As is often the case, I purchased the undeniably radical Mr. Squid, sourced from the tiny Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco Street, primarily because of the packaging, which in this case is perfectly suggestive of the faux-badass decorative t-shirts I favored as a four to eight-year-old. As a committed adult, I’m now forced to settle for four dollar tubes of fun, crispy (but non-fried) squid to show off my gnarlier side. In terms of packaging, Mr. Squid serves well in this regard, with canister art depicting the snacks in a fashion redolent of rigatoni (or bundled hay?) resting in a pile amid a heat-streaked miasma of fire, dust and haze. Yet despite the design bona fides and the decidedly groovy mascot - who sort of resembles a wind-inflated kite mounted with a sunglasses-clad feather duster - these unfortunately tasted a bit like fish food smells. They may also taste like fish food tastes, although I cannot say with any real authority. I’m not the only one who feels this way, but as always, I’m willing to mark this down as a difference of tastes, a cultural gulf between the snacking proclivities of Thai fish fanatics and gormless American potato munchers like myself. In an effort at conciliation, I will be making a real effort to hire Mr. Squid as the official mascot of Snack Semiotics. Imitators beware.
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Bird’s Nest gets a lot of attention as one of those fundamentally bizarre foods, perfectly demonstrating the eccentricities of the Chinese palate. Produced from the massed saliva of tiny cave swifts, it’s prized for its supposed health proprieties_, textural qualities and the inherent difficulty of procuring these little prizes. The latter makes this one of the most expensive foods on earth (retailing at upwards of 2k per kg), although the old, dangerous method of scaling cliff faces to pluck nests from gaps in the rock has mostly disappeared, largely due to the accompanying devastation of swiftlet populations. The nests are now harvested in specially built birdhouse complexes dotted throughout Southeast Asia (see here for more info and a fabulous headline), but the high price remains part of the prestige attraction and has thus held. This leaves lots of room for artificial bird’s nest flavoring, which might not pass muster in the famous soup, but works as part of handy imitation beverage. Genuine bird’s nest drinks do exist, and may come with better packaging and real-deal spittle, but the imitation, purchased for $1.50 from a Chinese supermarket, will do in a pinch. This version employs “artificial bird’s nest flavoring,” in addition to floating flecks of white fungus, which I guess cover for the missing textural consistency of the actual nests. Produced in Thailand, which seems to have recently caught the bug in terms of bird’s nest production and consumption, the can also boasts a bevy of beautiful birds, darting through the air with the stern efficiency of military aircraft. The golden sun, cresting above the outline of a white cloud, is also a nice touch.
Here I am imagining a feature which compares bags of chips to one another, which presumably will occur any time I buy two different, suitably interesting bags on the same shopping trip, and then have occasion to photograph them side by side before one is consumed. And so, welcome to the first (and last?) edition of Chip Comparison, featuring two East Asian offerings from the global Lays Empire. The Thai chips, pictured to the right, were purchased from Elmhurst snack emporium Sugar Club and labeled ‘seashell’, although the seafood pictured appears to be a scallop. I’ve admittedly had a hard time with nautical flavors since New Year’s Day 2014, when I left a half-eaten bag of Hwa Yuan’s ‘Oyster Omelet’ chips on a hot stove, suffusing my entire apartment with a sweet, oystery funk, but these were far from overwhelming. The seasoning was piquant and gently fishy in the style of many seafood chips, a market that the maritime sections of Asia appear to have cornered (Walker’s ‘Shrimp Cocktail’ style seems tame and ketchup-y by comparison). The Magic Masala, purchased from the Jackson Heights Patel Brothers, presents a much more familiar flavor profile, albeit one that’s also completely dissimilar from most American-market preparations. The main difference here is not the masala spice seasoning, which is only a few tweaks away from a BBQ or sour cream and onion, but how clearly the individual spices come across. The Indian market, I imagine, would not take kindly to chemical interpretations of flavors that can be easily conveyed via simple, natural powders. This brings us to the bag design; notice how both feature entire potatoes transmorphing into sliced ridgey shards, indicating the focus on freshness, which appears to be a company-wide concern. The Thai potato definitely looks a bit chunkier, a difference not reflected in the chips themselves.
On a winter visit to Elmhurst’s venerable SriPraPhai, I’d planned to order the Haw Mok, a fish curry custard not commonly found around these parts. It was no longer on the menu, and rather than use MenuPages invaluable ‘Find-a-Food’ function to scare up another version elsewhere, I set down to replicating the dish myself. First, a trip to Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco Street, where I purchased some Thai essentials, as well as an unfortunate squid snack that’ll be the subject of a future post. Then fresh red snapper from Mermaid’s Garden, and some banana leaves left over from a New Year’s Eve barbacoa, with structuring provided by this recipe. Despite a slightly-too-liquidy broth, which collapsed a few of the wrappers like overfilled backyard pools, the dish came together beautifully, toothsome chunks of fish floating in a curry-flavored custard, the overflow providing perfect seasoning for a side of jasmine rice.
Haw mok (also known as mok / amok / ho mok / hor mok, mok pa, etc.), has roots in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, with plenty of regional quirks distinguishing the different versions. The Cambodian variety utilizes the spice mix Kroeung, while the Lao might involve dill and a different use of banana leaves, although it seems likely that most variations occur from personal preference rather than along strict national lines. All of these preparations, with their baseline of fish mousse simmered in sauce, seem to be derived from the French quenelle (itself rooted in the German knödel), a fine-dining delicacy left behind in Indochina after colonial occupation, then transformed into something entirely new. One important lesson learned too late: kaffir lime leaves should be julienned, not sliced, thus eliminating the need to work through their thick, waxy exteriors. A recent article from The Atlantic digs into the ubiquity of America’s third most common condiment: the mysterious soy sauce packets which litter Chinese takeout orders, and which are not technically soy sauce at all. Beyond nostalgia - I still look back fondly on the years where I believed the Yi Pin brand logo was actually some kind of globular spacecraft - there’s no reason not to retire this horrible hydrolyzed protein concoction, along with its takeout-standby cousins, the shockingly orange Duck Sauce and the one-note Hot Mustard (discussed in further detail here). By way of replacement, look to simpler, more natural flavor-supplementing alternatives like this one produced by Raitip, a baggie of which I found tucked into my Thai takeout and filed away for future use; the food was hot enough as it was. Known also as the 'Thai Cereals Company,' Raitip is a producer of nuts, herbs and spices, which Google somewhat rudely identifies as a producer of animal feed. This powder may not be available for retail purchase in the U.S. (at least I've never seen it) but you can see it in its natural environment here or buy in bulk from Ali Baba's wondrous e-bazaar. Another option would be to just read this beautiful, perfectly strange forum argument over differing Chinese and American perceptions of what soy sauce entails.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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