Jitlada is the only restaurant in the Los Angeles area specializing in southern Thai food, which is said to be insanely spicy. (I read somewhere that Thai cuisine had been scientifically determined the world’s spiciest, so this is saying a lot.) After an excellent meal of unusual flavors there, however, I have to say that if one thing was missing, it was heat!

Maybe it was just the dishes we ordered (although the brother and sister who were waiting tables both commented that we’d ordered well): salmon in a tamarind-based soup, rice salad, and mango salad with crispy catfish. With the possible exception of the rice salad, I can’t imagine how they could have been spicy.

The catfish salad (the mango is just an afterthought) was amazing, with clumps of catfish that managed to be cloudlike and crispy. You didn’t really get individual pieces of fish, it was more like its essence had been distributed throughout the mixture. This dish could be translated into a fantastic bar snack.

The soup was a light, tangy tamarind broth with perfectly cooked pieces of salmon. I worried a little bit about them overcooking in the still-boiling soup, served in a container with flame underneath, but it didn’t happen.

Perhaps the most talked-about dish at Jitlada is the rice salad — the Los Angeles Times even devoted an article to it in the Sunday magazine. (Check out the notes from the test kitchen.) It was a beguiling mixture of tastes and textures, a true salad rather than a rice-bowl gut bomb, whose flavors were dominated by sweetness and a fishy funkiness that spoke of the ground shrimp and fish sauce. Still, I was perplexed by what seemed to be a photo of that salad, in an article beneath the glass cover on my table. It had a huge heap of sliced Thai chiles, whereas my salad hardly seemed spicy at all.

There’s still plenty for me to try at Jitlada — the southern menu alone comprises TKTK items. My fellow blogger Pat has tried many dishes, and I’d like to check out her recs of softshell crab curry, blue crab salad, and clam curry with betel leaves — not to mention frog legs with santol fruit curry, and pumpkin coconut custard for dessert.

Khao Yam [Thai Rice Salad]
Adapted from Jitlada restaurant, via the Los Angeles Times
Serves 4

Scant 2 cups steamed jasmine rice
2/3 cup seeded cucumber, sliced lengthwise into thirds, then crosswise into 1/8-inch slices
2/3 cup thinly sliced cabbage
1/2 cup very thinly sliced lemongrass
1/2 cup thinly sliced green beans
2/3 cup bean sprouts
2/3 cup julienned mango (slightly underripe)
1 cup julienned carrot
1/4 cup or more dried shrimp, coarsely ground in a food processor or spice mill
1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 teaspoon chili powder, or to taste
1 teaspoon fine chiffonade of kaffir lime leaves
Thinly sliced Thai chiles, optional
5 tablespoons or more khao yam sauce (below)
2 or more lime wedges

Toast the coconut in a small saute pan over medium heat until golden; set aside. Place the rice in a small, oiled bowl and invert onto a serving platter. Working clockwise, gently mound the cucumber, cabbage, lemon grass, green beans, sprouts, mango and carrot in small separate piles around the bowl. Gently unmold the rice. Sprinkle the ground shrimp on half of the mounded rice, then sprinkle the toasted coconut on the other half. Sprinkle the chili powder in a line down the center of the rice, separating the shrimp from the coconut. Sprinkle the lime leaf chiffonade over the mounded rice. Just before serving, squeeze the limes over all, add the sauce and toss well. Serve the Thai chiles on the side.

Khao Yam Sauce

1 1/4 cup (10-ounce bottle) budu (fermented anchovy sauce)
3 kaffir limes, halved
20 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 stalks lemongrass, trimmed, crushed to release the oils and roughly chopped
1/2 pound galangal (about 4 pieces, each 3 inches long and 1 inch thick), roughly chopped
2 1/2 cups or more palm sugar, divided
3/4 cup dried shrimp, ground in a food processor or spice mill
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or to taste

Place the budu, 2.5 cups water, kaffir limes and leaves, lemon grass and galangal in a 2-quart, heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat so the mixture barely bubbles, and keep it at a bare simmer for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. Add water as needed to keep the total amount of liquid constant. Stir in 1.5 cups of the palm sugar until dissolved, and continue to simmer gently for an additional hour, stirring frequently.

Strain the mixture into another heavy-bottomed saucepan, reserving some of the steeped lemon grass (the rest of the solids can be discarded). Whisk in the additional cup of palm sugar until dissolved, as well as the ground shrimp. Mince 2 teaspoons of the reserved lemon grass and add to the saucepan. Stirring constantly, bring the mixture to a steady simmer over medium heat. Cook until the sauce has thickened and taken on a rich caramel color, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly and making sure to stir the bottom of the pot to prevent the palm sugar from burning. Quickly pour the mixture into a glass or nonreactive container and cool to room temperature. Whisk in the fresh lime juice.

The sauce should have a thick, syrup-like consistency, with a balance of salty, sweet and tart flavors. Taste and adjust as necessary, adding budu for saltiness, palm sugar to sweeten and lime juice for tartness. If the dressing is too thick to stir easily, whisk in a little water to thin. The recipe makes about 3.5 cups dressing and will keep refrigerated up to 4 months in an airtight, nonreactive container.

*If fresh kaffir limes are not available, double the number of kaffir lime leaves.

Jitlada
5233 1/2 Sunset Blvd.
Hollywood/Thai Town
(323) 667-9809