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เกี่ยวกับอาหารไทย
As the well-known axiom goes ‘one’s culture can be seen through a window of one’s kitchen’. Thai cuisine is clearly an inseparable part of Thai culture and mirrors the traditions of the land. The ‘Tai’ people migrated from valley settlements in the mountainous region of Southwest China between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, into what is now known as Thailand. Influenced by Chinese cooking techniques, Thai cuisine flourished with the rich diversity of the Thai peninsula.
The first rulers of Thailand appreciated the value of differing cultures and brought scholars and artisans from China and India to teach the Thai people. It isn’t difficult to classify Thai food as a hybrid between Chinese and Indian fare. The peppers and curries usually associated with Indian entrées is ever-present in the Chinese style noodles and rice dishes of Thai food.
Thai cooking style
Originally, Thai cooking reflected the characteristics of a waterborne lifestyle. Aquatic animals, plant and herbs were major ingredients. With their Buddhist background, Thais shunned the use of large animals in big chunks. Big cuts of meat were shredded and blended with herbs and spices.
Traditional Thai cooking methods were stewing and baking, or grilling. Chinese influences saw the introduction of frying, stir-frying and deep-frying. Culinary influences from the 17th century onwards included Portuguese, Dutch, French and Japanese techniques. Portuguese missionaries, who had acquired a taste for chillies while serving in South America, introduced it into the Thai cuisine during the late 1600s.In a country where more than 70% of the population are farmers, there is a natural inclination for the Thai people to treasure their cuisine. Eating is not just something done for nourishment or hunger but it’s a symbol of their way of life. The Thai people greet each other during the early evening with the salutation, ‘Gin kao’, which means, “have dinner with us”.
Thai food
Thai cuisine is famous all over the world and is essentially a marriage of old Eastern and Western influences. harmoniously combined into something uniquely Thai. Modern day Thai cuisine, like many of its Asian counterparts is a ‘throw-together’ style of cooking that allows much room for creativity. A typical Thai meal should consist of soup, a curry dish with condiments, a dip with accompanying fish and vegetables. A spiced salad may replace the curry dish. The soup can also be spicy, but the curry should be replaced by a non-spiced item. There must be harmony of tastes and textures within individual dishes and the entire meal.
Thai cuisine
An example of the tremendous variations in ingredients used in Thai dishes exhibiting the creativity and diversity of the Thai cuisine is the green papaya salad (som dtam). There are dozens of ways to make this favorite food of the Thai people. Some prefer to use tamarind along with limejuice, while others like it sharply sour with limejuice only.
The north
easterns like it pungent with the flavor of fermented fish and some prefer it with fermented shrimp paste, while still others prefer it to be clean tasting without either. Some like it sweet with palm sugar, sprinkled with roasted peanuts, while others care for neither sweet nor peanuts and go for it in a hot and salty style with the flavor of salted crab. The permutations and combinations are plenty. Little wonder why we need to specify our preferences when ordering green papaya salad. -
Baby Bananas in Sweet Coconut Milk
My American friends always tell me how easy is that to make a pie. ..like American idiom says “as easy as pie”. But I found to make a “good” pie is not that easy. Since a pie is only as good as its crust. It has to be tender and flaky so you really have to know how to work with the dough and because of entire range of Thai cuisine there are almost no baked dishes to be found so I never be able to make a good one.This remind me of Thai idiom meaning of how easy to get thing done. In Thai we have “It’s easy as peel banana and eat it”…and I will show you how to make easy Thai desert from bananas. Read the rest of this entry »
