Thai Food Ingredients Poll -- Do You Cook With Thai Ingredients

[Jingthing]

You can choose multiple answers, choose one or more that reflect your answer.

I am wondering whether people here use Thai ingredients to cook Thai dishes and/or fusion dishes.

For example, a Thai dish using Thai ingredients would be tom yum goong, pad Thai, green curry.

A fusion dish using Thai ingredients would use lemon grass and Thai fish sauce in a Salade Nicoise or a burrito soaked in coconut milk (scary).

Thai ingredients, you know, the kinds of ingredients that are the core and define Thai cuisine.

The poll is not intended to be asking about using Pan-Asian ingredients in non-Thai dishes, for example if you use shiitake mushrooms in your Italian pasta dish, that wouldn't be using Thai ingredients in a fusion dish.

Examples of core Thai cooking ingredients

coconut milk

Thai basil

galangal

lemon grass

Thai fish sauce

Thai curry pastes

kaffir lime leaves

mini-eggplants/pole beans

fresh green peppercorns

Thai jasmine rice

etc.

Some examples of Pan-Asian ingredients that I don't consider core Thai ingredients, but you might

Shiitake mushrooms

Rice noodles

Bean thread noodles

watercress

Thai rice more generic tasting

peanuts

The reason I thought of this poll is that before I moved to Thailand I would cook actual Thai dishes using actual Thai ingredients quite often. Here, I never do (use restaurants instead)! However, I do use typical Thai INGREDIENTS in a fusion dish. In my case the fusion dish is pan-Asian (not Thai, not western).

I would be curious to hear about how people are using Thai ingredients in fusion dishes. In other words, descriptions of specific dishes.

Edited January 16, 2010 by Jingthing

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

In the U.S., I cooked Thai food once per week. I could get all ingredients, except for Kafir lime leaves. I never cooked Thai fusion in the U.S.

In Thailand, I cook Thai food about 4 times a week, and sometimes use Thai ingredients in fusion cooking, like peanut sauce, galangal and lemon grass.

I don't consider items like shiitake mushrooms or bamboo shoots to be Thai, as they are more prevalent in Chinese cooking.

[Jingthing]

I don't consider items like shiitake mushrooms or bamboo shoots to be Thai, as they are more prevalent in Chinese cooking.

Agreed. But its more of a flavor profile thing in my view rather than that the ingredients are used in other cuisines. The core ingredients are those that without which you couldn't begin to cook many Thai dishes.

Edited January 16, 2010 by Jingthing

[burgerqueen]

My friend does most of the cooking. This means 90% of the time we eat Thai (Isaarn) food:

Som tam, kao niao, lap, yam ma muang (green mango salad), yam guen seng (seafood and bean noodle salad), tom yum something, tom Jueh, kip kapee (something, something shrimp something ?? what is this ??) ...

We don't cook with coconut cream anymore, because of the saturated fat.

I used to make gim shi (Korean sour cabbage) every 15 days, no specific thai ingredients were added that I can think of...

[Jingthing]

In a case as above, there is NO option to vote for.

If your Thai partner does all the cooking, you don't cook.

If you cook at all, you can't say you don't cook.

If you don't cook Thai food or use Thai ingredients at all in your cooking, there is no voting option.

Multiple voting choices includes the number ZERO, ha ha.