How to have fun and enjoy Thai Cooking more

The first thing you nee to get to grips with when cooking Thai food is balance!

What I mean by balance is harmonising the hugely varied ingredients, such things as flavour, aroma, texture and colour. If you don't get that right you end up missing so much fo the fun and enjoyment of Thai food.

Everybody knows that Thai food is very spicy. Myth!

However, a lot of Thai food is ruined by poor preparation and too many chillies and the really sad part is the folks who get it wrong, never know they are doing so and miss so much.

Yes there are a lot of spices (often chilli) used in Thai recipes, however there are also a lot of subtle flavours used as well and countless Thai recipes and dishes that are quite bland, so folks add spices to pep them up, a bit like you might put mustard on a hot dog and many "falangs" (non-Thai's) don't take this into account when describiing Thai food.

In addition there are many Thai recipes and dishes that are bursting with flavours, all of them subtle and harmonising with each other to excite your taste buds into a frenzy without a hint of spicyness!

So back to balance.......

How do you mix these ingredients so one does not overpower the otther so you can enjoy all those lovely flavours, textures and aromas?

Firstly you have to consider their strongest property

Take chillies and garlic, chillies have very litle smell but a hugely powerful flavour, garlic has a much stronger aroma than chillies and a lesser taste.

Chillies if eaten raw will burn your tongue and lips, they can't be said to have much in the way of "flavour" other than pungent burning

Garlic raw, will also burn your tongue and lips but to a much lesser degree so in this case you can taste "some" flavour although over powered by the burning we receive it via aroma mostly

However, they react differently when you cook them

When stir frying, Chillies emit a pungent choking aroma, nay fumes, that will make you cough and gag, after frying, chillies are still hugely spicy and will burn your taste buds, the chemical inside (mostly in the white inner flesh and seeds) is capsaisin, it is not reduced by cooking. There's some interesting Chilli facts

Garlic gives off a wonderful aroma which is unique and unmistakable and after cooking the burning sensation when you eat it has gone and the taste and aroma is more full and savoury, almost sweet. Here's some interesting Garlic facts

What does this mean?

When cooking these ingredients in Thai food you need to understand what happens to them in the cooking process so you can get a better balance of flavours in the finished meal.

How they effect other ingredients, lets take Galangal as an example, a root vegetable, added to many soups and curries in the presence of garlic and chillies, what happens?

Well, Galangal has a fibrous, almost woody texture and wonderful aromatic properties it also has different properties depending on whether it is an old root or a young one, so an old one is used in soups where it is boiled for a longer time and young in curries which are quicker to cook. Unless you are making a fairly spicy curry in which case you would use an old Galangal which has a much stronger flavour, not pleasant on it's own but great in a spicy curry and it adds another texture to the mix, bonus!

By comparison to garlic and chilli, Galangal has a very mild flavour which these other two can easily overpower so when using them all together you should ensure the Galangal has enough time cooking to infuse its flavour and aroma at the same time not using too much chilli just because if you like it spicy, you'll be missing so much!

The same goes for Lemongrass, often used with Galangal in many Thai recipes, particularly soups where they have the chance to shine throught all the other flavours

A typical example is Tom Yam Gung one of Thailands signature dishes Prawn sour and spicy soup, to a westerner the thought of sour soup sounds initially uninviting however when prepared properly it's delightful and the sour is the lime so not too sour.

When you make this soup a good recipe is key, as it will give you the right amount of ingredients and also where to enter them into the cooking process. This soup is mostly riuned in my experience by the addition of too many chillies so you lose touch with the more subtle flavours of lemongrass, lime leaves, shallots, mushroom, spring onion and coriander, all very varied so when to you add them in the process, a great recipe I can recommend with very clear cut and easy to understand instructions is Tom Yam Gung

No it bloomin' well doesn't!

You see Thais eat rice, mostly Jasmine rice, which in itself doesn't cook like any other rice, it's much softer so doesen't require soaking first or it will be soggy.

But that's another story, bear with me here, you see where I'm going with this, it's not just the ingredients and recipe and cooking process, Ooooh No!

What should you eat with what, you take a lot of trouble when ordering wine in a restaurant to compliment the meal.

Why?

So as you eat and drink the wine refreshes the palate for the meal and vise versa thus increasing your enjoyment of both.

Thais don't drink wine really, they mostly drink water with a meal, which will doesn't really refresh your palate after a good gobful of something spicy, but something sweet and savoury with some substance WILL and thus one enhances your enjoyment of the other.

So now, not only have you got a balance of flavours in the recipe but we've extended it to the next level, your enjoyment of a balanced complete meal!

Here's a video below of a peculiar fellow eating Thai food the balanced way, you gotta laugh at him, but he obviously loves Thai food and gets the point across!