Colors of Global Cuisine: Thailand
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Thailand is a country rich in color, and its cuisine is no exception. With its exotic amalgam of flavors and styles, Thai food is popular in many Western countries. Though the cuisine actually consists of four distinct regional styles (Northern, Northeastern, Central, and Southern), Thai meals all share a a philosophy of balance among the five fundamental flavors – hot, sour, sweet, salty, and bitter. The result is a colorful dining experience.
Colors of Thai Dishes
|  Pad thai is perhaps one of the best-known Thai dishes. It is usually made with stir-fried rice noodles, eggs, fish sauce, sugar, and tamarind pulp combined with a variety of vegetables or meat. In Thailand, it is sold everywhere from the highest-end restaurants to the smallest street vendor. |
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|  Som tum is a crunchy, spicy salad made with grated green papaya, chopped tomatoes, whole beans, chilies, pounded garlic, fish sauce, sugar, peanuts, and lime juice. Variations can be found throughout the country made with salted black crab, dried shrimp, salted fish, or white eggplant. |
|  One of the spiciest of Thai curries, green curry gets its distinctive color from a combination of green chilies, coriander, lemongrass, and other seasonings. |
Colors of Thai Ingredients
A number of ingredients are commonly found in many types of dishes throughout the country, including the dishes above. Here, we'll take a look at just a few of them.
|  As many an unwary diner can tell you, Thai food is famous for its spiciness. Though a variety of chilies are used in Thai cooking, these small red and green chilies are among the most common and pack a powerful punch. Their name, prik ki nuu, literally means "mouse shit chilies". |
|  As in most Asian cuisines, rice is a staple ingredient in Thai cooking and accompanies everything from curries to stir-fries to sweet slices of mango. Jasmine rice is indigenous to Thailand, growing in the rice paddy fields stretching across the central plains. |
|  Almost all Thai soups contain kaffir lime leaves as seasoning, most notably the hot and sour tom yum. These leaves are also frequently combined with garlic, galangal, lemongrass, turmeric, and a variety of chilies to make curry paste. |
|  Native to tropical Africa, these tree fruits are used in many global cuisines. In Thailand, the flesh is seeded and dried to make a thick paste that is later mixed with water to lend a subtle sweet and sour flavor to many Thai dishes. |
|  Coriander, more commonly known as cilantro, has a peppery and lemony taste. While Western dishes usually call for the leaves of this herb, Thai cooks more often use the roots, which have a stronger flavor. Coriander roots are generally difficult to find in Western supermarkets, but can be substituted with twice the amount of coriander stem. |
|  Salty and pungent, fish sauce is an ingredient common to virtually all Thai dishes – from the green papaya salad som tum to the grilled chicken dish gai yang. It is popular in Southeast Asian cooking beyond Thailand, as well. High-quality fish sauce is made by fermenting small fresh fish for up to a year and extracting the resulting reddish-brown liquid, though the parts of and types of fish used vary. |
Two Quick Thai Recipes
- Click recipes for details at the Food Network.
About the Author, Parsiri Audcharevorakul
Parsiri is a marketing consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. She shares her own work and writes on design, illustration, and more at parsiri | blog, and likes to hear from indie artists and up-and-coming design businesses. She is also a COLOURlover, of course.
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