About Thai Food

I just have to post something about the deliciousness that is Thai food.

So Thai cooking has 4 major flavors to it. Spicy, sweet, sour, and salty. But the way they get those flavors is very different than how we get those flavors.

I learned this in a cooking class I took in Chiang Mai, where I learned how to make spring rolls, pad thai, Tom Sab (SOOOO GOOOOD), and curry paste and curry. Let me just show you a couple of dishes I had in thailand while I was there.

This was the green curry I made. It was SOOO spicy! Our instructor called peppers "sexy vegetables"

This is called the "welcome snack". It is a leaf, filled with lime, shallot, ginger, coconut, and palm syrup. YUMMY!

My sister made that. I think its called something uw.

My sister made red curry. I think I prefer red curry actually.

Coconut milk soup with chicken.

My pad thai. NEVER in my LIFE did I think it could be that good! I didn't even take a before picture.

Classic fried dish.

Lemon glass soup!

 OK. On to the fruit, which legitimately ROCKED my WORLD! First, let me tell you about the Durian. According to wikipedia, a Durian is a fruit that looks like this:

 and has a smell that is "strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks. The odour has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia". I got the chance to smell the durian, and it is like a pungent combination of rotting onions, slightly old meat, and detergent.

It was banned from our hotel.

One morning, I woke up with a desire for funnel cake. Instead, I got this - fried pineapple! And it was GOOD. The pineapple in thailand is a totally different fruit from the one here. It is mild, and not acidic, and a whitish yellow color.

THis is called a Rambutan. I loved it. A brit in my group on the tour said it tasted like "slimy nothingness". I told him that was what I looked for in a fruit.

Blended coconut juice, from a young coconut. SO fatty and SO good!

Last, but certainly not least, this is was my lunch the second day on the trek. It was noodles packed in a banana leaf and we use chopsticks our guide cut off of bamboo from the jungle. FREAKING AWESOME!!!