FOR FOODIES..THAILAND SPECIAL

Bring Home Thailand

With the easy availability of exotic ingredients in India, making authentic Thai curry at home is a breeze. All you need to know is how...

Thailand, specifically Bangkok, is now the second most poplar destination for Indian tourists and how many of them can resist falling madly in love with the cuisine? Thai restaurants and those serving the mysterious “Pan Asian” cuisine offer Thai food all over the city, but few can deliver on the authenticity front. The main reason for this? The freshness.

Good Thai food doesn’t come from a tinned paste, but from the careful combination of mother nature’s fresh and glorious bounty. With that knowledge in hand, how do we set about capturing some of the explosively delicious tastes of the Thai home kitchen?

One way is to understand the herbs and spices of Thai food, and use them accordingly.

Where to Buy

All of these ingredients are available at the higher end grocery stores. For those packaged ingredients such as coconut cream and milk, palm sugar, and fish sauce, you can buy a couple of packets and store them. However to avoid disappointment if there are out of stock, and to assure absolutely freshness, why not cultivate your own Thai garden?

Galangal, lemon grass and Thai basil all grow very well in plant pots.

Galangal

Galangal is a root from the same family as ginger, but with a totally unique flavour which is notoriously hard to pin down. You may substitute it for ginger, but it is absolutely won’t be the same. Galangal grows fairly easily outside with regular watering through the summer.

Lemongrass

Lemongrass is a wonderful plant to embrace. Not only does it give an extremely distinctive flavour to Thai dishes, it can also make an excellent tea and even infuse everything from massage oil to vodka as it is so aromatic.

In Thailand it is sometimes placed, grilled, on the side of a phad thai to add an aromatic dimension to the plate. A fresh piece of lemongrass can be persuaded to sprout roots after just a few days in water. Lemongrass is a natural digestive, an insect repellent, and an all-around healthy addition to the diet.

Kaffir Lime

Kaffir lime is the hardest ingredient so far to grow at home, it being a citrus bush of considerable size. I certainly haven’t managed to tease one into life on my narrow and arid balcony. Luckily for lovers of fresh food, the kaffir lime’s waxy leaves and thick waterproof skin allow it to last for quite some time. It’s an extremely versatile plant, with the leaves being used as an aromatic in curries and the rinds adding an even more intense and distinct aromatic essence to dishes, one of the key differentiators from our own Indian dishes. The juice is so strong and almost perfume-like that it is rarely used in cuisine, but can be saved to experiment with utterly exotic cocktails or even to create a palate cleansing sorbet which your guests will talk about for weeks to come.

Thai Chillies

Thai chillies are recognised by their small size and fierce flavour. However they can be easily substituted by readily available chillies of the heat level you are prepared to ensure!

Thai Basil

Another unique and enigmatic ingredient of Thai cuisine, Thai basil is nothing like it’s European counterpart with a far more forward, aggressive, liquorice taste. It is generally shredded and placed into Thai dishes at the very last moment to preserve it’s aromatic effect.

Shrimp Paste

An ingredient which takes some getting used to, to say the least, shrimp paste is made from dried and pounded prawns which have been left to ferment. It has an intensely fishy flavour and is best stored inside cling film, inside foil, inside a well-sealed Tupperware box, inside newspaper! It is most certainly not for the faint of heart. However, if you can bring yourself to deal with the ingredient, it adds an added, and surprisingly very subtle, boost to the completeness of the flavour profile of Thai curries.

Fish Sauce

Fish sauce, after the above descriptor of shrimp paste, is a far less scary proposition, with a much more amenable appearance and a marginally more sufferable scent. It can be used in a similar way to soy sauce, but I find that a little is irrelevant, and a narrow margin leads to too much, which adds an odd aftertaste to a dish, so better to wield this flavour weapon with caution.

Palm Sugar

Finally, and to end a by no means exhaustive list, palm sugar, or jaggery is a far less obvious addition. Although it is regularly used in Indian dishes. I wished to highlight it here as many people do not realise that quite so much sugar is used in Thai cuisine. Many dishes, from red curry to phad Thai, have a fairly heavy sugar element to balance the hot, sour, and salty tastes. That is to say, it is very often the missing link when experimenting with your Thai kitchen. While regular granulated sugar could be used palm sugar can make all the difference in adding the final mark of authenticity to your Thai culinary journey.

Thai Curry Paste

You wouldn’t dream of creating a masterpiece meal or going to a fine Indian restaurant and finding that the masala comes from a tin, so don’t make the same mistake with Thai cuisine. Thai curry pastes are not that daunting and can be easily ground by hand or in a grinder given that you have gathered the right ingredients.

For red curry paste, use garlic, shallots, (dried) red chillies, galangal, shrimp paste, salt, kaffir lime peel, coriander root, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns and lemongrass.

For green curry paste use green chillies, shallots, garlic, galangal, kaffir lime peel, roasted coriander and cumin seeds, white peppercorns, shrimp paste and salt. It is possible to substitute white pepper for a mild black. While red and green pastes are the best well known in India, yellow is also favoured in Thailand.

Once the hard work is done you simply heat the paste and then add any type of stock, as well as your main protein and some additional ingredients, such as fish sauce, sugar, Thai eggplant, bamboo shoots, Thai basil. Otherwise you can base your sauce on coconut creams and milks for a luscious taste.

Vegetarians are free to create curries with Thai eggplant, pumpkin, tofu or any manner of vegetables, but must be careful to skip the shrimp paste and fish sauce. All Thai curries are finished off with fresh aromatics, which could include chopped mild chillies (not chilli paste, please!) shredded kaffir lime leaves, fresh coriander leaves and fresh Thai basil.

Once you have those basics in place you are free to experiment without hesitation! Happy cooking!
(CAROLINE ROWE ET30OCT11)