Report from Bangkok Post dated 6 March 2012 :-
Spices that won't be confined to the kitchen
She asked if I would appear on a television show, as I had done the previous year. That appearance was broadcast on Valentine's Day and I had brought along dishes that I made for my restaurant, with ingredients known for their aphrodisiacal qualities. My publicist thought it was a clever marketing idea to showcase my passion-inspiring creations. It was she who got me the booking with the TV company. I put on an impressive spread. The producer loved it.
This year, as Valentine's Day approached, the same producer asked if I would do a repeat performance, but with a different menu. I wondered to myself if the invitation had anything to do with reports I'd heard of something strange that had happened after the first show? I had invited the production crew to share the dishes I had brought along. And four women who worked at the television station all got pregnant soon afterwards, apparently. Nine months later, they all delivered healthy baby boys.
While long known in my community as a crusader who lives, speaks, writes and cooks food as medicine, I have never thought of myself as a love alchemist. To me, that profession is the sole preserve of the scary, stern-looking, elderly women portrayed in Thai novels I used to read as a child. These eccentric magic-women lived in huts hidden deep in the forest. Desperate women who yearned to bewitch men would make the arduous journey to such places to plead for magical love potions. They were prescribed bark, herbs, roots, insects and blooms, often to be boiled with alcohol. If that didn't work, the reciting of chants and other supernatural tricks were employed.
I don't use magic, nor do I live in a hut hidden in a forest. I am elderly and, I must admit, slightly eccentric with an insatiable passion for food. To lure my customers into eating vegetables, I have been known to create dishes using ingredients known to stir up endorphins.
Wait! Come to think of it ... I've just remembered that I do have a certificate in love magic. I earned one decades ago and had forgotten about it. Secreted away somewhere in a storage box, the document certifies me as a licensed sex therapist. I once trained with Masters and Johnson, the famed sex therapists, you see, back in the days when I was working as a family counsellor. It was a time when sex was being liberated from the strict conventions imposed by previous generations. Talking about and practising the art of love was no longer taboo. It became a national obsession in some parts. Everyone wanted to be a love expert, or at least the most perfect lover possible.
The bedroom blossomed, changing from a place to sleep in to a love nest. Soft pink and purple lightbulbs cast romantic spells over bedsteads covered with silken sheets and piles of pillows. Scented candles perfumed the room with alluring fragrances.
Even the bathroom, not typically the most romantic setting in a house, was transformed. Walls were moved to make room for romance in larger, more airy spaces. It was painted in hues suggestive of some exotic land, with bathtubs big enough for two waiting to transport lovers to another level with warm sensual water and aromatic bubbles.
For those who could afford it, hot tubs brought love into the backyard where people could play at sex under the open night sky. Alcohol added to the ambience, lubricating the imagination and relaxing inhibitions.
All of these atmospheric stage-settings were part of my training. And so were techniques to prolong the sexual act or correct sexual dysfunction and related problems. Oddly, foods known to act as aphrodisiacs were not mentioned as part of any treatment. However, I do remember one incident where love-crazed folks threw a sexy food party, imitating the actor who played Tom Jones, in the movie of the same name, downing raw oysters chased by chilled wine.
The making of aphrodisiacs is an ancient form of alchemy. Spices such as ginger, cardamom, asafoetida, frankincense and chillies, to name but a few, have long been prized and sought after for their hidden powers, their ability to awaken and arouse sedated desires and boost sexual prowess.
When chocolate was first introduced to the West, priests forbade its consumption among their congregations. They claimed it had a potent and dangerous effect on human sexual desire. They suggested that chocolate would turn the masses into a bunch of love-crazed, uncontrollable sex addicts.
Meanwhile, the clerics themselves and the aristocratic class were feasting on this buttery, rich and irresistible delicacy. Um, could it be that the fear of chocolate's seductive sway was a reason for self-mutilation by the pious, a way to drive away prurient thoughts and keep all virgins safe?
Long is the list of items that humans have experimented with in an attempt to enhance sexual desire and to heighten amore. Ancient chronicles mention, not just chocolate, but also garlic, basil, coriander, asparagus, various berries (including raspberries and strawberries), figs, almonds and oysters as foods with aphrodisiacal qualities.
Our own King Rama II was a gifted poet. One of his queens was reportedly a superb cook. I like to believe that one of the most famous poems penned by that monarch was a tribute to his consort's culinary skills. In one particular stanza, he wrote with erotic undertones about her massamun curry, which I took the liberty of translating for the chapter about curry in my cookery book, Cracking the Coconut:
Massamun is the most complex of Thai curries. It is flavoured with more than a dozen ingredients, many, if not all of which, are known to have aphrodisiacal qualities. The spice paste is a marriage between common domestic ingredients and once-rare foreign imports. From the Thai garden came garlic, chillies, coriander roots, peppercorns and shallots; all of these boost blood circulation and stimulate the appetites. Cardamom, cumin, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon were brought in from the nearby Spice Islands (in what is now Indonesia) and heated to arouse the senses.
Legend has it, that when massamun curry was made by a pair of expert hands, such as those of Rama II's consort, a mere whiff of its perfume was enough to make one fall into a state of rapture. A single bite, as the poem reveals, will whet your appetite for a menu of delights that is best served in the bedroom.
MASSAMUN CURRY PASTE
Makes one cup
INGREDIENTS:
PREPARATION:
Preheat the oven to 204 degrees Celsius. Slice the tops off the garlic and shallots. Place them together with the chunk of galangal in the centre of a small piece of aluminium foil. Drizzle a little oil over them and fold the foil into a small parcel. Wrap the lemongrass in another piece of foil. Put both pouches in oven. Bake lemongrass for 20 minutes and the garlic, shallots and galangal for 30 minutes. Cool. Remove the skin from the cloves of garlic and shallot by squeezing them. Mince the galangal and the lemongrass.
Using a pestle and mortar, pound the coriander seeds, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, cardamom seeds, cloves and mace to a fine powder. Add the grated nutmeg and the cinnamon powder and mix in well. Transfer the contents of the mortar to a bowl.
Put the salt and coriander roots into the mortar and pound to a pulp. Add the chillies, kaffir lime zest and again reduce to a puree. Add the garlic, galangal, shallots and lemongrass and pound to combine. Pour in the contents of the bowl and pound to combine.
When the paste begins to create suction as you pound and all the ingredients have been pureed into a single entity, it is time to add the fermented shrimp paste. Pound and mix to combine.
If you don't intend to use this paste immediately, store it in an airtight container and refrigerate. It will keep for three to four days and maybe for up to a week.