Thai food is diverse in appearance, aroma, color, and taste. Its most distinctive character is its piquant taste. Apart from meat and vegetables as the main ingredients, the use of several different seasonings is emphasized in Thai food. This way, each and every dish is a harmonious blend of sour, sweet, salty, and hot tastes. With their elaborate cooking method and presentation technique, Thai dishes such as tom yam kung, phat thai, and kaeng khiao wan have become world-famous.
The special quality of Thai food is its ability to reflect three key values – nutritional, cultural, and medical – with the use of fresh ingredients, well-trained natural talent in cooking methods and presentation techniques, and the generous use of herbs and spices. Thai food is meant to be appealing to the eye, nose, and palate. The Thais pay attention to detail at each and every step of food preparation. Thai cookery can therefore be classified as an art and an essential part of the nation’s cultural heritage gleaned from generations past. Thai food is a harmonious combination of tastes and medicinal qualities, as the ingredients are mainly vegetables and herbs, such as lemon grass, galangal, capsicum, basil, and garlic, which not only give out enticing aromas, but also increase the health benefits.
The Thais have rice as their staple food, normally taken in a communal manner, with diners forming a ring around dishes set in the middle of the table or picnic-style on the floor. The dishes often comprise a spicy soup, a fried dish, a soup, and a dip, with an individual rice dish for each person, who may choose from among the shared dishes to eat with his or her portion of rice, while eating together with the others. Each region of the country has its specific dishes and dining methods, depending on the culture and weather conditions that prevail. Such regional specialties reflect the local wisdom of the region, with recipes thought up and improved in accordance with available resources and the region’s unique cultural traits. For example, people in the central and the southern regions eat white rice, while their counterparts in the North and Northeast enjoy plenty of sticky rice, conveniently conveyed to the mouth by the fingers, along with selected food from shared dishes.
Thai desserts and sweetmeats, meanwhile, come in diverse forms and are elaborately made, whether heated or chilled. Most are in pleasant shapes and forms, in bright colors that everyone relishes. Thai desserts are based on fruits and produce such as banana, sugar palm nut, coconut, young rice, maize, sweet potato, taro, rice flour, and tapioca flour, made into puree over a fire, steamed, boiled in syrup, fried, and baked. Egg yolk is added for desserts like golden thread and golden drop. Some are boiled in coconut milk, or eaten with fruit, such as creamy steamed sticky rice with ripe mango, and several others. All these desserts and sweetmeats not only make a great finish to a meal, but also provide Thais with nimble fingers a chance to demonstrate their skills.