The generic name for cooked items or dishes from a Thai kitchen is "kap khao" - "in addition to rice" or "to be taken with rice." Such dishes vary in accordance with the geophysical makeup of the land it originated in. Because the people have resided along the country's waterways since ancient times, fishbased dishes make up the Thai people's daily diet, complemented by fresh vegetables found in abundance near their homes. As time passed and the society developed, conventional Thai dishes also underwent changes and became more versatile, in terms of ingredients, cooking methods, and tastes. International trade that the country engaged in through the ages also brought foreign food cultures that the Thais embraced and adapted to suit their tastes.
Thai dishes can therefore be roughly categorized into two types: genuine and adapted.
khao chae
Genuine Thai dishes are those that have been cooked by the Thais since time immemorial. They include such dishes as "summer rice" - khao chae - rice in ice-cold water, served with various condiments; spicy clear soup - tom khlong and tom yam - with herbs, meat and vegetables; hot curry or goulash - kaeng pa, kaeng khae, and kaeng om - curry with no coconut milk but with meat and vegetables; and spicy dips - nam phrik and lon, for instance. Thai desserts and sweetmeats, meanwhile, are made mainly of rice flour, sugar, and coconut milk, such as khanom piak pun, khanom chan, tako, and lotchong, for example. Those with egg yolk and egg white mixed in are adapted from other food cultures.
But alongside the genuine dishes, a large number of Thai dishes resulted from the adaptation of foreign food to Thai taste, so masterfully done that the Thais themselves adopted them as their own. They are dishes like kaeng kari (curry), kaeng massaman (from "Mussulman," that is, Muslim), both adapted from Indian food, while stir-fried and steamed dishes and vegetable soups are adapted from Chinese food. Several desserts and sweetmeats have been introduced by Europeans since the Ayutthaya Period, such as thong yip (gold cup), thong yot (gold drop), thong prong (gold nest), foi thong (gold thread) and sangkhaya (egg custard), for example.
With the wise blending of foreign cuisines into Thai cookery, the versatile Thai master chefs (normally female) invented new recipes that are now well-known all over the world. Cooking methods used in the Thai kitchens are diverse. Apart from boiling, grilling, and frying the food, there are specific methods that are characteristic of Thai food, as described below.
Tam - as in som tam, the world-famous spicy papaya salad - refers to the pounding of one or more food items in a mortar, as ingredients or as the main dishes, such as pla pon (pounded fish), kung pon (pounded shrimp), nam phrik sot (fresh spicy dip), nam phrik haeng (dry spicy dip), nam phrik phao (sambal, from Indonesia), and phrik kap klua (pounded and seasoned roasted coconut meat).
Yam is a form of spicy salad, in which vegetables, cooked meat and seasoning sauce are mixed. The sauce combines saltiness and sourness, laced with the hot taste of capsicum. Popular ingredients for yam include mimosa, wing bean, rose apple stamen, grilled meat, seafood, and sausages of all sorts.
Kaeng is the general term for a type of curry that does not use curry powder. Thai herbs and spices such as shallot, garlic, lemon grass, galangal, and turmeric root are pounded into a paste and dissolved over a fire in water or coconut milk as soup, with meat and vegetables added. Hot chilies or capsicum are indispensable, with varying seasoning and spices used to make such dishes as kaeng som, kaeng phet, and kaeng khua.
Lon is the term for spicy dip with coconut milk, which is meant to be eaten with fresh vegetables. It has three main tastes - sour, salty, and sweet - and can be made with soy bean paste or preserved fish as ingredients.
Kuan is a method of cooking liquefied food over a medium fire, usually done to preserve ripe fruits. Large wooden spoons are used to turn the ingredients thoroughly in a quick and forceful motion. Such sweetmeats as palm sugar caramel, khanom piak pun, tako, and thua (bean) kuan, are made in this manner.
Ji involves cooking in a frying pan with some oil, as in the case of paeng ji and khanom ba bin, for instance.
Lam is a way of cooking food by putting ingredients in a section of bamboo and smoking it, as with khao lam, glutinous rice flavored with coconut milk and other ingredients, smoked in bamboo sections