Thailand is the Kingdom of a thousand cultural nuances, one of the true highlights of any adventure travel to Asia, and I’ve authored pieces about many of them, including the fine arts, the architecture, the Dharma, the music, the dances, the Muay Thai boxing, and the diverse and ultra colorful national holidays. However, if there’s a single cultural aspect to Thailand, one that everybody in the world is familiar with, it has to be the kingdom’s legendary cuisine.

I eventually discovered the primary reason why Thai food tastes so great: the Thai people are crazy about eating! Eating is a national obsession for Thais, with the Western idea of three meals a day pretty much tossed right out the window. Thais are either thinking about food, talking about food, shopping for food, preparing food, or eating food. I’ve known Thai girls who eat five or six times a day - and stay skinny!

Naturally, with all this attention being paid to eating, Thailand’s exotic cuisine has become elevated to a state of refinement, a condition that like so much of Asian culture is the result of centuries of practice and perfection. In the selection, the preparation, and in the serving, if ever cooking was to be considered as an art Thai food qualifies as being among the finest examples.

And it often looks as interesting as it tastes…one of the reasons why Thai dishes are so popular with Western cultures. Thai cuisine’s distinctive flavors and interesting coloration was central to the invention of what is now commonly referred to as Fusion Cuisine, the contemporary gourmet culinary style that arose in California’s San Francisco east bay area in the early 80’s and quickly spread to finer eating establishments across the globe. Fusion’s eclectic mixing of the formal presentations of French dishes with Thai flavors and fragrances was all it took. Utilizing the diverse and abundantly fresh California produce Berkeley’s Alice Waters ‘fusion’ combinations eventually launched a thousand trendy menus, and can be directly linked to dishes currently gracing the tables of the world’s best resorts and restaurants.

Here in Thailand, high-quality and fresh food can be found everywhere, from the most exclusive restaurants to the old gal in a lampshade hat with a rolling pancake stand on the street corner. In fact Thailand (along with Mexico) probably has the best tasting street food in the world. And there are hundreds of choices in-between these two price extremes, pretty much ensuring that you can get fresh, good tasting food wherever you go.

Since Thai people are generally not wealthy a lot of this exotic tasting food is inexpensive, which is a real boon for travelers. When it comes to Thai food it’s often no more expensive to eat out that it is to cook at home. As a result restaurants and food stands do a bustling business, with the big turnover insuring that food you get is generally fresh and safe to eat. Ironically the food in some of the cheaper places is easily as good as the most expensive restaurants.

Just as Thailand has different dialects that are spoken in various parts of the country, different regions of Thailand have their own slant on the cuisine. Just as it is in the southern parts of Europe and the United States, the food in the south of Thailand is spicier than its northern counterpart.

There are even regions of Thailand where the philosophy is ‘if it crawls, flies, slithers, or hops’ it can be eaten. Westerners can be pretty shocked by Thais who happily roast Cobras, deep fry grasshoppers, and eat the bones and shells as well as the meat of whatever critter is in the pot that night. This is the truly exotic side of food in Thailand, and is pretty much removed from what actually constitutes traditional Thai cuisine.

With chilies being such an integral element of Thai dishes it’s hard to imagine that they are actually a non-indigenous plant. Like the noodles of China evolving into the pasta of Italy, the tomatoes of Mexico turning into spaghetti sauce, and the potatoes of Peru ending up and as ‘French Fries’ (chips) the world over, the chilies of the Caribbean and Brazil came to Asia via Portuguese sailors who brought them to Thailand on trading ships in the 16th century. It’s hard to get any of today’s Thai people to believe that there was a time when chilies didn’t grow everywhere in the country.

Certainly, Thailand has been affected by the cooking traditions of India and China, the two ancient powerhouse cultures of Asia. From India came the concept of the many little dishes at a single meal, and the essential concept of curries. From China came the Wok, that ubiquitous oversized flying saucer shaped Asian frying pan, and all the fried dishes that resulted, as well as the ever-omnipresent noodles. Prior to that Thai food consisted largely of rice and soups, with fish and marine creatures being the staple of the oldest eras of Thai culture. Soups are still the primary dish of any Thai meal. This probably arose from the tradition of trying to get as many obscure ingredients as possible into a pot of hot water and feeding the most people possible with the least amount of food. Traditional Thai cooking methods also included baking and grilling.

As is typical of traditional cultures eating in Thailand is a major social event, even when reduced to the level of a family meal. The psychology of how Thai food is served is based on pleasing a crowd, with the traditional idea that an individual eating by themselves is either sad or anti-social. Since this is a deeply social culture made up of families and small village clans, eating alone was something almost completely unheard of.

Even today when a group of Thai people place their orders in a restaurant they always order an extra dish, knowing full well that they will be sharing everyone else’s food as everyone else will be sharing theirs. It’s almost a mathematical ratio. If you order two dishes get a third. If you want to order three, then get five. That way they’ll be enough for everyone.

A typical meal might include a clear broth like soup; an appetizer like bitter melons stuffed with minced pork; a steamed dish, like mussels in curry sauce; a fried dish, like whole fish with ginger; a spicy salad, such as thin slices of duck on a bed of lettuce, onions, chilies, mint leaves and lemon juice; and all served with a variety of flavorful sauces to splash or dip with. Sweet desserts, like a coconut and rice pudding and/or fresh fruits such as jackfruit, papaya, pineapple and watermelon, would follow this.

Another significant aspect of cooking and eating in Thailand stems from the Buddhist concept of balance, the middle path, or the perfect union of the yin and yang elements. Both dishes and flavors are a set out with intent to provide a constant counterpoint of flavors, alternately mixing spicy, bland, hot, sour, salty, and sweet tastes. It’s part of the reason for all the separate dishes. And seeing how some of the food is, to western tastes, nuclear, having something outright bland on hand, like a lot of plain white rice, seems like a darn good idea. The sticky type of rice makes a particularly good fire extinguisher.

Thai cooking sets itself apart from other Asian cooking styles by seeing overpowering spices toned down and enhanced by fresh herbs such as lemon grass, basil, and galanga. Eventually fewer and fewer spices were used in Thai curries, while the use of fresh herbs increased. It is generally acknowledged that the spicier Thai curries can burn intensely, but only for a few moments, whereas other curries with strong spices burn for longer periods. The extensive use of natural herbs is a trademark of Thai cuisine, and one of the secrets to its complex flavors.

You would need a thousand pages to cover all the different dishes or all the region variations, so we’ll serve this casual overview of Thai food with a bit of information on the basic herbs and spices likely being used in your next Thai dinner.
One easy way to start your own culinary adventure is to head over to the local markets and look for some of these herbs. You may find them for sale in your local Thai or Asian market, or certainly in the major inner city produce markets where Thai chefs shop. In Thailand small bundles of fresh herbs can be purchased for mere pennies, but will cost a bit more in the U.S.

Even if you’re not doing any cooking it’s nice to take the herbs and either rub the leaves in your hands or set them out in a cup of hot water and become familiar with the distinct fragrances of each. Some of them look like tree branches and leaves, which is exactly what many are. Adventurous sorts can find Asian supermarkets, Thai restaurants, cooking schools, and gift shops that sell prepackaged sampler assortments of Thai cooking herbs, and these can be added to your personal spice collection at home.

Many of the basics can be bought fresh in supermarkets internationally - things like garlic or ginger - but others, like the rare Basils and certain chilies, cannot, and adding them to soups or salad dressings at home can, for those who have visited Siam, bring back the fragrant memories of eating some of the world’s best tasting food, the Cuisine of Thailand.

Here’s some of what you might find in the markets:

Chilies: called “Phrik” in Thai
Chili plants are an erect, branched, shrub-like herb with seed pods, usually colored red, yellow or green, and used as garnishing and flavoring in Thai dishes. There are many different species, and they come in all sizes and potency. All contain capsaicin, a potent biologically active ingredient with intense effects. Beneficial to the respiratory and immune system, blood pressure and heart, pure capsaicin is being used both as a natural pain medicine and a modern weapon.

Cumin: “Yi-ra” in Thai
Cumin is a small shrubbery herb, the fruit of which contains a 2-4% volatile oil with a pungent odor, and which is used as a flavoring and condiment.

Garlic: “Kra-thiam” in Thai
Garlic is an annual herbaceous plant with underground bulbs comprising several cloves. Dried mature bulbs are used as a flavoring and condiment in Thai cuisine. The bulbs contain oil and organic sulfur compounds.

Ginger: “Khing” in Thai
Ginger is an erect plant with thickened, fleshy, and aromatic rhizomes. Used in different forms as a food, flavoring, and spice. Ginger’s rhizomes contain a 1-2% volatile oil. Look for the thinly sliced pickled pink ginger served as a tasty garnish.

Galanga: “Kha” in Thai
Greater Galanga is an erect annual plant with aromatic, ginger-like rhizomes, and commonly used in Thai cooking as a flavoring.

Hoary Basil: “Maeng-lak” in Thai
Hoary Basil is an annual herbaceous plant with slightly hairy and pale green leaves, eaten either raw or used as a fragrant flavoring, and containing approximately 0.7% volatile oil. Therapeutic benefits include the alleviation of cough symptoms. This is a favorite of the Issan Thais.

Sacred Basil: “Ka-phrao” in Thai
Sacred Basil is an annual herbaceous plant that resembles Sweet Basil but has narrower and often times reddish-purple leaves. The fried fresh leaves give a spicy, pungent flavoring to dozens of dishes.

Sweet Basil: “Ho-ra-pha” in Thai
Sweet Basil is an annual herbaceous plant, the fresh leaves of which are either eaten raw in salads or used as a flavoring in Thai curries and chicken dishes.

Kaffir Lime: “Ma-krut” in Thai
The leaves, sliced outer peel, and juice of the small Kaffir Lime are used as a favorite flavoring in Thai cuisine. Both the leaves and peel contain a strong volatile oil.

(No Common English Name): Krachai in Thai
This erect annual plant with aromatic rhizomes and yellow-brown roots that look like small carrots or white ginseng is used as a flavoring in soups and curries. The rhizomes contain approximately 0.8% volatile oil. The plant has great medicinal qualities, and is known for relieving stomachaches and its general antimicrobial properties.

Lemon Grass: “Ta-khrai” in Thai
This erect annual plant resembles a coarse gray-green grass. Fresh leaves and grass are used for its distinct citrus-like aroma, and its sweet medicinal flavoring.

Lime: “Ma-nao” in Thai
The ubiquitous lime is used as a garnish for just about every dish on the menu, and is a standard element in many of the dishes. The fruit contains Hesperidins and Naringin, is a proven anti-inflammatory and loaded with the antioxidant bioflavonoids of vitamin C. Thai’s don’t grow true lemons, and the lime is the basic replacement for expensive imported yellow lemons.

Turmeric: “Kha-min” in Thai
Turmeric is a member of the ginger family, and the smooth bulbs provide yellow coloring for Thai food, with unique aromatic characteristics. It’s also a good tummy medicine.

Marsh Mint: “Sa-ra-nae” in Thai
The fresh leaves of this herbaceous plant are used as a flavoring for salads and sauces, and to perk up pork dishes.

Shallot: “Hom, Hom-lek, Hom-daeng”
Shallots, or small red onions, are annual herbaceous plants. Underground bulbs
comprise garlic-like cloves, and offer that unique flavor that is sweeter than garlic when fried.

Coconut: “Mapao”
This well known tropical ‘wonder nut’ provides one of the essential elements for Thai curries and for the wide selection of desserts. Fresh coconut milk really adds to the authentic flavor of your Thai dishes.

-Written by Richard Arthur Love (copywriter@storyjet.com)

From 2001 to 2004 Richard Love was the Senior Editor at a highly successful periodical. His most recent book is a lovely coffee table format photojournalism title on the culture and cuisine of Koh Samui island, in southernThailand. He has lived in many of the great resort destinations of the world and currently resides in Newport Beach, California.