Thai
Curries, noodle dishes, salads, soups, the grills and the sweets, and the pastes and dips that make each one — each recipe with its full method and the technique articles it leans on.
How to read this section: Thai food is paste first — start with curry pastes, then the two ways heat is used: stir-frying for the quick dishes and a slow pot job for the curries. Most of the food lands on top of rice or noodles; know those two and the rest reads fast. Every dip and every sauce on the section builds on the same fish-sauce–lime–sugar spine.
Noodles
- Pad thai (ผัดไทย) — Rice noodles stir-fried with shrimp, dried-shrimp, shallot and egg in a tamarind–fish-sauce–palm-sugar sauce, served on a bed of fresh sprouts with lime, crushed peanuts and chili. The whole plate is a balancing act — sour, salty, sweet, hot, umami — and the wok work gives it the char you can't get any other way.
- Pad see ew (ผัดซีอิ๊ว) — The wok-fried noodle dish of the home kitchen — flat, wide rice noodles (khanom jeen) in a two-part soy sauce with cabbage and Chinese cabbage, and a protein of your choice. The whole point is the char: the noodles are meant to go dark and a little bitter on the edges, not stay pale and soft. That char is the flavor.
- Boat-noodle soup (ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเรือ) — A small, thick bowl of dark, deeply savory pork stock — made from marrow bones and a long, skimmed simmer — with the thinnest rice noodles, a topping of braised or minced pork, a soft egg, coriander and chives, and a drizzling of chili-lime-fish-sauce at the table. The whole dish is about concentration: small bowl, strong stock, and the balance of the drizzle adjusted by the eater, not the cook.
Curries
- Green curry (แกงเขียวหวาน) — Chicken in a coconut-milk broth with green-aromatic curry paste — Thai chilies, kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, and galangal — and a scatter of Thai eggplant, long beans, and fresh green chilies. The name is the color of the paste, and the method is one sentence long: fry the paste, add the liquid, build the dish.
- Gaeng som (แกงส้ม) — The thin, sour, un-curdled curry of southern Thailand — a fried paste of dried red chili and turmeric thinned with coconut milk and tamarind, carrying a fish or a squash. No thickening, no creaming: the sourness does the work that a heavy curry does with fat.
- Massaman curry (แกงมัสมั่น) — Beef (or chicken) in a thick, slow-simmered coconut-and-spice broth with potato, shallot, and kaffir lime leaf — the "dry spice" curry, where the flavor comes from a ground-roast of coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, and star anise rather than the fresh-aromatics paste of the other Thai curries. It's a braise in a coconut broth: long, low, and the meat is the point.
Salads
- Som tum (ส้มตำ) — Julienne green papaya pounded in a mortar with a dressing of fish sauce, lime, palm sugar, raw garlic, and raw chili — and a scatter of long beans, cherry tomato, and a few green grapes for the pop. It's a dish about ratio as much as technique: the dressing is the whole thing, and the papaya is what it's built around.
Soups
- Tom kha kung (ต้มข่ากุ้ง) — The lemongrass–galangal–coconut shrimp soup, and the dish that carries most of Thailand's kitchen aromatics in one bowl. Shrimp in a clear-but-silky broth built on bruised lemongrass, sliced galangal, kaffir lime leaf and chili, rounded with coconut milk and finished with fish sauce, lime and coriander at the stove.
Mains
- Khao man gai (ข้าวมันไก่) — Poached chicken on jasmine rice, with cucumber and the three-dip plate — dark soy, fresh chili and the ginger paste — that the whole dish balances on. The chicken is poached, not boiled: it comes out of cool water, not a boil, and that is the whole game.
- Pad krapow moo (ผัดกะเพราหมูสับ) — The wok-fried basil and minced pork of the daily Thai home — the dish that is the default over rice when there isn't anything else going. Garlic and chilies in the wok, the pork broken and browned, the fish sauce and dark soy added, and the basil dropped in last so the leaves just wilt and release their oil. Fast, hot, and the whole point is that it happens in the space of a few minutes.
- Khao pad (ข้าวผัด) — The Thai fried rice — egg and aromatics in the wok, the day-old rice broken up and charred at the edge, a two-sauce seasoning of fish sauce and dark soy, and the greens added last. The whole point is the contrast: a grain of rice that has a soft center and a seared, slightly bitter edge, and the dish is the contrast, not the rice.
- Moo yang (หมูย่าง) — Grilled Thai pork — the yang, "grilled," being the whole point. A marinade of fish sauce, dark soy, palm sugar, garlic and chilies (the "nam yang," the same family as the dipping sauce in nam yik), a hard sear over direct heat, and a crisp, slightly charred edge that a pan can only imitate. Thin-cut, quick, and the dish that turns a grill into a Thai counter.
- Moo hong (หมูฮ้อง) — The northern Thai (Lao-Thai border) braised pork belly — a long marinade of fish sauce, dark soy and the bruised aromatics of the region (lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, black pepper), then a slow, covered braise in which the belly's own fat renders into the liquor until the edge sets into a soft, glossy gel and the meat is just tender enough to pull apart. The "luak" version on the menu, and the dish that turns a weekend morning into a two-day table centerpiece.
- Satay (สะเต๊ะ) — The chicken, minced with the lemongrass, the kaffir lime leaf and the shrimp paste, worked with the oil into a paste that holds the skewer, and grilled fast and hot until the outside is charred and the center is just set. The peanut sauce, the cucumber, the sliced shallot and the puffed rice are the table, and the sauce is the half of the plate that is not cooked.
- Steamed fish (ปลาเนื้อนิ่ม) — The sea bream, laid over the lemongrass and the kaffir lime, steamed on the gentle 90–100 °C heat until the center flakes with the back of a spoon, and the fish-sauce–lime–chili dip doing the seasoning instead of the heat. The fish is not cooked by the fire; it is set by the steam, and the dip, made on the side, is the half of the plate that carries the salt.
Sweets
- Banana fritters (เฝ่าทอด) — เฝ่าทอด (fan tor) — the fried banana sweet of the stall. Slices of over-ripe banana, a thin batter of rice flour and a little wheat flour, and a deep fry to a crisp, pale gold with a center that is still soft and sweet. The whole point is the contrast: a hard, crackling shell around a banana that is barely cooked, and the batter thin enough that the fry is fast and the oil doesn't have time to soak in.
- Mango sticky rice (ข้าวเหนียวมะม่วง) — The glutinous rice, soaked, steamed, and worked into a thick coconut-cream syrup while it is still hot, then set against the ripe mango, the toasted sesame, and the last few drops of raw coconut. The dish is two halves — the rice, which carries the coconut, and the mango, which does not need to — and the only trick is the syrup, made thick enough that the grain coats, and made hot enough that the rice drinks it.
Sauces & dips
- Nam yik (น้ำยิก) — The Thai dipping sauce, and the dish it's named for is the dip itself. Fish sauce, lime, and the fresh chilies — with a little of the sugar and the garlic or the roasted shrimp that a given dish wants — and the whole thing is a balance in a small bowl: salty-sour on top, a little sweet to round it, and the heat or the garlic or the nut of the dish underneath. Every grilled and fried dish on the section carries one of these, and the sauce is there to do the work the dish itself can't.