In many kitchens across the United States, pepper often follows the word “salt,” referring to one type of black peppercorn that serves as a common base note. But for Pepper, there’s a whole world of pepper — chiles and berries that can move together as an overture in cooking — apotheosized especially in her hot and sunny recipe for khao pad sapparod, pineapple fried rice.
Pepper’s decorous version calls for four kinds of pepper: the aforementioned roasted Thai chile powder (just a dash, it’s hot); a healthy two tablespoons of aromatic curry powder (which often features ground chiles like paprika or cayenne); one whole teaspoon of musky ground white pepper (which lends a numbing, tingling savoriness); and a couple of fresh red peppers like Fresnos or bells (for color more than spice). On swapping any of these peppers out for another type you have in your pantry, she said to me, “It’s fiiine,” drawing the second word with an utter coolness.
For the full Pepper experience, I wouldn’t substitute a thing. Chiles lend a fruity dimension as well as heat. The dish will also perfume your kitchen, your house, your entire being, with the sweet, golden aromas of curry powder and caramelized pineapple and the warmth of white pepper and dried red chiles — a reminder that there’s more to life than black pepper.
Serving the rice inside a hollowed-out pineapple is optional, but if you’re going that route, remember there’s a core; score around it on both sides and scoop out the flesh, sort of as if you’re creating a fashion runway from the root to the stem. “When I came to the U.S. in the 1980s,” Pepper writes, “Thai restaurants in America were already coming up with dishes that were fancier and more over the top than anything I grew up eating back home.”
The word “fancy” comes up a lot for Pepper when talking about pineapple fried rice. It’s true that the dish is a more flamboyant rendition of simpler fried rices in the Thai canon. Fried rice is, in many cultures, a meal intended to use up leftovers from the fridge. The dissonance of pineapple fried rice, then, is not lost on Pepper: “Whoever came up with a way to get people to pay more for fried rice by putting it inside a pineapple is a genius!” And Pepper’s version, though inspired by modern restaurant takes on the dish, is informed by her expertise as a home cook.
