Why is it that in the past Thais ate seasonally, cooking different dishes at different times of the year? One reason is that they lived much closer to nature than most of us do now. They understood the natural cycles — what ingredients would be at their best in a given season, and what things were best to eat. The changing possibilities that came with the rotating seasons brought variety to the table.
Today we have moved far away from such direct contact with nature, but it isn't a serious problem because we have such endless access to information through the internet. In seconds, right in our season-proof homes, we can find out what foods are available, which ones are at their best, where we can get them, and what we can make with them, so that we can still cook and eat the food that is best throughout the round of seasons.
There are many examples of seasonal foods and ingredients. Right now we are at the end of the rainy season, a time when the het khone, or termite mushroom, appears. To get hold of them you must know where they are found, which is in forested areas Kanchanaburi, Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi, and Suphan Buri where the vegetation is not too dense.
Then you have to know on what day they will appear. People who gather them know that the best time is after a few days of hot, still weather during which no rain has fallen. Then, if there is light rain in the evening or at night that lasts almost until the morning, the het khone will sprout, especially in areas where the trees are not too high and there are rotting logs or dead leaves on the ground. If all of these factors are in place, anyone out looking for the mushrooms probably won't be disappointed.
The reason the mushrooms grow as they do has to do with the nesting habits of termites. They bring scraps of decaying wood into their underground nests and store them. Small fungal growths sprout on them that have a sweet taste, and these serve as food for the entire colony.
King of mushrooms: Het khone, above, and freshwater fish, below.
But when the population of the nest decreases in accordance with the insects' life cycle, the fungus spores germinate faster than they can be harvested. The moist atmosphere in the nest combined with hot weather outside accelerates their growth and they mature into mushrooms. If there is rainfall that softens the ground, they push their way up through it into the open.
Het khone are the king of mushrooms in Thailand. They are crunchy but not tough or chewy, and have a sweet flavour and fragrance all of their own. They can be prepared as a tom yam, or just boiled with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, dried chillies and nam pla. There is no need to add meat, because its flavour would interfere with the delicate taste of the mushrooms.
The best way to obtain het khone is to drive along a road that passes through the provincial areas where they grow at this time of year. There you will see local mushroom hunters who have set up temporary stalls to sell them beside the road. The price will be high, but it's worth the investment because there is only the one time each year when fresh ones are available to eat.
There are other foods besides the het khone that can only be had at the end of the rainy season. The small, shiny green fruits called taling pling are one of them. They are so sour that you have to shut your eyes when biting into one, but they can be used to make a number of tasty dishes. Cut into little pieces, they go well with the curry puff-like pan sip sai pla nueng, with their fish filling. Most pan sip are deep fried, but a steamed type can be made by chopping steamed snakehead fish to a fine consistency, mixing it with salt, garlic, and pepper, wrapping the mixture in dough to make bite-sized packets and then steaming them. The taling pling pieces make the perfect accompaniment.
Finely chopped taling pling can also be added to nam phrik kapi (a chilli dip sauce, eaten with fish and vegetables), replacing some of the sour lime juice so that less of it has to be added. It gives the dip a special taste and aroma.
Taling pling is especially good in kaeng khua muu saam chan (kaeng khua are spicy curries that contain sour fruit. This one is made with streaky pork). Plenty of taling pling and the sour little tomatoes called makhuea prio in Thai go into it, giving it a sharp tang.
The end of the rainy season is also the time for makawk nam, a round, dark green fruit a little bigger than a golf ball that is about as sour as the shiny green madan, but with harder pulp. Peeling it can be tricky because the sap it produces is very slippery, and it is easy for the person doing the peeling to get cut with the knife. The safest way to do it is to rinse the fruit while removing the skin.
Makawk cut into fine slivers is sprinkled over deep-fried pla samlee (a fish with firm white meat) together with sliced chillies and shallots and the sour-salty-spicy sauce used on the Thai salads called yam. Usually the sour fruit used in this dish is shredded raw mango, but makawk is crisper.
A delicious yam made from makawk is a local dish eaten in Cambodia, where it is called yam maka. It uses the meat of the crispy dried pla nuea awn (sheatfish), rinsed and with the bones removed, which is mixed with toasted peanuts, hand-torn dried chillies, shallots, shredded makawk, phak chee farang (an aromatic, coriander-scented herb), and mint leaves. All of these ingredients are tossed together and just a little nam pla is added, since the fish is already somewhat salty.
Het khone and all of these fruits are all available at the end of the rainy season. To buy them you will have to visit a large fresh market or a more informal one in the locality where the plant grows.
This is also the time of year to find some kinds of freshwater fish. At the beginning of the rainy season, water from the North flows down, and the current is so strong that it whips up soil and becomes muddy and red. Villagers call it the rueduu nam daeng, or red water season.
By their nature, fish swim against the current to lay their eggs near the source of the river, so there will be many new ones in the water, and they will swim around looking for food near the river's source. At the end of the rainy season when the water level falls they head downstream into upper provinces of the Central region and they are plentiful where there are no dams to block them.
But the Chao Phraya River has the Chao Phraya Dam in Chainat Province. Provinces below the dam like Lop Buri and Ang Thong therefore have many fish that get stalled there while swimming north. Anyone who goes to a local pre-dawn market there will be able to see a great variety of them, including sheatfish, carp, and local types like pla daeng, pla kot, pla thaypho, pla khao and pla khayaeng. Fish-loving visitors who stop in at one of these markets at this time of year won't leave disappointed.
Thai people of the past were experts on the subject of seasonal food. They knew what was in season, where to get it, and how to prepare it for the table — culinary knowledge that had been accumulated for centuries.
There are no obstacles to confront anyone who wants to cook up an authentically seasonal meal now. The information is available online, and all it takes is a sojourn to the right market and buying the needed ingredients before they disappear for another year. n
