through the simple yet striking dishes of the poorer northeast, down to rich coconut-milk dishes in the south, with sophisticated royal cuisine found in the capital. Thai food is the most emphatically flavored of all Southeast Asian cuisines, almost always a little hotter, sourer, sweeter, and saltier, yet always perfectly balanced.
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were all part of what the French colonials referred to as Indochina, yet they are quite different. This is cleverly summed up by the local saying: "the Vietnamese plant rice, the Lao watch it grow and the Cambodians listen to it growing." One thing they share in common is excellent French bread, a most welcome colonial legacy
Vietnamese food is scintillating, sophisticated, and often deceptively simple, with a subtle balance of flavors. The Vietnamese have a passion for wrap and roll, using wafer-thin dried rice papers, freshly steamed rice pancakes or lettuce leaves to enclose an amazing range of food. Rolls and barbecued meat are eaten with a platter of fresh herbs bean sprouts, and salad leaves that accompanies just about every meal, even a simple bowl of noodle soup.
Most Laotians prefer glutinous or sticky rice to normal rice as their staple (as do the Thais living on the Lao border). Water buffalo is the most popular meat, but there is still a remarkable array of anything that slithers, jumps, and flies — frogs, eels, tiny birds, grasshoppers — in local markets. A large percentage of Lao plants are still gathered in the wild, including bamboo shoots, young leaves, rhizomes, flowers, and even a type of river algae.
Cambodia food is perhaps the most "pure" in the region, using fewer introduced ingredients than its neighbors. It is also the only country in the Southeast Asia where black pepper (the original source of heat before chilies were introduced) is still largely preferred. Fresh lemon grass, galangal, kaffir lime leaf are the most popular herbs, and freshwater fish (especially from the huge Tonle Sap lake) is much more common than meat.
Malaysia and Singapore share many culinary similarities, largely the result of waves of Chinese and Indian immigrants. The original inhabitants, the Malays, form around 50 percent of the population of Malaysia, while Singapore is predominantly Chinese. Like most Indonesians, the Muslim Malays do not eat pork; their food is often rich in coconut milk, generously spiced and frequently chili-hot.
The earliest Chinese immigrants to Singapore, and to Penang and Malacca (both now part of Malaysia) gave birth to an exciting cross-cultural cuisine blending Chinese and Malay ingredients and cooking styles. Known as Nonya cuisine (after the term for the women who created it), this sometimes contains Burmese, Thai, and Indonesian influences as well — a true Southeast Asian synthesis.
Indonesian cuisine differs considerably from one region to another. Best known, perhaps, are the mild, often sweet flavors of Java and the richly spiced, chili-hot and fragrant food of West Sumatra. Hindu Bali — the only area in the world's largest Muslim nation to enjoy pork — offers some of Indonesia's most exciting dishes.
Over the years, I have been amazed by the generosity of cooks throughout Southeast Asia. I don't think anyone has ever refused to let me peer over their shoulder, or been reluctant to explain an ingredient or a technique. I have been able to pass on some of this in books I've written about almost every individual Southeast Asian cuisine, but I feel it's now time to put some of my favorite recipes together in just one book.
This highly personal selection includes only a fraction of my favorites (my publisher refused to let me include them all). I've resisted the temptation to include purely Chinese or Indian food found in places like Singapore and Malaysia, concentrating on the indigenous dishes, or those which show a fusion of foreign and local cuisines. And I've avoided the most esoteric recipes as I know it's not always easy to find such things as fresh palm heart, turmeric flowers and fermented sticky rice in your local Asian store.
I've had a fabulous time "living the food," gathering, cooking, and enjoying these recipes over the years. I just hope you have half as much fun trying them out in your own kitchen.
You may find that the grouping of recipes within this book somewhat different from the conventional approach. It is worth remembering that in Southeast Asia, unless a one-dish meal such as noodles is being served, all dishes served with rice are generally placed on the table at the same time, for everyone to share.
This means that the grouping of dishes is not a hard and fast rule.Thus, within this book, snacks, starters, and soups are grouped into one chapter, as are salads, rice, and noodles. Because some recipes take much longer than others to prepare — and because time is often an important factor in busy modern lives — I've grouped various poultry, seafood, and meat dishes into two categories. A Flash in the Pan includes dishes that can be whipped up in under 30 minutes, while Time to Impress includes those recipes which take a lot longer, either in preparation time or actual cooking. Side dishes, which include various dips, relishes, pickles and cooked vegetable dishes, are grouped in the chapter A Little Something on the Side. The last category, Sweet Endings, says it all: delicious sweets that can either bring a meal to a close or be served, Southeast Asian-style, as a between-meal snack.
So free up your approach to food. Everything is flexible. Enjoyment is paramount. Welcome to the feast!
how to prepare the basics
The preparation of various Southeast Asian ingredients (such as shallots, lemon grass, etc) is described in Southeast Asian Ingredients (page 212). Some other important tasks which are a little more complex or take longer to describe are discussed here in greater detail.
Banana Leaf
If you are fortunate enough to have access to a whole banana plant, cut off an entire leaf. Cut down either side of the thick central rib to obtain two long leaf halves, then trim these to the required size using a pair of scissors. Most cooks will have to make do with packets of either fresh or frozen banana leaf. To prepare banana leaf for cooking, wash the leaves, then cut to the size specified in each recipe. To make banana leaf pliable for folding around food or for fashioning into little cups, it must be softened by passing it briefly through a gas flame (you can watch the moisture starting to rise and the color turn brighter), or by soaking the leaves in boiling water until they soften. When using banana leaf as a wrapper, keep the upper, more shiny side on the outside. (Aluminum foil can be used as a substitute, but it does not provide the moisture, nor the subtle flavor, that are characteristic of banana leaf.)
Crushed Dried Chili Flakes
You can make these by dry-frying whole dried chilies (the large type, not dried bird's-eye chilies) in a wok, turning them until they darken and become crisp. Take care not to burn them, however, as they cook very quickly. After frying, discard the stem end, break the chilies into smaller pieces, and process both the chilies and the seeds in a spice grinder until they are coarsely ground. Cool, then store in an airtight container; they'll keep indefinitely in the freezer.
Coconut Milk
If you can obtain freshly grated or frozen grated coconut, it's worth making your own coconut milk, especially for desserts or cakes. Put about 4 cups of room-temperature grated coconut (about I large coconut or 400-500 g) in a bowl and add ½ cup (125 ml) of warm water. Squeeze with your hand for about a minute, then transfer the coconut and liquid to a cheese cloth set over a bowl. Grab the ends of the cloth together, tighten them and squeeze firmly to extract as much juice as possible to obtain thick coconut milk. To obtain coconut cream, let the thick coconut milk stand in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes, then spoon off the rich cream that rises to the top.
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