BITCHLOVE

The Kitchen

Bar food

Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.

2 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks

vegan 73 vegetarian 36
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Bangkok, Thailand — they call it kap klaem (กับแกล้ม)

Nobody here drinks without eating. A bottle of Hong Thong or SangSom lands with a bucket of ice and a siphon of soda, someone keeps topping your glass, and the table fills with kap klaem: salty, sour, charred, deliberately too spicy, so a session can run four hours. It happens on plastic stools outside Isaan grill shops, at ya dong carts in Chinatown, in any open-front shophouse after dark. Boiled peanuts and raw cabbage arrive unasked.

everything dips 63 fried 120 loaded 164 skewers 43 sliders 32 wings 14 sweet 8
🍌

Fried Bananas VEGAN

กล้วยทอด / กล้วยแขก (kluai thot / kluai khaek) · Bangkok

Bananas in a coconut and sesame batter, fried hard, sold hot in a paper bag. Not a bar-table dish. It is what the cart on the corner sells you on the walk home at two.

45 min 4-6 easy
Make it

You need

  • 6 firm bananas, ideally Thai namwa; slightly underripe plantains work
  • 1 cup rice flour
  • 1/4 cup tapioca or all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
  • 2 tbsp white sesame seeds
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup coconut milk, plus water to loosen
  • Neutral oil for frying, about 4 cups

Method

  1. Whisk rice flour, tapioca flour, coconut, sesame, sugar and salt. Stir in coconut milk to a batter that coats a spoon thickly, adding water a spoon at a time.
  2. Rest the batter 20 minutes. The rice flour needs to hydrate or the crust stays chalky.
  3. Peel the bananas and cut lengthwise into thirds, or press them flat with the side of a knife.
  4. Heat 2 inches of oil to 340F/170C.
  5. Dip each piece, let the excess run off, and lower it into the oil. Fry 3-4 minutes, turning once, until dark gold and hard to the tap.
  6. Drain on a rack. Eat them within twenty minutes; they are only good hot.

Where you'd actually eat it: Carts outside the bar strips of Banthat Thong and Ari, running until the drinkers thin out. Eaten standing up, waiting on a motorbike taxi.

From behind the bar: Traditional cart batter is rice flour and coconut milk, no egg and no butter. Some newer versions add egg for color, so ask before you assume.

🥭

Sour Fruit with Chili Salt VEGAN

ผลไม้จิ้มพริกเกลือ (phonlamai chim phrik kluea) · Bangkok

Hard sour fruit under a coarse red powder of chili, salt and sugar. It is the chaser at every ya dong cart and about the only sweet thing a Thai drinking table wants.

25 min 4 with drinks ▲▲ easy
Make it

You need

  • 1 green mango, firm and sour, peeled and cut in thick slices
  • 1 guava, seeds cut out, cut in wedges
  • 2 rose apples, or half a pineapple, cut in spears
  • 3 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1 tbsp coarse sea salt
  • 1 tbsp dried chili flakes, phrik pon, or 4 dried red chilies
  • Ice, for holding the fruit

Method

  1. If using whole dried chilies, toast them in a dry pan over medium 2 minutes until they darken and smell sharp. Cool completely.
  2. Pound salt, sugar and chili in a mortar to a coarse red powder, or pulse in a spice grinder. Leave it gritty; dust sticks to nothing.
  3. Taste it on a slice of fruit. Salty first, hot second, sweet last. It keeps a month in a sealed jar.
  4. Cut the fruit thick. Thin slices go limp and drown in the dip.
  5. Hold everything on ice 20 minutes. Cold, hard fruit is the whole point of the plate.
  6. Serve the fruit over ice with the chili salt in a small dish alongside.

Where you'd actually eat it: Ya dong carts around Chinatown and Talat Phlu hand you a slice of pickled fruit after the shot. Lao khao, then fruit, then soda, in that order.

From behind the bar: The other cart dip is nam pla wan, palm sugar cooked down with fish sauce and shallots. Good, and not vegan. Dry phrik kluea is the version that is.