The Thai Kitchen

- Equipment and Utensils
- Essential Techniques
- Cooking Methods
- Traditional Recipes
- Characteristics of Thai Food and Seasoning
- A Note for Vegetarians

Traditional Recipes

Thai cookbooks per se are only comparatively recent: the first was published in the late nineteenth century. Before then, most recipes - and perhaps this is too precise a term - were handed down orally from generation to generation, mother to daughter, cook to assistant. Most cooks were female; most Thai believe that women make the best cooks, as only they have sufficient patience and dexterity to deal with intricate and time-consuming techniques.

Ancient recipes were vague, loose affairs, often listing the ingredients required but not their quantities because the amounts could be varies as the recipe coalesced. In fact, written recipes were most likely incomprehensible to these often illiterate cooks. They would work their way through a recipe, for example a curry paste, stopping to sniff the developing aroma of the paste in the mortar after the addition of each ingredient and then adjusting accordingly. Very often, they were enjoined to cook hai horm, "until fragrant". The recipes' brief cooking instructions - whether oral, remembered or written - used color and aroma as indicators of readiness. It was assumed that experienced cooks would interpret such instructions according to the ingredients being used and their intentions. The implication was that cooks had to be familiar with the ingredients and techniques to the extent that they would know when and how to alter them to attain the desired results without affecting the integrity of the dish. This takes not only a deft hand but a knowledgeable one, too - something that can only be achieved by trial and error. Regular cooking builds up a vocabulary of taste and a confidence in techniques. Surely this is the definition of good cooking, regardless of cuisine.

Given the lack of written recipes, some might contend that it is difficult to guarantee truly authentic - or at least consistent - Thai cooking, due to the possibility of infinite variations, and few agreed standards or explicit methods. In fact there are conventions - established practices and flavor preferences - that give a certain, albeit elastic, continuity to the cuisine. Such culinary customs ensure that a dish can be faithfully reproduced in taste, if not precisely then approximately. Any variation would be due only to the preference of the individual cook; but such a cook would be the one who had been rigorously tutored in the 'correct' taste - in Thai called rot tae. Taste is a conservative sense. The familiar becomes the accepted and expected; the unfamiliar is viewed with suspicion and distaste. With an almost inherited skill, successive generations of Thai cooks have learnt by the side of the cook, and in both the gilded palaces and meanest hovels the manner of teaching was the same. Only what was taught differed. Day after day, tastes were instilled in this time-honored manner.

In this vibrant atmosphere, reputations of indivicual cooks were made. The late nineteenth century became a high point of Thai culinary art as cooks strove to develop their craft to rarefied heights. Food from these palaces became increasingly removed from that of the nearby rice farmers. However, palace and peasant dishes still shared many characteristics, making them familiar to all - and decidedly Thai.

- Adapted from Thai Food, by David Thompson