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About
Thai Cuisine |
How
to appreciate Thai food
 In
recent years, there has been a wonder why Thai food has become
very popular. The rising recognition of Thai cuisine is due
to the fact that most western people today are more health-conscious.
They realize that having the traditional western-style food
in their diets can be critically harmful for their health
because of an excessive amount of fat and cholesterol. Now
they feel like changing their eating habit and looking for
healthier alternatives.
Thai
food is lighter. Moreover, the herbs and spices used as common
ingredients have medicinal properties. Some of them are good
for digestion while some have benefits to drive away your
fever and clear your throat. Best of all, Thai cuisine can
easily beat gourmets from all over the world because of their
amazing taste.
What
gives Thai food its distinctive character is a harmony in
its tastes. We have soups that look plain in color but the
taste combination is sour, salty, hot and aromatic. The use
of peanuts and coconut in our curries are very characteristically
Thai as well. We use distinct herbs such as lemongrass, kaffir
lime, both the leaf and the fruit, galangal, one in the ginger
family, and mix them with the pungent sourness of fresh lime
or the pleasurable sweetness of palm sugar.
 The
most important thing to remember about Thai food is to appreciate
its lightness, its heat and its passionate smell long before
it arrives at your dining table. Herbs used in our food have
a dissimilar scent from western ones. They are much more aromatic
and yield different flavors in each Thai dish.
To
appreciate Thai food you have to understand how we eat. Westerners
eat their foods with such starch as bread and potatoes. Thais
eat their foods with rice. The experience of having a Thai
dinner is a communal eating. Many dishes are served for all
to share and everyone at the table take the food from these
dishes and eat them with rice. Each person at the table does
not get his or her own plate of fried fish or sweet and sour
pork. They will get a plate of rice and share all the dishes
served at the table. It makes the meal more enjoyable because
you can sample more dishes that you want.
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