Thai shallots, garlic, and dried chilli roasted black in a dry pan and ground with tamarind and palm sugar
Origin: Central Thailand
From the journey of Shallot.
Phao means to roast over a fire, and the whole character of this paste comes from doing that to the aromatics before anything else happens. Shallots, garlic, and dried chillies go whole and unpeeled into a dry pan or over coals and are left until the skins blister and blacken in patches and the flesh inside softens. What that does is convert the sharp raw sulphur compounds of the alliums into sweetness and add a smokiness that no amount of frying would produce. The blackened aromatics are then peeled, pounded or blended with tamarind, palm sugar, fish sauce, and dried shrimp, and cooked briefly in oil until dark and glossy. The result is a paste that is simultaneously sweet, sour, salty, smoky, and only moderately hot, and Thailand uses it as a seasoning rather than a chilli sauce. A spoonful stirred into tom yum is what turns the clear soup into the orange-red version, tom yum nam khon. It goes into stir-fries, particularly with prawns and with clams; it dresses noodles; and it is eaten straight on rice or spread on toast, which sounds unlikely and is a genuine Bangkok habit. Shallots rather than onions, again for a technical reason. Roasted whole, a small dense shallot cooks through to sweetness in the time it takes the outside to blacken, whilst a large onion is still raw at the centre when its surface has burnt. Jars of it are sold everywhere in Thailand, and the commercial versions are sweeter and smoother than the homemade, which tends to be smokier and coarser.
Large dried red chillies, the mild kind sold as phrik haeng, are what this wants: they give colour and body rather than heat. Kashmiri chillies are a good substitute. Bird's eye chillies would make it fierce and unbalanced. Palm sugar has a caramel note that ordinary sugar lacks. Soft light brown sugar is the nearest substitute. It keeps for two months refrigerated under its oil and the flavour deepens over the first week. Stir a tablespoon into tom yum to make the creamy orange version, into stir-fried prawns or clams, or into fried rice. Thais also eat it plain on rice and, genuinely, spread on buttered toast. For a vegetarian version, leave out the dried shrimp and fish sauce and use light soy sauce plus a little extra salt and a spoonful of fermented soybean paste.
Mapping Culinary History
To explore — select an ingredient below.
To explore — select an ingredient below · click any location dot on the map for recipes and stories · browse the information panel on the right · trace the full journey on the timeline.
Journey Point Map Key