True taste of Thailand

> Chef Korn Yodsuk hopes to educate more people about his country’s cuisine

THAI chef Korn Yodsuk has mixed feelings about how Thai cuisine is portrayed on cooking shows. “I saw one show where they said to put ginger in the green curry paste,” he said. “I switched off the TV right away. Ginger is not used in green curry paste.

“Most of these shows don’t show the traditional way of cooking Thai food. They don’t mention pounding the ingredients. They don’t show how the aroma of the ingredients comes out when you pound it.”

Korn, who runs two restaurants in the Klang Valley – Erawan in Damansara City Mall, and Tiffin’s By Chef Korn in Mid Valley Megamall – is hoping to little by little teach more people about his country’s cuisine.

During a Thai Cooking Made Easy demonstration held at the Royal Thai Embassy in Kuala Lumpur last Friday, Korn showed an invited audience the right way to prepare four popular Thai dishes.

The dishes were tom yung goong (prawn tom yum soup), gai pad kraprao (spicy stir-fried Thai basil chicken), kaew whan gai (green curry chicken), and bua loy maprow on (dumpling in coconut milk).

Also present at the event were Thai Ambassador Damrong Kraikruan, and Tourism Authority Thailand (Malaysia and Brunei) director Ahman Mad-Adam.

The Thai Cooking Made Easy event, held in cooperation with Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Royal Thai Embassy, was also to laud the inaugural issue of The Michelin Guide Bangkok 2018.

Korn took time to impart some words of wisdom on how to use certain ingredients such as fish sauce (too much makes the dish smell fishy), lime juice (pour in last after turning off the heat, or it turns bitter), and when to put in seafood into soup (when the broth is boiling so it won’t end up tasting fishy.

He added that there is no substitute for fresh ingredients, and that one should only use oils with high smoking points, such as palm oil, for deep frying.

He also cleared up one key question, often posed by people who try to recreate Thai cooking from recipe books: what is the difference between coconut cream and coconut milk?

Korn said coconut cream is what you get from the first squeeze of grated coconut, while coconut milk comes from the second and third squeeze.

“In Thai cooking, there are no shortcuts. You need the thick coconut cream mixed with the curry paste to slowly boil, and [then] produce the oil.”

Korn is a huge believer in the ‘slow food’ concept, in which meticulous care must be taken into preparing food. Korn’s path to becoming a chef was somewhat fated. His grandmother cooked for King Rama VII, and brought her own family recipes to the palace. Everyone in his family learnt how to cook. Korn said: “I started cooking when I was seven or eight years old. I was the youngest in the family of four boys. “I was [both] unlucky [and] lucky in that aspect. “Being the youngest, I was given the job of walking around our orchard to pick lemongrass, galangal, and coconut, and [to] grate the coconut.” The whole experience prepared him for the time when he would know how to pick and prepare ingredients, should he live away from the family. The first dish he cooked on his own was rice and omelette. “Very basic.”

Prior to becoming a professional chef, Korn took up business administration, majoring in marketing, in university. After finishing college, he joined the civil service working for the district office in his hometown.

While working, he used to cook for his friends and family. His friends, who loved his cooking, would encourage him to open his own restaurant.

Korn eventually helped a friend open a cooking school in Kuala Lumpur in 2006, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Describing his passion for food, Korn said: “I like to eat, I like to try different food, I like to experiment. If I like something, I try to recreate my own version of it.”

Korn said cooking reflects a person’s personality. “When you cook you ask yourself what you like first. You don’t force yourself to cook what you don’t like. So your cooking reflects your tastes.”

Describing his own cooking style, Korn said it reflects the principles of Thai cuisine itself.

“I love everything about Thai food, [and] I love to share what I love.”