A Taste of Thailand

I love travelling. I love visiting new places, I love learning about the culture and I love trying the local cuisine. Last week I got to experience a little taste of Thailand at home when a friend invited me over for what turned out to be an epic four-course Thai feast. This wasn’t Thai food as we are most familiar with it- the kind of dishes you may be served in a restaurant- but the real food that is cooked and eaten everyday on Thailand's bustling streets.  

Thai Pork Skewers cooked on the barbeque

Prawn Cakes with Chilli & Peanut Sauce

The culinary tour began with delicious marinated pork skewers, cooked on the barbeque to seal in the flavour and give them a wonderful smoky taste. Next came crunchy prawn cakes -succulent fresh prawns covered in a light rice batter and deep fried until crispy and golden- accompanied by a feisty sweet chilli and peanut dipping sauce. These were unlike anything I’ve ever tasted and so simple to make. They’d be perfect as a canapé, a starter or even as a side dish with your summer barbeque, I really can’t recommend them highly enough. 

The main course was a more traditional arharn gap kao (food eaten with rice) dish. A fiery chicken curry that combined rich spicy and tart flavours served with the Thai staple glutinous rice, so called because it has a slightly sticky texture. I love the traditional bamboo steamer it was cooked in!

We finished off with a roti. Unlike the savoury Indian version, in Thailand these are often served with banana and drizzled with condensed milk as a desert. Like the prawn cakes, roti are delicious but super easy to make. First a pancake-like dough is made from wheat flour, an egg, a little melted butter and a pinch of salt, this is then kneaded together and allowed to rest before being rolled out as thin as possible and fried until golden on both sides. The filling is added to the middle and the roti folded in around in. A quick drizzle of condensed milk finishes it off.  If you have a sweet tooth like me this would be a great alternative to the traditional British pancake for breakfast. Click here for a great quick and simple roti recipe you can easily recreate at home.

Bamboo rice steamer with traditional Thai Glutinus Rice & Banana Roti

The recipes for all the dishes can be found in David Thompson’s Thai Street Food. Available here from Amazon.co.uk I hope I've inspired you to give Thai food a go!