Cooking The Books

Chiang Mai Pork Hock and Cheung Fun

The trickiest bit about eating in Thailand is the lack of any Roman alphabet. The Thai script leaves menus totally indecipherable and most places think Westerners don't want real Thai food and so present you with an English language menu sporting nothing but fried rice and Pad Thai. This can leave you rather limited but at Chiang Mai bus station the three big pork hocks steaming away let me know there was more to the restaurant than the crappy tourist menu you was letting on.

A bit of finger pointing left me with a delightful noodle soup, remarkably light considering the contents - tender pork meat, fat and skin sat on top of fresh wide rice noodles. Unlike any Thai food I've seen before but worthy of a place on any menu, English language or otherwise.

Just up the road from our guesthouse we found the most amazing cheung fun stall. No need for a shop front here, just whack a few steamers near straight on the road and turn out boxes full of the stuff.

Chewy rice flour pancake filled with pork and peanut. A dash of meaty sauce, some fried shallots and some birds eye chillies on top left a Chinese delicacy with a distinctly South East Asia feel to it.

Thai Food - A First Taste

I was really looking forward to Thailand's food.  I eat a bit at home - Tom yam's been on the regular list ever since Nigel Slater in Real Food - and occasionally out too and I wanted to see how it compared to the real thing.  First impressions were it's quite far removed.

 

Whilst people do eat British Thai favourites like red curry, green curry, fish cakes and pad thai they certainly weren't the food I was seeing in Bangkok.  Maybe it's a regional thing, maybe it's because red and green curries are time consuming or expensive to make but unless we looked in somewhere touristy you just didn't see them.  I wasn't too disappointed though really as I tend to steer away from the coconut rich curries, find pad thai too sweet and peanuty and adore the sharp, fiery dishes and roast meats I found in their place.