Freshly picked cabbages waiting to be taken to market

Although the more lettuce-like Chinese cabbage is more common, the hard-headed type of cabbage is also seen in the markets. Although the cabbage probably originated in Asia, it wasn’t until after the Celts introduced it to Europe that the hard-headed variety was developed, sometime during the middle ages. Cabbage was definitely known to the Egyptians, who would eat large quantities of the vegetables before a night of drinking in the belief that it would allow them to drink more without feeling the effects. The Greeks and Romans apparently believed that cabbages could cure just about any ailment. For their part, traditional Thai wisdom has it that cabbages are a powerful aphrodisiac, hence the unusual name of one of Bangkok’s popular restaurants, Cabbages & Condoms, which is run by the Population Development Association.
 

Chinese cabbage on display in a market stall

Chinese cabbage grows in an elongated head that is rather loosely gathered compared to the hard headed cabbages typically found in western supermarkets. The leaves have a strong centre stalk, and closely resemble romaine lettuce. The edge of the leaves usually have only the merest hint of green tint, with the rest being almost snow white. The shape makes an excellent spoon for eating red chilli dip.

In western supermarkets, Chinese cabbage may be labelled as bok choy or siew choy. In Korea, Chinese cabbage is the main ingredients in kim chee, a pickled vegetable that can be fiery hot. Thais will also pickle cabbage, usually using simply water from washing rice.

Chinese cabbage does indeed originate in China, where it has probably been cultivated for many centuries. Chinese traders transplanted the vegetable to their business communities throughout South-east Asia, although it doesn’t appear that the locals in places such as Malaysia and Thailand starting using Chinese cabbage in their own cuisines until the last few hundred years.

Bitter Gourd

In Thailand, the most common use of the bitter gourd is to hollow it out by removing the seeds and inner membrane, then stuffing it with chopped pork and cooking it in a clear soup (gaeng jood). The meat and soup help to reduce the bitterness, but not always enough to make it palpable to western tastes. To further reduce the bitterness, most recipes recommend boiling the gourds in salted water first.

Thais believe the gourd, and soup made with it, is good for you. They highly recommend bitter gourd soup to anyone who might feel a cold coming on. This seems to follow a folk belief that seems to be prevalent throughout the world: Anything that tastes bad must be good for you. There may be some scientific foundation for at least some of their beliefs. The bitter gourd is high in calcium, phosphorous and vitamin C.
 

Sweet and Sour Pork

I also like sweet and sour stir fry because you can use just about whatever is at hand, in truly typical Thai fashion. Some kind of meat and onions are about the only real requirements. You can add any other vegetables you may have, such as baby corn, long beans, bell peppers and of course pineapple makes an occasional appearance as well. If you like a bit more sauce, which goes well with rice, you can try adding some Thai style chili sauce or even ketchup with some ground chili. Even the sauce can be improvised using whatever is at hand, such as tomato sauce, vinegar, pineapple juice, etc.

This particular recipe, which I’ve translated from a Thai cookbook, is somewhat unusual in that it calls for shiitake mushrooms, as well as a lot of vegetables. Although I haven’t tried it, I believe that if you left out the meat entirely, this would make a good vegetarian dish. You can use soy sauce in place of fish sauce.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Heat some oil in a wok and stir-fry the garlic until it is fragrant. Add the pork and stir-fry until cooked through.
• Season with the fish sauce, sugar and vinegar. Then add the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and banana chillies.
• Check the seasoning and add more vinegar if the dish is not sour enough.
• Stir the tapioca flour into the three tablespoons of water, then add to the stir-fry along with the prawns, if desired. Remove from heat as soon as the prawns are cooked and the sauce thickens. Sprinkle the chopped coriander over the stir fry.

Pork Stir-fried with Long Beans

This recipe also calls for red curry paste – krueng gaeng ped – to be used. You should be able to find this in an oriental grocery, or use the recipe linked to below. You can of course use fresh string beans if long beans aren’t available. If you can find real long beans, one thing some cooks like to do is tie the beans in a knot. Cut the beans in four to six-inch lengths and then just tie them in a knot. Long beans are flexible enough to do this. Regular string beans will snap if you try this.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Fry the curry paste in the oil over medium heat until the paste releases its fragrance, add the pork and stir-fry until cooked.
• Add chicken stock, sugar and fish sauce. Mix well. Add the yard-long beans and stir to mix.
• The dish is typically garnished with a sprinkling of finely sliced red spur chilli and shredded kaffir lime leaves.

Several kinds of bamboo shoots on sale in the market

One particular variety, rightly commonly referred to as Giant Bamboo (pai bohng), can have fresh shoots that reach more than a metre in length. This height can be reached in as little as a day, and the plant typically reaches its average maximum height of 30 meters in only a month. Nearly as large, and more commonly eaten, is a variety called pai nahm. I encountered a stall selling huge shoots of bamboo in the Lamphun municipal market one day. They were about the width of an adult’s hand in diameter, and displayed standing end up to show their extraordinary length of a meter or more. The shoots had also been peeled to reveal their snow white flesh.

In Chiang Mai, the large Muang Mai wholesale market spills out onto the surrounding streets in the early morning to become a general market for street vendors and householders to shop for the day’s fresh produce. Farmers from the countryside will come to spread out their wares on the side-walks and even in the streets themselves between the main market and the provincial offices. Here you will almost certainly come across someone selling bamboo shoots. There will likely be stacks of fresh shoots, as well as plastic tubs full of water with freshly peeled and cut shoots soaking. The vendor will occupy his time between customers peeling the shoots, cutting them into bite sized pieces, and then tossing them into the tubs of water, ready to be sold to the next customer.

As most people know, bamboo is a type of grass. There are a large number of varieties of bamboo found in Thailand. The country is home to nearly half of the world’s known tropical bamboo species. About a dozen of these are ‘cash crops’ in Thailand, used for food, construction materials, toys, musical instruments and many other things. The shoots are just that: young sprouts of the plant that have not yet developed stems or leaves. The large size obtained by Thai farmers is attained in part by covering the new shoot with earth or a sheath while it increases in size, and preventing it from developing chlorophyll. As you might expect, bamboo shoots are high in fibre and low in calories. Fresh shoots are also a good source of potassium.

In cooking, Thais will add bamboo shoots to curries and stir-fries to add extra crunchiness and a mild foil for the spicy seasoning. There are very few recipes that feature bamboo shoots. In vegetarian dishes, bamboo shoots are often used to substitute for the meats in typical Thai recipes, so you can use them in green curries, holy basil stir-fries and many other dishes.

As anyone who has tried to grow bamboo knows, the plant can easily take over a garden and grow almost uncontrollably. Thus I found very interesting a quote attributed to Dr David Fairchild (1876 – 1954), the eminent botanist who founded the Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction section of the United States Department of Agriculture. Dr Fairchild travelled around the world looking for plants that the American people could use. He is reported as saying “The best way to control bamboo is to eat it.”
 

Clear Soup (<em>gaeng jood</em>)

This is a very basic recipe for clear soup. The pork, which will usually be chopped rather than ground is typically added for flavour rather than fill. The tofu and the glass noodles are the real fillers.

The tofu preferred by Thais for this dish is called ‘chicken egg’ tofu in Thai. It comes in a plastic tube, so that when sliced it looks like a slice of hard-boiled egg.

If you use a chicken soup powder for the stock, you might want to leave out the salt or fish sauce, since the powders are often quite salty already. These days, it seems that most Thai cooks use the powders, and since the soup is expected to be ‘clear’ the powders actually produce the more ‘correct’ result for this dish.

Glass noodles usually come in a small packet that makes a single serving. There’s usually no point in trying to divide a packet into a smaller portion. Contrary to their name, and unlike Italian pastas, dry glass noodles aren’t that brittle. They tend to bend rather than break, so the only way to actual divide up a tangle of noodles is by cutting it with kitchen shears.

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Soak the glass noodles in warm water to soften, about 10 minutes.
• Grind together the coriander roots, garlic and black pepper in a mortar and pestle to form a smooth paste.
• In a large pot, heat the vegetable oil and stir-fry the paste until its fragrance is released. Add the pork and continue cooking over medium heat until the pork is cooked through.
• Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and add in the remaining ingredients. Simmer until all items are cooked through. Sprinkle some chopped coriander leaves over the soup just before serving.

I tend to be hit or miss with dressings, but this one turned out fairly well for a first attempt. I was originally thinking of trying something close to salsa – chopped tomatoes, coriander, lime juice, etc. – but when I found the sun-dried tomato pesto in the supermarket, it seemed like a simpler solution to give a little tomato taste to the dressing.

Corn and Black Bean Salad

If you can’t get long beans, regular fresh green beans will probably do just as well. I used dried black beans, although canned will also do.

Ingredients

Dressing

Preparation Method

• Make the dressing first. I prefer to add the vinegar to the spices and let it soak for a while, then add the oil just before using.
• Mix all the vegetable together, then pour the dressing over and mix it in.
• Like many cold bean salads, this one improves after a day or so in the refrigerator.

These curious legumes are also known as yard-long beans or snake beans, while in Thai they’re tua fak yao, and they have to be in the running for one of the more unlikely vegetables. At more than a foot long, they are quite preposterous looking. The pencil-thin beans really can grow to a yard long, but are usually picked and sold when they are approaching a foot and a half. Long beans are a common ingredient in stir-fries, and also served raw with hot and spicy foods, especially chili dips. Like cucumbers, long beans have a strong cooling effect when you’ve eaten a bit too much chili. Aside from their length, long beans look and taste just like fresh green beans. This makes it easy to substitute French beans or similar if you can’t get the real thing. However, never use canned or frozen green beans. They must be fresh. I often see long beans growing on fences along country lanes around the north. They make a great, as well as edible, privacy screen for country homes.

Chinese Kale on sale in a Bangkok market

Kale is sometimes called Chinese broccoli, although the resemblance to broccoli usually has to be pointed out. Like broccoli, kale has thick green stems which are edible. Unlike broccoli, the stems end in large leathery leaves, also edible. You can, if you like, divide diners into those that like the stalks and those that like the leaves. Of course, on the whole everybody likes kale.

Kale is a variety of cabbage, one of the most primitive types in fact. It originated in southern China, along with broccoli and cabbage. It would have come to Thailand along with the earliest settlers thousands of years ago, and was probably carried to Europe along the ancient silk routes. Until the end of the middle ages, kale was perhaps the most common green vegetable in all of Europe. Kale grows year-round in the fields around Chiang Mai, as it does throughout most of Thailand.