People who pay attention to food know that cooking soup and stir-frying vegetables to perfection is a gift that God bestowed specially on Chinese cooks. Stir-frying vegetables would seem to be a simple thing, but in fact, it’s not. Doing it properly requires a store of precise accumulated knowledge. How soft or hard is the vegetable? How does this affect the length of time it should remain on the fire? How hot should the cooking fire be? What seasonings should be used, and at which point during the frying process should they be added?
The fried vegetables should not come from the wok too soft, and it is especially important that only a few seconds should elapse between the time when the vegetables are cooked and the moment they are put onto a plate and set before the person who will eat them. It is a combination of knowledge and instincts that combine to produce the skills of the accomplished stir-fried vegetable cook.
STANDING THE HEAT: A chef in a ‘khao tom’ restaurant, top left, and examples of the stir-fried vegetable dishes that most are expert in. photos: suthon sukphisit
Kitchen equipment and utensils are important, too. The stove must produce a very strong flame as hot as the sun, and the iron wok should be heated until almost red hot, so that when the vegetables are put in they cook instantly. The ability to bring all of these elements together has been part of the repertoire of Chinese chefs in every tambon, every city or district, and every Chinese province from the remote past until today.
It is a natural gift that they take with them wherever they go, including Thailand. In the past there were only a few fine Chinese restaurants, and these catered to a small and affluent clientele, the only people in the country who had an opportunity to eat stir-fried vegetables cooked by skilful Chinese chefs.
Then came the era of roadside restaurants selling khao tom (rice soup), which was known in Thai then as khao tom phui or khao tom kui. Customers were mostly from the middle class. These restaurants had a special layout all their own. There was usually as cabinet up in front that contained a selection of foods that had been prepared in advance. These might include jap chai (a variety of vegetables that had been simmered together), nam liab (a salty Chinese black olive) fried with minced pork, snakehead fish stewed with salty pickled cabbage, bai paw pad krathiem (a spinach-like herb stir-fried with garlic), pet palo (duck stewed Chinese-style with aromatic spices), boiled chicken, crispy pork, shark meat stir-fried with shredded ginger and chicken feet stewed in Chinese-style aromatic broth with pork intestine and tofu.
But there was also a menu of foods that had not been cooked in advance, and that could be prepared to order. Of course, these included stir-fried vegetables.
Favourites were the leaf vegetable called pak kwang toong stir-fried in oil, pak khana (Chinese broccoli) stir-fried with crispy pork, stir-fried pak boong (a morning glory-like vine) and bean sprouts stir-fried with tofu. Customers went for these dishes because they were served hot and were delicious eaten with rice or rice soup.
With time, stir-fried vegetable dishes evolved to make them more appetising. Nam man hoy (oyster sauce) was introduced to add flavour, and dried chillies to add to their appeal for people who liked spicy food. The places that sold them also developed and changed. To the permanent restaurants that were open all day were added temporary stalls and stands that set up next to the road and only served customers from the evening until late at night. They spread all over Thailand.
Watching a chef stir fry vegetables, especially pak boong, could be exciting. The wok and the oil in it got so hot that when the pak boong was added the oil would spatter and sometimes ignite, so that red flames could erupt and soar high up into the air. The cook looked like he was working in an steel smelting mill. Because of the conflagration, pak boong fried this way is called pak boong fai daeng — red fire pak boong — and it is the most delicious version of the dish.
There is a khao tom restaurant next to the pavement near the dam on the Nan River in Muang Phitsanulok that opens in the evening and stays open until late. Pak boong fai daeng is on the menu there, together with other offerings, but it is the pak boong that has made the place famous. The cook has a technique that causes the flames to surge up dramatically from the entire inside of the wok and to last for a long time.
And that isn’t all. In the past, when he cooked up a dish of pak boong fai daeng, the cook had a waiter, holding a serving plate, stand some distance from the cooker. When the vegetable was cooked he hurled it across to the empty plate, and never missed. This way of serving earned the pak boong fai daeng sold there some new names: pak boong hoen faa (the pak boong that soars through the sky) or pak boong bin (flying pak boong).
If the cook thought that distance between him and the waiter was not far enough, he had him go out and stand in the middle of the street. The waiter had to have catcher skills to match the pitching skills of the cook, and sometimes he had to do some running to intercept the flying vegetable. There were times when he got it wrong and the plate stayed clean while the pak boong landed in the street. There were also occasions when the waiter’s attention was focused so closely on the airborne pak boong that he ran into a passing motorcycle. These things did happen.
But even those stunts were kindergarten stuff compared to the new ones visitors to the restaurant see these days. There is now a platform, more than three metres high, at a distance from the restaurant, where tourists, both Thais and foreigners, can stand and wait for their pak boong.
For catching it, the restaurant has switched from standard plates to aluminium pot lids almost a metre across. Foreign tourists worry about getting splashed with hot oil when catching their phak boong, so they are given outer garments to wear that are brightly coloured, like the outfits of circus clowns. When they make a catch, it is greeted with strokes on a drum and the bell-like Thai cymbal called a ching, and loud cheers. So there is pulse-pounding excitement to be had from a serving of pak boong fai daeng, if you know where to go for your plateful.
Now let’s return to the art of stir-frying vegetables the normal way. It is always being developed and extended. Thai-style pat prio waan (sweet-and-sour stir frying) is the result of evolution and change in the original Thai way of stir-frying sweet and sour vegetable ingredients. These included pineapple, the cucumber-like taeng raan, onions and pork or shrimp. The original Thai version of sweet-and-sour got its acid bite from sour tamarind, but nowadays clear vinegar is used instead.
A different way of stir-frying vegetables branched off from the standard technique — adding egg. Not all vegetables are suitable for this style of cooking, but mara (bitter melon), taeng raan, hua chai po (Chinese radish) and salty pickled cabbage are all delicious fixed this way. In the South, vegetables are also fried with egg.
Stir frying vegetables to eat at home isn’t hard. First, you need an iron wok where the cooking surface is bare metal, because it gets hotter than the Teflon-coated type. If you know exactly how you want to season the vegetables, mix the seasonings — oyster sauce, soya sauce, sugar — in advance in the combination you prefer and have them ready in a cup.
When the wok is hot, put in the vegetables followed by chopped garlic and the seasoning mixture you have ready. There is no need to add any water, because the vegetables will release enough. When you’ve mastered the technique you’ll have hot stir-fried vegetables that taste exactly the way you like them.
Stir-frying vegetables is like a teacher who instructs you in the cooking knowledge and techniques that you need. Afterwards, you will be able to move on to other kinds of food and have them turn out perfectly. Fry some vegetables today, enjoy them now and anticipate more kitchen successes in the future.
A former Outlook staff member and now retired, Suthon Sukphisit has written articles on Thailand’s art and culture and on topics related to Thai society, history, archaeology, architecture, environment and education. These days, he spends his leisure time pursuing another topic in which he is well versed: food and cooking.
