Many people think that foods in the ahaan paa (forest or jungle food) category get that name because they are made using ingredients brought in from the wild. This is partly true: they may contain meats that people ordinarily do not eat, but they share other qualities, too. They are easy to prepare with no hard-and-fast recipes, and are often extremely spicy. Many are kap klaem dishes intended to be eaten together with alcoholic drinks.
Full of goodness: Ingredients for 'kaeng paa'.
The hot curries called kaeng paa qualify, because they are simple to make and vary from locale to locale depending on local tastes and available ingredients. There is no ironclad recipe, and kaeng paa are very hot. But they are not necessarily eaten as kap klaem. They can be served any time, and go well together with other foods of every kind. Besides that, they are very good for you.
The reason they are considered healthy is that they place the accent on vegetable ingredients rather than meats. The vegetables used are primarily local ones that change with the seasons. In fact, the vegetable ingredients are so central to kaeng paa that they can be considered vegetable curries.
Most of the local vegetables recruited for the kaeng paa curry pot are nutritious ones believed to have medicinal properties. Some mask the protein smell of meat ingredients. And since the plants used differ from season to season and have distinctive and characteristic tastes and fragrances, kaeng paa can range over a wide variety of flavours.
For example, the northern dish called kaeng khae can contain chicken or pork, and therefore can be considered a combination of kaeng paa and kaeng phak (vegetable curry or vegetable soup). The curry seasonings for kaeng khae include dried chillies (phrik khee nuu haeng), onions, garlic, galangal, lemon grass, kapi and plaa raa (fermented fish) that has been cooked and filtered to obtain only the meat.
It can contain any of a large number of vegetables and herbs. Many are local or regional, like the flowers called dok ngiew and dok khaa. Also suitable are fruits, small eggplants and herbs from the fields and garden like tamlueng (a morning glory like vine), cha-om (a shrub with mimosa-like leaves), chaphluu (a ground creeper with shiny, aromatic leaves) and wing beans. Especially important is the wild mushroom called het lom, which grows on rotting logs and in rock crevices. It is delicious and has an appetising fragrance, but should only be gathered during the cool season or the summer, when it will be drier and chewier than it is during the rainy season. This mushroom is a special favourite with Northerners.
Field and garden plants like tamlueng, chaphluu and wing beans are less plentiful during the dry months, so they can be left out of the kaeng khae or kaeng paa. The taste and consistency of the dish will be different, but the rotation of available ingredients is part of the character.
The Isan dish called kaeng awm is also basically a vegetable curry. There are no specific meat ingredients that have to be included. Dried fish, frog, red ant eggs, any of them can be used, or no animal ingredients at all. The seasonings are simple and basic: dried chillies, onion, garlic, lemon grass and kaffir lime zest. Vegetables and herbs can be added as they become available seasonally and might include eggplants, long beans or spring onion. Essentials are dill, whose fragrance is essential to the dish, sliced chillies (phrik chee faa) and nam plaa raa (the liquid from fermented fish), used to flavour it.
Kaeng awm is not made with a lot of liquid, as similar curries in other parts of the country are. Only a small amount of water is used, and the rest cooks out of the vegetables as they are simmered. It is eaten with sticky rice, which is dipped into the broth. It is like eating stewed vegetables, and the taste is salty from the plaa raa and spicy from the seasoning mixture.
The kinds of kaeng paa made in the shore areas of the Central Region are different from those made inland. Versions cooked in seaside locales used fish of every kind. Plaa saai and plaa het khone, both small and tender, mackerel and ocean catfish are all viable. Again, seasonings are simple and basic, and include dried chillies, onions, garlic, galangal and lemon grass. Vegetable ingredients might be small eggplants of different kinds and fresh chillies (phrik chee faa). Some cooks like to add fresh basil.
There are no rules regarding meat ingredients for the kinds of kaeng paa made in Thailand's different regions, so cooks can choose the one that they want — chicken, for example, or boar (these are all farmed these days, but made to exercise so that the are firm and have little fat, like a wild boar), snakehead fish or catfish. The seasonings are largely similar for all of these dishes, but if the curry is made with snakehead fish or catfish, with their strong odour, slivered krachaai (an aromatic rhizome) is added to cover the smell.
Vegetables can include small eggplants, phrik chee faa and cha-om. Some recipes call for fresh basil, too. If the kaeng paa native to inland areas of the Central Region is made without water and is stir-fried "dry", the result is no different from the spicy stir-fry called phat chaa.
Some restaurants in the Central Region cook kaeng paa in ways that deviate from the dishes' true characters. For example, they will fry the seasonings in oil first, believing that doing this will make the curry more fragrant, and will leave an appetising-looking layer of oil floating on top. Many shops put in baby corn or carrots to add colour. They shouldn't. The corn and carrots do not improve the flavour. They just take up space that would better be taken by fresh local vegetables. If you look closely at the character and structure of kaeng paa, you will see that it is full of vegetables, local types gathered nearby, and that they are all completely eaten, even the krachaai, a medicinal plant with beneficial properties.
Comparing kaeng paa with tom yam, it can be seen that both are alike in being simple soup-like recipes. But even though the tom yam has healthy herbal ingredients like galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and a delicious sour-salty-spicy flavour, the galangal, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves are left in the bowl or pot like so much trash. This makes the dish harder to eat than kaeng paa, in which everything is edible.
Keep all of these things in mind when you are in the mood for some culinary exploring. Kaeng paa in its great variety will offer new flavours and aromas from place to place and from season to season. It is one among the many great creations that give Thailand's food its seemingly endless diversity.
Plenty of options: 'Kaeng paa plaa', a version with fish, is one of many varieties.
