Thai Ingredients

Thai Ingredients

Thai Ingredients

Shallots

This small red onion is a very important ingredient in most Thai dishes but the quantity may be reduced if you find you do not like it.

Spring onions

These green onions are used for garnishing soups and salads and as vegetables.

Lemon grass

The plant looks like a tuft of coarse grey-green grass. The lower part of the stalk is used fresh for flavouring and as an ingredient in certain dishes. It is indispensable for torn yam but a piece of lemon peel might make a good substitute.

Gingers

Gingers are herbaceous plants indigenous to the tropics. We have many kinds of native gingers whose roots are used to flavour food and as vegetables.

Common ginger

Fresh roots or "hands" are young and plentiful in the rainy season. While these roots are plump, pale yellow and pink we pickle them, crystalize them and make a drink out of them. Young ginger pounded with a little salt, pepper and garlic is good too as a marinade for chicken or beef. For the rest of the year we make do with old ginger which is more fibrous and much spicier. Ginger keeps well and is therefore obtainable in Chinese stores abroad. There it is called green ginger.

Siamese ginger

The roots are larger and whiter than common ginger. It is always used in making curry pastes and a few slices are usually added to fish or chicken stock. The flowers are edible, dipped in batter and fried, served with nam phrik.

Turmeric

These small bright orange roots provide the yellow colouring for curries or vegetables. Turmeric powder is easier to use. White turmeric: khamin khao; Curcuma sp. These roots are white and about the same size as the common ginger. Used as a raw vegetable it tastes only slightly peppery and has a pleasant tang. The flowers are used boiled as a vegetable with nam phrik.

Cumin or cummin

This annual is native to Egypt and the name is pronounced kumm-in. The small ridged, light brown seeds, so similar to caraway and fennel, taste and smell quite different and have to be heated to release their aroma. The Thai word yira is given both to caraway and to fennel seeds, presumably because of the similarity of appearance, though in actual fact only cumin is used in Thai cooking, mainly in the making of curry pastes.