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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.
Other descriptions:
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