from the fruit of the palmyra palm tree, both sugars are used interchangeably in Thai hot sauces, curries and desserts. Palm or coconut sugars are always sold canned. Bangluck carries several brands.

* Roasted Rice Powder: A basic ingredient in Thailand’s northeastern Isaan region as well as neighboring Laos and Cambodia, roasted rice powder gives Isaan salads their distinctive toasty undertones. It is made from sticky rice that has been roasted in a dry pan and pulverized.

ASIAN BASIL

Many of the wonderfully aromatic leaves you find in Thai curries or stir-fries are types of basil, actually a member of the mint family. Thais love many varieties of the herb, which are often dissimilar from the sweet basil found in European cooking. Thai basils can be used interchangeably, although Thais like to pair certain ones with specific dishes.

* Bai Horapa: Also called sweet Asian basil, this is the most commonly used basil in Thai cooking. Its mild anise-like flavor can balance the intense heat of green curry or fresh clams stir-fried with red-hot curry paste. It is especially popular in curries as a last-minute garnish. Long cooking destroys the flavor of bai horapa , so it is always added to dishes a few seconds before they are served.

Of the Asian basils, bai horapa has the flavor closest to the European-style herb. It is easily identified by its pronounced veins, its green shiny leaves and because it often has purple-tinged stems.

* Bai Kraprao: Rarely eaten raw because its pungent flavor emerges only after it is heated, bai kraprao is often found in stir-fries of meat or chicken, with plenty of garlic and fresh minced chile.

Sometimes bai kraprao is called holy basil (it’s unclear where this nickname came from). Its small, jagged-edged leaves are about the size of mint leaves. Their texture, though, is smooth and matte, and they range in color from green to deep-reddish-purple with purple stems. Spring, summer and early fall are the best seasons for bai kraprao ; during other parts of the year its appearance in markets is spotty.

* Bai Maengluk: With its delicate citrus scent and taste, bai maengluk is sometimes known as lemon basil in English. Its slightly fuzzy leaves are smaller and paler than bai horapa. They don’t keep well and must be used soon after you bring them home from the market. Thais love this herb mixed into knom chin , a noodle dish seasoned with a coconut milk-fish curry broth. Bai maengluk is also sprinkled over soups and used in salads.

In “Real Thai,” McDermott offers a recipe for ooh plah , a northeastern-style fish curry steamed in banana leaf packets (or in a saucer) that accents the special character of bai maengluk. The dried seeds of this basil are often soaked until they’re soft and chewy, then mixed into sweet coconut milk drinks to add an interesting texture.

CURRY PASTES

Traditional Thai cooks use mortars and pestles to pound large quantities of fresh garlic, coriander root, lemon grass, chiles and other ingredients into curry pastes that are the seasoning base for curries, soups and other dishes. But looking at the huge selection of curry preparations on Bangluck’s shelves, one might get the feeling that Thais have retired their trusty mortars in favor of purchasing prepared curry pastes. These come packaged in variously sized containers ranging from plastic-lined tinfoil bags or quart-sized plastic buckets to tiny cans holding a few tablespoons.

Prepared curry pastes have come a long way in the past decade. I used to find them in tiny plastic containers with hand-made labels written in Thai script. Now their colorful packaging sports ingredient lists and color pictures that illustrate the finished dish made with the pastes. The products are labeled in Thai, English and Arabic and sometimes French or German. Some packages even have directions. Though the grammar is frequently a little strange, at least you know what to do with the product.

The Thai word kaeng refers both to curries and some soups, so you’ll notice the names of these products often begin with kaeng (also transliterated as gaeng ). The cuisine has scores of variations. Some pastes, such as kaeng Phanaeng , are intended for a specific dish. Others can be prepared using various ingredients--whatever the cook has on hand. Here are a few of the Thai curry pastes and products available at Bangluck.

* Kaeng Keo Wan or Green Curry Paste: Based on tiny fresh green chiles ( prik khi nu ), lemon grass, Kaffir lime peel, garlic and cilantro roots, this is one of the hottest Thai curries. Kaeng keo wan , like most of the curries below, is cooked with coconut milk, which the cook adds after frying the paste to bring out its aroma. Meat or chicken and various vegetables are added, and a few seconds before the curry is removed from the heat, a handful of fresh bai horapa is tossed into the pot.

* Kaeng Phed: A deep-red-colored paste made from dried chiles, kaeng phed complements pork and is often used to make a curry with Chinese roast duck. Its many uses include dishes made with coconut milk, but country-style curries without it are popular rural fare. The paste is also used in non-curry dishes such as steamed catfish seasoned with fried curry paste.

* Kaeng Kari (or Kahree): One of the mildest curries in the Thai repertoire, it is based on lots of turmeric with fresh ginger, lemon grass, garlic, shallots and only a small amount of dry red chiles. Kaeng kari is often used with chicken or shrimp because its mildness won’t mask the flavor of these ingredients. Use it with the fresh bamboo shoots found in the produce department, along with diced carrots and cauliflower or cut-up potatoes.

* Kaeng Mussaman: The Persian word mosolman , meaning Muslim, gives this yellow curry its name. Its flavor is closest in taste to Indian-style curries because it includes similar spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, star anise and cloves. Mild and familiar-tasting, kaeng mussaman is popular in Thai restaurants, where you find it made with shrimp, chicken or meat and many vegetables.

* Kaeng Som: Som means sour, and this paste is the base for a tart, clear, soup-like curry made without coconut milk. The orange paste contains vinegar, and some cooks add diluted tamarind paste. Dried red chiles, onion and shrimp paste are the other main ingredients. A kaeng som usually includes bamboo shoots ( nor mai ), in which case the curry is called kaeng som nor mai. In Bangluck’s produce section, bamboo shoots are packed in large bins of water and displayed whole, sliced and julienned. Add chicken and your dish becomes kaeng som nor mai gai.

* Kaeng Leung: This sour yellow curry, the Southern Thai version of kaeng som , includes tart, fruity tamarind juice and lots of garlic. Southern cooks often add pickled fish stomach to their kaeng leung. Less intimidating versions include nor mai dong , the soured (fermented) bamboo shoots found in the produce section next to the plain whole or julienned bamboo shoots.

* Kaeng Phanaeng (also spelled panang ): A fairly mild red curry paste, always cooked with beef and coconut milk. The dish is usually a good choice for those who don’t like a curry with too much chile heat.

* Chu Chi Curry Paste: A simple red curry based on lemon grass, red chiles and garlic that is usually used for fish and seafood dishes with a rather thick coconut cream-based sauce. Traditionally, chu chi curries are garnished lavishly with fresh basil and bai makrut.

* Kaeng Hung Lay: This mild, slightly sweet red curry paste is made with ginger, an ingredient used sparingly, if at all, in other Thai curries. A Northern Thai specialty, kaeng hung lay was originally borrowed from the Burmese. The curry is always made with pork, another specialty of Northern Thailand.

* Kao Soi Mix: “Northern Thai taste” proclaims the kao soi label in English. It’s a mild yellow curry that’s always used for kao soi , a noodle dish of Burmese origin that is as popular in northern Thailand in the area around Chiang Mai as pizza is here. Instead of pepperoni or olives for a topping, kao soi lovers choose deep-fried garlic slices, pickled Chinese cabbage, hot red pepper sauce and lime wedges to top their curried noodles.

* Kaeng Tom Yam Gai: This coconut chicken soup base comes in cans and also as a powdered soup base. The powdered version is found above the freezers across from the seafood department, where it is kept with other convenience foods such as hot-and-sour soup ( tom yam kung ) mix. Add sliced kha and makrut leaves if possible to improve the flavor.

Bangluck Markets, 12980 Sherman Way, North Hollywood, (818) 765-1088; 1670 Indian Hill Blvd., Pomona, (714) 621-7666; 5170 Hollywood Blvd., East Hollywood, (213) 660-8000. Open daily .