Thai Dumplings
January 8th, 2009
Sai Kuu Ka Muu and Khiaw Kreab Pak Mor
Bangkok, Thailand – Lately I’ve had dumplings on my mind, in part because my friend Andrea Nguyen is working on a cookbook on Asian dumplings, which is sure to be as beautiful and instructive as her first cookbook Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors. When I was growing up I used to help my mother make pork dumpling for special occasions. We would sit around the kitchen table for what seemed hours stuffing a minced pork and chive mixture in wonton wrappers, wetting the edges with water and sealing them shut. Later my mother would get out her huge burnished wok, fill it with oil and fry the dumplings until the outside golden brown, add some water and let them steam until the insides were cooked into juicy pork morsels.
These dumplings are quite different from the ones I grew up with. Steamed rice flour skin dumplings or khiaw kreab pak mor are made right out on the street and named for the method of cooking (pak mor means pot lips in Thai). A cloth, sometimes a bed sheet, is pulled tightly over a pot of boiling water with a small opening for steam to escape. A thin layer of rice flour batter is smoothed onto the steaming cloth with a ladle and allowed to cook slightly before a spoonful of filling – a sweet-savory paste of pork, palm sugar and peanuts – is dropped on top. Then the edges of the skin are lifted off the cloth with a rubber spatula and wrapped around the filling forming a shiny sheath of gorgeously wrinkled skin. The ones pictured here were spotted on Charoenkrung Soi 5, but I’ve also seen them made in Chiang Mai covered with metal cones to speed up the steaming I assume. The same filling is also used for another steamed dumpling, sai kuu ka muu, which uses tapioca pearls instead of a rice flour batter for the skin creating a translucent pearl dumpling of equal beauty. Garlic oil is drizzled on top of the dumplings to prevent them from sticking. And they’re served with bird eye chilies, cilantro and lettuce for wrapping and eating.
Ladling the Rice Flour Batter
Dropping the Filling
Wrapping the Skins around the Filling
Khiaw Kreab Pak Mho
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