Street food in Thailand offers a smorgasbord for all of your senses
Picture a barbecue hotdog stand outside a North American sports stadium. Now, instead of hotdogs and buns sizzling on a grill, the food cart is laden with fresh bananas, which are slathered in batter and deep-fried to golden in a giant wok, then scooped into a paper bag like a super size order of extra thick homecut french fries. That was my first breakfast in Thailand while I watched hundreds of beautifully costumed elephants play soccer and tug-of-war in the annual Elephant Round-up in the far northeast of the country!
The next 'hotdog stand' does have a grill, placed over a large bin of charcoal, with flattened chicken quarters sizzling on sticks that you eat like a popsicle; next door to that is yet another steel cart heaped with fresh, ripe pineapple, mango and papaya, and sporting a huge mortar and pestle for transforming the greener papayas into a crunchy, sweet-sour-spicy salad with morsels of shrimp or squid.
Fresh fruit, salads and even soups and noodles are ladled into plastic bags with a skewer, fork, spoon or straw for eating on the go or perched on a folding chair at a nearby metal card table in the market.
Thai buses and trains become moving picnic grounds, with everyone chatting, eating and sharing the fare hawked through the vehicles' windows at roadside stops and terminals: Gai Yang, the flattened barbecue chicken on a stick, skewered meat and fish balls and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves.
Carnivals and markets feature huge woks bubbling with deep-fried critters of all sorts, many unidentifiable. Are they grasshoppers? crickets? spiders? baby birds? small frogs? -- my mouth and eyes were constantly wide open in wonder and amazement!
Many people are a bit leery of how different food, especially street food, will effect them and their health while traveling. The World Food Companion describes some of the tips I have practiced for embracing adventures in food around the world over many years of travel.
Of course, you will find an endless selection of sit-down restaurants in Thailand where you can savour some of the more familiar dishes now found in restaurants around the world: green curry with chicken, red curry with beef, pad thai and other noodle dishes, and wonderfully aromatic sweet basil dishes.
Whether you plan to sample the fabulous foods from the street vendors and markets or stick to what you know, learn a few tips on deciphering a menu or asking for a type of dish with a few Thai Food Terms.
Many Thai recipes are fairly easy to create in your own kitchen once you've mastered a few essentials. Gai Yang, afterall, is really barbequed chicken with a Thai twist! A good food reference guide or cookbook with a glossary of Asian ingredients will help you gain that perfect balance of sour, sweet, salt and heat that is unique to Thai cuisine.
You'll also find some great ideas for infusing Thai flavours into everyday meals in the Recipe for Travel's Recipe Box.
