Everyone here in Trang knows that we’re hung-up on a great-tasting Panang Curry made at Mai Muang, a restaurant that has moved much farther out of downtown than when we first became affectionados. We’ve been enjoying Panang Curry at least once a week in the outskirts now, and sometimes twice when we can find another source in town.

Another restaurant, owned by a member of the Trang Cycling Club, has added it to their menu and we need only park our scooter outside their dining deck and the Panang Curry starts simmering on the gas stove. We don’t even have to order any more.

Stanna has tried to replicate this dish in Durango, with a Chaing Mai cooking school cookbook and ingredients from an international food store in Albuquerque. It just hasn’t been the same: too runny to appreciate the fine flavors and tastes. So we mustered up our courage to ask if we could have a lesson at Mai Muang on just how to cook Panang Curry her way.

Surprisingly, Lee the wife and chef, enthusicatically welcomed us into the kitchen, and even offered to let Stanna try to cook it herself. (“Next time,” we said.) We just wanted to photo document and watch the process as she produced it.

Lee turned up the flame under one of her many woks to high, and poured in a cup of coconut milk.  This was such a surprise, because we’d figured in Durango that our recipe was in error, since our Panang was so runny we thought we must be using too much coconut milk.

With the coconut milk boiling she added the simple ingredients: sugar, fish sauce, Panang curry, chili paste, kaffir lime leaves, sliced red chilies and chicken.  This was more of a soup boiling in the wok and we couldn’t imagine what would happen to turn this into a succulent sauce with chicken.

Boiling.

Simply boiling the milk down to a sauce, stirring occasionally, adding fresh basil leaves near the end, and then sliding the meal onto a plate was the answer.

We got treated to a follow-up lesson this next week when Sunsern (our cycling fixer friend) volunteered his wife to come to  Wassana’s kitchen to show us how she cooks Panang curry.  This lesson started with a trip to the market, where she selected the ingredients and said we needed to cook some vegetables along with the curry.

Thai cooks use a meat cleaver rather than a variety of knives for chopping or peeling, and Toi (Sunsern’s wife) was deft at wielding one whether she was pounding garlic flat before mincing, severing a chicken breast or peeling a mushroom.  (BTW the preferred chopping board is a 3″ tree round sliced like a carrot and dished-out from wear, like granite temple steps.  Wassana’s kitchen is so modern only a white polycarbonate one was available.)

Once again we photo’d every step, primarily for our memory, and took hasty notes to record measurements on an iPhone. Sunsern had to repeatedly request Toi to use a spoon so we might glean whether she was pouring a teaspoon or multiple tablespoons of seasonings into the wok.  Her choice of measurement was her taste buds, when she spooned a bit of sauce between her lips.

Her stir-fried vegetable was unique in several ways: after she put in the oil and garlic, she added about 3 or 4 bites-sized chunks of chicken (for flavor we assume), in addition, she’d pre-soaked some angle hair rice noodles and added them to the vegetables when all was thrown in the wok.  She used oyster sauce as a seasoning along with fish and soy sauces, and finally she threw in a splash of water.  On medium to high flame the stir-fry was done in minutes.

Her Panang curry was basically the same as we’d learned earlier, only the order of ingredients varied.  She only put in half the coconut milk to start, before adding the curry paste (we’d purchase pre-blended red curry and chili paste from the market, rather than the special blend Lee at Mai Muang had in store). Two other variations Toi used were half a bullion cube and coconut sugar rounds.  And her preference was three times the amount of Thai basil which Sunsern extracted so a comparison might be more fair.  Again, the secret to the sauce was boiling down the mixture to a thick viscous liquid before turning off the flame.

Not quite the same as Mai Muang, but we agreed if our Durango version could be this good we’d have a new family standard.  And just to be sure Stanna knew how to do it, Toi insisted she try, preparing the entire meal a second time after we’d finished lunch. (Dinner was wonderful having Panang Curry “left-overs”.)