home recipe
links Hat Yai is a city in southern Thailand, on the main rail and road routes from Singapore to Bangkok and beyond. it's a city with a large Chinese population, Northern Thais, local Thais and a fair scattering of Malays too. Quite a multicultural city in other words. If you travel in southern Thailand, it's almost certain you'll have to pass through Hat Yai at some point and if you're travelling long distance, you'll probably need to stay there over night. I've done that a few times but now I prefer to stay at Songkhla, a small town by the sea close by.
Last time I passed through Hat Yai, I was traveling from Langkawi Island in Malaysia up to Krabi, via Satun on the south-west coast, which is the entry port into Thailand. That's a great journey... the ferry is a small fast boat that weaves through an archipelago of picturesque jungle-clad limestone islands and arrives an hour or so later at the tiny harbour at Satun with it's little immigration post at the head of the wooden pier. The guys at immigration are friendly. One time I arrived with some guys who needed visas but hadn't brought photos with them for the application forms (they lied and said they had them when they boarded the ferry) and the immigration officer kept their passports and sent them into town with another officer to get their photos taken in the shopping mall.... Nice people.
More recently, I traveled the same route with Sveta and Lucy and we managed to get all the way to Hat Yai without stopping. Travelling is like that sometimes: you get off the ferry, go straight through immigration and there's a sawnthew taxi at the kerb ready to leave. The driver's shouting, 'Come, come! Were you go? Bus station? Okay! Come, sit!' and you throw your bags in the back and squeeze in after them as the taxi is pulling away. When you reach the bus station the Hat Yai bus is just pulling out, but the sawnthew driver peeps his horn and stops the bus. The bus driver shouts, 'Come! Where you go? Hat Yai? Okay! Come! Sit!' and all the stuff you've learned, about checking the fares first and how long the bus takes and whether it really goes to Hat Yai or to some dusty piece of waste ground surrounded by waiting taxis in the countryside near Hat Yai, gets left behind in the rush. That turned out to be a good bus, though. it took a lot longer to get there than we expected because we stayed on the bus until the last stop at the bus station, and it took about forty minutes to wind around the city. Later we found out the bus passed the bus station on the way into the city and we could have got off there and walked. But we didn't. You learn something new every time.
When we arrived at the bus station in the late afternoon, we were all thirsty and hungry as we hadn't time to grab any sustenance since leaving Langkawi in the morning. We had to buy tickets for the next day's journey to Krabi and we weren't sure what to do first - tickets or food. As luck would have it, the first likely looking place we came to was a combination travel agent and restaurant so we did both at the same time. The proprietors were a friendly family who chatted away while we were eating and they gave us good advice about where to catch the cheap mini bus to Songkhla. It was a Muslim restaurant but I showed the cook my little 'I am a vegetarian' sign and she knocked up a delicious fried rice dish for us. It was a simple creation and seemed to me as if it was born of a combination of Thai, Malaysian and Indian cuisine. It was probably borne of necessity as that was all that was in the kitchen at the time, but I was so impressed, I jotted down all the ingredients in my wee note book so I could try it at home.
Hat Yai is well known throughout Thailand for it's food and there are some famous Hat Yai recipes. This is not one of them. It probably wasn't even a recipe until I got my hands on it, so you might wish to experiment - see if you can come up with a tasty variation. Try the same seasoning I used though. I think that's what makes it so interesting. I'm not going to give quantities to feed a particular amount of people here. This is a true 'chuck everything into the pan' recipe, so you'll have to work it out by yourself.
Ingredients
Steamed rice
About a quarter of a head of cauliflower
A few green beans
A few baby corn cobs (or a handful of canned corn)
A few green chillies
A small onion
A small piece of root ginger
3 or 4 kaffir lime leaves
About a third of a teaspoon of ground turmeric
About a half teaspoon of coriander seeds
Salt
Oil
Cut the cauliflower into small florets. You can split larger ones by cutting through the stems long ways and then pulling the pieces apart. This will allow the cauliflower to cook in the same time as everything else. Also chop up the beans, baby corn, onion and chillies.
Stir fry all the chopped vegetables on a high heat for a couple of minutes, then chuck in the turmeric, lime leaves, crushed coriander seed and a little salt. Stir fry for a minute more then stir in the rice. Keep stirring until the rice has heated through and that's the dish ready to serve.