Cuisine of Thailand
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Image:Unidentified thai food.jpg
Thai cuisine is known for its balance of five fundamental flavors in each dish or the overall meal - hot (spicy), sour, sweet, salty and bitter. One of the important ingredients is nam pla (Thai น้ำปลา), a very aromatic and strong tasting fish sauce. Typically a full meal consists of many complementary dishes served concurrently instead of a single main course with side dishes.
Rice is a staple component of Thai cuisine, as it is of most Asian cuisines. The highly-prized, sweet-smelling jasmine rice is indigenous to Thailand. Rice dishes are accompanied by highly aromatic curries, stir-fries and other dishes, incorporating sometimes large quantities of chillies, lime juice and lemon grass. Noodles are popular as well. Noodles usually come as a single dish, like Pad Thai.
Although popularly considered as a single cuisine, Thai food is really more accurately described as four regional cuisines corresponding to the four main regions of the country: Northern, Northeastern, Central and Southern. Each region has its own distinct dialect, history, culture and cuisine. The North, for example, has a relatively slower, softer-spoken dialect and was once its own kingdom known as Lanna.
Many Thai dishes in the Central and Southern regions use a wide variety of leaves rarely found in the west, such as kaffir lime leaves (Thai ใบมะกรูด). Usually fresh - kaffir lime leaves' characteristic flavour appears in nearly every Thai soup (e.g., the hot and sour Tom yam), stir-fry or curry from those areas. It is frequently combined with garlic, galangal, ginger and/or fingerroot, together with liberal amounts of chillies, blended together to make curry paste. Fresh Thai basil is needed for the authentic fragrance. Other typical ingredients include the small green Thai eggplants, tamarind, palm and coconut sugars, and coconut milk.
With the exception of noodle soups, Thai food is generally eaten with a fork and a spoon, rather than with chopsticks. The fork, held in the left hand, is used to shovel food into the spoon. However, it is often common practice for Thais and hilltribe peoples in the North and Northeast to eat sticky rice with their hands by making it into balls that are dipped into side dishes and eaten. Also, in the Southernmost provinces of the country Thai-Muslims can be seen to eat meals with only their right hand as some Muslims in Malaysia do.
Famous Thai dishes familiar in the west from Central Thailand include:
- Tom yam goong (Thai ต้มยำกุ้ง) - hot & sour soup with shrimp
- Tom yam gai (Thai ต้มยำไก่) - hot & sour soup with chicken
- Tom kha gai (Thai ต้มข่าไก่) - hot sweet soup with chicken and coconut
- Satay (Thai สะเต๊ะ) - grilled meat served with peanut sauce (originated in Indonesia).
- Pad Thai (Thai ผัดไทย) - rice noodles pan fried with fish sauce, sugar, lime juice or tamarind pulp and egg combined with chicken, seafood, and tofu.
- Red curry (Gaeng Pet = 'hot curry') (Thai แกงเผ็ด) - made with dried red chillies
- Gai yang (Thai ไก่ย่าง) - marinated and grilled chicken
- Green curry (Gaeng khiew-waan) (Thai แกงเขียวหวาน) - sweet green curry, made with fresh green chillies and flavoured with cumin
- Yellow (Massaman) curry (Thai แกงมัสมั่น)
- Neua pad prik - Thai chili beef or Thai pepper beef
- Panang beef - dry beef curry
- Panang Chicken
- Panang Pork
A few Northeastern Thai dishes popular throughout the country:
- Larb (Thai ลาบ) - various sour salads containing meat.
- Som tam (Thai ส้มตำ) grated papaya salad, pounded with a mortar and pestle.
- Sticky rice (Thai ข้าวเหนียว)
Throughout the country there are many interpretations and variations on these common dishes. Other dishes from the northern part of Thailand include unique sauces, such as nam prik num (น้ำพริกหนุ่ม), and exotic foods, such as raw beef, fermented fish paste, and deep fried larvae (also enjoyed in the Northeast). The culinary creativity even extends to naming: one tasty larva translates to "freight train" and the smallest, hottest chillies are known as Prik Kii Nuu "mouse droppings chillies".