Sunday Night Thai: sesame chicken

Sesame Thai chicken

Here’s a feature I’d like to see become regular: Sunday night Thai cookin’ with Jessica. Last night’s entree was a delectable sesame chicken.

I wish I could offer a nice recipe write-up beginning with only the barest of ingredients. Ideally, I’d walk you through buying the exotic ingredients, simmering the sauce and rolling the noodles by hand. That’s not really how we roll here at Sunday Night Thai©, so I’ll be straight up: buy the box. It’s worth it for the spice packet alone, unless you already stock coriander and tamarind.

Allow me to digress on that latter ingredient. Tamarind does not in any real way exist. My adventures preceding an earlier Thai cooking experience (this one perhaps on a Thursday) confirmed this well enough. Nowhere in Our Great Nation’s capital does such a beast exist. Neither my local Giant, Wholefoods, nor even the Chinatown grocer who told me my driver’s license photo makes me look like a girl (it doesn’t) carried any such thing. After a not-inconsiderable period of research, I believe I now know tamarind’s dark secret.

Tamarind extract. Exotic, right? Delicious, right? Fruit, right? NOT HARDLY. One cannot find tamarind extract in the United States because we have laws in This Fine State against the consumption of adorable primates! Ferchrissakes! I’ve been to the National Zoo, readers. I have seen these furry political émigrés, forced to flee their own country for reasons of culinary persecution. It is tragic, dear readers; cute (these are foot-long monkeys, after all), yet tragic.

My research has further uncovered the gory process by which tamarinds are, er, processed. Babies are taken from their mothers in a bloody, vernal ritual outsiders call “the hunt.” They are caged and grossly overfed, so that by the early summer months the young pad thai prisoners swell to tragicomic (these are foot-long monkeys, after all) proportions. The young monkey-blobs, hardly recognizable, are then chained together and suspended from low-hanging tree branches, though anthropologists have not yet found any particular motivation for doing this. Readers who are easily put off by acts of animal cruelty should have had the good sense to stop reading some time ago, but if any yet remain, they’d better not click on this graphic depiction. From here, the unfortunate tamarind youth are dumped into a customary tamarind press. What comes out is a furry pulp, formless and, to the humanity of its producers, positively damning. The tamarind pulp is dried, mixed with coriander, and still actually a bit adorable (these were foot-long monkeys, after all).

That this “tamarind extract” should wind up on Our Glorious State’s supermarket shelves is despicable. That millions of Thai-loving hipsters, not at all dissimilar from you or I, should consume it blissfully unawares, is downright sickening. Somebody should do something, and that someone is Dr. Lester M. Crawford, George Bush’s FDA head. Won’t you do your part to stop the international trafficking of cruel, furry contraband? Why not write the FDA a note telling him how you feel about tamarind extract crossing This Noble Land’s borders. It’s up to you, dear readers.

Right. Sesame chicken. The package’ll tell you that limes, green chilis, and cilantro are optional, but don’t believe it. You don’t want to skimp here, believe me. Throw it all in a wok over medium heat, then add the soft noodles and drizzle the whole thing with sesame oil. สุขสันต์วันเกิด, as the Thai say!