Welcome to:

Don't feed the Chickens Sticky Rice
Mai mei gai g'in gop khow neow

or
Adventures in real Thai cuisine.
or
One good kroc deserves another.

Online edition     Episode 1

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Cooking is the first art

     Of all human art forms food is the one that people most ignore as an art inspite of the fact that everyone eats (or should) daily. You can live without music, sculptures and paintings for the world supplies these in its own ways. Unless your eating everything right off the trees, bushes and out of the burrows however your probably cooking it. True you can cook that meat on a spit over your fire and get by with that. But wouldn't it taste better if you rubbed those leaves on it first? At that point it becomes an art. Here in Thailand 80% of the population is still involved in agriculture and outside the major cities (even there really) many of the common foods eaten here you'll never see in a Thai Hotel, a Thai restaurant outside of Thailand or in a Thai Cookbook. Yet these foods are the basis for the foods you will see in most of those other places. Yet in the vast majority of Thailand food preparation hasn't changed much at all in many generations. Foods and sauces that keep well for days even weeks without refrigeration are relatively common upcountry¹. One of the most basic of these is the very common sauce here in Thailand called Pla-La . While many cookbooks mention Pla-La, I have yet to see just one that tells you how to make and store it, they just give you substitutes for it. For the most part these substitutes are not adequate nor bring the true flavor of the dishes as they are eaten here. A serving of Som-Tom using NamPla instead of Pla-La is not the same and if you have never been to Thailand, you'll never understand the difference. That is however the substitution given in most Thai cookbooks I have read. Much more about Pla-La and various related sauces will be addressed in the course of the book. The Pla-La information here in the online version will be greatly abbreviated, as just general recipe and storage information I have compiled runs many pages. The glossary description alone which I consider the most basic information runs about 250 words and that will be increasing over time probably to a page(s) for itself along with separate pages for Prik, substitutions, etc..

     The recipes contained here (to make myself perfectly clear) are probably not the Thai foods your familiar with. Some may even seem very unappetizing to some of you. Let me assure you every one of these dishes I have eaten recently and/or eat on a regular basis, some mentioned variations excepted. Every one of them tastes fine to me (well art appreciation is in the mouth of the chewer) and every one of them I feel comfortable enough with, that if you follow my directions you will experience a taste of the real rural Thailand.

     Please excuse me as I do make some assumptions. In this first recipe I assume that you live outside Thailand, that you will not be able to find "Pla Too" (Too fish), that you know well enough to remove the fish scales, head, tail, fins and viscera of the fish you do use at the appropriate times and that if you modify the ingredients (such as the addition of oil or butter to fry the vegetables) you will also change the flavor and have to change the storage instructions of the dish. (using butter for instance, not counting the flavor change, would seriously reduce the storage time and probably create an oily scum on the surface of the dish when served) Also completely omitting the chilies (see "Prik" in the Glossary) from any of the recipes will leave you something less then the true taste of the dish.

Please follow my storage instructions closely as they are very important.
The storage instructions have the duration of storage shortened in many cases to suit western "farang" ideas of food freshness, as with some of these recipes the reader may find it difficult to distinguish what is good or bad in a food that already smells strange to them.

     This online edition will only have one or two recipes per episode.

     I will be adding a comments area (guestbook) in the future, in the meantime please send any praise or gripes to dave@awebspace.com Thanks
Dave Harris
Surin, Thailand
October 2544


¹ Upcountry in Thailand is anywhere outside of Bangkok


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Copyright 2001 / 2544 Dave Harris
Last Updated: 7 October 2001 / 2544
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