BOUNTIFUL: Fried plaa soi noke kaew and plaa taphien haang daeng.
Living in Bangkok for a while can create the impression that the city is a world culinary capital. There are offerings of every kind from countries all over the globe, available in every price range, whenever you want them. Atmosphere and style in the city’s restaurants run the gamut. After experiencing all of this over a period of time it isn’t hard to assume that living in Bangkok has taught you all you really need to know about food and dining.
But just because you have been eating heartily in Bangkok for years, that does not mean that much of what was set in front of you was especially good. If you were to compare the experience with that of someone who spends the same amount of time eating in provincial areas, you would find that the fare outside of Bangkok was really better. In using the word “better”, I’m thinking primarily of the quality of the ingredients used to make the food. In Bangkok, the pressure and time limitations compel most people to have their meals in restaurants or food shops. The cooking is always done by personnel in restaurant kitchens, where costs are a prime concern. If the business is to be profitable, costs have to be kept down.
Customers being served have no way of knowing where the ingredients used to make their meal came from, and whether they are of good or bad quality. This is especially unnerving at a time when we are always hearing that, before fresh seafood reaches retailers and passes on to consumers, it will have been soaked in formalin to keep it looking fresh, and that the fresh vegetables like chillies and basil that everyone had thought were safe are actually contaminated with dangerous amounts of chemical insecticides. Isan restaurants that make som tam and noodle shops that use lime juice as seasoning rely on bottled products concocted from flavouring and colouring.
Compare this with the situation in the provinces, especially as regards food eaten by farmers who have limited income. Since circumstances require that they economise, they usually prepare their own food, obtaining the ingredients from different sources. Some of these, like local or regional vegetables, they can find for themselves growing naturally according to season, or they can buy them at informal talat nat — regularly scheduled temporary markets — from local people who have gathered them. These ingredients might also include fish caught in nearby waters, eggs from neighbouring small-scale poultry farmers and produce that they raise for themselves.
Let’s take a look at some of the foods that people in the provinces prepare for themselves. In coastal areas they might go to the local talat nat and find mackerel that has just been brought from a fisherman’s boat. They can cook it into a simple dish by boiling it together with pounded lemon grass and some nam plaa. Prawns or other kinds of sea fish can be cooked into a kaeng som nam sai (a soup-like sour-sweet-slightly spicy curry without coconut cream) made with an easy-to-pound seasoning paste and no added vegetables. After the fish or prawns have been put in, the dish can be seasoned with palm sugar, sour tamarind water and nam plaa.
Farmers know that when there is a sudden change in the weather, when the dry, extremely hot summer yields to rainy-season downpours, for example, new shoots and tender little yellow leaves will appear on makrood lime trees. These fresh new leaves are an enticement to pound up a mortarful of nam phrik for a meal. The tender leaves are delicious when scalded briefly in boiling water and served with the nam phrik. Some people like to douse them with some thick coconut cream just before serving.
New shoots brought out by the rain from a variety of other plants — mapraang (Marian plum), krathin, mango trees, tapioca, the morning glory-like phak boong — are also delectable when eaten with nam phrik. Then there are taling-pling, very sour little green fruits that their trees produce in profusion during the rainy season. When provincial shoppers go to the local market and find vendors shredding fresh coconut on graters at the same time that the taling-pling are available, it opens the opportunity to cook kaeng kathi sai bua kap plaa thuu nueng sai luuk taling-pling (a coconut cream curry made with lotus stems, steamed mackerel and the taling-pling fruit). Southerners might prefer to prepare kaeng lueang yawt maphrao kap plaa sai taling-pling (a fiery yellow curry made without coconut cream that includes heart of coconut palm and taling-pling fruit).
At the beginning of the rainy season, the people of Ratchaburi’s Photharam on the bank of the Mae Klong River are happy because the fish are especially abundant. There will be local types like plaa taphien haang daeng, plaa soi nak kaew, plaa takoke and plaa maa. Fishermen catch them at night and deliver them to market vendors in the morning.
These fish inspire the local people to prepare dishes that are often personal specialities. The plaa taphien haang daeng and plaa soi nok kaew are especially good when fried and eaten with kaeng som made with phak boong.
These examples give an idea of what distinguishes food made with really high-quality ingredients. They also point up the simplicity and freedom from complexity of the dishes and recipes prepared by provincial cooks. There is no need to take special pains to make them attractive, their appeal is clear as they come from the kitchen, and they cost almost nothing.
It is a shame that many people in Bangkok who would like to taste foods like these don’t have a chance to enjoy them because they are not available for sale in the city. The only way to experience them is to head off to their native territory or, if possible, to make them at home.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.