Then there is a variety of noodles too although nothing is really served without rice. You will not find any semblance of bread anywhere unless you went to a bakery, Indian or a western eatery. Noodles are made from either rice, wheat or mung daal flour. You have hofun – wide, flat rice-flour noodles, dried rice vermicelli – very fine rice threads, egg noodles or bami made from wheat and similar to ramen, and glass or cellophane noodles – thin transparent noodles made from mung bean flour.
All south east Asian dishes contain coconut – either in the form of milk, oil or grated into pastes and curries. Thais particularly put palm sugar in everything so one must either be prepared for sweet dishes or ask them to desist. However, there is also a tremendous use of red and very hot chillies – dried, red and green varieties and the really hot variety of Bird’s Eye chillies in UK - which are usually made into paste and put in dishes. You don’t realize the chilli content of your dish as its masked by palm sugar (they don’t use cane sugar) and coconut milk but my word, you do realize it the next morning in the toilet. Other spices commonly used pretty much everywhere are coriander – seeds, leaves and roots, galangal – a rhizome similar to ginger with a distinctive and often pungent fragrance, kafir lime juice and leaves, green peppercorns, krachai or Chinese keys, lemongrass, rice vinegar, rice wine, shrimp and fish paste/sauce, tapioca pearls, tamarind, water chestnut, taucheo or salted soy beans. There is hardly in frying in oil so that the food always tastes fresh and nice.
People eat several times a day – the urban Thais are really nibblers with no fixed rule for eating who will eat a full meal for breakfast or have something light and simple for lunch. More rural Cambodians tend to eat a very heavy breakfast and then only one other meal a day. This is in keeping with Buddhist teaching where monks eat only two meals a day - one at 5am and the other at 2pm. Depending on where you are eating you can have a sumptuous meal for Baht 200 (around £4)in Thailand, for Riyal 10,000 ($2.50)in Cambodia and for Kip 100, 000 (around $13.00) for the whole family in most parts in Laos. Its much cheaper in road-side vendors although one must make sure everything is piping hot.
Thais eat a lot of fruits – what Indians do with their fried fritters, pakoras, vadas, etc or the western man with burgers, nuggets, fried fish, the Thais do with their fruits – they snack on it. You will find small glass and wooden tricycles ferry fresh papaya, watermelons, pineapples (I’ve never eaten sweeter pineapples in my life), coconut, guava, mandarin orange, apples, and the famous Durian. Eaten fresh or dipped into a sauce of sugar, salt and ground chilli, these fruits taste wonderful.
The meat, fish and vegetable markets play a very important part in the common man's life as he must get to it several times a week, although with modern gadgets like fridges, this is easier now. The markets are veritable museums of what the human mouth can consume and the gut can digest. You can everything you never anticipated to be on your plate out here – everything from beetles to tadpoles, snakes to cow stomach, from really small fishes to sharks, and most of those alive and moving!! It’s not something for the squeamish because the smell can be unbearable sometimes for those not used to going to fresh fish and meat markets. But the experience is once in a lifetime so give it a go. Do particularly try out a market about 55 kms outside of Bangkok in a place called Samud Sonkhran (or if you prefer Samudra Sagaram in Indian lingo). At predictable times during the day (10am and 1pm) the neatly and busy market laid out along a train track contracts and expands to let through the local trains pass. Its amazing to watch - Check this out…
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