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Jet Tila translates Thai cuisine for everyone
Never be daunted. That’s what Jet Tila’s right arm says—in thick black tattoo ink—something I remember while flipping through his newest book, “101 Thai Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die.” The last time I had a good pad thai was in Thailand. A woman who made only pad thai prepared it in her little open-air restaurant. The dish came out steaming hot, the tender, bouncy rice noodles punctuated with juicy shrimp, tender chicken, crisp bean sprouts, meaty tofu, crunchy peanuts and a showering of bright herbs—everything heightened by a sauce that was at once sweet, tangy, funky and spicy. Watching her toss it in the wok, it appeared as simple as making a salad. Yet the image of my past sticky gloppy attempts was paralyzing.
How not to be daunted? Taking a deep breath, I call Tila to ask him himself. His answers, delivered with the combination of calmness, compassion and capability of an exceptional 911 operator, make it clear why he has been a Food Network favorite since his first appearance in 2011, when he went up against Masaharu Morimoto on “Iron Chef.” He has since appeared on everything from “Chopped” to “Cutthroat Kitchen,” “Beat Bobby Flay,” “Guy’s Grocery Games” and “Tournament of Champions,” as well as on NPR, CBS’ “The Early Show” and NBC’s “Today Show.” It also speaks to why he has 360,000 followers on Instagram and a popular YouTube channel dedicated to cooking videos.
“You’re not alone,” he reassures me. “A lot of good cooks are intimidated by Thai cooking.” It’s simply unfamiliarity, he says. “No one teaches you how to buy dry rice sticks from Thailand; you have no natural familiarity with the ingredients.”
Tila, whose full last name is Tilakamonkul, knows this well, as he has watched Westerners wrestle with Thai food since he was a kid. His family is largely credited with the founding of L.A.’s Thai Town, the largest Thai community outside of Thailand, spawned by the grocery store they founded in 1972. Back then, no one was importing Thai products, or growing the herbs and vegetables Thai cooks relied on back home. Tila’s family created a magnet for Thai families by bringing in essentials like Thai soy sauce, real sriracha sauce, and contracting with farmers in Mexico to grow ingredients such as galanga, an integral ingredient in many curry pastes.
Tila was born in 1975, and essentially grew
up in the grocery, as well as the restaurants his family began opening in 1979. “It’s not a glamorous story,” Tila begins. “My grandmom sized me up well; I was a hyperactive kid, I had trouble concentrating, and she knew that rote learning in school was not going to cut it. She basically stuck me in the kitchen, starting when I was three or four. It was a very practical situation for her: she needed to focus me, and there was no iPad or TV.”
School remained so challenging for him that he dropped out before graduating, but cooking, being visual and tactile, was something that made sense to him. Not that he cared when he was 17. “By my late teens, I was in full rebellion mode,” he says. He left and took a bunch of odd jobs, including security guard and deckhand on a fishing boat. “But when I failed, I’d always come back to my family’s business.”
The turning point came one day when he was 22. “We had a group of Caucasians that would come to the grocery all the time and ask for recipes, and I’d write them out,” he recalls. “Finally, they asked, ‘Can you just teach us a class?’” In response, he created a series of cooking classes he taught out of his mom’s backyard. They ended up featured in the Los Angeles Times. “It changed my life,” Tila says.
Despite the success, Tila didn’t want to be just “that Thai guy.” “Through the grocery store, I knew all L.A.’s top chefs, as they all shopped there—Wolfgang [Puck], Joachim [Splichal], the Two Hot Tamales—and I wanted to be that.” Tila enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu to study classical French cooking, then went to the California Sushi Academy. He staged (interned) with many of the chefs he had grown up admiring. “Culinary school was my bridge to get to them,” he says. “I could take what I knew and speak French technique to have a shared language.”
“And ironically I came back to Asian cuisine!” Tila exclaims, laughing. In truth, what he initially considered a limitation became his superpower, landing him positions running kitchens for everything from Pacific Cafe at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters to Wazuzu in the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Today he also runs Dragon Tiger Noodle in Las Vegas and consults for the Pei Wei Asian Kitchen chain. His ability to translate Thai food to a Western audience even inspired the Royal Thai Consulate-General of Los Angeles to name him Culinary Ambassador of Thai Cuisine in 2015.
Culinary Translator
Tila’s well-honed position of culinary translator comes through clearly in “101 Thai Dishes,” the most welcoming, non-intimidating Thai cookbook on the market. “I write my books so that anyone can cook anything,” he says. “That’s why it’s ring-bound and paperback; I want this book to get dirty.” It’s also why he hasn’t laden it down with laundry lists of exotic ingredients. He’d rather you focus on finding a few crucial ingredients.
In fact, Tila says, forget trying to cook with a wok—unless you happen to have a wok burner that puts out 50,000 to 200,000 BTUs (the amount of heat needed to attain “wok hei”). Use cast iron instead and spend your energy on seeking out Thai-made ingredients. Although Thai cuisine uses plenty of Chinese soy sauce, Thai soy sauce, which has more sweetness and umami, adds a distinct signature. Canned curry pastes from Thailand are totally cool by Tila, as, he says, their production is so complex and time-intensive that even he often prefers to leave them to the experts. To really bring out their flavor, he advises, fry them in the thick cream spooned off the top of an unshaken can of coconut milk. And seek out Thai fish sauce. As Tila points out, “Like soy sauce, every culture that makes fish sauce has its own little spin on it.” Vietnamese fish sauce will do in a pinch, but it won’t be the same.
You’ll need some herbs, too. A huge variety are used in Thai cuisine, often just heaped on platters so that diners can season dishes to their own taste. But only three are strictly necessary. “The French have mirepoix,” Tila says, referring to the mix of onion, carrot and celery that forms the base of countless soups and sauces. “We have lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and galanga.”
“The defining characteristic of Thai cuisine is what we call the ‘yum’—the balance of the five flavors: salty, savory, sour, spicy and sweet.” —jet tila
Ginger is often suggested as a substitute for galanga, but it’s not quite the same. “Like ginger, it’s a rhizome, but galanga gets a lot thicker, and it has an herbaceous, medicinal pine-like flavor,” Tila explains. “It gives curry paste a backbone of spice and heat.” When you find it, buy extra: “Slice it into thin planks, and then freeze it; it holds beautifully,” he advises. Same with lime leaves and lemongrass: “All these things that are low moisture and high essential oil freeze well.” With this “Thai trinity,” you can make Thai chicken stock, the basis of countless soups, including Tom Yum.
At the same time, don’t get too hung up on authenticity. Even with the right ingredients, the Thai food we make in our kitchens here is going to be different than what cooks in Thailand make—and that’s OK. The Thais, in fact, have been absorbing new influences for the entirety of their existence and incorporating them into their foods. “Though the country has always remained unoccupied, natural trade has contributed a wealth of influences to the cuisine,” he says. His recipe for satay, the grilled, marinated chicken skewers ubiquitous on Thai menus, points to their origins in Indonesia and Malaysia. Another recipe for roti, the flat, flaky breads often used to scoop up curries, explains the Indian connection. Loatian influences come up in dishes from Northeastern Thailand, such as Waterfall Beef, which is a grilled-beef salad, and a fried rice pungent with shrimp paste nods to the ancient Mon ethnic group.
Others are much more modern, born out of the migration of many Chinese to Thailand in the 1960s and, later, of the early days of Thai cooking in the U.S., when Chinese ingredients were more readily available than Thai. The result was dishes such as Roast Duck Red Curry, Tila’s favorite Cantonese-Thai fusion dish, an amazingly simple dish that packs a ton of flavor and comes together in less than 30 minutes.
Even pad thai, a dish we think of as quintessentially Thai, is a relatively new dish, pushed in the early 1940s by Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram as part of a program encouraging national pride and health. Although the noodles and the stir-fry technique are borrowed from Chinese cuisine, the prime minister was attracted to the speed, affordability and healthiness of the dish. The government actually disseminated a recipe along with mobile cooking carts to encourage its adoption. It’s now a given on Thai menus around the world.
Thai at Home
But can you pull it off well in a home kitchen? Absolutely, Tila enthuses, because if you get the right noodles and treat them well, you’re most of the way there. “Look for noodles from Chantaboon: It’s a region that’s known for making the best—kind of like Sonoma is for wine.” Then soak them. “If you’re in a hurry, use warm water—70 to 90˚F. By the time noodles soften, the water will be room temp.” Cold water is slower but simpler. “At Google, I did four cases at a time, soaked in Lexan tubs,” Tila recalls. They are ready to use when they feel “pliable and plasticky,” Tila says, and they’ll hold in the fridge in this state for a couple of days. (If you can’t find them, just look for medium-width rice noodles. Sometimes they are labeled “pad thai rice noodles.”)
Then get your ingredients lined up and your pan hot. You’re going to first add the aromatics (garlic, radish, dried shrimp), then, once they smell great (a few seconds), add the proteins. Then come the noodles. “They must hit the pan while it’s hot and has some oil—you’re flash-evaporating the moisture off of them, coating them in oil and toasting them.” Just when they begin to soften, add the sauce and cook just a few minutes, until al dente. “That’s when you add all the fun accoutrements—peanuts, bean sprouts, scallion,” he says. The dish needs only 10 to 20 seconds more, while the sprouts soften and the scallions add their perfume. But here’s a secret: “You know how Italian grandmas use pasta water? They learned that from Thai cooks,” Tila jokes. “If the dish is too dry, finish it with two or three tablespoons of the noodle-soaking liquid. It gives it a nice shiny finish.” Cooked well, each noodle retains its identity. “You should be able to take it home and the next day pull it apart with a fork.”
The dish isn’t actually finished, though, until the diner tastes it. “The defining characteristic of Thai cuisine is what we call the ‘yum,’” Tila says, “the balance of the five flavors: salty, savory, sour, spicy and sweet.” It’s hard to define, as “balance” is such a subjective concept. But this is itself part of the Thai identity. “I have two grandmas. If my Chinese grandma makes a dish and you try to put soy on it, she’d cut your hand off,” Tila says. “When my Thai grandma cooks, she’ll put out sugar and chile and lime and fish sauce.” There’s no right or wrong when it comes to “yum;” a dish will be no less Thai if you don’t make it Thai-spicy or you cut down on the sweet or sour to suit your tastes. “I think it’s also reflective of the culture,” Tila says. “There’s no insult taken. It’s one of the very few Asian cultures—maybe the only one—where they’re happy to have you make it your own.” Don’t be daunted. Just assemble the ingredients and make up some pad thai tonight.
This is arguably the most popular Thai dish in the world. Because this dish has been in America for 50 years, there are dozens of versions. To me, the common thread is tamarind, sugar and fish sauce. Everyone gets to the red color a little differently. I like using paprika for a great color without heat. But if you want a little chili punch, back up the paprika with 1 to 2 tablespoons of Thai sriracha. Rice stick noodles also vary in quality. Look for Chantaboon dry rice sticks from Thailand; they are the best. — jet tila
Noodles
3–4 cups soaked medium rice stick noodles, or fresh (see Editor’s Notes)
Pad Thai Sauce
4 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons tamarind concentrate
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
4 tablespoons white sugar
Pad Thai
2 tablespoons canola or other high-temperature cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons packaged shredded sweetened radish
1 teaspoon dried shrimp (see Editor’s Notes)
½ cup savory baked tofu, cut into slices
2 eggs
½ cup thin strips of chicken breast or thigh
10 large–medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon paprika, for color
3 scallions, cut into 3-inch julienne
¼ cup chopped dry-roasted unsalted peanuts, divided
1 cup bean sprouts
1. If you’re using dry noodles, soak them in a large bowl of warm water for about an hour. The water should be about 90°F. The noodles will start to absorb water and loosen up. Drain them well, reserving some of the soaking water to adjust the texture later if needed, and set aside. If you’re using fresh noodles, you can just open the package and add them to the pan at the appropriate time.
2. To make the sauce, combine the fish sauce, tamarind concentrate, lime juice, vinegar and sugar in a small bowl. Make sure to stir well until the sugar dissolves. Set aside.
3. Heat a wok or skillet over high heat for about 1 minute, until hot. Add the oil and swirl it to coat the pan completely. When you see wisps of white smoke, add the garlic and stir-fry for about 5 seconds. Add the radish, dried shrimp and tofu and stirfry until they begin to get fragrant, about 1 minute.
4. Push the ingredients in the wok to one side and let the oil settle in the center of the pan. Crack the eggs into the pan and add the chicken. As the eggs start to fry, just pierce the yolks to let them ooze. Fold the chicken and eggs over, scrape any bits that are starting to stick and cook for about 30 seconds or until the eggs begin to set. Now stir everything together to combine it all in the pan.
5. Add the fresh shrimp and cook for about 30 seconds, until they just start to turn color and become opaque. Add the soaked (and drained) rice noodles and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the noodles become soft. Add the reserved sauce mixture and the paprika and fold together until the paprika evenly colors the noodles and all the liquid is absorbed, about 2 minutes.
6. Place the scallions in the center of the noodles, and then spoon some of the noodles over the scallions to cover and let steam for 30 seconds. Stir in 3 tablespoons of the peanuts. Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with the bean sprouts and remaining peanuts.
Editor’s Notes:
• Look for medium-width rice noodles. Sometimes they are labeled “pad thai rice noodles.” You’ll need about 14-16 ounces dry.
• If you can’t find dried shrimp, add a little more fish sauce to taste or omit.
finish.” Cooked well, each noodle retains its identity. “You should be able to take it home and the next day pull it apart with a fork.”
The dish isn’t actually finished, though, until the diner tastes it. “The defining characteristic of Thai cuisine is what we call the ‘yum,’” Tila says, “the balance of the five flavors: salty, savory, sour, spicy and sweet.” It’s hard to define, as “balance” is such a subjective concept. But this is itself part of the Thai identity. “I have two grandmas. If my Chinese grandma makes a dish and you try to put soy on it, she’d cut your hand off,” Tila says. “When my Thai grandma cooks, she’ll put out sugar and chile and lime and fish sauce.” There’s no right or wrong when it comes to “yum;” a dish will be no less Thai if you don’t make it Thai-spicy or you cut down on the sweet or sour to suit your tastes. “I think it’s also reflective of the culture,” Tila says. “There’s no insult taken. It’s one of the very few Asian cultures—maybe the only one—where they’re happy to have you make it your own.”
Don’t be daunted. Just assemble the ingredients and make up some pad thai tonight.
