I’m writing this on a Friday, which is traditionally curry night in this house – just as it is in so many other households in Scotland. Just how celebratory is a weekend curry?
At the end of a cold, dreich day, when you’ve finally downed tools, poured that first glass of wine and stopped cursing at Reporting Scotland, is there anything better on Tayside than dialling up Dil’se or the Taj Mahal and waiting for that special aromatic delivery signalling instant entry into a brighter world?
If there is then please do let me know, but it must involve swift delivery to Fife, keeping your clothes on and no comedown on a Saturday morning.
A curry is a pretty instant legal high, and a relatively cheap one.
The non-pharmaceutical feelgood factor that a good curry brings isn’t just from the pleasure of great food brought to your door, of course.
Many of us who dread the winter months know that a good hot curry can transport you into the Valley of the Dolls quicker than a valium, an SAD lamp or a couple of tumblers of Glenrothes single malt – how hot you like your curry could either be a test of your fortitude or an admission that chillies are probably the ultimate instant feelgood food.
A jumbo-sized bar of Dairy Milk is, of course, the exception to this rule. Having chilli and chocolate together, as you might enjoy in Lindt’s Dark Chilli Bar, might raise your spirits to such ecstatic levels that you’d need to listen to Leonard Cohen or Nico for a month to bring you back down to Earth.
The heat in a chilli comes from a family of chemicals called capsaicinoids, which are mainly found in the seeds – this is why a lot of recipes will advise you to remove the seeds when chopping chillies and adding to a dish.
That the writers don’t remind you not to touch your eyes or any other essential organs after handling chillies is probably the starting point for a thousand lawsuits in America right now.
The pungency of chillies is measured on the Scoville scale, with a jalapeno pepper measuring about 8,000 against the zero of a sweet pepper.
The scale measures the amount of capsaicin in each chilli which reacts with receptors in the skin, most notably in the mucous membranes.
This is why I try to remember to pack hankies before going out for an Indian or Thai feast.
A good thing to tell your date as you cry and sniffle at the restaurant table is that your exaggerated emotional display is merely your body reacting to the hot chilli by releasing endorphins as a natural defence and pain-killer. This is what gives you that curry high.
I thought of this when we visited the excellent Chiang Mai Thai in Monifieth this week.
The first thing to say about this place is that I embarrassed myself by asking our waiter how long they’d been open.
Without missing a beat he replied “24 years”, thereby scuppering my hopes to reveal Chiang Mai as a secret discovery of mine (in my defence I was living in London when it opened in 1997, and I’ve subsequently driven past this site many times without realising it was a Thai restaurant).
I’d actually been recommended Chiang Mai by my gym trainer David McGinley, who had first come here when it was unlicensed – which should have alerted me to the longevity of the place. But, I mean, 24 years, what an achievement!
The food
I loved everything about this restaurant. Firstly, of course, the food.
Chiang Mai specialises in the food of Northern Thailand, the birthplace of chef and co-owner Toy Schofield (her husband Chris is co-owner, and was also our waiter).
Everything we ate was delicious and tasted authentic – but then authenticity in food is such an abstract concept sometimes.
This is in no way to diminish the cooking here but, really, who am I to judge when the cook is from Chiang Mai and has probably forgotten more about Thai food than I will ever know?
The first thing we ordered was a wonderful papaya salad (£6.55) which led to Chris asking how hot we’d like it.
In truth I thought he was just being over-cautious because he thought maybe we were innocents abroad, but in fact it was great that he asked because it sparked a debate at the table about how hot we liked our food.
Chris explained that three chillies in the papaya salad would be very hot,
two would be quite hot and one would be OK.
Because I have an aversion to being in the middle of the road I was going to live dangerously and say that three was fine – I guess I was feeling macho by driving to Monifieth in the dark – until David stepped in and said he wanted one.
We settled on two because I shouted the loudest.
The papaya salad was absolutely great – a fantastic combination of flavours and textures, with the most wonderfully citrus, spicy basenote. Top stuff!
In mid share though we did realise that the salad had a real fiery kick to it, which proved too much for David.
This meant that I devoured the whole plateful and as I did so I was aware that my mouth was tingling in places that no mouthwash could ever reach.
This actually was quite hot!
It was then that the spice euphoria kicked in and I do believe that if someone had struck a match in front of my mouth I could have ignited the surrounding area quite easily.
If I say it was the most delicious sensation to feel like a Bunsen burner had taken up residence in my tonsils, I hope you’ll see this as more an expression of culinary joy than of macho bravado.
Just as Nigella often celebrates the fact she has asbestos hands, I now know that my throat is insulated against the chill of autumn. A great papaya salad!
My starter of spicy fish cakes (£6.55) was also excellent – four small but richly flavoured cakes that were hugely moreish.
Reading David Thompson’s exhaustive, brilliant book Thai Food (Pavilion Books, 2002) I see that such fish cakes are often eaten as snacks and in the south of Thailand the mixture is sometimes wrapped around a small chilli before being deep fried.
The food of the north of Thailand being generally less fiery than the south, I was spared this version – instead, my delicious fishcakes came with a sweet chilli relish that quenched the fire instead of adding to it.
David’s starter of hot and sour soup (£5.45) was a lot chunkier in texture than the Thai soups we’d had before, like the classic Tom Yum and Tom Kha (both on the menu here, from £6.10).
David’s vegetarian choice was more like a stew and was delicious – less assertively punchy than other Thai soups, this was clean flavoured and felt nourishing, which is often what you want from a restaurant soup in order to avoid drowning the appetite.
My main course came recommended by Chris, although he did say he found it hard to choose one dish to recommend above others.
But my chicken curry and deep-fried king prawn dish (£18.85) was, I think, the best choice for my first visit here, knowing we’ll be back many times to explore this menu further.
This main course is actually two dishes combining with wonderful sticky rice to make the Mini Khan Thoke described on the menu, from which I quote here: “Khan Thoke is a wooden food tray used as a dining table by the people of the north.
“As people in Northern Thailand traditionally sit on the floor when eating, so Khan Thoke is used as dining furniture to keep food off the ground”.
This unctuous stew was based on deboned chicken thighs braised in quite the loveliest, spicy broth, bursting with the flavour of tamarind, tomato and ginger. It was brilliant.
Accompanying it on the board were four deep fried king prawns, the batter so crispy and delicious I devoured them in minutes. The sticky rice was perfect.
David’s vegetarian pad thai (£8.75) was simple and tasted great. This dish is enjoyed throughout Thailand and has also become a mainstay of Thai menus all over the world – its ubiquity shouldn’t stop you ordering it though, because, done properly, it’s a hugely tasty offering.
We finished with banana fritters and vanilla ice cream (£5.95). Of course
we did, and naturally it was completely heavenly.
The verdict
Everything here was cooked from scratch, easily reflecting Chiang Mai’s aim to provide fresh, authentic Thai food, served simply and unpretentiously.
As such it reminded me of fantastic places I used to go to in London which were “regular” cafes by day and then Thai cafes at night. The decor is basic but the food is great.
That’s exactly the case here.
A special word must go to the service at Chiang Mai which was just the most charmingly gracious and helpful I can remember.
Chris Schofield can’t do enough to make you feel welcome – and his knowledge of the menu and of his wife’s excellent cooking is second to none. Service this good is a sad rarity these days, and this was a joy.
Twenty four years ago, Chiang Mai was the only Thai restaurant in the
Dundee area.
That it has survived this long, and is now even more popular than ever, says a lot about this wonderful family restaurant. I loved it.
Information
Address: Chiang Mai Thai, 10 Maule Street, Monifieth DD5 4JN
T: 01382 530500
W: www.chiang-mai.co.uk
Price: Starters from £5.25, Mains from £8.75, dessert from £4.50
Scores:
- Food: 4/5
- Service: 5/5
- Surroundings: 3/5
