Thai Food Pet Peeves

[jacko45k]

costas, perhaps you should take the members advice to heart.

on another note, rubber bands are generally tied so they can be easily removed.

just learn how.

as for the rest, they are just part and parcel of the thai food experience.

He just linked us back to the annoying thread again!

So post 'get a life'........again.

Those elastic bands on bags, how do they do that? Sometimes they just spring off, sometimes drive you nuts trying to.

[RT555]

Most likely Lazy and British.

Not removing skins from garlic.......Leaves essential oils from dispersing it's aroma.

Do you want some grubby fingers going through your soup or dirty tongs or dirty anything to take out arromatcs?

Eating the shells on prawns can lead to weight loss....Chitosan? with a good excercise program

[RT555]

I always think it is hilarious when people complain about hygiene at street stalls. At least you can see what is going on. All my worst experiences of food poisoning and that of many friends has been at at so called classy hotels and restaurants. What goes on behind closed doors I dread to think.

I've worked in a few kitchens. You don't want to know.

Must have been in England.........doesn't happen in MY KITCHEN.

[SoiBiker]

Lets skip the lazy stereotyping, eh?

[MyFriend You]

I need 250g dry weight cooked, look at the size of me, I'm dying, give me enough rice.

Seriously?

That about how much I'd cook for three people.

and probably expects to pay for one bowl, instead of three - I do admit, in the early years in both Thailand and Cambodia, we would get a nice ornamental large bowl of rice with every meal, you would just eat as much as you wanted...........what they did with the left over rice is not my business Street vendors often throw in an extra bag of sticky rice or two - Craig Krup needs to learn to speak Thai they can understand, that baby talk makes me want to Puke - I always, always get what I want. and I only speak street Thai, never went one minute to a Thai language school.

[manarak]

You smash the Thai garlic and shallots.

You do not peel them.

That's the trick of it.

I would complain if they were not SMASHED.

Yes, you can smash them. The next step in most cooking is to separate the goodness from the unpalatable skin.

I have a feeling you'd complain about many things. What year were you born?

OK. That's enough. Welcome to my ignore list.

Though I do like the idea in general of Thai food pet peeves.

Well, one thing that could resolve your little vendetta is the so-called "Royal Thai" cuisine.

In that kind of cuisine, they make sure there are no displeasant things in the food, no garlic peels, no wood and other tree branches in the tom yam / gaeng khio wan, shrimps are peeled and there are no bones in the fish.

But I have to say normal Thai dishes are quite okay, even with some unpeeled garlic and the hard herbs, I don't eat them anyway, their purpose is to give taste.

Dishes using the cheapest ingredients, such as innards and other stuff are dishes poor people ate/eat, as is the case in Europe for popular dishes made with leftovers, for example the french pot-au-feu.

For Chinese it's the same, traditional lo-so Chinese food is unpleasant, the ingredients are sometimes even outright yucky, same as for much of Isaan food.

Although some have good taste, I have always found these low cost dishes to be a somewhat unpleasant to eat.

[Craig krup]

I need 250g dry weight cooked, look at the size of me, I'm dying, give me enough rice.

Seriously?

That about how much I'd cook for three people.

and probably expects to pay for one bowl, instead of three - I do admit, in the early years in both Thailand and Cambodia, we would get a nice ornamental large bowl of rice with every meal, you would just eat as much as you wanted...........what they did with the left over rice is not my business Street vendors often throw in an extra bag of sticky rice or two - Craig Krup needs to learn to speak Thai they can understand, that baby talk makes me want to Puke - I always, always get what I want. and I only speak street Thai, never went one minute to a Thai language school.

No, I'll pay, but Thais and fat farangs who never go for more than forty minutes without popping a little something in their mouths just don't understand the concept of eating three starchy nutritious meals a day.

I was so fed up with Thai food that I bought a rice cooker from Tesco Lotus and (after one night of "finally enough to eat") it popped and blew the lights. The Thai owner of the Pikul Apartments in Nong Khai took pity on me and took me around to his mate's place. "Big portions. Big. My wife and I split one". Honestly? I could have eaten six such plates easily. He also gave me a piece of paper in Thai so that my "khao sip baht" could not possibly be misunderstood. Sometimes that gets you a decent bag of rice and sometimes a third of that.

Let's be frank. Nearly everybody in Thailand is getting their 2,000-3,000 kcals. They eat 1,000 in three 333 kcal meals - 1) jok, 2) bowl of noodles, and 3) little plate of rice, veg and chicken. They then insert anything between 1,000 and 2,000 kcals of pure s**t in between these meals. They stand on the scooter and buy a bag of fried dough and then scoot thirty yards for a bag of cola. They never walk their own length in a tropical climate where your basal requirement is very low. They then get fat and have sugar management problems.

I was moaning about the real Thai diet to a German lad on the Nong Khai waterfront. He really couldn't see my problem - he had no difficulty getting enough to eat. Within ninety seconds of saying that he said, "Hold on a second, I'm just going to get some ice cream".

The Thais and the farangs balance their diets by placing three little islands of rice in their stomach and then pouring a lake of sugar around it.

[MauiSteveBKK]

+ Thai cooks "cross contaminate" all the time.

+ Thai use their hands too much. Wipe on pants. Use hands again.

+ No cleaning wok. I can often taste the previous dish in my dish.

SERVICE !

My Thai Wife has now been in the USA for 1 month. She Loves:

+ Everything comes out of the kitchen at one time.

+ Server brings water to everyone.

+ Refills are constant throughout the meal.

+ The Server actually "care" about your dining experience.

best wishes.

[Gecko123]

Don't need to peel shallots?

That's a new one on me.

[spidermike007]

Sugar and MSG added to everything!

If you ask for vegetarian, you often still get meat.

Something which Thais call tofu is actually a pork ball.

Too much meat in everything.

Yes, the elastic band thing. I fear i will never figure it out.

White rice...WHITE RICE!!

When service ranges from non-existent to clearing the table while you are still chewing your last mouthful and refilling you beer with each sip you take.

Though, i am not sure there is anything bad about palm oil, to be honest.

Palm oil is horrific. The flash point is low, ensuring a lot of artery clogging saturated fats. But I think most restaurants use soy oil, which is nearly as bad.

[ableguy]

My biggest gripe is when buying any dish containing pork or ground pork the high fat content, seems that lab and nan tok all contain fat bone gristle in fact any part of the bloody pig. Trying to buy very lean ground pork is nigh immpossible , Makro in Hua Hin would grind three kilos of pork tenderloin at the meat section, here in Korat Makro will only grind five kilos which is a lot when we don't eat too much pork per week, ah well seems that fat is ok for most Thais but myself I cannot abide it.

[ableguy]

Well now you're restricting the discussion to metabolism, which was not what you said in the first quote. I am simply referring to general chemistry, which considers skeletal structure, reactivity, taste, solubility and so on.

Sugar is soluble in water whereas starch is not (unless it's cooked first). I don't disagree that they are both medium to long-chain saccharides that provide about 17 KJ of energy per gram.

Go back to sleep.