Re: [CH] nam prik
Jim Graham (spooky130u@gmail.com)
Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:23:41 -0500
On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 05:38:00AM -0700, Rael64 wrote:
> If you got it at a reputable source, play the Idiot American (I do that
> all the time, and quite convincingly. Hmm.) and just ask.
I got it at a Thai market about a block away which, by a strange
coincidence, is named "Thai Market". :-) The owners are Thai, as
are most of the customers. All of the products' labels are in Thai,
and most (minus a few that I've seen so far) have English as well.
Quality on everything I've ever bought from them before has always
been excellent.
I'll go by there today (they're closed tomorrow...what is it with Thai
places always being closed on Monday?) and ask. They expect questions
when I walk in.... They have also greeted me as I walked in with a
bag of prik ki nu (they have prik ki fah[1] out on the fridge shelves
for the "general population") for, as I recall, $3 (big bag, too---it
was probably all of the prik ki nu they'd just picked from their garden).
They know I always ask for the hottest....
[1] Did I get the name right this time? Did I? :-)
> Okay, did a little digging online, so authenticity of such information
> notwithstanding, here's what I found.
Probably the same sites I found. :-)
> First, na rog and sawan are
> essentially the same, i.e. they are evidently a kind of nam prik, not a
> brand name (it may have been just me who thought they were proper
> names); yet na rog is should be hotter because it has more chiles.
Funny...I seem to recall reading just the opposite (about which is the
hottest between the two). I do know one thing: the guy at Thai Market
specifically pointed me to those two as the hotter varieties.
Btw, when I asked him where I'd find "nam prik", the first thing he said
was, "nam prik ..... [hand gestures---waiting for the rest." He repeated
that again, looking for me to fill in the blank at the end, and then
realized I didn't have a clue, so he explained that there were different
types of nam prik, and that some were milder, some hotter, and different
ways of making them, etc...some good for one thing, some good for
another, some good for anything... I responded when he mentioned using
it to dip veges into it, and he (knowing I'd prefer the hotter stuff) led
me to the na rog and sawan. Btw, as far as I could tell, there is *NO*
brand name on the label (unless it's in Thai only, which is a very good
possibility, as the vast majority of the label is Thai ... I don't read
or speak Thai).
> tamarind juice. Dunno. Seems that nam prik recipes are many just like
> hot sauce [....] Damned Weird Shit. Er, Sheeet. Yeah.
Seems to me that tamarind would fall into that category, at least, based
on looking at it. I've used it before, but I must admit, I have yet to
follow the rule I've been taught (as a brewer, but I assume it applies
to cooking, too), to taste all of your ingredients.
> Since no one else is chatting up on the list, I'll ramble just a bit.
That was about my thought, too. But after staring at the computer for a
bit, my brain (which has been through 3 cancer tumors, both grand mal and
petit mal seizures, triple brain surgery, radiation, and chemo) is
starting to mix words and the spelling of words (not what I think...what
gets sent to my fingers to type---we're not talking ordinary typos...this
is something very, very different).
So I'll limit myself to a few more (much shorter) comments, then followup
later, after I check in at Thai Market.
> I was fortunate enough to have a Thai
> restaurant in Hattiesburg, MS that cooked up some really good dishes.
They're spread about a block apart here, probably thanks to the large
military population. We also have an authentic Indian restaurant, a
diminishing number of Chinese places (probably all being replaced by
Thai), and quite a few very nice Hibachi/Sushi places.
> They prodded me with their good food to spend far, far too much money
> for Thai ingredients and work through more than a few of the
That's something I love about Thai Market...I go up to pay, with a
hand-basket full of stuff, and the bill ends up being something like
$8.50 or so. The two nam priks were $2.30 or something like that.
> India was a world unto itself; it is truly a Different World (I'm sure
> most chileheads are interested in Indian food too, like I am).
While it's true that I started out with jalapenos when I was about
10--12 years old, my first *TRUE* experience with *HOT* was in college,
when a woman from India taught me how to make a real curry, and then
sold me all of the spices (which, once again, were very inexpensive at
the little local market that she and her husband---also from India---ran).
The owner of our local Indian restaurant made a comment, in reference to
how he and I both like our Vindaloo: "You and I, we are different from
most people...we are not happy unless the cook is coughing."
And that seems like a highly appropriate thought on which to end this. :-)
Later,
--jim
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spooky130u@gmail.com j.graham@ieee.org ICBM/Hurr.: 30.39735N 86.60439W
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out, you didn't want to know anyway... --Larry Wall