The country, in one mortar

I. The Isan question

Isan is the northeastern plateau of Thailand, bordered by Laos to the north and east, by Cambodia to the southeast. It is the driest and historically the poorest region of the country. The food it produces is the most interesting and the most underrepresented in the global image of «Thai food.»

When Thai food was exported globally in the 1970s and 1980s — a deliberate Thai government cultural-diplomacy initiative — the food that traveled was central Thai cooking: curries, pad thai, coconut-milk dishes. This food is excellent. It is not the whole picture.

Isan cooking uses almost no coconut milk. It is built on fresh herbs, raw and lightly cooked vegetables, fermented fish paste (pla ra), dried spices, and the mortar.

II. Why Isan is having a moment

Isan cooking has always been there. It has been eaten by the thirty million people of northeastern Thailand since before the central Thai culinary tradition existed in its current form. What is new is that the people writing about food internationally have started paying attention.

This is different from rediscovery. You cannot rediscover something that was never lost.

III. Som tam — in the mortar

Som tam is green papaya salad. The dressing is built in the mortar: dried shrimp, garlic, chili, cherry tomatoes, long beans, palm sugar, lime juice, fish sauce. Each ingredient is pounded briefly before the next is added.

The mortar is the method and the equipment simultaneously. The papaya is pounded gently — bruised rather than crushed — alongside the dressing. This bruising releases the papaya's interior moisture into the dressing. Som tam made in a bowl with a spoon has the same ingredients. It is not som tam.

The balance is the five Thai tastes in miniature: fish sauce salt, lime juice sour, palm sugar sweet, chili heat, dried shrimp umami. All five in each spoonful. The adjustment is tasted, not measured.

IV. The mortar is the method

Curry pastes — the foundation of Thai curry cooking — are made by pounding dried and fresh ingredients into a fine paste. Hardest and driest first (dried chili, galangal, dried spices), moving toward wetter and fresher (lemongrass, kaffir lime peel, garlic, shallot). Each ingredient is fully integrated before the next.

A red curry paste takes 30 to 45 minutes of active pounding. A food processor produces a paste in 3 minutes. The difference in the finished curry is real and tasted by people who know what they are tasting.

This is not purism. It is an understanding of what the tool does and an honest assessment of when the result justifies the work.

Recipe — Som Tam · Green Papaya Salad

Sirinya Phimpha · Bangkok · serves 2 · 15 minutes · no cooking

• Serves 2
• 15 min assemble
• 0 min cook
• 2–4 chilis

The Ingredients

• 300 g green papaya, peeled, shredded into matchsticks
• 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 100 g long beans (or green beans), in 4 cm pieces
• 2 tbsp dried shrimp
• 2–4 bird's eye chilis
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp palm sugar (or brown sugar)
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• Juice of 2 limes

The method

1. In a large granite mortar: add garlic and chilis. Pound to a rough paste.
2. Add dried shrimp. Pound briefly to break down.
3. Add palm sugar, fish sauce, and lime juice. Mix with the pestle.
4. Add long beans. Pound gently, bruising but not fully crushing.
5. Add cherry tomatoes. Pound gently, bursting most of them but leaving some intact.
6. Add green papaya. Use the pestle and a spoon together — pound the papaya gently while turning it with the spoon, bruising and mixing simultaneously.
7. Taste. Adjust: more lime for sour, more fish sauce for salt, more sugar for sweet, more chili for heat. Serve immediately on a plate with sticky rice.

About the contributor

Sirinya Phimpha

Sirinya Phimpha writes about Thai food philosophy and Isan cuisine from Bangkok, Thailand. She has been to Isan forty-seven times in the past decade and makes her curry pastes in a granite mortar.

Editor’s notes — the longer view

A note on the mortar itself. Buy granite. Heavy granite, not marble, not ceramic, not wood for any application but garlic and herbs. A real Thai mortar weighs 3 to 5 kg and is rough on the interior surface — the roughness helps grip and bruise. If you can lift it with one hand easily, it is too light.

A note on the pestle. The pestle is also granite. Wood pestles are for separate herb preparations. The motion is a controlled drop, not a strike — gravity does most of the work, the wrist guides where. You should not be tired after thirty seconds.

A note on pla ra. Fermented fish paste is the deepest umami in Isan cooking. It smells unfamiliar at first. It is supposed to. A spoonful in som tam takes the dish from a Bangkok version to an Isan one.

A note on eating from the mortar. The truest version of som tam is eaten directly out of the mortar, with sticky rice in one hand and a long spoon shared among three or four people. A plate is a concession to formality. The mortar is the bowl.

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