Cultural Seasoning -- Quickly Prepared Mae Sot Noodles Meld The Flavors Of South Asia

WHEN SEATTLE SLIPS INTO DANK drizzle, I escape by stirring together a bowl of pungent noodles.

The noodles remind me of my favorite sidewalk cart in the dusty border town of Mae Sot, Thailand. It is always warm in Mae Sot and the noodles always taste good.

It's so hot there, nothing seems to budge the heavy air. Except steam. Steam fragrant with golden baubles of chicken fat and sliced ginger. Steam rising from a metal vat torched by blue propane flames. Steam that billows into the gritty street, clings to your skin, dampens your hair.

You sit on the road side on a blue metal stool, pressed against a rickety table covered with a cheery scrap of vinyl.

Egg noodles? Or rice noodles? Choose egg noodles if you're hungry; lighter rice noodles if you've come mostly for the atmosphere.

The noodles soak in a green pail of water that hangs from a nail in the alley. Plastic sacks of bean sprouts, chicken necks and long beans dangle nearby. On the little table, there is extra chili oil, sugar, lime wedges and a roll of clean white toilet paper to use for napkins.

A handful of noodles goes into a brass-mesh strainer that gets dipped into the boiling vat of chicken broth for about a minute. Then the noodles slither into a shallow ceramic bowl along with slivered long beans and squiggly bean sprouts. The dish is sprinkled with a spoonful each of fish sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, spicy peanut oil, shrimp powder, ground peanuts, fried onions, pickled

cabbage, chopped cilantro, sliced scallions. All this is mixed vigorously with chopsticks and a tin spoon. Finally, the noodles are topped with a squeeze of lime, a pinch of ground chili, thin slices of barbecued pork and two crescents of hard-boiled egg.

You can slurp the whole bowl in a few minutes if you're in a rush.

It's a bad idea to rush in such a hot climate.

Better to slowly savor the snack and digest what's going on around you.

The noodle cart straddles the curb in front of an open-air storefront where Thai ladies sit on bamboo mats click-clacking jade stones for sale. Tropical birds squawk and coo in a pet shop next door. The street is crowded with turbaned gem traders peddling paper packets of rubies while talking on cell phones; barefoot monks in saffron robes; machine-gun-toting Thai border guards; Burmese women in flip-flops; Karen refugees from Burma with powdered tree bark swirled on their cheeks; mangy dogs sleeping in the road, too hot to care.

Mae Sot is the Casablanca of South Asia, a trade gateway to Burma, China, India, Bangladesh and points Northwest along the old Burma Road. There are two main streets, a tangle of alleys, a bazaar, a night market, a hospital, a malaria-research clinic, several Buddhist temples, a mosque, a couple of banks, a few photo-processing shops and thousands of illegal refugees, lorry drivers, soldiers, shopkeepers and spies.

Sitting there, you get the feel of a lot of deals going down: gems, teak, guns, silk, sex, booze, cigarettes, border passes, secrets.

Of these, the best and safest deal is the noodles.

Thirty cents buys one bowl and a pungent taste of mingled cultures. The noodles are slightly sweet with sugar, tangy with lime, sour with vinegar, spicy with chili, musky with fish sauce. The ground peanuts were harvested from parched fields; the tiny shrimp were netted in warm seas. The scallions bite the tip of your tongue; the egg yolk soothes the back of your throat. The noodles slide, the bean sprouts crunch.

The origin of Mae Sot noodles is unclear. The cart is owned by a Thai woman who employs Karen refugee girls. Our Karen friends say the noodles are Burmese; our Burmese friends say they're Thai; our Thai friends call them kwei tiao, the Chinese word for snack. My grandmother was Chinese and she never cooked anything like this.

In Seattle, the closest approximation I've tasted is Battambang Noodles, menu item No. 12, $3.99, at Phnom Penh Noodle House, a Cambodian restaurant on King Street in the International District. The dish is not quite the same, but I haven't figured out what's missing.

Happily, here in Seattle, I've found all the ingredients to recreate the noodles in my own kitchen. Everything, that is, but the heat and dust and bewildering spice of Mae Sot.

Paula Bock is a staff writer for Pacific Northwest magazine.

Mae Sot Noodles Makes one bowl

At the sidewalk cart, the noodles are mixed together very quickly, one bowl at a time. You can double, triple and quadruple the recipe, but you still need to stir the noodles together one bowl at a time. Believe it or not, it's fast and easy. Don't be intimidated by the long recipe.

1 fist-sized coil Asian egg or rice noodles A few slices fresh gingerroot 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1/4 cup long beans or green beans sliced very thin on a diagonal

1/2 cup bean sprouts 1 tablespoon each: Chili-infused oil (soak dried chili peppers in a small jar of oil for a few days in the refrigerator) Rice-wine vinegar Fish sauce Pickled greens # Sugar Freshly squeezed lime juice Fried shallots # Ground peanuts (roasted, unsalted peanuts ground to a fine powder with a food processor or mortar and pestle) Ground dried shrimp # (usually comes as tiny orange dried shrimp that you need to grind yourself) 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 2 tablespoons slivered scallions A few slices of barbecued pork, optional (or substitute barbecued tofu) 1 hard-cooked egg, quartered Pinch of chili powder

# Available in Asian grocery stores

1. If you are using rice noodles, soak them in water for about 15 minutes. Add the ginger slices to the stock and bring it to a boil. Drop the noodles in the boiling stock for a minute or two, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon or mesh strainer and slide them into a bowl. Dip the beans and sprouts through the boiling stock and add to the noodles. 2. Add the chili-infused oil, rice-wine vinegar, fish sauce, pickled greens, sugar and lime juice to the bowl and vigorously mix with the noodles, green beans and bean sprouts to mingle the flavors. Sprinkle the fried shallots, peanuts and shrimp onto the noodles. 3. Garnish with cilantro, scallions, barbecued pork or tofu, hard-boiled egg and a pinch of chili powder.