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# Talad Chonpratan: My Neighborhood Market
- URL: https://www.jamsthaitable.com/talad-chonpratan-my-neighborhood-market/
- Published: 2026-09-21T03:50:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-23T20:25:54.000Z
- Author: Jam Sanitchat
- Tags: Newsletter

Every year or so, sometimes a little less, I go home to Thailand to see my family, wander the markets, and eat the food I've been craving and can't find here. Markets are my favorite part of the trip. I don't remember being drawn to them the same way as a kid — maybe it's just the way of life when you're in it. It's only from being away that I realize how much I miss it.

Sometimes I feel like a tourist in my own hometown, wanting to see and be part of that way of life again. I think living abroad does that to you — makes you crave the things you used to take for granted. It's funny, how you have to be away from something to really appreciate it.

I'd wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning and drive out to markets farther from the house, chasing something specific. But the one I visit every single time I'm home is my neighborhood market, Talad Chonpratan — Chonpratan market. The weekend markets are bigger and busier; people come to shop for the whole week ahead, and my family is no different. That job belongs to my brother — he's the market-goer of the household. So every first Saturday after I get home, I hop on the back of his moped and we ride over together. My go-to at my neighborhood market is moo ping — grilled pork skewers with sticky rice. And if I don't make it onto the moped that first Saturday, I know it'll be waiting for me when I wake up anyway. My brother knows the drill.

The market opens at 5 am, but the vendors start setting up as early as 3\. It's enormous — vegetables, meat, prepared food, used clothing, tools, all of it under one roof. In all the twenty-five years I've been coming back, not much has changed. Some sections have gotten a permanent structure built over them now, but plenty of it is still the same tiny alleys, with people selling their eats the way they always have. This time, I was there for coconut and beef, to make green curry with my mom.

Coconut milk in a can or carton is fairly new to Thai cooking, and more people are going that route now — keeping a supply in the pantry, ready whenever they need it. I still miss the days when we made coconut milk from scratch every single time we made curry. But Thailand makes ingredients so convenient. There are mobile markets, too — pickup trucks with a roof, driving through the neighborhood with a speaker announcing their arrival, selling coconut meat that was shredded that same morning, along with other staples. If you know the route and the time, you don't really have to make it all the way to the market most days. But this trip we needed more than the truck would have — I wanted to go to the market myself anyway.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/08/1708963d-b62a-4aa7-a5a4-33b692c1a9ae/content/images/2026/09/B526F3A6-DD02-475C-BA53-71C83D2DB9D2.jpg)

At the market, the coconut meat is shredded fresh right in front of you — the vendor does it on the spot, and they always have some ready that was done less than an hour ago. The trucks carry theirs from earlier that morning, so it's not quite as fresh, but still good. I was making enough curry for about eight servings, which meant about 2 pounds of meat, so I just told the vendor how much meat I needed and they measured out the right amount of coconut for me. We didn't make the curry paste from scratch this time either — I bought that at the market too. Same idea: tell them how much meat you're using, and they get you the right amount.

I don't think I ever knew this before — buying coconut like that. I guess I was never the one who had to. Between the coconut meat, the beef, apple eggplant, and curry paste, we had everything we needed.

Back home, I got started on the curry, beginning with the coconut milk. You put the shredded meat in a bowl, add water, and press the meat into the water with your hands until it turns into a creamy white milk, then strain it. That first pressing is called hua kati in Thai — literally, the "head" of the coconut milk, and it's the richest, thickest round. Then you add more water to the leftover meat and press again; this second round comes out a bit lighter, and once you strain it through a strainer into a separate bowl, that's haang kati — the "tail" of the coconut milk.

We made the green curry together, my mom and I — though by then her role had shifted. She directed instead of leading the cooking herself.

Thailand always has something new for me to try, too — new inventions, new twists on food I thought I already knew. I take note of the ideas that catch me, and when I get back to Austin, I bring them into the kitchen at Thai Fresh and turn them into specials.

After 23 years of teaching these techniques in person, I'm opening a new chapter: an online cooking school where I can keep sharing this same kind of teaching — story and recipe together, the way I've always taught it — with anyone, anywhere, not just the people who can make it into my kitchen.

The full recipe for that green curry — paste, technique, and all — will be part of it. Members will get new recipes, the techniques behind them like the coconut milk pressing above, and video lessons walking through each one.

Sign-ups open today. The first recipes and videos start rolling out in two weeks.

Until next time,  
Jam