MARKETS : Sumpun Thai: Everything but the Stove

Sumpun Thai Market and Spices, 12049 Ventura Place, Studio City, (818) 762-7861. Open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

As Los Angeles Thai markets go, Sumpun Thai Market and Spices is unconventional. The range of basic raw ingredients is limited; there are no meat or produce departments. Instead, the market features its own products, prepared in the family’s restaurant next door. These are supplemented with a few commercially made items such as jars of deep-fried garlic for garnishing and the hot Sriracha chile sauce that some Thais use like catsup.

Best of all are Sumpun’s kits containing all the pre-measured fresh ingredients needed to cook Thai dishes at home. Anybody (even my cousin whose most complex recipe is banana bread) can turn out a complicated Thai curry or a pot of tohm yum goong --the fragrant hot-and-sour shrimp soup--without shopping for a dozen unfamiliar ingredients, without having to chop, mince or grind anything and without wondering what to do with leftover coriander root or half a cup of coconut milk.

The shop’s co-owner, Tal Jalanugraha, says she got the idea after her visits to Bangkok. “Hardly anyone of the younger generation cooks a whole meal from scratch these days,” says the petite, soft-spoken woman. “You can get prepared ingredients and all sorts of convenience foods now.”

The shop looks as smart as the idea behind it. A rotating pastry case holds the kits packed in clear plastic boxes. Heavy wooden shelving and stylish white accents give the place a gourmet store feel. A small but interesting selection of wines comes primarily from California’s boutique wineries. Jalanugraha’s brother-in-law Chad Sripanich, a wine aficionado, has chosen them to complement Thai foods.

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Alongside the kits are jars of freshly made, home-style Thai curry pastes--the kind few restaurants make themselves anymore. You simply add coconut milk, meat, and perhaps vegetables to make an almost-instant curry. Jalanugraha points out that many of her customers are vegetarians who love to vary their curries by using eggplant in one and perhaps tofu fried with cabbage and zucchini in others. The market also stocks commercially produced curry pastes, which can be handy in emergencies, though they’re not as fragrant as the homemade varieties.

“You don’t have to limit yourself to the kits on display,” explains Jalanugraha. “We’ll put any dish together for you.” If you’re serving a large group, Sumpun Market will organize ingredients in the quantities you need for the dishes you want.

For inspiration, peruse the shop’s excellent selection of Thai cookbooks. For anyone with a serious interest in Thai cooking, these alone are worth a trip to Sumpun Market. Printed in Thailand (in English), many of the books are difficult to find elsewhere.

The force behind the market is Sumpun Jalanugraha, the woman who opened Sumpun restaurant in Hollywood more than 20 years ago and who guides the kitchen at the second restaurant next door. Sumpun is well acquainted with the tastes of her American customers. In part, it was their interest in Thai cooking that led to the idea for the market.

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“What gives this dish its lemony flavor?” they would ask. “What’s in the sate sauce that makes it so rich?” Answering these questions, Sumpun has always held, would lead to their deeper appreciation of her foods. It’s still not unusual for her to haul a tray filled with ingredients out of the kitchen for customers to smell and taste.

Before she emigrated to California from Bangkok, Sumpun supplemented her income as a government employee by running a small restaurant near the Boxing Stadium. Even today, the stadium area is famous for Isaan restaurants and other regional specialty places. People from various provinces attending the boxing matches patronize these modest restaurants to get a taste of home. Sumpun’s kao soi and Indian noodles, both specialties of the north around Chiang Mai, gathered an enthusiastic following.

“In those days,” said Jalanugraha, explaining her mother’s immigration in 1968, “Thais who had an international education, namely British or American, could advance better in business.”

Sumpun joined a relative in California where her children were schooled. They never did return to advance in Thai business but they do visit. And they’ve returned to Studio City with Thailand’s latest innovations in food marketing.

Shopping List

HOMEMADE CURRY PASTES AND CURRY KITS:

Curries: The essential flavoring for curry dishes, curry pastes are a complex amalgam of fresh herbs and spices that usually include garlic, shallots, chiles and fish paste, to which kha (galangal), kaffir lime peel, lemon grass and other seasonings--depending on the curry’s style--are added. Pounded in a stone mortar or ground in a blender, the ingredients merge and are transformed into a thick paste.

Perhaps the first Thai convenience foods, curry pastes have long been sold in old-fashioned Thai open markets. Amid the vivid color of the produce, the clucking of live poultry and the pungent aroma of dried fish, each curry vendor presides over a stall of earthy, cone-shaped curry paste mounds.

Although making your own curry paste is a fair amount of work, many cooks prefer to blend their own ingredients; they’re rewarded with the brighter, more immediate flavor of just-pounded seasonings. Sumpun, one of those cooks, makes four home-style curry pastes and packages them for sale in plastic cups.

Three of her curry pastes are put up in small portions as part of a complete kit. Each comes with a different selection of vegetables and includes a small can of coconut milk, a tiny bottle of fish sauce, a garnish and cooking instructions.

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Kaeng Kari: This mildest of Thai curries (the name is also spelled gaeng kah-ree ) is a golden-yellow color from its main ingredient, turmeric. Cumin, lemon grass and garlic add their scent to the blend. Included with the vegetables is a white potato which is always traditional with this curry. Sweet red and green peppers and carrot strips serve as the colorful garnish. You add your own chicken or shrimp, or for a vegetarian dish add the firm tofu sold here.

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Kaeng Ped: Fragrant with lemon grass, lime peel and coriander seed--and pungent with dried red chiles-- kaeng ped (or gaeng peht ) has an intense chile heat that sets it apart both from mellow kaeng kari and the sharp, aggressive flavor of green curry. Asian eggplant, fresh mushrooms and bamboo shoots make this aggressive dish seem luxurious. The garnish of whole, fresh hot peppers and Thai sweet basil leaves (bai horapa), stirred into the curry at the very end of its cooking, give a dazzling aromatic punch to the sauce.

On its own, the curry paste has many uses as a seasoning for non-curry dishes. Saute a little of it with shrimp or chicken meat. Stir-fry the kaeng ped paste with rice for chili fried rice (kao paht prik) and use it with ground pork, chopped tomato and fish sauce to make the northern-style nahm prik ohng, a dip for fresh vegetables and deep-fried pork rind (many Thais substitute the similar Mexican chicharrones for the rind).

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Kaeng Kiow Wahn: Moving up the scale in heat intensity is kaeng kiow wahn , literally “green and sweet curry.” The sweetness is usually lost in this incendiary mix of herbs and fresh green chiles. Thai cooks often use the tiny blow-torch-hot prik khi nu chiles (whose name literally means “rat droppings”--very descriptive of their knobby shape), but Sumpun Market’s is based on fresh jalapenos or serranos, making a slightly milder taste. The kit comes with about half a dozen vegetables, including eggplant and green beans, with bai horapha for the garnish. Chicken and thinly sliced beef are both appropriate for this curry.

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Prik King Curry Paste: Sometimes called crisp curry or fried ginger curry, prik king is never cooked with coconut milk, nor used in soups; it is known as a dry curry. Simply fry a tablespoon of the paste in a little oil and then add meat, seafood or vegetables. Or simply mix cooked rice into the sauteed curry paste and stir-fry until heated through. Serve these dishes in the Thai manner, as part of a meal along with several other dishes and rice.

KITS FOR SOUP

Tohm Kha Gai (Chicken Coconut Soup With Galangal): Fresh galangal ( kha ), an aromatic relative of ginger, is responsible for the elusive fragrance of this easy-to-like creamy soup. The kit is a fragrant bundle of fresh kaffir lime leaves, cilantro and vegetables. The slices of fresh kha are to be tossed in whole, and the fresh chiles are floated into the soup just before it’s served. Coconut milk is included in the kit but not broth. This is because some people prefer to use their own and vegetarians don’t want to use chicken broth, explains Jalanugraha. But the shop does keep canned broth on hand.

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Tohm Yam Kung (or Gai): Clear and tart tohm yam , the fiery-red hot-and-sour soup, seems an unlikely cousin of the creamy tohm kha gai. But both soups start out with the same ingredients: lemon juice, cilantro, kaffir lime leaf and fresh chiles mixed into a chicken or fish broth. Tohm yam , of course, includes roasted chiles but lacks kha and coconut milk. When it’s made with shrimp, the soup is called tohm yum goong; made with chicken it’s tohm yum gai.

NOODLES

All of Southeast Asia’s noodle dishes are rooted in China. But when Chinese immigrant vendors vied for competition on the streets of Bangkok, they soon learned to adapt their flavorings to Thai tastes. The result was dishes such as pahd Thai or stir-fried rice noodles with chicken and Thai basil. Meanwhile, in the palace kitchen, humble rice vermicelli was deep-fried and turned into crispy, sweet mi krawb (mee krob).

Sumpun Market sells the five most popular noodle styles in the Thai repertoire. The fresh ones are included in kits.

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Noodle Kits: Almost every Thai food lover has tried pahd Thai, a sort of stir-fried noodle salad splashed lightly with a tamarind-based sauce and crunchy roasted peanuts. Sumpun Market’s pahd Thai kit includes fresh square-edged rice noodles called kwaytio sen jahn (Jalanugraha says this translates as “string-like rice noodles from Chonburi--a Thai town”). The noodles are accompanied by a cup of sauce and all the familiar pahd Thai garnishes: crushed peanuts, bean sprouts, carrot strips, cabbage and hard-cooked eggs. As with all the kits, there’s a recipe taped to the box.

Another kit, noodles stir-fried with mint, is based on fresh, silky broad noodles made from rice. This dish probably got its English name 20 or so years ago, when Thais were unsure of their English herb terminology. Bai horapha or bai kraprao (the Thai basils that can be used in the recipe) are noted in herb reference books as members of the mint family--as are all basils. Someone labeled the dish noodles with mint and the name stuck.

In any case, fresh basil entirely changes the original Chinese character of these black-bean sauce-and-garlic-flavored noodles. Carrot and green pepper strips add a gay tangle of color, another characteristically Thai touch. You may add your own chicken at home, but if you want a vegetarian dish, the shop can include extra vegetables.

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Dry Packaged Noodles: To prepare its customers for noodle cravings, Sumpun Market stocks the linguine-width dry rice noodles labeled Chantaboon noodles (or sometimes Banh Pho for the Vietnamese market). When boiled, these may be used in soups or topped with a sauce. They may also be soaked and used in pahd Thai. A recipe for that dish comes wrapped around the package.

A mee krob recipe graces the package of the noodles Thais call kwaytiow sen mee-- those thin rice noodles often called rice sticks or rice vermicelli. They puff slightly when they’re deep-fried, which is what gives the mee krob its airy, crunchy quality. (Sumpun Market has attached a mee krob recipe to the package.) When they’re not served fried, rice sticks are particularly popular in soups.

The store also carries mung bean thread noodles, known in Thai as woon sen. These noodles absorb other flavors beautifully and are used in all sorts of dishes from soups and salads to stuffed chicken wings. In one of my favorite preparations, yam woon sen or glass noodle salad, the noodles are sauteed with shrimp and served warm with a chile-lime dressing on a bed of lettuce.

Woon sen must be soaked until the strands become flexible and then heated (usually in a soup or sauce) to make them tender, chewy and glassy-looking.

SAUCES:

Look in the display case along with the kits for these sauces.

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Sate Sauce: A touch of red curry paste gently ignites this voluptuous-tasting sauce of ground peanuts, rich coconut milk and tamarind. In addition to its fame as an accompaniment with sate, it has a talent as a dip for raw or lightly steamed cut vegetables.

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Indian Salad Dressing: Inspired by Sumpun’s famous Indian noodles, this light, peanut-accented salad dressing isn’t nearly as rich or peanutty as the sate sauce. Tamarind gives it a slight fruity tartness that’s delicious on cucumber salad or iceberg lettuce.

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Prik Dom Nahm Som : Sumpun grinds fresh red chiles with a little vinegar to make this simple hot sauce that is served as a condiment at almost every Thai meal.

NAHM PRIK

In Thailand every good cook has a personal nahm prik formula, which begins with a thick paste of dry chile flavored with such things as pureed eggplant, garlic, tamarind or fermented fish. The long-keeping quality of these flavorful mixtures has made them a reliable stable in Thailand’s tropical heat. They could make a bowl of plain rice into a meal when there was little else to be had. Nowadays these handy pastes have a myriad of other uses.

Nahm prik is mainly a “family-style product,” explains Jalanugraha. Mothers make a sweet, mildly hot version for children, who eat it spread on toast. Usually nahm prik mixtures are used to make a dip to eat with raw vegetables or to stir into hot rice. For the dip, freshen up the nahm prik by mixing in a few other ingredients. Some add lime juice, others add dry fish or a little tamarind water.

Like American chilis--those that inspire chili cook-offs or are named after their place of origin (Joe’s Backyard Chili or Chicago Bowery Chili, for example)--these Thai pastes are the subject of folklore and a lot of joking rivalry. A nahm prik will likely be named after a guy who made the best chili paste in a Thai village, or after a slang expression. Nahm prik narok , for example ( narok means hell), is the chili paste from hell. Nahm prik Ta Daeng, says Jalanugraha, is named after its originator, Ta Daeng. It’s an appellation (and a flavor) as familiar in Thailand as Aunt Jemima or Orville Redenbacher are here.

Some nahm prik names are more logically derived from one of the principal ingredients. Nahm prik pla duk , for instance, gets its name from a large catfish ( pla duk ), which is fermented before use. Likewise, nahm prik pla yang is made with roasted fish ( pla means fish and yang means roasted ).

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Nahm prik pao, one of the few nahm priks used as a cooking ingredient, is roasted chile, garlic and onion blended with shrimp paste. Sumpun adds nahm prik pao to her coconut chicken soup which gives it an interesting peppery tang and a rosy color. Jalanugraha suggests sauteeing nahm prik pao with shrimp or diced chicken meat for a spicy side dish.

SNACKS

Several ready-to-eat snacks are kept above the freezer. Thai Toast is familar from our Thai restaurants, but the whimsical Thai Barbecued Chicken Sandwich on a bun and the Thai Baklava seem to be Sumpun originals. The baklava is a thinner, crisper version than the usual kind--more like a stuffed cookie.

CONVENIENCE PRODUCTS

Deep Fried Chopped Garlic: One of the most indispensable Thai garnishes, crunchy, deep-fried garlic gets sprinkled over almost everything from soups to noodles. But frying garlic is an art: If it looks right when you remove it from the oil it will darken to a state of overdoneness as it cools. And if it’s not cooked long enough at just the right temperature it won’t get crisp.

Sprinkling perfectly cooked garlic from the jar, though, is as easy as using salt. Keep the jar tightly closed in a frost-free refrigerator and the garlic will last several months.

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Tamarind Paste: The sharp-fruity flavor of tamarind liquid is unbeatable. But preparing it from scratch involves peeling off stubborn skin from the pod, soaking the flesh, removing the seeds, mashing and straining the pulp. The prepared tamarind paste sold here, an excellent substitute for the fresh, contains a little vinegar to stabilize its flavor.

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Nahm Gin Gai Yang Sauce: Bottled, but still delicious, this sweet-spicy garlicky sauce will be familiar to those who often order Thai barbecue chicken. It’s the dip that always comes on the side. You can also turn it into a dip for deep-fried foods by adding a little rice vinegar, water and cut cucumber to your taste.

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Khanom Wun Gati: Here is Thailand’s answer to Jell-O, a layered, molded, gelled dessert made from a packaged mix. Instead of gelatin, it’s agar that gives shape to the dessert’s coconut-and fruit-flavored liquids. Unlike many Thai desserts, this one isn’t too sweet.

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Thai Teas and Coffees: The rich, sensuous flavor of Thai tea and coffee begins with the proper tea or blend of beans. It takes a disciplined hand with the added seasoning to perfect the job. Sumpun Market’s own well-balanced blends display that discipline. Each package includes instructions for brewing and sweetening the drink. You have the option of adding milk or half and half (or evaporated milk, as some places do).

The official Thai-style tea and coffee cloth strainers for making the brew properly are also for sale. The strainer will last for years and needs only a rinse between uses. But buy one strainer for coffee and another for tea.

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Cookbooks: Among Sumpun Market’s collection are books you almost never see sold in the United States. These include “Thai Cooking: The Most Delicious Recipes From Every Region” by Kurt Kahrs; “Thai Vegetarian Cooking” by Vatcharin Bhumichitr, and “The Elegant Taste of Thailand” by Thai writers Sisamon Kongpan and Pinyo Srisawat. Jalanugraha recommends Hilaire Walden’s “The Book of Thai Cooking,” a book that’s exceptionally clear, she says, and easy for English speakers to use.