Divine Seafood

Anyone who knows me is fully aware of how much I love food!  I love to bake, I love to cook, but most of all, I love to eat food that other people have cooked for me.  I love simple food made with care.  And I love seafood.  I could live on seafood forever.  Which is why this blog is about one of the most wonderful seafood dishes I discovered quite by accident.

It was about a month and a half ago that I was in Issaquah, on my way to Costco, when I realized that I hadn't had luch that day, and I was quite hungry.  I was in the mood for Thai food, so I headed over to Ochar Thai Restaurant at Pickering Place.  I scanned the dinner menu and looked at item number 42.  It was a Thai seafood dish called Ho Mok Talay.  The description read, "Salmon, shrimp, mussels and squid in coconut milk curry with a touch of curry powder. Served over poached cabbage."  "Interesting," I thought, "I should try this".  So I ordered it and asked the server if I could have the spice kicked up a bit.  I was told that Thai Green Peppers could be added to it, but only if I could handle the heat.  Was he kidding me?  Oh well, I told him I could.

So when it came, this is what it looked like.  It was foil-wrapped, and just as the description said, contained salmon, shrimp, mussels and squid, with coconut, red peppers, the Thai Green Peppers I had asked for, and cabbage at the bottom.  I served myself some steamed rice, then put a few tablespoons of the dish on top.  I took a small bite.  Oh me, oh my!  Delicious!  Everything was just right!  It was as spicy as I hoped it would be, the seafood was cooked just right.  The mouth-watering coconut curry wrapped itself around every morsel of seafood in an exquisite symphony of flavor and texture.  The cabbage at the bottom was crunchy but had somehow managed to absorbed the flavors of seafood and coconut.  I had never tasted seafood so good!  Hints of lemongrass and fish sauce were evident, as in most Thai cooking.  At $14.95, it was a pretty generous helping of food that made it through two meals for me.  I thoroughly relished my dinner that day, and took quite a bit of it home to enjoy later. 

A couple of weeks later I had a hankering for Ho Mok Talay again, but this time went to the Ochar Restaurant at Eastgate.  I ordered the same thing, but when I took my first bite of food, I was deeply disappointed.  There was no shrimp, there were scallops.  Not a bad substitute, except that the scallops didn't seem to belong to this dish for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. The seafood was overcooked, the mussels tasted off.  The dish tasted like it was put together in a hurry, almost like an afterthought. Maybe it isn't ordered often at the Eastgate restaurant.  I was also surprised that two restaurants supposedly under the same ownership could serve the same dish but prepare it so differently.  I have no words to describe how much of a let down it was.

Anyway, another trip to the Issaquah Ochar a few weeks later got me over my disappointment.  It also got me searching the internet for a good Ho Mok Talay recipe.  I learned that there are slight variations to the dish.  One recipe I read called for tender coconut meat to be stirred in, with a dollop of coconut cream on the top.  Another called for beaten egg to be included.  I have no idea how it will combine, but am not averse to trying it sometime.  But the most intriguing recipe I read said that Ho Mok Talay should be served in the shell of a tender coconut.  Wow!  I continued to scour the internet to see if there was anywhere in Seattle they served Ho Mok Talay in a coconut shell.  Bingo!  Sea-Thai at Wallingford!    I did have to look through the menu a few times to find it listed, though.  But to make things easier for you, it's S9!  I cannot wait to try this. Once I do, my next step would be to try and make this at home.

So Rachel, what are your thoughts on going to dinner at Sea Thai?