A lunch stop in a tiny open-air restaurant was my introduction to kuay teow tom yum Sukhothai (noodle tom yum soup Sukhothai style).
Continue reading Thailand Food Exploration: Kuay Teow Tom Yum Sukhothai
A lunch stop in a tiny open-air restaurant was my introduction to kuay teow tom yum Sukhothai (noodle tom yum soup Sukhothai style).
Continue reading Thailand Food Exploration: Kuay Teow Tom Yum Sukhothai
Our Thai host ordered a very enticing-looking dish for dinner recently, and the next day, we followed suit.
Kra pao kai (pictured) or kra pao moo (if pork) translates as chicken (kai) stir-fried with holy basil. The kai dow on the end means fried egg, a popular addition to the dish, but you can leave it off when ordering if you don’t fancy it. The egg aside, it is a light, clean-tasting dish, inexpensive and seemingly very common.
The same small restaurant that serves the gaeng jued tam luang also sells packets of Thai sweets. This includes nang let, a delicious crispy snack.
They are made from cooked sticky rice that has been formed into patties, dried, fried and topped with a swirl of palm sugar caramel. A sprinkle of black sesame seeds is mixed in with the rice, which adds a subtle nutty flavour.
On a previous visit to Thailand nearly 5 years ago, while out with our hosts we suddenly screeched to the side of the road and shortly afterwards were the proud owners of a box of khanom krok. Hot, crispy, soft and coconutty, the little half-spheres were sublimely delicious.
Having rashly quit our jobs and sold our house recently, my boyfriend and I are now spending a few months outside the UK, our first stop being Thailand.
My boyfriend’s dad has retired here and is married to a Thai lady, which makes all food experiences much easier and more varied. They are based near Pattaya, which is notorious for many things, but has a lot of excellent places to eat for all budgets.
On our first morning, feeling a little jet-lagged, we picked up some drinks at a small coffee shop. I opted for a Lychee Blitz, which is a fruit and ice blend, although I suspect it included some syrup as it was sweet and had a pink tinge to it. We returned to the car for a brief trip onwards to a small road-side restaurant, bringing our drinks with us.
Our hosts outlined a few of the more popular dishes, and we plumped for the “gaeng jued tam luang” (phonetic representation!) which I was advised translates as “bland soup with coccinia grandis leaf”.
Continue reading Thailand Food Exploration: Gaeng Jued Tam Luang