When things that were once familiar change or disappear, we can either regret their loss or feel relief that they are gone. There are features of our political past that we wouldn’t want to have back, while changes for the better in health care give points to the present over what came before.
Taste of the past: 'Hua chai po' stewed in coconut cream with shallots, a Thai-Chinese hybrid dish that has all but disappeared from modern-day menus.
There are many people who would like the natural and social environment to return to the way it once was, and this is true of another thing that is very close to everyone — food and dining. Many of us would like to experience the cooking of the past, and may wonder why things have changed so much.
Change has certainly overtaken the relationship between the Thai and Chinese cuisines. In Thailand the two have become so closely intermixed, both in terms of form and flavour, that it is hard to separate one from the other. In the past, however, they were more distinct than today’s diners-out would imagine.
Before looking specifically at food, we should take a look at the lifestyle and society of the past. Going way back to the time when Chinese immigrants were arriving in Thailand, the newcomers had to fight to establish their new lives. They had to struggle with extremely fatiguing work and lived in cramped and crowded quarters. They had to spend as little as possible on food, and preferred to stay together in communities based on shared language and ethnicity.
The choice of work that suited their character best was trade, and they worked to attain a better future by living economically, saving money and having their children study and become educated. Living closely together in communities that shared the same culture meant convenience in social and cultural activities as well as commerce, and the most convenient way to live was in rows of shophouses.
Thais considered themselves to be the owners of the country, experts in administrating it and in the agricultural lifestyle. In their love of a free lifestyle they preferred free-standing houses on their own property. They liked things to be easy and loved pleasure, but disliked dealing with daily problems and annoyances, so commerce did not appeal to them. The careers they desired for their children were in civil service because of the benefits that also extended to parents.
In daily life, both Thais and Chinese had to visit the fresh market daily. Originally the markets were only held in the morning. Customers would buy ingredients for all three of the day’s meals and produce bought early in the morning was fresher than most of what could be offered at noon or in the afternoon.
The stalls where food was sold were strongly differentiated in terms of the produce they offered. Chinese vegetable vendors, for example, sold Chinese vegetables grown in special plots: white cabbage, lettuce, Chinese radishes, Chinese broccoli, mara jeen (bitter melons), khuen chaai (Chinese celery), spring onions, fresh coriander and the herb called phak kwangtoong.
Vendors of Thai vegetables, on the other hand, offered local produce like phak boong (a morning glory-like vine), makhuea proh (a small, round eggplant), makhuea phuang (small, pea-sized eggplants that grow in clusters), makhuea yao (long green eggplants), different kinds of basil, lemon grass, kaffir lime, limes, various kind of chillies and herbs like krathin and cha-om.
Stalls that sold dry foods were also different. Thai products included kapi in small ceramic pots, palm sugar in big containers, nam plaa, dried chillies, onions, garlic, plaa raa (fermented fish) and fresh coconut shredded to order. The offering at the Chinese stalls were tao jio (a salty sauce containing whole fermented soybeans), see iew (soy sauce), kiem chaai (a pickled vegetable condiment), tofu in various forms, and fresh foods like pork, sea fish, duck and chicken.
Thai vendors sold different kinds of fresh-water fish like snakeheads, eels, catfish, and the Anabas species called plaa maw in Thai. Beef was sold primarily by Muslim vendors.
The reason trade in markets was so strictly categorised was that verbal communication between language groups was not as easy then as it is now. Chinese vendors, for example, knew what they should have on hand for their almost exclusively Chinese customers. This was the atmosphere of Thai fresh markets as they were in the past.
Now we should look at the ways in which Thai and Chinese dishes differed from each other. In earlier times Thais ate fish and did not like pork, but bought pork fat to render for cooking fat. They preferred fresh-water to sea fish because they were plentiful and cheap. Pre-dawn markets were full of fresh fish, and people who lived near rivers or canals did not like salt-water types because they were thought to have a bad smell that meant they weren’t fresh. What’s more, they were expensive. The Chinese, on the other hand, preferred sea fish and had many recipes for them. They did not like spiciness or coconut cream and thought that kapi and plaa raa stank. Salted fish was also off the list. The dishes they preferred were boiled, stewed, slow-cooked and stir-fried.
That was a long time ago, though, and time has brought changes. Cooking traditions that were once separate and distinct have begun to blend and combine. Chinese ideas have been adapted to Thai dishes. The very fine-gauge rice noodles called sen mee, tofu, tao jio, ground pork, all Chinese in origin, are used to make the Thai dish called mee kati, with coconut cream and hot chillies added to give it a more intense, Thai-style flavour.
Conversely, Chinese cooks have adapted the spicy Thai pork curry with added squash called kaeng phet muu sai fak into a mild Chinese version by borrowing the Thai-style curry paste and coconut cream but adding Chinese pork and a melon-like Chinese vegetable.
Plaa chon (snakehead), a kind of fish of which the Chinese are traditionally not especially fond, is now stewed with kiemchaai, stir-fried with Chinese celery leaves, or cooked into a curry by Chinese cooks. These developments point up the harmony between the two cuisines, and parallels the way the Thais and the Chinese, whose cultures were so distinct and separate in the past, have blended and developed.
Finally, I would like to consider some dishes that have disappeared or been so changed that they are now rarities (and these are not related to the Thai and Chinese culinary comparisons above). First are the curries. The ones eaten in the past are different from what we have now. Decades ago, curry shops offered a curry called kaeng phet (or kaeng daeng) made with dried chillies. It was a red-coloured chicken curry that contained long slivers of fresh bamboo shoot. The chicken was chopped into pieces that included the bones. Kaeng khio waan in those days was made only with beef with makhuea phuang, chillies, and bai horaphaa (a variety of basil) added. Also on the menu were the kaeng som (a sour-sweet-slightly spicy soup-like curry) made with phak boong and plaa chon, kaeng khua (a type of kaeng phet), plaa sawaai kap naw mai dong (a fresh water fish cooked with pickled bamboo shoot), and kaak muu phat phrik khing (pork rinds fried with a sweet-spicy paste of chillies and ginger) sprinkled with slivered kaffir lime leaves.
Nowadays, the kaeng daeng made with chicken is gone. Kaeng khio waan is made less often with beef than with balls of pounded fish meat, pork or chicken. The other dishes mentioned above, once favourites, have all vanished, as have many others.
The disappearance of these foods follows a rule of nature that decrees that all things have their day and eventually disappear or are transformed into something else. But it is no less inevitable that we will miss them when they go, and wish that we could see them again. n
