I’d lived in Bangkok for my entire life and when I moved out of the city I counted my blessings. How lucky I was now to escape the traffic. How fortunate I was not to have to wade through water when it rained. How nice to no longer get lost on new roads that had suddenly appeared.
But there was a bad side to it, too: I could no longer eat some of the tasty food I was used to enjoying in Bangkok.
One special favourite was hoy thawt — shellfish fried with egg and herbs. There were the ones served at Hoy Thawt Nai Mong on Phlabphlachai Road, at Daeng Racha Hoy Thawt on Soi Sukon 1 across from Wat Trimitr and Hoy Thawt Phu Khao Fai on the lane beside Robinson Department Store in Bang Rak.
When I think of hoy thawt, I think of the ones made with mussels, a sea bivalve that once featured largely in Thai recipes. They were included in many dishes, from simple ones to complicated creations that require fastidious care in preparation. They could also be sun-dried for use later. In the past there was an abundance of large, high quality mussels, but nowadays the situation is beginning to become worrisome, and the hoy thawt you buy today may not be as tasty as it once was.
Mussels are animals that grow well in waters not far from the coast. In the days before they were farmed, as they are now, they were obtained mostly as a by-product associated with the use of a type of fish trap called po dak pla in Thai.
Grab ’em when you can: There are still a number of Bangkok shops that serve good fried mussels.
These traps consisted of long bamboo poles inserted close together into the sea floor to form big circles, maybe 100 metres in diameter. A net was stretched around the inside of the circle so that it formed a cage-like enclosure with an opening left in it as an entrance. Bamboo poles were set at each side of this opening, with more extending out into the sea from the mouth of the trap to make a triangular configuration.
Netting was stretched over these rows of poles, too, with the opening facing in the direction of the tide. Since fish swim against the current, the tidal flow would guide them into the trap. Fishermen could catch them by taking boats into the water inside the trap and pulling in the nets.
But the fish were not the only thing that fishermen caught with these traps. Mussels attached themselves to all of the bamboo poles, which decayed and deteriorated over time. When the old poles were pulled up to be replaced with new ones, the fishermen could collect the mussels for sale.
Fishermen did not collect fish from these traps for sale every day. Sometimes they waited for considerable periods of time between trips, but they did not stay idle. They caught fish for their own family use each day by taking a small boat out to get them in the water outside the trap. They did not come away empty-handed because fish gathered there to eat the baby mussels that had recently appeared on the poles.
The whole system worked beautifully: the traps were built to catch fish, but also produced the mussels, and more fish could be caught outside of it because they came to eat the baby shellfish.
In the past these traps were built all along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand and the supply of mussels never decreased. All of them were of good size, because there were plenty of plankton for them to eat. They thrived because fresh water flowing into the ocean mixed with sea water of just the right temperature, and an abundance of food allowed them to proliferate and grow big.
When mussels grow large and there are many of them, there are enough both to eat fresh and to dry. They are removed from the shell, washed in salt water, arranged into a flat sheet and sun-dried for sale. Fishing villages that make dried fish and dried squid will also usually have dried mussels.
The dried mussels may seem ordinary, but when taken as gifts to friends in the North or in Laos, they are always received with great pleasure.
With the po dak pla traps largely gone, we are now in the era of farmed mussels. Bamboo poles are stuck into the sea floor in groups. Originally fishermen would decide on a part of the seabed and raise the shellfish themselves, and the process went smoothly. But later another method developed that used a series of large buoys connected by ropes that hung down into the sea for the shellfish to attach themselves to. With time this technique became very widespread.
Mussel farming was taken up all over the Gulf of Thailand, spreading to Chon Buri, Phetchaburi, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon and Samut Songkhram, and problems started to appear. The quality of the water in the gulf has deteriorated because the fresh water flowing in from various rivers was polluted. The number of mussels declined, as did their size and quality.
Of course, with fewer mussels available and the ones that were in the stalls often both smaller and more expensive than before, dishes made with them disappeared or become less common. Dried mussels have become very hard to find, so food that the sweet-salty fried dried mussels go well with like hoy maeng phuu phat kraphrao (mussels stir-fried with basil and seasoning) and phat phet hoy malaeng phuu (mussels stir-fried with chillies and seasoning) are no longer seen very often.
Hoy maeng phuu phat kraphrao and phat phet hoy maeng phuu are now scarce. Hoy maeng phuu luak sai bai horaphaa (a once-popular pot of mussels boiled with basil) is much less appealing when the mussels are so small, and even hoy thawt loses its lustre when you have to search for undersized mussels hiding in the egg and batter.
Of course, hoy thawt is still with us and will not disappear any time soon, even if the shellfish often aren’t what they once were. The real area of concern where these shellfish are concerned is with those dishes that have disappeared because the mussels generally available now are neither abundant enough or good enough to do them justice.
Gone but not forgotten: Dried mussels have almost disappeared from the scene.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.