The most delicious dish in the world

Not to overstate things, but there’s an appetizer at a local Thai restaurant that seriously may be the single most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten. My lovely wife and I went out for dinner tonight, and for the umpteenth time I was blown away by this dish.

It’s called miang kum and it’s a Thai peasant version of those ubiquitous Chinese restaurant lettuce wraps. The ingredients include the following:

• Large fresh spinach leaves
• Tiny dried shrimp
• Minced shallot
• Chopped Thai chili
• Minced ginger
• Toasted coconut
• Tiny whole limes, diced
• Peanuts
• Tamarind sauce

You take a spinach leaf, spread some tamarind sauce on it, then add small pinches of each of the ingredients - we’re talking single peanut-sized quantities here - roll the whole thing up and put it in your mouth. Unbelievable.

The tamarind sauce and limes provide a tangy citrus high note, with peanuts and shrimp filling out the bass end. The coconut, shallots, and ginger make an earthy middle section, while the chilis provide a bright hot spice note. The nuts and coconut are crunchy, the shrimp and limes are chewy. It’s sweet and salty and hot and tangy and cool and fresh and funky and altogether astounding.

I’ve traveled all over Thailand and have had a buttload of awesome street food, but I never had anything this amazing. Thai cuisine is always exciting, and miang kum is, no kidding, the best thing I’ve ever eaten at a Thai restaurant – or possibly anywhere else.

Anyone else tried this? Anyone have their own candidate for most delicious dish on the planet?

I definitely share my lovely husband’s enthusiasm for miang kum. The funny thing is that this restaurant, Typhoon, is a small-ish Pacific Northwest chain that looks very commercial. It doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you’d find something and proclaim it “the most delicious dish in the world”.

This dish reminds me of a passage from one of Ruth Reichl’s memoirs. She described her first taste of Thai food as an awakening. Her words:

My head flew off. I felt my cheeks getting hot and my eyes getting moist. My palms prickled. Shivers swooped down my spine. Suddenly I was so attuned to sensation that I could feel my watch ticking against my wrist. No food had ever done this to me before… the hot pink soup was dotted with lacy green leaves of cilantro, like little bursts of breeze behind the heat. Small puffs of tofu, as insubstantial as clouds, floated in the liquid. I took another spoonful of soup and tasted citrus, as if lemons had once gone gliding through and left their ghosts behind.

Even though I loved this book when I read it seven years ago, I ignored the recipe at the end of the chapter on Thai food. I looked tonight… and it’s miang kum.

I’ve been to Thailand several times, but clearly we visited different places.

Joking aside, sounds delish. The dish that is.

Thanks, Brad.

Ruth Reichl is the most eloquent food writer since MFK Fisher, but yeah, I can see how you’d confuse the two of them.

Had it, among many other appetizers, in Bangkok; the restaurant was either Ban Khun Mae or Lemongrass. I liked it fine, but, honestly, wasn’t crazy about it; but, then, again, I’m not too crazy over Thai food. Whenever there, I look for other than Thai cuisine after the 3rd day at most . My brother, his wife and my wife enjoy it much more than I.

Most delicious dish on the planet? I have no idea, but, personally, my 3 offhand candidates would have to be:

1. Barely done steamed fresh live crabs especially those king crabs from the southern province of Surigao in my country;

2. Cantonese roast pigeon with toasted salt (especially from the now defunct original Sun Sui Wah restaurant, HK); and,

3. Roast French pigeon (especially the one of Fabienne Escoffier in Ma Cuisine, Beaune).

Interesting that pigeon features in two of your three candidates. I’m all for ridding the world of as many pigeons as possible, but it never occurred to me that we could do it by eating them. I’ll have to put that dish on my “to-do” list for France this summer.

Heh heh. I probably have eaten too many ducks, geese and, surely, too much red meat over the years that I’m now overly focused on pigeon.

N

Thank you so much, my friend, for getting my husband interested in vermin. Tell him more about the geese and meat instead! Or truffles. Surely you’ve had a few good ones over the years.

Ive had the pleasure of having these a few times…mighty tasty.

Love the stuff. I love having lunches at Ma Cuisine when in Burgundy. My first lunch on my second trip there, I noticed that the pigeon wasn’t on the menu. I told Pierre that I came back all the way from the Philippines for their pigeon - he asked me to wait for a second, headed for the kitchen, came back within a minute and told me they’d make me some. Had that with a '99 Dujac Morey St-Denis. Nice lunch.

did you hear a shotgun blast outside while they “made you some”

On a side note, I’ve been to Ma twice, never saw the allure…

Okay. I need a smiley here that simultaneously emotes:

• Embarassed amusement;
• Amused disapproval; and
• Disapproving embarassment.

Ah hell, this’ll do: [1928_middle_finger.gif]

Don’t forget disamusing approvement, which is this smiley -

Damn skippy. I shoulda used that one.

Been there many times. I see the allure.

Noel, what’s that in your avatar?

I swear, it looks like Noel’s channellling the Alien.