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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Hey, happy food for thought Thursday everyone. Every week we bring you food, or at least we bring you a conversation about food, making it, enjoying it, appreciating the stories behind it. Now we'll get into some stories and recipes and techniques from Thailand's food culture. A new cookbook is out, it's called Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Cookbook.

Unlike other cookbooks, this one takes an illustrated cartoon-like journey through the history of Thai food, its flavors, and influences from Chinese cooking, the regional agriculture of the different parts of Thailand, and from trading European produce with Portuguese merchants. All that history and culture adds up to some extremely tasty dishes like Pad Thai, khao soi, and Tom yum.

Now that we're around lunchtime, let's get our mouths watering and our inspiration flowing for some weekend cooking ideas with the authors of Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Cookbook. With me now are illustrator Christina De Witte and Thai language teacher Mallika Kauppinen, who have been longtime friends and collaborators. Christina, Mallika, welcome, and congratulations on the cookbook.

Christina De Witte: Thank you. Thank you so much for [crosstalk]

Mallika Kauppinen: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Mallika, I just want to make sure, did I pronounce your last name correctly?

Mallika Kauppinen: That was correct. Yes, Kauppinen.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Thank you both so much for being here. Listeners, we can take your calls. If you have a connection to Thailand and its culinary traditions, we want to hear from you. What's your favorite dish to cook, and what does it mean to you? Call 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also tell us how you think about blending the flavors common in Thai food, like making peanut oil, coconut milk, and lime all work together.

You can also message us on Instagram or X, we are @allofitwnyc. Our questions are for Thai cooking for our guests. The number again is 212-433-9692. Let's talk about the book for a little bit. Christina, you said in another interview for this book, that the idea for an illustrated Thai cookbook came from your agent. He called you up with this idea and you talked about it. Can you tell me about that conversation a little bit?

Christina De Witte: Yes. The funny thing is Mark, who is my agent in New York, came up with the idea of a graphic novel-style cookbook. I never really thought about it because you generally never see a fully illustrated cookbook that is maybe not as childish. He came up with the idea and then we talked it through, and I actually was immediately on board, but the next step was to find a publisher that would want to publish a fully illustrated graphic novel cookbook. That was really exciting.

We got a yes from Ten Speed Press, which was amazing, and which is even more amazing because Kimmy, the editor of Ten Speed Press, well, of the book happens to be Thai as well. We got all the stars aligned, and that was really amazing because we only had a one-shot, one chance with this book because there were not really other publishers interested. We really were very lucky with this.

Kousha Navidar: Mallika, you and Christina had been working together in a different context. You're actually her online Thai language teacher. Is that right?

Mallika Kauppinen: That's correct.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. What excited you about this project when Christina called you up to pitch the idea?

Mallika Kauppinen: She called me up and she asked, "Mallika, are you interested in doing this book with me? It's about Thai cooking." I don't remember her last word. I was just, "Yes, yes, yes." [laughter]. I don't know how many times I said yes. I'm like, "I'm born for this. This is my purpose." I started cooking when I was seven. At the time, I didn't like it at all because it was more duty, something that I had to do at home. Some often I thought to myself like, "One day I should get a trophy [laughter] for being so much in the kitchen." This book is my trophy today.

Kousha Navidar: Tell me a little bit more--

Mallika Kauppinen: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: I understand that you grew up in a rural community in Thailand. Can you bring us into some of your memories growing up? What was your family's relationship like with cooking?

Mallika Kauppinen: We are a big family. As a Thai girl we have to cook, we have to do housework. That's ladies' duty at home in Thailand. When I grew up, I already grew up with food every day. I had to cook food. I had to help around in the house, and people just love food in Thailand. We eat all the time. Even our house in the backyard, it was full of papaya, for example, chilies, all the food, so when I look at it in the backyard, I'm like, "I'm going to make some Tum today," or "I'm going to make other food today," because what I see is just food around me.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking about Thai food and Thai cooking. We'd love to hear from folks out there who have a connection to Thailand and its culinary traditions, who love Thai food, who have questions about Thai cooking. What's your favorite dish to cook? What does it mean to you? Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also tell us about how you think about blending the flavors that are common in Thai food like peanut oil, coconut milk, lime, how they all work together. What are some of your favorite ingredients in Thai food?

We can also take your comments and questions on social, we're @allofitwnyc. Give us a call at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Christina, this partnership that you and Mallika have and started out with is so interesting. I wanted to talk a little bit about Thai heritage through language as a biracial person born in Belgium with ties to the other side of the world that you had to uncover. How was working on this book and diving into Thailand's food culture further developed your connection to that heritage?

Christina De Witte: I discovered more about my heritage, and I learned way more about my own culture through food, which was very, very special to me because I think I started learning Thai with Mallika around the early February 2020, but we got this offer to do the cookbook together, I think late 2021, which is in hindsight seems ages ago, but it isn't that long time ago. In the two or three years that we've been working together on this book project, I've learned so much about language through food, because for example, the Thai word for rice is khao, but rice holds so much cultural importance because rice is almost as valuable as gold.

There are so many thousands of varieties of rice. Rice holds a very special spiritual meaning even in the Thai culture, which I didn't know before I learned through Mallika about our cultural heritage. Even the word white resembles khao, because it's khao, and the color white is sĭi kăao. It's all intertwined. It's all connected. Thai people even believe that rice has a soul. That's why they get to learn at a very young age that rice is important, and you should always finish your rice even before your proteins. [chuckles] Right Mallika?

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes, that is correct. I remember that when we were in class in, what do you call, primary school, yes?

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

Mallika Kauppinen: The teacher teach us how hard the farmers work, how difficult it is to get each grain of rice, so we cannot waste it. Every single grain in the plate, it should be finished.

Kousha Navidar: Can either of you tell me more about this idea of rice having a soul? How does that show up? Mallika, maybe you can take over?

Mallika Kauppinen: Rice has a soul because I think that we believe we already worship rice. We think that rice is very important to us, and even in some region like Isan region, they use rice-- or even my region actually, we believe in spirits, for example, and we would use rice to offer to the spirits.

Kousha Navidar: Wow.

Christina De Witte: I also remember back in my youth days when I spent the summer in Isan region, which is a northeast of Thailand, that we had to offer rice to monks as well because that was our way of showing respect and feeding monks was a way of staying connected through that spirituality. From a very young age, my mom always told me to finish my rice, more than anything. Yes, rice is important.

Kousha Navidar: We just got a text from a listener that wants to talk about noodles as well. It reads, "Can we get a quick best of, for the many Thai noodles? Noodles are a passionate food component of mine." Christina, do you have a sense of the noodles that you got to discover through making this book, some of your favorites, maybe?

Christina De Witte: Yes. Definitely. The funny thing is, I just got back from Thailand. This was my first time in Thailand that I could actually distinguish the types of noodles that are available when you go to a food vendor, but my favorite one is the Sen Yai, which are the big, flat, large noodles. These taste incredible in Pad See Ew, which is a stir-fried dish with noodles, and it's so like-- I ate it, I think five times my past trip, and it was so good. Because the texture is different than the Sen Lek, which is the smaller noodles.

You have egg noodles and the Sen Yai and Sen Lek are rice noodles, but you have all types of varieties. We even don't hate instant noodles in Thailand. It's a staple. It's a staple. Mama noodles are the best.

Kousha Navidar: There's a space for everything, right? [laughs]

Christina De Witte: Exactly. Even uncooked, and Thai people will acknowledge this uncooked Mama noodles are like a snack. [chuckles]

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you have any questions, or if you have a favorite kind of Thai noodle, or you have a favorite Thai ingredient in Thai cooking, give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. We're here with Mallika Kauppinen and Christina De Witte. They are the authors behind, Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll take more of your calls and talk more about all that delicious food. Stay with us.

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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we're joined by Christina De Witte who is an illustrator and cartoonist, and Mallika Kauppinen, who is a Thai-Finnish language coach, and they are the authors behind the Thai cookbook, Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice. It is a Thai comic book cookbook. You open up the book, and you see comics and illustrations, as well as wonderful recipes. Listeners, we're taking your calls about Thai food. Give us a call if you have questions, favorite dish, favorite place you want to shout out, give us a call or text us at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We've got a caller on the line. This is Samantha. Hi, Samantha. Welcome to the show.

Samantha: Hi. How are you? Nice to hear you.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Thanks.

Samantha: Sawasdee ka.

Mallika Kauppinen: Sawasdee ka.

Samantha: I just came back from Thailand, and I learned how to cook Thai food at a cooking class that was part of our excursion, Cooking@home in Chiang Mai. It was an amazing experience of learning how to use great flavors and different ingredients that I never thought would go together. Like papaya and-- Well, just papaya, papaya salad. I never thought to make a salad out of papaya. It was an amazing taste experience. My question is, I know there are a lot of ethnic supermarkets in New York City area, but what would you recommend as staple products for Thai cooking that we should all have?

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wonderful, Samantha. Thank you so much for that question. Christina, do you want to start?

Christina De Witte: Yes. Mallika and I were discussing this recently that you should not even have a specifically Thai store to find all the staples and all the basic necessities that you need, but I think a good fish oil, a few types of soy sauce. You could use the black and the thick one, and even the seasoning one and the thinner one, but you should not get-- By all means, you should not get all the fancy ingredients, because that might seem overwhelming in the beginning. A good base of palm sugar, for example, you can find it anywhere these days, but I think Mallika could add more to that [crosstalk]

Kousha Navidar: Yes, Mallika.

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes. I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question? Sorry, the internet got lost.

Kousha Navidar: No problem at all. Samantha from New York was just asking what are some staples in the pantry that you should definitely have if you're going to try to cook Thai food?

Mallika Kauppinen: I have three sauces at home. I have the oyster sauce that is a must, a fish sauce, it can be any brand, and soy sauce, thin soy sauce. If you could have another one is Ros Dee. That is the powder that add the flavor in the Thai food. You can find that in--

Kousha Navidar: Ros Dee, is that it?

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes, Ros Dee.

Kousha Navidar: Do you know how you would spell that?

Mallika Kauppinen: It's R-O-S D-E-E, Ros Dee.

Kousha Navidar: Ros Dee, okay. Those three three main ingredients. Well, it was three and then--

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes, four.

Kousha Navidar: Four main ingredients. Then there's this recipe that I wanted to bring up from the book. There are some great recipes, pad kra pao. Mallika, can you go ahead and tell us what that dish is, what we need to make it, how to make it?

Mallika Kauppinen: Okay. Pad kra pao is the all-time favorite for Thai people. It's the best street food. When you go out and you don't know what to eat, you just order pad kra pao because he's never going to disappoint you. It's cooked usually with mincemeat or chicken. How to cook is very simple. It needs chili and garlic. You crush them together first, and then you fry it in the oil, and then you put the meat in it. When the meat start to get cooked, you put oyster sauce, thin soy sauce, Ros Dee, and a little bit of sugar to make the flavor balanced.

Then at the end, you put the basil leaves. The original is a whole leaf basils but you can use the alternative. You can use a basil from any store to put it at the end.

Kousha Navidar: There's a tweet that just came through that I want to read to you. I think you'll both enjoy this. It says, "I'm listening to you right now, and I just ordered your book. We are Indian, but for every family celebration, we go out for Thai food. The owners and staff have become our family. I'm so intimidated by Thai cooking, but I love the idea of your book. It's beautiful." Listener, IndiraVO, thank you so much for sending that. Thanks for the love.

Christina, let's talk about the book a little bit more for a minute because this is a beautiful book. There's a lot of comics in here. While I was looking through it, I was wondering why comics? What is it about illustrations that lets you explain or communicate in a way that maybe pictures or just words can't?

Christina De Witte: The main thing for me-- I'm a very, very big fan of cooking myself, but the one thing for me was that I could not concentrate when I read a regular cookbook. I lost track many, many times resulting in a recipe failing. One thing that I've realized, I am a visual learner, and I've been making comics ever since I can hold a pencil. To me, it was very logical to create something that would work for me in the first place. I figured that illustrating every step would be so helpful when you're cooking.

Thai cooking is a very-- preparation is key, but it's a very high-speed, kitchen. Everything goes all together all at once, and you don't have time to waste. If you could do a quick glance at the page that you're currently working at, I feel like that would be more helpful to people like me at least, to be on track and to be at the right space. I think illustration was a very logical step for me to work this book out. I could not imagine any other way of making this, which was still challenging because illustrating every step was very hard, and we had to make a lot of choices too. Because it's always in the details, but if you look at it, there's generally no more than 10 steps, which is very doable in my opinion.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. We got another text that Christina I'm going to send to you. It says, "Do you recommend any spicy Thai dishes that are vegan or that can be easily adapted for a vegan diet?"

Christina De Witte: I very much love this question because I have for myself been trying to make all of the recipes-- Well, some of them at least for now, in a vegan version. As we were talking about pad kra pao, you can easily, easily make it with, for example, tofu or with replacement meats. Any protein works. You could just omit the oyster sauce or go for vegan fish sauce. You can find alternatives even in the Asian stores these days. Yes, yes, big yes, everything is adaptable in a halal way, in a vegan way, in a vegetarian way. The Thai kitchen is so versatile. I truly, truly, truly believe anything can be turned vegan.

Kousha Navidar: Is there a specific dish that you would recommend? It says here spicy. Is there something that's spicy that's vegan?

Christina De Witte: Oh, spicy. I think you could turn anything spicy really, but I truly believe that the pad kra pao contains a lot of chilies. If you would turn that one to start with, I think that's a good base-level recipe to be introduced with in a Thai kitchen. For example, the kway teow, I also really enjoy because it could be a plant-based broth, but they add like a lot of dried chili spices into it. It can turn very spicy very quickly. It's a noodle soup actually, which is very, very nice.

Kousha Navidar: If you're listening out there and you sent that text, there's a lot of options there. It sounds like anything is adaptable. If you just get the chilies and you can substitute tofu and get vegan fish oil there. That's wonderful. Mallika, I'm listening to Christina talk about how fast it is and there's only 10 steps generally to these dishes. I'm wondering, for you, are there any cooking techniques that if you saw somebody getting it right, it suggests to you that they definitely know their way around a Thai kitchen, whether it's how they prepare the rice or the kind of heat that they use, the kind of pan that they use. Are there any secret things that show you, oh, that's really a person who knows their Thai cooking?

Mallika Kauppinen: My techniques, I would go for, you need to have rice cooker to save your time. I'm not sure if that's a technique.

Kousha Navidar: I would call that a technique.

[laughter]

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes. It saves lots of time. You just put it there and put on the button and you go and do something else. When your food is ready, the rice cooker is ready.

Kousha Navidar: That's such a cross-cultural thing, isn't it? Just get a rice cooker. [chuckles] That's the way- [crosstalk]

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes. [chuckles]

Kousha Navidar: -to do it. So you have a rice cooker?

Mallika Kauppinen: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Do you have multiple rice cookers?

Mallika Kauppinen: No, I have only one.

Kousha Navidar: One. I've heard of some folks having multiple rice cookers for specific needs.

Mallika Kauppinen: [chuckles]

Kousha Navidar: I'm looking at the clock. We're just about getting ready to wrap up, but I want to get a quick, just one dish from each of you because the summer season is here. It's getting hot outside. The weather's getting warmer, at least in New York. I'm wondering for each of you, what's your favorite Thai dish to eat when it's hot out? Christina, let's go to you first.

Christina De Witte: Sorry. There is only one decent answer here, and that is som tam. I'm so sorry, Mallika if that was going to be your answer, but som tam all the way. It's so sour. It's so fresh. It's so refreshing. Oh, it's so amazing. I learned how to make it this past trip as well, and it's so easy. It's so, so easy. I think once you get the hang of it, you wouldn't want anything else this summer. Som tam.

Kousha Navidar: Mallika, how about you?

Mallika Kauppinen: I would go for, I think, the ice cream.

Kousha Navidar: Oh.

Mallika Kauppinen: [laughs] It helps a lot because in the heat, in the summer, when you get hot, the sweetness from the ice cream, it will give you energy, and it's super good.

Kousha Navidar: That sounds great. The book is Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Cookbook. We've been here with Mallika Kauppinen and Christina De Witte. Thank you both so much for hanging out with us and for the book.

Mallika Kauppinen: Thank you for having us.

Christina De Witte: [Thai language]

 

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