Thai-Style Feasting: My
Thai Restaurant Review – Part 1 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I
first ate Thai food in the mid-1980s at the Thai 55th Restaurant in
Hyde Park, Chicago when I was a student at the University of Chicago. I always ate sweet-tasting Panang Curry with
jasmine rice there.
When
I saw the My Thai Restaurant in Marina (California), sweet memories prompted me
to query the editors at The Monterey
County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) to do a review. I described the food, especially an elusive
ingredient called galangal and won the assignment.
Thai-Style
Feasting is the official name of the article, but I liked the photo caption,
too – Bite of Bangkok. The article
follows:
Thai-Style Feasting
“Thai
food is totally individual, befitting a country which has never been conquered,
yet it has similarities to both Indian and Chinese food,” notes Charmaine
Solomon in The Thai Cookbook: A Complete Guide to the World’s Most Exciting
Cuisine.”
I
decided to see how My Thai Restaurant fare in Marina held up to her standards
after just a few months in existence. On
a recent visit for lunch, I ordered Panang Curry with shrimp over rice.
There
is a major difference between Indian and Thai curries. Notably, the chile paste used to prepare
Panang Curry is made with fresh ingredients like cilantro roots, lemon grass,
galangal, and kaffir lime zest whereas Indian curries rely on dry spices for
flavor.
I
have perused many cookbooks at home to make Panang Curry, my favorite Thai
dish. I asked my waiter if My Thai uses
peanuts as a thickener in its version.
“Absolutely
not,” he responded.
“We
thicken our curry by letting it simmer a long time.”
My
Thai takes no shortcuts in the kitchen, but does not keep customers waiting long
for their food.
My
Panang Curry arrived piping hot within minutes, tickling my nose with a sweet
aroma of shrimp paste and coconut cream.
The orange-pink color of the curry matched that of the plump shrimp and
contrasted with the flavor of the green beans and peppers, sweet red peppers,
and carrots.
The
sweet and savory curry no doubt got its salty flavor from Thailand’s namm pla
fish sauce. I ate each curry-coated
vegetable leaf of Asian basil and shrimp with bites of flavorful jasmine rice.
The
carrots and green beans were crisper than what I expected, but that did not
keep me from eating them; I did not want to waste any curry.
The
Panang Curry came as part of a lunch with a cup of hot and sour soup, which had
fried tofu, mushrooms, and slices of galangal in it. The Thais use galangal like the Chinese use
ginger, which galangal resembles in appearance.
End
of Part 1.
To
be continued…
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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