Revisiting Thailand

Last April, Lou and I spent seventeen days traveling around Thailand. It was a wonderful trip from start to finish, but the food was one aspect of the trip we enjoyed most of all. As some of you readers know, I took a long break from blogging late last spring and summer, and as a result I never posted about the food we sampled in Thailand. Now that a full year has passed, I thought I'd take you on a photographic look back on some of the simple and delicious food we tasted while visiting that lovely country.

A few words about Thai cooking: everywhere we went--Bangkok, Chiang Mai and on Phuket--the food was simple and made of fresh ingridients. Most often, we ate a spicy salad, made with a consistent base of fish sauce, lime and some assortment of fruits or vegetables and meat or fish, along with rice and some kind of curry, again made consistently with coconut milk, curry paste, whole green peppercorns, and some combination of vegetables and meats, fish or shellfish. No matter whether we ate on the street, at little cafes or in fancier restaurants, the food was always a delight.

Here are some pictures of a few of our meals.

Pork and kale with noodles at the Jim Thompson House Restaurant in Bangkok.



Lou at lunch in Pai in northwest Thailand before we rode the elephant. We often would down a large Singha with a lunch of rice and curry.



This is a spicy chicken curry with bamboo shoots (one of my favorites!).



Some delicious vegetables at dinner in Pai.



That same night we also ordered an unusual shaved lemongrass and cashew salad. I would not normally expect whole, raw lemongrass to be edible, but it was quite tasty with the cashews and light dressing of lime juice and fish sauce.



Here's a picture of a typical spicy beef salad, this one on Koh Racha, where we stayed for several nights at the southern end of Phuket.



While at the Racha, we took a Thai cooking class. Here's a picture of the chefs.



Here's our green curry.



And our Tom Yam Goong (spicy seafood soup).



And our spicy seafood salad.



And me enjoying the results of our class efforts.



A sample of the fresh seafood that was on display at markets everywhere we went. This is also on Koh Racha.



Here's a picture of my birthday cake at the Racha. It was an iced banana cake.



And, finally, here's a picture of the best Mango Sticky Rice we tasted in Thailand. We ordered it at our hotel, the Chedi, in Chiang Mai, and they served it with coconut ice cream. Yum!



What a trip!