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- VOL. 12.3
Epat Diary: You Are a Trampoline
By Michael Moore
Surprise is the reaction of many Westerners to their first formal Thai meal. Instead of a bowl of soup, they find a table filled with an array of small dishes of food – each different in some way from the other. The scene is a riot of colours, smells and textures.
Some of the dishes are served hot, others cold, and some warm. There are soups, salads, and a host of other dishes, some stir-fried, some deep-fried, others steamed. Some of the offerings are spicy; some sweet – or sour; and some surprisingly bland. Many of the platters are dotted with delicately carved fruits and vegetables. To make matters worse, additional items stream from the kitchen as the meal progresses, each, again, differing in some significant way from anything served before.To the uninitiated, this may look disorganised and confusing, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are no separate courses in a Thai meal, but the event is as rigidly organise as a formal dinner in the West. The differences lie in the principles used to organise the affair.
The Thais seek variety, contrast, balance and harmony, not only in life, but also in their meals. It’s considered bad form to serve items that are similar to one another – a real bore. Thus, the Thais have become masters at juggling and combining the basic flavours of sweet, sour and salty – and why some dishes are spicy and others bland. Creating these flavours in unique and imaginative ways provides Thai chefs with a significant weapon in their never-ending efforts to create the contrast and variety that’s such an essential part of a proper Thai meal.
A closer look at how the Thai cook produces sour, spicy, salty and sweet dishes gives an insight into this wonderful and increasingly popular cuisine. There is much to be learned here, and much that can be borrowed and used in your own cooking.
Sour
Creating flavour that is roughly translated as “sour” illustrates the imagination and inventiveness of Thai chefs. Westerners usually rely on lemon juice and vinegar to produce this flavour; the Thai repertoire is infinitely larger.
Tamarind trees with sprays of delicate leaves dot the Thai countryside. The long slender pods contain pulp and seeds. When the dried pods are shelled and soaked in warm water and then squeezed and strained, they produce a thick, brownish liquid that has a delicate sour flavour with a hint of raisins. This wonderful liquid, called nam makaam, is added to numerous Thai dishes to produce a delicate, sour flavour. In Phuket it is frequently added to stir-fried shrimp, turning it into goong phad nam makaam, something that should be sampled by all visitors to the island.
Lemon grass, or takrai, is another ingredient used to produce a sour lemony taste. Takrai grows in clusters and looks a bit like a large, fibrous scallion. The stalk is frequently coarsely chopped and added to liquids, most notably in tom yam goong– probably Thailand’s most famous soup. This shrimp-laden, hot and sour soup is a common feature of meals served in Phuket. A version with a mixture of seafood – tom yam talay– is another “must” for those visiting Phuket.
A wild lime tree, the Kaffir lime, grows throughout Thailand and is another source of sour lemony flavour. The leaves of the tree are often added whole to dishes where they simmer – much like a bay leaf – along with other ingredients. At other times the leave are finely chopped or pounded with a mortar and pestle and added to curries and a wide variety of other dishes. The grated zest of the knobby limes found in the tree is also used to produce a sour taste.
The fruit of the Kaffir lime has little or no juice, so for this, the Thais turn to a lime similar to that cultivated in the West. Manao juice is widely used and is frequently encountered by foreigners filling a range of roles. It’s perhaps best known as the sour player in tom kha gai, a chicken and coconut milk soup that’s often popular with visitors because of its lack of spice. Tom kha gai is served in restaurants throughout Thailand and is a staple item in Thai restaurants in foreign countries.
Manao juice is also made into nam manao, a delightful lime drink that’s a great antidote to Thailand’s hot sun. Nam manao is available at roadside stalls throughout the Kingdom and can be found at virtually every restaurant in Thailand.
Spicy
As anyone who has ever taken a bite of Thai food knows, the Thais like food
that’s hot and spicy. They don’t, however, achieve this by simply throwing
in a handful of chilli peppers into every dish they create. In fact the
chilli pepper is a relatively new addition to Thai cuisine. Traders
introduced it to Thailand in the 16th century when they brought it to
Southeast Asia from its home in the Americas.
Initially Thai food received its heat from the pepper known as prik thai
that nestles next to salt shakers on tables throughout the world. Large,
colourful cans of both black and white ground pepper can be found in markets
throughout Thailand. It’s also used whole or cracked in a variety of Thai
dishes.
The colourful chilli peppers that give Thai food the fierce bite for which
it’s famous come, as visitors quickly discover, in a wide variety of shapes
and sizes. The fiercest of the lot, the tiny prik kee noo, literally
mouse-droppings chilli, is to be treated with the utmost respect, for it’s
searingly hot by anyone’s standards.
Generally speaking, the larger the chilli, the milder the flavour. This is
not, however, always true and any chilli found floating in a Thai dish
should be approached with caution. Don’t assume that a green chilli is
milder than a red one, either. The heat produced is exactly the same.
Chillies are used in both fresh and dried form in Thai cooking. Dried
chillies are often ground and added to dishes as they cook, or sprinkled on
food at the table by those brave souls who want a little more heat.
Those of us who are used to ginger as a powdered dry ingredient added to
pumpkin pie are often surprised to find that in its fresh form it packs a
spicy wallop. When added in large quantities to a dish, as is often done by
the Thais, it creates a sharp, pungent flavour and a pleasing aroma. It’s
frequently used in pork, fish and chicken dishes, to create a mildly spicy,
yet refreshing, flavour.
Salty
Westerners make food salty by adding salt – that white stuff that doctors
tell us contributes to high blood pressure. The Thais make food salty by
adding ingredients with a salty taste that also have another flavour and
some sort of food value. Nam pla, or fish sauce, is the most notable
example.
Fish sauce is made from fermented anchovies, or other kinds of seafood, that
are pressed to extract a salty liquid. This sauce, with a distinct odour
that many people initially find disagreeable, is rich in minerals and
protein.The Thais take their fish sauce seriously and there’s much debate
over which brand tastes best.
But fish sauce is not the only salt – soy sauce, bean paste and yellow bean
sauce are other examples. Like the Chinese, the Thais use both light and
dark soy sauce for flavour and salt. Soy sauce is thin and readily poured
from bottles. The fermented soy beans used to make bean paste and yellow
bean sauce, on the other hand, are thick and serve as a thickener as well.
Nam man hoy, or oyster sauce, is another ingredient of Chinese
origin. Made from oysters that have been cooked in soy sauce, this liquid is
mildly salty and is often added to stir-fried vegetable dishes, creating a
delightful salty flavour that surprisingly does not taste of fish.
And then, of course, there’s plain old table salt. The Thais do use it upon
occasion, but with so many other sources of salt, it plays a minor role in
Thai cooking.
Sweet
Sugar is used as a sweetener in a variety of Thai dishes. The quantity
used is quite small by Western standards, and it’s often used as a
flavour-enhancer rather than as a primary flavour. In addition it is added
to a far wider variety of dishes than is common in other cuisine. The Thais
will, for example, often add it to eggs, curries and meat dishes.
Although granulated white sugar is sometimes used, sugar made from palm
trees is more common in Thailand. The sugar, which is produced from the sap
of the tree, is brown and tastes more like caramel than its granulated white
equivalent.
As you can see, sweet, sour, salty, and spicy are created in a variety of
ways in Thailand. These basic flavours are often combined with one another
to produce some of the Kingdom’s most popular culinary offerings of food.
Variety, contrast, harmony and balance are the name of the game.