Photo by: Mark McCracken

Cuisine of Thailand

Thai cuisine is known for its blend of fundamental flavors in each dish -- hot (spicy), sour, sweet, salty and bitter. One of the important ingredients is nam pla (Thai น้ำปลา), a very aromatic and strong tasting fish sauce made from dried anchovies which have been fermented in brine.

Rice is a staple component of Thai cuisine, as it is of most south-east Asian cuisines. The highly-prized jasmine rice is indigenous to Thailand. Rice or noodle dishes are accompanied by highly aromatic curries, stir-fries and other dishes, incorporating large quantities of chillies, lime juice and lemon grass.

Many Thai dishes use kaffir lime leaves, usually fresh - its characteristic flavour appears in nearly every Thai soup (e.g., the hot and sour tom yam), stir-fry or curry.

In Thai cuisine, kaffir lime is frequently combined with garlic, galangal, ginger and fingerroot, together with liberal amount of chillies. Fresh Thai basil is needed for the authentic fragrance. Other typical ingredients include the small green Thai eggplants, and Coconut milk.

Thai food is traditionally eaten with a spoon, not with chopsticks.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cuisine of Thailand".