Thai Food & A Non-Thai Food Fix in Thailand….

Eating in Thailand is delicious and delightful. Thai flavors and ingredients are lively and colorful and a great spring-board for any culinary adventuress. Salty, spicy, sweet, sour, bitter are the elements of Thai cuisine. When applied to other cuisines, the palette of flavors has the potential to turn on the taste buds in a whole new way. A simple squeeze of fresh lime on smoked salmon or fragrant chilies pulverized with cilantro added to ceviche, can turn the yum factor up a notch or two.

I am loving my ongoing Thai eating festival but alas, one cannot live on Thai food alone, at least not in my book. Nor can one live solely on Italian, French, Mexican, etc.. When you love food and eating, part of the joy and pleasure is the variety of ingredients, methods of preparation, even the history of different cuisines. Food is easily one of the threads that unites us in the tapestry of life and social geography.

Recent cravings for something other than Thai food led me to the grocery store and outdoor market to see what might appeal to my taste buds. I found some multi-grain baguette that looked like they had some good crunch to the crust and would play nicely with smoked salmon and a schmear of cream cheese. I guess it’s the New Yorker in me that would murder a good bagel, cream cheese and lox from time to time. Add a few capers and a little lime juice, have your friends bring over the fixin’s for some bloody mary’s and you have yourself a nice Sunday brunch to enjoy together! Until I find a bagel, I can settle for a good hunk of crusty bread in its place.

The next stop was the local outdoor market where I felt the pull to my favorite prawn gal. She was featuring some good-looking squid and white snapper as well on that day and it became immediately clear to me that I had to bring these sea creatures together as ceviche. I blanched the squid briefly and tossed it with the snapper and prawns, Thai celery and coriander, lots of lime juice, and sealed the deal with some nice fresh chilies. Happy days when I found a bag of plain tortilla chips, devoid of any artificial flavorings of ranch or cheese. Blasphemy what they do to tortilla chips.

Next stop 7-11 for some cold Chang beer and then home to un-Thai my hunger!

~ by lisa esposito on October 11, 2009.