One of my favorite things to eat in Thailand is a dish called khao kha muu, which translates as “rice with pork leg”. Sounds pretty good already, right? As with many dishes, the name belies a much more complex underlying narrative involving cooking method, tradition, history and flavor. A short description of khao kha muu is this: pork knuckle stewed in soy, spices, herbs and a little bit of sugar, served on jasmine rice with a boiled egg, stewed pickled mustard greens or Chinese broccoli with some of the cooking liquid poured over it and a sour yellow chili dipping sauce on the side. Typically served in street side carts, called rot ken, for lunch and dinner it is a deeply satisfying one-plate meal.
Now for the nuances. This is a Chinese dish in origin, as are many other typical Thai dishes, and there are as many variations and recipes as there are carts and shops that sell the stuff. In the Chinese cooking tradition there is something called “master sauce”, a sauce or stock that is used over and over again to cook the same dish. For khao kha muu, the pork knuckles are cooked fresh every day, but the cooking liquid is preserved, strained, and used to cook the next day’s batch, refortifying it with seasonings as needed. Some places claim to having the same master sauce for several generations of the family of the vendor, who typically hands of the business to a younger member of the family when they retire. This leads to a depth of flavor, or umami, that is impossible to achieve in a single cooking session. From there, everybody has a slightly different recipe that usually remains a family secret. I know of at least one cart in Chiang Mai (at Chang Pheuak night market, look for the lady vendor with a cowboy hat) that claims Milo as one of their ingredients. Don’t ask how I know, it’s a secret!
The pork itself is absurdly tasty when done right, stewed for hours until the skin & fat turns soft and gelatinous and the meat is moist and rich with the sauce and highly flavorful. Often the vendor will see a westerner and automatically leave off the fat and skin…don’t let this happen, you will be missing the best part.
Next come the eggs, or to me the second most important factor. The best ones are boiled either in the master sauce, or separately and then peeled and soaked in the sauce, others are just plain but cooked perfectly with a molten/set yolk. Some use duck eggs, some chicken, sometimes you get the whole egg without asking, sometimes it is an add-on. Don’t take the chance: make sure you order the dish “sai khai” or with egg.
I like the version that comes with the pickled mustard greens that have been stewed in the master sauce, but the Chinese broccoli shoots are delicious too.
The dipping sauce varies from vendor to vendor almost as much as the stewed pork does, and some places are known primarily for their naam jiim, or dipping sauce. I much prefer the sour yellow chili ground with vinegar but you are just as likely to get a sweet red chili and garlic version. Luckily whatever the sauce, it is usually good, and better yet it doesn’t have to be that great if the pork is good.
In my experience the rice is nothing special, but when you get a nice soft new jasmine rice it just makes the dish that much better.
And finally, the little bunch of chopped or torn cilantro on top? It’s not a garnish; it adds a nice sharp counter to the richness of the pork and adds the “hom” (smells good) element, helping to mitigate what is a strong porky bouquet.
We will be serving khao kha muu for lunch at Ping very soon. It’s going to take a while for the sauce to mature, but it still tastes pretty darn good out of the gate. Also, look for a whole stewed pork knuckle that is then deep fried, in the style of the German beer hall classic, Hocken. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Songkran is the biggest national holiday in Thailand, and there is no better place to spend it than in Chiang Mai. Located in the north of Thailand in the Ping River valley, Chiang Mai is considered the cultural heart of Thailand. It is also my home away from home and personal culinary Mecca.
Despite regular visits for some 2 decades now, this is only the second time I have been able to make it to Chiang Mai for Songkran (or Water Festival), last year being the first. Songkran is the Thai new year, falling during the hottest part of the year, just before the rains come in May and June. Lasting for 3 days from April 13th-15th, it symbolizes the beginning of a new life, the pause before the new rice crop is planted, and is a time for going home to the family, paying homage to your elders, eating copious amounts of foods and sweets, and (more recently) having enormous water fights in the streets.
My understanding of the nuances of the whole deal is limited, but here’s what we did this year:
On the 13th, we cleaned the house. You always start the new year out with a clean house. We ate a relatively light meal of laap, a northern Thai minced salad of pork, fish or buffalo usually and one that we always have on the menu at Pok Pok. Eating laap is good luck on Songkran, at least in the North. Then we got into the pick-up truck and went to the city center and drove around khu muang (the city moat) which surrounds the old city of Chiang Mai. The pick up had 2 big barrels of water strapped onto the bed, and there were about 10 of us in the back (me being the only farang) armed with squirt guns and buckets. The scene is hard to describe, but try to picture a traffic jam of pick up trucks (all similarly manned as ours), motorcycles, tuk-tuks, bicycles and pedestrians all pouring, spraying, blasting water on each other, all day long! for three days straight!! It is a whole lot of fun, needless to say, but exhausting, and  the water from the moat which is used to refill our tanks is dirty…but at least you can buy big blocks of ice by the side of the road to put in the barrels to make the water shockingly cold in the 100 degree weather. After this, it’s time to go home for a small meal and then back to my guesthouse to sleep. The village people have been drinking rice whiskey since sundown the night before. They will not stop drinking for about 5-7 days this year as the government has added 2 more days to the holiday to make up fo the disruption caused by the riots in Bangkok.

On the 14th, “prep day” according to my friend Sunny, we prepare khanom, or Thai sweets, to bring to the temple the next day. One of my favorites is khanom jok, which is rice flour mixed with naam oi (raw sugar made from sugarcane, dark brown in color and very flavorful), and coconut milk. This dough is wrapped around steamed, ground mung beans with salt and sugar and fried shallots added in, made into balls and then the whole thing is wrapped in banana leaves in small pyramid shaped packets and steamed for about 45 minutes. In Northern Thailand, you find this khanom at almost every house, sometimes with a palm sugar and grated coconut filling instead of the mung beans. We also made steamed melon khanom and steamed pumpkin khanom. Then we made dinner, plaa thawt yam samun phrai:  fried fish with a salad made from lemongrass, garlic, thai chilies, shallots, pineapple, cashews, lime, lime leaf, cilantro, green onions, ginger and carrot all chopped up and mixed in a sweet palm sugar/lime/fish sauce dressing and dumped on top of the fish. That and yam phak buung krob: deep fried water spinach with an equally complex dressing/salad to eat with it. Sunny and I were practicing our yam (salad) dressings.

The morning of the 15th you visit the wat (temple) where various offerings are made and blessings given. Then I went to see my friend Tri and his family in Saluang Nai, a small rice farming village about a half an hour from Chiang Mai. There we were offered khanom, and I caused a bit of a commotion by offering them the khanom we had made the night before…very novel the idea of a farang making khanom! After lunch we set off to dam hua, or pay respects to the elders of the village. Dam hua is an important part of the Songkran celebration and consists of visiting the elders, often surrounded by their family, giving them gifts, like soap, milk, toilet paper, flowers, eggs, and a bunch of misc. other stuff. The visitors sometimes symbolically wash the hand of the elders with water scented by flowers, and the elders then  rub a little water onto their head and give a blessing to the gathered visitors sometimes wrapping a white cotton twine around their wrist as they do so. Da Chom, Tri’s father and the patriarch of the family, taught me how to make laap about 13 years ago so I made a point of paying my repects to him, even though I am not really versed in protocol and procedure.
When that was done, I headed out on the motorbike to meet Sunny for dinner at his sister’s house and then back home for some kip.

Being in Chiang Mai is always a treat, but being here during Songkran is really joyful, and I feel quite lucky to get a small glimpse of what is happening at home rather than just the giant water fight that most tourists witness and participate in, fun as that is. And it carries on today: we are making yam wun sen for 50 “housewives” of the village of Doi Saket tonight when they come to give our friend Leung Louis a blessing on his household. And the villagers are still drinking….

After a pretty intense and exhausting push to open Ping and do a bunch of work on Pok Pok uring our annual closure in January, it’s great to get back out on the road and explore, revisit and eat my way through a couple of countries.
First stop, a small city state just a 45 minute ferry ride away from the shiny skyscrapered island and financial center (not to mention culinary giant) of Hong Kong. Macau, a colony of Portugal for some 400 years before being kicked back to China in 1999, is technically part of mainland China but enjoys the same autonomy as Hong Kong from the Chinese government and is known as the Las Vegas of Asia. In the last few years, since my last visit, several mega-resort casinos have been built on land reclaimed from the sea (joining several others already in existence including the notorious Lisboa Casino and Hotel) but the old part of the city is still intact and the cobblestone streets and colonial architecture make it very atmospheric.
Macanese food is an interesting blend of Portugese and Chinese; mostly Portugese with Chinese influence. You can find dishes that combine olive oil, bay leaves and soy sauce; fish stews with shrimp paste called belichao added to them; chicken, chilies, tomatoes, potatoes and coconut milk. Of course there is the typical Hong Kong-style Chinese food available, and at much lower prices than in HK.
On this trip, I am here to hunt down the best ju pa bao in the city. Ju pa bao is simply a pork chop fried and stuck in a bun, with no condiments or veges and relies on the juiciness and seasoning of the chop sandwiched between a bun that is crispy outside and soft inside. We have them on the menu at Ping, but I have not had one for about 4 years, and that in a small neighborhood cafe that I’ll probably never find again, so I want to make sure we are getting it right. I am not sure of the origins of the dish, but the buns look Portugese to me and not entirely unlike a Mexican torta roll. The flavor of the pork chop is pretty simple: just salt, pepper and garlic. The name is decidedly Chinese though, and I have seen baked buns with pork belly in them in Chinese bakeries in Hong Kong. I am no authority on the subject, but to me this pretty much sums up what Macanese food is about: really simple with obvious Portugese roots and a nod and wink to Chinese cuisine.
After some research, I was looking for 3 places: Tai Lai Lei Kei on Taipa island, ten minutes by bus from downtown Macau; Tea Plus, a touristy chain situated in the old part of Macau; and Kam Ma Lon in the market area of old Macau. The first was the most famous and, not surprisingly, the most busy of the 3. Also not the best imo, as happens so many times when a place becomes a legend: it was the smallest, the bun was quite chewy and the chop was obviously pre-cooked and reheated as evidenced by a greasy brown crust on the outside and dry overseasoned center. The second was surprisingly good considering the chop was done in a deep fryer and the restaurant had no pretenses of being anything but a tourist trap: nice soft bun with a little crispiness and a big juicy, if utterly plain, pork chop jammed in there, complete with bone just as I remembered. I then spent several hours wandering around the back lanes of the market area trying to find the last place, with no luck.
The next morning, my last in Macau, I was looking for a cafe/bakery to have a final ju pa bao and a cup of coffee before heading out, wandered into a likely looking joint and BINGO!, I found myself looking at a menu saying Kam Ma Long. No English writing on the outdoor sign and I had walked by it a few times the afternoon before. And there it was, exactly what a ju pa bao should be: a buttery bun that had a nice crispy crust to it and a soft interior and a lovely pan-fried pork chop seasoned just right with a bit of garlic sweetness. The coffee was no good, but I should have been drinking milk tea anyway..when in China, after all.
So, mission accomplished and except for a small adjustment I think we are getting it pretty good at Ping. The bun we use from An Xuyen Bakery on SE Foster is good, though it does not look exactly like the Macanese bun. Until I can find one that more closely resemble the ones from the Macau’s bakeries they’ll do nicely. The pork chop is almost there, and with the addition of garlic to the brine the flavor should be spot on.
I was also getting reacquainted with a couple other dishes that are probably going to make their way onto the menu at Ping or Pok Pok, but I’ll leave that for another time. Next stop, Chiang Mai, Thailand and environs.

our “early menu’ runs from 4-5:30pm, monday through saturday.  check out the menu page for more info.