Dining Guide
/ South and West Asian Cuisine
Even though Thai society encompasses an ethnically Indian minority of a size not much smaller than the ethnically Chinese minority, the number of Indian restaurants is much smaller than the number of Chinese restaurants (on the other hand, there are many more Indian than Chinese tailors). The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that Indians do not eat in restaurants as often as do the Chinese.
While there are Indian restaurants frequented by local Indians in the Indiatown of Bangkok, adjacent to the Chinatown, most Indian restaurants in other parts of town mainly cater for visitors to the capital - may they be Indian or from other South or West Asian countries. As there is not much West and South Asian food available in Bangkok, the whole region from India to Turkey is covered in one section of our dining guide in spite of existing variations.
West and South Asia is the globe's corner of forbidden foods. Based on religious perceptions, the Moslems don't eat pork because they consider it dirty, and the Hindus don't eat beef because they believe that cows are sacred.
Largely because of religious prohibitions lamb and mutton are the most common meats in all of West and South Asia. However, there is a definite distinction in the preparation which does not depend on different religions but on whether coconuts are grown in a region or not.
The Arabian and Iranian world does not grow coconuts, and the cuisine there seems to lack sauces. A typical Arabian dish is meat grilled on a skewer called shish kebab.
On the Indian sub-continent on the contrary where coconuts are grown, meat is mostly elaborately prepared in thick sauces based on coconut milk.
Actually in Indian and Pakistani cuisine, dishes are named according to the manner of spicing the sauce. The most common is curry. In Indian and Pakistani terminology, curry is not a spice but a dish. And depending on the meat used in the dish one has mutton curry, chicken curry, fish curry, or shrimp curry. Vegetable curries are also common in Indian cooking.
The spices of a curry are a mixture of around ten seeds or roots. The dominant spice in all curries is coriander seeds that have a flowerlike, slightly sweet taste. Coriander makes about a third to one-half of the spices used. Other generally used ingredients are turmeric, a reddish kind of ginger, ordinary ginger, and cumin seeds which look like and resemble caraway in taste. Mustard seeds and poppy seeds are part of some curry mixtures.
Curries do not have to be hot. The degree of hotness depends solely on the amount of chili that is added. In Indian street cuisine, the amount is enormous, so enormous that it is, for example, impossible to determine whether the curry dish is served warm or cold, so enormous that a Westerner can merely dip bread or rice in the sauce.
Coriander and cumin, once crushed, do not maintain their flavor for long, particularly when exposed to light. Therefore, a fresh curry powder mixture tastes different from (and much better than) any of these readily available mixtures of McCormick etc, which all are of minor quality to a true gourmet.
Another common sauce in Indian cuisine is garam masala. The preparation of garam masala is very similar to the preparation of curries, and it includes many of the same spices. However, coriander is not predominant, and it includes cardamom. Cardamom is a very strong spice with a taste reminiscent of fragrant woods; it strongly overlays all other spices used in this mixture and it also gives the sauce a grey-brown appearance. Cardamom, by the way, is one of the more expensive spices but it is not half as expensive as saffron.
A common Indian vegetable are lentils. They are often pureed and served as a spiced pulp, named dahl.
Overseas Indian and Pakistani cuisine always tends to use less chili, but curry dishes still are generally hotter than any Western cuisine.
http://www.asiatour.com/x-librar/dining/southasi.htm
Jan Garanoz
Juhu Tara Road, Juhu,
Mumbai - 400049 India
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Last updated: July 06, 2011