When you read old Thai cookbooks, you will find certain very specific descriptive words often appear with the instructions on how to prepare a dish. These can be very interesting, as they give an insight into how cooks of the past chose the ingredients and techniques that would ensure the dish would turn out at its best.
For example, when pounding the seasoning paste for a curry, the book might say “use Bang Chang dried chillies, onions, garlic, lemon grass, galangal, makrood lime zest and Khlong Khone kapi”. When adjusting the flavour the cook will be advised to use palm sugar and nam pla dee (good fish sauce). The specific call for Bang Chang dried chillies and Khong Khone kapi refers to the places of origin for the best quality products.
“Good” nam pla refers to nam pla made the old-fashioned way. If sea fish is used to make it, it should be pla kratak (a type of sprat). Freshwater nam pla should be made from pla soy (a mud carp).
Good Thai cooks will always tell you that fine cooking depends on two things — the skill of the person who prepares it and the quality of the ingredients used to make it. Both of the examples cited above show that the cooks who used these books wanted ingredients they trusted and knew were of such high quality they were unwilling to settle for anything else.
Things change with time and some of the ingredients that cooks of an earlier era demanded no longer exist. New alternatives have appeared, some of which have replaced the old ones. Here are some examples:
Dried chillies from Bang Chang used to be the first choice among cooks who made their own curries. They were big, dark red in colour, thick rather than thin and papery and just hot enough. Bang Chang was the original name of Amphoe Amphawa in Samut Songkhram, although that name has not been used in such a long time that many people have no idea where Bang Chang was located.
The reason the chillies grown there were so good was that saltwater from the sea entered some parts of the area to create a brackish water mixture. Fruit and other produce grown in places exposed to some saltwater often have good flavour and quality, so the chillies grown at Bang Chang were especially choice and found high favour among cooks.
Nowadays the phrik chee faa variety chillies dried for use in cooking have been bred to be longer and thicker and can be grown in Isan and other areas. They are now cultivated in great quantities and sold nationwide. The availability of the Bang Chang chillies diminished and became insufficient because the farmers there switched to other crops. Horticulturists traced the original strain and promoted the cultivation of the chillies by farmers in Ratchaburi's Damnoen Saduak district, Samut Songkhram province and in Nakhon Pathom, to be sent off for distribution to markets.
The situation can be somewhat confusing for buyers, though. Vendors will tell them that all the dried chillies come from Bang Chang because those are the ones that bring the higher price. All the chillies look the same, so there is no way of telling their actual place of origin. They can’t tell by the taste, either, because they don’t know what the flavour of chillies grown in brackish water areas is like and can’t make comparisons.
Hua chai po, or dried and salted Chinese radishes, are another example. In the past, cooks wanted to use only the ones from Surin province. They were large and not overly salty, with a sweet flavour. They could be used to make a variety of dishes: hua chai po tom kati (cooked in coconut cream), hua chai po sap sai nai phat Thai (chopped and mixed into phat Thai) and hua chai po phat khai (fried with egg). All of these were made only with the salted Chinese radishes from Surin.
Nowadays hua chai po from Wat Jetsamiean in Amphoe Photharam have elbowed their way into the exclusive territory once dominated completely by the ones from Surin. There are almost 10 factories there now that produce the salted radishes on an industrial scale, with wide concrete drying areas where tractors turn them over to ensure they are always exposed to the sun. They are chopped or cut into strips to give buyers a choice and are sold for distribution to markets everywhere. Of course the hua chai po from Surin are still the radishes of choice for those who really appreciate this condiment.
Thai garlic is still a necessity for the preparation of some dishes. The bulbs and cloves are small but very potent in flavour and aroma. They are grown primarily in the North and in Si Sa Ket province in Isan. Garlic bulbs from both these places are equally popular with cooks, with no clear leader. Those who prefer one or the other are likely to stick with it. When pounding chilli pastes and nam phrik, Thai garlic has to be used, but it has its problems. The cloves are very small and when the bulbs are freshly harvested they are full of thick juice that sticks to the fingers when the cloves are peeled. Removing the skin from a large number of them, which is u