HOMEMADE THAI FOOD
Easy steps to authentic dishes
In Thailand, ketchup is “the epitome of Western ingredients,” Pailin Chongchitnant says in one of her popular YouTube videos.
It’s a clip demonstrating one of the ways Thai people prepare pasta — pad macaroni. And ketchup is central to that sauce.
But if someone puts ketchup in pad Thai — “that is wrong and wrong,” Chongchitnant says. “It is essentially a westernized pad Thai by definition.”
Vancouver-based Chongchitnant has written her first cookbook, Hot Thai Kitchen (Appetite by Random House, 2016). She was born and raised in Thailand, and through an examination of her native cuisine, she has come up with her own standard when looking at the two.
“Authentic dishes are dishes that use the ingredients that are local to our cuisine.
“So if you put ketchup in pad Thai, that is not authentic no matter how you look at it because ketchup is not an ingredient that is native to Thai cuisine,” she explains, emphasizing her belief that ingredients are what characterize Thai food.
Chongchitnant started her YouTube channel, Pailin’s Kitchen, while working as a chef in the San Francisco Bay Area after completing a culinary arts degree at Le Cordon Bleu. She takes an educational approach with her videos, and has extended her teachings to Hot Thai Kitchen.
The book isn’t simply a collection of recipes, although there are certainly plenty of those, including lesser-known dishes such as sour curry with Thai omelette (gaeng som) and nam prik, a dip that is a mainstay on many family tables in Thailand.
It’s a comprehensive resource, designed to arm home cooks with the cultural context necessary to understand Thai cuisine.
One of her goals is that readers will have the know-how to improvise Thai dishes, and cook like a local. She wants home cooks to become familiar with the flavours and how to use Thai ingredients, and feel free to make educated substitutions. For example, she recommends using the inner stalks and leaves of celery in place of Chinese celery, or broccoli or kale in place of Chinese broccoli.
“When (Thai people) cook at home, we don’t stick to a recipe. We throw in what we have and call it dinner. So people have to adopt the same relaxed attitude that they have about cooking their own cuisine.”