Why do we find Thai cuisine so mesmerizing?

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from Food Processing

Something happens when you watch someone eat Thai food for the first time. Looks of wonder, pleasure and fascination compete in their expression until superseded by delight. Thai food is based on a delicate and harmonious balance of flavor sensations. It’s at once, clean, big, mysterious and familiar. Zesty fresh lime juice, salty fish sauce, molasses-tinged brown sugar, garlic, cilantro — all come together for a symphony of clean, fresh flavors that are undisputedly not American, even if the ingredients are. And of course hot peppers. A number of Thai dishes are traditionally fiery hot.

Which elements of Thai cuisine do you like best?

Do you make Thai dishes at home?

Have you learned more and more about Thai cooking over time?

Your very favorite dish? Mine is, without a doubt, pad thai!

[Pan]

article from Food Processing

[...]Zesty fresh lime juice, salty fish sauce, molasses-tinged brown sugar, garlic, cilantro — all come together for a symphony of clean, fresh flavors that are undisputedly not American, even if the ingredients are. And of course hot peppers. A number of Thai dishes are traditionally fiery hot.

Which elements of Thai cuisine do you like best?[...]

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Well, that quote above pretty much covers it, except that I don't see coconut milk, tamarind, galangal, shallots, kaffir lime leaves, or Thai holy basil mentioned! What I like best about Thai food is that it's just bursting with flavor. I still remember two fantastic meals I had during my one brief visit to Thailand so far, in 1975 when I was 10! One was a Thai Chinese dim sum lunch in a tiny hole-in-the-wall in the Chinese neighborhood in Bangkok, and the other was a Thai dinner while sitting on the porch of what I guess was a popular neighborhood restaurant and looking at geckos on the walls for the first time (I was to have plenty of opportunity to look at geckos during the next two years, when I was living in Malaysia). I have to get back to Thailand one of these days.

[TPO]

Thai food tastes fresh to me. It also screams "This is what it means to be alive!" to my tastebuds.

We make Thai food at home, mostly curry dishes. Although I just planted some Thai basil in hopes of making lots of spring rolls.

On average we have Thai food -- cooked at home or takeout -- one to three times a week. I don't know if I could pick a favorite dish though.

[Grub]

I'm not very familiar with Thai food, but I do like it a lot. I've made a red chicken curry and a green shrimp curry (the green one being much hotter) -- using pre-made curry pastes. I'd like to try make my own curry paste.

One dish that I did make without any pre-made stuff was Tom Yum Goong, that I pieced together from recipies I found on the net (after having seen it made in a travel program). It's a shrimp soup with lemon grass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce -- as I said, I'm no expert on Thai food, but it seems those four are used a lot. It also uses lime juice, cilantro (stem and leaves), sugar, mushroom, shallots, green onions and chicken stock.

What I like about the Thai dishes I've experienced so far, is that it is both hot and spicy, while at the same time being really zesty and refreshing.

I don't know if shrimp paste is exclusively Vietnamese, or if it is used in Thai cooking also, but whoa, that stuff is too much for my pallate... The fish sauce, I try to use sparingly, but shrimp paste -- no way, too challenging for me.

[Pan]

Thai cooking uses fish sauce more often and Malaysia cooking uses shrimp paste (belacan) more often. Shrimp paste smells terrible by itself but is a good ingredient when used in proper proportions.

[BarbaraY]

I came to Thai food rather late in life since I had read the bad publicity on fish sauce and shrimp paste. Made it sound really disgusting.

Then some friends took me to Thai Cuisine in Berkley, CA and I was hooked.

Came home and dug through all my foody magazines and cooked Thai food for the whole next week.

I think it's amazing, tangy, spicy, sweet, hot, and intense flavors are addictive.

Now have ten Thai cookbooks and the correct ingredients to make it myself, including my own Kaffir lime tree.

[Chris Amirault]

I agree with David Thompson that Thai food comprises one of the world's great cuisines. (In case you don't own it, I urge you click here and order his Thai Food -- and give the eGullet Society a little pat on the back while you do it! His chapter on rice is worth the price of the book alone.)

Unfortunately, I can't get excellent Thai here in restaurants, but we live in a very vibrant Southeast Asian expat community, so I can get nearly any ingredient to make things at home. So every third or fourth weekend, I hit the markets, get out my mortar and pestle and my amazing coconut meat grater (scroll to the bottom), Thompson's book and Jeffrey Alford's Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (again, clickety), pluck a few leaves off of my kaffir lime tree, and go a bit nuts.

I'm not alone: check out the Larb, Laab, Larp thread and the Thai Cooking at Home thread, and you'll find some other Thai home cooking fanatics.

[Apicio]

I discovered Thai cuisine about twenty-five years ago in Bangkok Garden in Toronto. At the time the only images than came to mind about that country was what Hollywood served up in The King and I. In fact, the dishes had names linked to that story. But to discover a remarkable cuisine, prepared with utmost care and served with that unique exotique stylishness was truly unforgettable. Recalling it now would make it sound like a French citizen longing for the douceur de vie of the ancien regime. Their satays were excellent and their grilled beef salad provoked an obsession about the place. I took all my out-of-town guests there for dinner until two years ago when it changed .

[jgarner53]

I was familiar with Thai food before we went to Thailand, but really fell in love with it when we went there a couple of years ago for a 17-day vacation. I expected to grow tired of the cuisine (as many of our tour mates did) and pine for something else, a hamburger even, but I never did. We'd ditch the bus tour when it stopped for lunch and usually eat where the driver did - far more authentic food, and cheaper by far.

From the fried bananas bought from a street vendor, to noodle dishes, to curries, to the roti (thin pancakes) cooked on a grill and served up with bananas and sweetened condensed milk, to spicy peanuts, to spicy chicken with holy basil and peppers, I really grew to love it.

When we got back, I investigated taking some Thai cooking classes to learn more about the cuisine and be able to make some of the dishes myself. I found a woman in Oakland who's written a couple of cookbooks and takes regular trips to Thailand as a culinary tour guide, and also teaches Thai cooking out of her home. Once a week for four weeks, we'd gather to learn about Thai ingredients, tasting coconut milks to pick the best brand (we liked Mae Ploy and Chaokoh), and then discussing the week's recipes, prepping the ingredients, and cooking a meal together. At the end of the evening, we'd sit down to devour what we'd made. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot about Thai cuisine.

My favorite dish? Really simple stuff like well done ground chicken or pork with holy basil and peppers, served over rice. Or a good green curry.

FYI, Thais eat with a spoon, using a fork in the left hand to push food onto the spoon. Chopsticks are only for noodle dishes.

[jhlurie]

I'm not very familiar with Thai food, but I do like it a lot. I've made a red chicken curry and a green shrimp curry (the green one being much hotter) -- using pre-made curry pastes. I'd like to try make my own curry paste.

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I actually think that Thai curries, while excellent, are not the "stars" of the cuisine. The soups, the complex "salad" dishes (larb, yum neur) and many of the noodle dishes are--at least for me.

I've actually said, for years, that it's the most underrated cuisine in the world.

I despise things like fish sauce and shrimp paste on their own, but properly applied they fit well. But it's the fresh ingredients which really "make" Thai food work.

Also, Thai food is one of the cuisines where something can be blazingly hot, but other flavors can still peek through. A lot of Indian food, as a counter example, can be overspiced, but I find that doesn't happen nearly as much with Thai.

[Pan]

[...]Also, Thai food is one of the cuisines where something can be blazingly hot, but other flavors can still peek through.  A lot of Indian food, as a counter example, can be overspiced, but I find that doesn't happen nearly as much with Thai.

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I'd have to disagree on both counts. It's rare that I get truly blindingly hot Thai food in New York, but when I do, it's too hot for me to really notice anything else much, even though other tastes are present. Conversely, very spicy Indian food is normally bursting with flavor. Actually, I think that while Thai food is very different from every type of Indian food I've had any exposure two, the commonality is the combination of fragrant ingredients into a mixture that could be said to be greater than the sum of its parts even though of course, strictly it is that sum.

[foodgeek]

I'm a big fan of SE Asian food (including Thai). My favorite Thai dishes are Mango Sticky rice, various duck dishes (pretty much one per Thai restaurant i like), banana sticky rice from Sripraphai, and that ground beef, onions, and rice noodles dish form sripraphai. There is a restaurant in Arlington, VA that has that rice noodle dish, but it is better at Sri.

I am often not a fan of pad thai, becaus it is uninteresting at a lot of thai places. when it is good, it is great though. :)

[detlefchef]

As much as I love Thai, I'm actually a bigger fan of the foods of Vietnam. It's got the same exotic palate of ingredients but it has a level of sophistication and elegance that surpasses anything else I've eaten. I think it is the most noble cuisine on the planet.

[bilrus]

One of the things I think makes Thai cooking different from most other cuisines, especially Western cuisines, is how they feature their ingredients. One the goals of French cooking, for example, is to have the flavors and ingredients work together to taste different, and presuamably better, than they would by themselves. In Thai cooking the goal is to make the taste of every ingredient stand out, while still staying in harmony.

Like the book says - Hout, Sour, Salty, Sweet. It is all in how you tweak those four tastes.

Edited May 25, 2005 by bilrus (log)

[fifi]

The first time I tasted Thai food was about 20+ years ago in Hawaii. The kids were about 10 and 13. My son, the younger, was in charge of arranging dinner. He noted that we had never had Thai food and we should go to Keo's. We asked the waiter for advice and had fried spring rolls wrapped in lettuce leaves with peanuts, pepper sauce, mint and cucumber. That was followed by the coconut soup. Then came a Panang style curry, some garlic shrimp and we finished with coconut tapioca. With our first taste of that spring roll, our eyes bugged out. The rest of the meal was punctuated with "Oh. My. God." We have been hooked ever since.

. . . all come together for a symphony of clean, fresh flavors that are undisputedly not American, even if the ingredients are. . .

I am puzzled by this statement. If this were written 20 years ago, I could maybe understand it and excuse it even. I could see trying to approximate a cuisine with what you have and try to do your best. But I am with Pan, I don't see how you can come close without the unique aromatics. And the ingredients are just about universally available these days in urban areas and certainly over the internet.

I really can't say that I have a favorite. Those spring rolls in the lettuce leaf are right up there. But then so are the Panang curries. And then there is that sticky rice with mango. Um, I can't leave out the soup. What I make the most at home are improvised curries using what is around with the Mae Ploy curry pastes because it is a quick dinner. I keep the coconut soup base in the freezer ready to poach some chicken or shrimp. My coconut/mango sticky rice dessert is in demand for dinner parties. I need to expand my repertoir into the noodle dishes.

[Chris Amirault]

[...]Also, Thai food is one of the cuisines where something can be blazingly hot, but other flavors can still peek through.

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It's rare that I get truly blindingly hot Thai food in New York, but when I do, it's too hot for me to really notice anything else much, even though other tastes are present.

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Having made a rather obsessive commitment to using only fresh ingredients for the Thai food that I make at home pretty often, I'm increasingly convinced that the flavors of aromatics in Thai food are very dependent on freshness and quality. Specifically, new galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, shallots, basils, cilantro and cilantro root make a huge difference in the flavor profile of curries, larbs, soups, and so on. While this is a truism for most cuisine, I think that it's particularly true in Thai food.

As I mentioned above, I haven't really found a Thai restaurant around here that I like. However, my experience this past November at Thai Nakorn in Anaheim CA suggests that there are titanic differences between even family-style Thai restaurants. When I eat Thai around RI, the soups are underseasoned and based on weak stocks, the curries are suspiciously smooth and just this side of bland, and everything tastes tired. Thai Nakorn had dishes that exploded in my mouth, and the aromatics, textures, and flavors combined in magical ways. I'll bet that their very busy restaurant has massive turnover, sources and uses fresher ingredients, and does a lot more in house than the places around here.

[fifi]

. . . . .

As I mentioned above, I haven't really found a Thai restaurant around here that I like. However, my experience this past November at Thai Nakorn in Anaheim CA suggests that there are titanic differences between even family-style Thai restaurants. When I eat Thai around RI, the soups are underseasoned and based on weak stocks, the curries are suspiciously smooth and just this side of bland, and everything tastes tired. Thai Nakorn had dishes that exploded in my mouth, and the aromatics, textures, and flavors combined in magical ways. I'll bet that their very busy restaurant has massive turnover, sources and uses fresher ingredients, and does a lot more in house than the places around here.

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We went through a transition here in Houston over the years. One of the problems with what we found locally was that we always compared it to that first experience at Keo's. My son was reading a copy of Conde Naste travel magazine and yelled out "no wonder!" I asked what crazy-boy was yelping about. Keo's had been voted best Thai restaurant in the world that year. We would have to start there. The first places here didn't measure up to mediocre but then more and more started showing up. The competition increased and the knowledge of the Houston dining public caught up. Now, the quality level of most places is pretty darn decent. And we seem to have escaped the "sugar problem" that has been discussed elsewhere here. It is all about hitting that hot sour salty sweet balance. Perhaps your area will catch up eventually.

[Pan]

Having made a rather obsessive commitment to using only fresh ingredients for the Thai food that I make at home pretty often, I'm increasingly convinced that the flavors of aromatics in Thai food are very dependent on freshness and quality. Specifically, new galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, shallots, basils, cilantro and cilantro root make a huge difference in the flavor profile of curries, larbs, soups, and so on. While this is a truism for most cuisine, I think that it's particularly true in Thai food.[...]

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I particularly think that fresh lemongrass makes a huge difference. Lemongrass was growing as a weed in our yard in Malaysia, and we snipped it with scissors and had it in soup. If you can't chew up your lemongrass, it's either older than it probably should be or not optimally fresh.

[Grub]

If you can't chew up your lemongrass, it's either older than it probably should be or not optimally fresh.

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Really?! But you'd still remove a lot of the "bark" from the plant, though? I've tried to remove stuff, to try find an edible "core" on lemongrass, but even if I discarded 75% of the stalk, the stuff at the center still wasn't edible...

I mean, I've given up on actual lemongrass, and have switched to a lemongrass paste in a tube...

Edited May 26, 2005 by Grub (log)

[Pan]

If you can't chew up your lemongrass, it's either older than it probably should be or not optimally fresh.

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Really?! But you'd still remove a lot of the "bark" from the plant, though?[...]

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I don't remember that anything was removed (it wasn't extremely tall lemongrass), but I wasn't the one doing the cooking. In any case, if there's an inedible part, it's best removed before the lemongrass is used, when that's possible. If I remember correctly, we ate the entire stalk and the outside was chewy but edible and delicious. Unfortunately, we liked it so much we snipped all the plants and then there were none.

[Gifted Gourmet]

we ate the entire stalk and the outside was chewy but edible and delicious

Today I went to lunch at the Atlanta Fish Market, one of the best local seafood restaurants here, and had sea bass "Hong Kong Style" .. in a light sherry soy sauce with lemongrass slivers on top and they were chewy, but distinctive, and set off the dish beautifully!

[huiray]

I find it interesting (no dissing involved) that many people regard Thai cuisine in some manner as noteworthy, and comment (and "like") accordingly.  Why is this so?  Why does THAI food, over and beyond other E/SE Asian cuisines, have such a hold on the imaginations of the folks here?  Is there any, uh, correspondence with the fact that the popular exponents of Thai cuisine in the USA happen to be Caucasians? (Like Thompson, or that Pok Pok fellow) Or is there something about an expectation of VIVID, SPICY flavors, which the USAmerican palate expects of Thai food?

[Prawncrackers]

I live in the UK and there are two hot casual Thai restaurants at the moment in London; Som Saa and Smoking Goat. Both from the same stable of Northern (North East?) Thai cooking of The Begging Bowl also in London. Som Saa is more authentic as far I can tell but I prefer the simpler, sweeter more flavourful dishes at Smoking Goat. All run by farang! I should, being a self confessed food snob, prefer the more authentic restaurant but in the end it's what's on the plate that counts, the rest is BS especially the hype around places like this. For me it's clear the chefs behind them really care about Thai food and ingredients.

 

I don't know what you would define as 'noteworthy' cuisine, but to me one that is globally recognisable with a long distinct history and evolution of cooking techniques makes Thai as 'noteworthy' as any other cuisine in the world. But above all it's diverse and delicious. There are a lot of Chinese influences in Thai cuisine. Surely there's some aspect of it that would please you?

[Anna N]

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/12302-larb-laab-larp/?p=158314

It was Thai food that convinced me to join eGullet way back in 2002. The flavours were so vibrant, so new. I was somewhat familiar with Chinese, Japanese and Indian cuisines but knew little of Thai cuisine. Today it is still Thai flavours call out the most to me.

[huiray]

I live in the UK and there are two hot casual Thai restaurants at the moment in London; Som Saa and Smoking Goat. Both from the same stable of Northern (North East?) Thai cooking of The Begging Bowl also in London. Som Saa is more authentic as far I can tell but I prefer the simpler, sweeter more flavourful dishes at Smoking Goat. All run by farang! I should, being a self confessed food snob, prefer the more authentic restaurant but in the end it's what's on the plate that counts, the rest is BS especially the hype around places like this. For me it's clear the chefs behind them really care about Thai food and ingredients.

 

I don't know what you would define as 'noteworthy' cuisine, but to me one that is globally recognisable with a long distinct history and evolution of cooking techniques makes Thai as 'noteworthy' as any other cuisine in the world. But above all it's diverse and delicious. There are a lot of Chinese influences in Thai cuisine. Surely there's some aspect of it that would please you?

 

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/12302-larb-laab-larp/?p=158314

It was Thai food that convinced me to join eGullet way back in 2002. The flavours were so vibrant, so new. I was somewhat familiar with Chinese, Japanese and Indian cuisines but knew little of Thai cuisine. Today it is still Thai flavours call out the most to me.

 

Yes, of course Thai food also appeals to me and I like it.  I said nothing about disliking it per se. 

 

I wondered about why folks in the West seem to prefer it over other E/SE Asian cuisines.  But the Thai government program to popularize it in the West was also quite successful, I understand. Perhaps that is a factor.  (See here and here for example; or here and here.)  And many folks in the US went to Thailand for R&R back in the day when they were fighting in Vietnam, and carried back affinities for both Vietnamese and Thai food - or at least familiarity with them.