You have to sympathise with the confusion a foreigner may feel when encountering Thai food on its native turf, especially in Bangkok. The visitor may have conflicting feelings; thinking that he knows something about what he sees, but also suspecting that he doesn’t. For instance, if the tourist comes across a southern curry and rice shop he will recognise it easily enough because every southern curry shop has a sign saying that it is a southern food shop, and often mentions the province the owners come from. Even if the sign is written in Thai and the visitor can’t read it, someone nearby might explain.
Fusion food: Thais never used to steam fish, so dishes requiring the technique are Chinese-influenced.
But if he sees a vendor from Isan selling grilled eggs, he may think that this is an Isan dish. He may not know that selling eggs is just a job that people from Isan often take in Bangkok. The grilled eggs are not an authentic Isan dish, because people from that region traditionally do not eat eggs.
Seeing kui tio kai sai mara (noodles with chicken and bitter melon), the visitor might think the offering is a Chinese dish that vendors from Isan sell. But wrong again: it was Isan vendors who were the first to make and sell it, and pretty much own the copyright.
Around Bangkok there are noodle shops that have boats propped up on display inside. The noodles they sell contain congealed blood, shoots of the phak boong vine and pork dripping. Newcomers might take these noodles for the famous kui tio ruea Ayutthaya, or Ayutthaya boat noodles, as many people will tell them. But the noodles are a Bangkok invention. Vendors just buy an old boat from Ayutthaya, rotted on the bottom and no longer usable, and set it out to provide atmosphere.
Then there is the famous phat Thai noodle shop in the Pratu Phee area near the Golden Mountain temple. Crowds of customers queue up nightly to watch the noodles being cooked flamboyantly on a row of stoves. The many tourists among them will think that they are seeing an authentic Thai national dish being made, but what is served there is not traditional phat Thai. It is just a fried noodle dish prepared with great showmanship to impress them.
Tourists sitting down for a seafood supper at the corner of Soi Texas and Yaowarat may think that they are being served their grilled shrimp, shellfish or shrimp prepared the old-fashioned Thai way, but again, not true. Thais have never used margarine in cooking.
The preparation of the “flying” phak boong that draws fascinated tourists to roadside rice soup shops in Phitsanulok is admittedly spectacular. Flames shoot up high from the wok while the vegetable is being fried, and then this sight is topped off when the fried phak boong is thrown into the air for the waiter to catch in another pan and serve to a customer. But again, it’s all for show. Even discounting the acrobatics, Thais don’t like to waste food, as happens when the waiter misses the catch and the vegetable ends up hanging from the nearby electrical wires.
All of these examples are misrepresentations that can give visitors mistaken ideas about Thai food. Many shops and restaurants adapt and change their dishes, including authentic ones that date back many years, to boost sales. The competitiveness of the dining scene demands it, they feel. Another thing is that there is no one to enlighten them, even in print or in the various media, where more attention is given to advertisements of places to eat rather than into any informed discussion of the food they serve.
And it isn’t only visitors from abroad whom we have to feel for in this regard. There are many Thais who don’t understand the structure of Thai cuisine and tend to see it in generalised terms. But techniques and styles vary greatly, as can be seen when sampling the food from region to region. Isan cooks are experts at making pounded, grilled and boiled dishes but never stir-fry food in oil.
In general, Northerners do not use coconut cream. There is the example of khao soi (wheat noodles in a curried coconut cream sauce), which seems to be an exception, but that is an imported dish brought in from the Haw Chinese or Chinese Muslim cultures. Northerners eat primarily boiled, grilled and pounded dishes. For meats, they prefer fish, pork, chicken and water buffalo, but not duck.
Cooks in the Central region are experts at making the spicy, salad-like dishes called yam and a whole roster of nam phrik (chilli sauces eaten with vegetables and often fish). They also prepare boiled and curried recipes, both with and without coconut cream. Stir-fried and deep-fried foods are mostly Chinese-influenced. Steaming food is not a Central region skill, however. Haw moke, fish and herbs steamed in spicy curried coconut custard, seems to be an exception, but is actually a kind of dry coconut cream curry.
Since Central region cooks are not given to steaming food, they prepare fish primarily by boiling, frying or cooking them into soups and curries. Tasty fish like the pompano or the blade-like sheatfish are deep-fried and topped with chilli sauce, deep-fried with garlic and pepper, or made into a tom yam or chuu chee dish (topped with a rich curried coconut cream sauce), but all of these recipes are too spicy to allow the real flavour of the fish to come through.
It is strange that, with all their fondness for fish, Thais of the Central region do not eat the pla buu, or goby, even though its meat is among the most delicate, sweet and delicious of all fish. The long bone that runs through the middle of the fish is not hard, and its firmest, tastiest meat is in the cheeks on either side of the head. It is the favourite fish of the Chinese, and the only way that they cook it is by steaming, ideally with soy sauce. Most restaurants that offer goby steamed with soy sauce will charge about 1,200 baht for a 600g fish.
Goby live in both fresh and brackish, fast-flowing natural waters. The water should be muddy rather than clear, however, as the fish like to hide in holes and crevices in sunken logs, or among the roots of large trees growing in the water. When a small fish or shrimp swims past, the goby will lunge out and snap it up.
As a result, it doesn’t often find its way into fishermen’s nets, and the best way to catch them is with bait. Since they are a valuable commercial fish there have been attempts to farm them, but these have not been successful.
The reason that the Thais of the Central region do not eat them is a strange one. People say that it is because the fish figures in an old Thai fairy tale that has been told for centuries. It is a kind of Thai variant of Snow White, with a beautiful and virtuous heroine whose mother is a goby fish. She has to overcome many obstacles, but at the end of it all marries a prince. Beliefs inspired by this story apparently still hold on, because many women even now say they won’t eat a goby because they feel sorry for it, even though they may never have seen one.
But actually, there is more to it than that. Thais are not skilled at steaming, and that is the only way to cook the goby. Possibly cooks of the past tried to boil it or cook it into a soup, with the result that the very tender meat became unappetisingly mushy or just dissolved. They stopped trying to work with it, and with time it disappeared from the Central Thai culinary repertoire. Any that were caught got a plane ride to Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore.
When steaming the fish, Chinese cooks first heat the water in a steamer until it boils, then set the entire fish on the tray, put it into the pot and cover. When the fish is partially cooked they pour a flavouring sauce made from soy sauce, nam man hoy (oyster sauce) and sesame oil over it. They also put in spring onion that has been slivered lengthwise, but not too much.
This is an example of a food that Thais don’t really understand, and it is just one of many. It is easy to empathise with foreigners who misunderstand or miss the point of certain Thai foods when we ourselves remain in the dark about things like the delicious goby, which has been in our waters and known to us for centuries.
