The new year began today and people are arriving back at the office in dribs and drabs; business is hiccuping into first gear and much to my frustration, nobody I tried to contact will be back before Wednesday. There’s nothing more infuriating than being all dressed up in your brand new torero outfit, all ready to slay the bull but the bull’s having it’s nails done! Be that as it may, today I’m finishing up the series on with the food of Thailand’s region. I hope you’ve enjoyed & tested, at least, some of the recipes.

The southern Thailand region can, roughly be divided into the following two parts:

• The low lying provinces to the south & southeast of Bangkok: consists mainly of tropical rainforests, rice paddies, coconut and cashew groves and rubber & pineapple plantations.
• The Isthmus of Kra: the narrow land bridge which connects the Malay Peninsula with the mainland of Asia; it has a spine of hills and a coast on either side – it’s often referred to as the “Devil’s Neck”. The eastern bit belongs to Thailand & the shores are lapped by the gulf of Thailand; the western bit belongs to Myanmar and the sea on that side is called the Andaman Sea (the coast is rugged dotted with fishing villages in beautiful blue bays backed backed by sheer limestone cliffs covered in dense green vegetation – get the picture?) . It is the land of monsoons with the west coast & those hills getting their monsoon from May to October & the east coast having it’s turn from October to December. Here you’ll find large coconut & banana plantations and very little rice but it’s the fishing that the region’s money-spinner. In days gone by, tin mining and timber farming were big but not so today.

THE ISLANDS

• Samui, Pangan and Anthong – in the Gulf Thailand
• Phuket & the Similan Group – in the Andaman Sea

THE FOOD OF THE SOUTH

The food from this part of Thailand is the spiciest and hottest in the country and this is where you’ll find those brilliant red turmeric rich shrimp pastes; there are loads of different types of chillies, especially the fiery birds eye chillies (also called Thai chillies*) that you’ll find in almost every dish. Popular ingredients in the southern part of Thailand are:

• Coconut cream and coconut oil
• Chillies – they have a large variety, ranging from the tiny Bird’s Eye to the large orange ones
• Fresh turmeric
• Sour cucumbers
• Limes – for the juice & sometimes, the zest.
• Lemon basil
• Fresh coriander
• Lemon grass
• Shrimp paste (gapi)
• Garlic & other local vegetables like hog plums etc.
• Unripe pineapples & if you’re trying to replicate it at home, I’ve used sour prunes & plums quite successfully but whatever you use, you’re looking for hot, sour, creamy, spicy and packed with taste.

MUD CRAB CURRY

Ingredients

• 1½ kg mud crab
• 250 ml coconut milk
• 500 ml fish stock
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp tamarind water
• 250 ml coconut cream
• 5 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded

Paste

• 6 long red chillies, deseeded, soaked and drained
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 tbsp coriander root peel them with your vegetable peeler and grate them or chop them
• 5 tbsp fresh lemongrass, chopped
• 3 tbsp red shallots, chopped
• 3 tbsp fresh garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh turmeric, chopped
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste – gapi

Method

• Make the paste.
• Rinse any mud or dirt off the crab; this is very important because the grit & dirt can spoil the top dish; remove the top of it’s shell, scrape off any roe and chop the crabmeat into bite sized chunks.
• Bring the coconut milk and stock to the boil and simmer until the liquid has separated slightly, it will take about a minute.
• Season with sugar, fish sauce and the tamarind water & add 3 tbsp of the paste, then simmer for a minute before adding the crab and simmering until it’s cooked; check and correct the seasoning.
• Swirl in the coconut cream and sprinkle with lime leaves.

Seafood is very important along the coast for logical reasons and you’ll feast on almost any kind of seafood that you can think of, like tropical fish, prawns, clams, mussels, crabs and fresh squid and cuttlefish to name a few. Phuket is world famous for the crayfish grilled on the open flame & seasoned with coconut, then served with a sweet & sour chilli dipping sauce and the soft shell crab is deep fried or stir-fried with lemongrass & black pepper.

PRAWN & COCONUT SALAD

Ingredients

• 100g or 15 fresh raw prawns, if they’re very big you’ll need to slice or slither them, peeled and cleaned
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 250 g fresh, grated coconut
• 4 red shallots, peeled and sliced
• 50 g fresh coriander leaves, ripped off from the stems
• 50 g fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped
• 2 stalks fresh lemongrass, very finely sliced
• 1 tbsp long red chilli, sliced into julienne strips
• 1 generous pinch palm sugar

Marinade

1 fat clove garlic, peeled
1 large pinch salt
4 birds eye chillies
4 tbsp lime juice mixed with a little mandarin juice – if you have kaffir limes available, use that juice instead

Method

• To make the marinade pound together the garlic, the salt, the chilies using a pestle and mortar until you have a fine paste; transfer this to a bigger bowl and stir in the lime juice.
• Add the prawns to this and, using your hands, mix so that the prawns are completely covered in the marinade; you could also put everything in a Ziploc bag, remove all the air, seal and make sure everything is covered with the marinade.
• Leave for about 15 minutes and then add the palm sugar and the fish sauce before adding the coconut and the rest of the ingredients with the exception of al little red chilli & mint to garnish.
• Plate and serve.

Fish sauce is used in pretty much all Thai but in the south there’s a variation to the them because of an ingredient called Nahm boodoo & here a prawn paste known as gkabpi is used and is quite unique. The favourite Thai fish is, undoubtedly, the tiny mackerel called pla tuu that are steamed in bamboo baskets (after being thoroughly cleaned) & sent to the markets throughout the country overnight; they fished in the Gulf of Thailand. Fish are cooked in many ways, if you want to do this at home, here are a few ideas:

• Grilled over an open flame & served with chilli, garlic and lime sauce
• Deep fried with garlic or fresh turmeric
• Roasting on salt in earthenware pots
• Cooked in curries with green papaya
• Stir-fried with fresh chillies, fresh turmeric and garlic
• Steamed & served with a sauce of chillies, fresh local herbs and lime juice.
• Grilled & put on skewers, then served with a dipping sauce made from mint, chilies, shallots and lime juice.
• Soups – they’re usually delicate & contain coconut cream & fresh turmeric, fresh ginger, shallots, pineapple and lemon grass.

Here there are 3 types of shrimp paste:

• A paste made only from shrimps & fresh turmeric.
• A paste made from shrimps, fresh turmeric, garlic and fish innards
• A paste made from shrimp, sugar & chillies – it’s sweetish.

STUFF TO KNOW ABOUT SOUTHERN THAI FOOD 

• One of the more unusual regional favourites has to be the seeds from forest trees, of which the most popular is sadtaw that looks like a giant green bean.
• Thanks to the climate, coconuts thrive & you’ll see coconut groves, which is why coconuts are used so prolifically in southern Thai cooking (it’s used in both sweet and savoury dishes).
• If you’re going to order a stir-fry, take care; they can be searing hot & if you have a sensitive palate, even damage your taste buds.
• Soups are very popular and made in a variety of ways, usually based on coconut cream with some being highly perfumed, coloured with fresh turmeric and others hot & sour and so on.
• The Chinese community has also contributed to southern Thai food and it’s visible in the many noodle shops selling soups thick with noodles and the barbecued duck & pork served over noodles.
• Curries are mostly boiled and there’s a separate post on Thai curries. community
• You’ll find sticky rice in all the markets with various in the different towns.

Nuts, especially cashews, are plentiful and used to add a stronger flavour to some of the more subtle tasting dishes; even the leaves of the cashew are used as a starter in some restaurants.

YELLOW CLAM & PINEAPPLE CURRY

Ingredients

• 200 g clams or shellfish, purged of the sand
• 700 ml stock
• 1 very small half ripe pineapple
• 1 large pinch ordinary white sugar
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp lime juice

Paste

• 25 bird’s eye chillies, soaked and drained
• 1 pinch salt – you pretty much need to work out how much salt you like
• 1 tbsp galangal, chopped
• 2 tbsp red turmeric, chopped
• 4 tbsp fresh garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp red shallot,  chopped
• 1 heaped tbsp shrimp paste

Method

• Start by making the paste in your pestle and mortar.
• Peel the pineapple and cut into quarters, discard the core and chop the flesh coarsely; bring the stock to the boil and season with sugar, tamarind water and fish sauce; then dissolve 2 tbsp of the paste in the stock and cook for a minute; add the pineapple & as soon as the pineapple has become soft, add the clams.
• Simmer until the clams have opened, throwing all the closed ones and then finish with lime juice; it’s a thin curry so don’t worry because you’ll serve it with a plate of raw veg and a pile of noodles.
• Always check and correct your seasoning – this one should be hot, sour and salty.

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The Muslim community don’t use as much coconut cream and you’ll find them using yoghurt, ghee and stock; their food is more similar to Indian cuisine than Thai but Indian curries, Thai curries use fresh herbs and spices so the taste is less sweet and more fragrant; even though rice is popular here, it’s sometimes supplemented with flat breads like roti or naan which are often stuffed with curried meat and vegetables and can be eaten alone or as an accompaniment to a main meal. Roti can also be sweetened with condensed milk, coconut milk or stuffed with bananas to satisfy the sweet tooth of many of southern Thailand’s Muslims.

*Despite the name, these chillies originated in South America & were brought here by the Spanish & Portuguese traders