The Nation

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful time and recovering from the New Years celebration. As I had mentioned in my column at the end of last year I will be giving you recipes of Thai food and some historical background of the developments of Thai food through the ages. In the early period of Thai food history, the kind of food eaten is limited by the choice of cooking techniques. They had fire, knives, pestle and mortar, clay pots and mixing bowls made of coconut shells for the peasants and clay plates for the ruling Kings. We ate with our hands and used banana leaves as plates. Hence the cooking techniques were limited to boiling, grilling, dips or Nam Prik, and Yum or salad. Today I will present you with a recipe of Thai salad. There is not much difference in the concept of salad making between Western salads and Thai salads except that there is no oil in Thai salad dressings. The principle concept making is the same is to add some flavors to your salad that has some saltiness, acidity, sweetness and probably some aromas or scent. Thai salads should be tossed when you are ready to eat it.

It cannot sit around waiting to be consumed. This is especially true for vegetable salads because the dressing will make the vegetables loose its crispiness. Now that you have some general idea of the concept of making Thai salad dressings we will go into the recipes

Yum Tang Raan (Cucumber Salad)

Ingredients:

Large cucumber, peeled seeded and cut into julienne strips 4 cups

Shallots peeled and sliced ½ cup

Ground dry shrimps ½ cup

Salad Dressing Ingredients:

Thai fresh chili peppers, Chopped 4 each

Fish sauce 1 Tbsp.

Shrimp paste ½ Tbsp.

Palm or coconut sugar 1 Tbsp.

Lime Juice 4 Tbsp.

Directions:

1. Take the dressing by mixing together all the dressing ingredients. You can also blend it in a blender but omit the chili peppers if you do not like you dressing to be to hot and spicy.
2. When mixing the dressing add the limejuice last and a little at a time and taste it as you go long. The dressing should be sour and slightly sweet. The saltiness comes from fish sauce and the shrimp paste (kapi) which gives the dressing both fragrance and body. It should not be too salty because the dry ground shrimp that we are going to put in the salad is also salty.
3. Once you have the desired taste dressing toss the julienne cucumber and shallots with the dressing and mix well. Add some ground dry shrimps to the salad and taste before adding more. The salad might be salty enough without using all the dry shrimps. Add the chopped chili peppers. If you like the salad hot and spicy add lots but is you just want a hint of the heat and aroma of the chili peppers just add a little.
4. Plate the salad and sprinkles dry ground shrimps, sliced shallots and a tiny bit of chopped chili peppers on top and serve immediately.