Posted on 06/13/2007 8:58:23 PM PDT by NZerFromHK
It's official - our nation has gone cuisine crazy.
A new little Thai restaurant opened up just round the corner. It's one of those more traditional authentic Thai restaurants, with the traditional authentic Thai decor, and the traditional authentic Thai pun-based name - it was something like Bow Thai, or Thai-Tanic, or it may have been Thai Me Kangaroo Down Sport. Anyway, it looked pretty good, and we were pretty hungry, so we popped down to get some takeaway.
We ordered a green curry and a red curry, and also a brown curry, which is probably just the red curry mixed with the green curry. We brought our food home, sat down on the couch, opened the tubs, and were just about to start eating when the unthinkable happened: my beloved ran off into the kitchen and came back with ... chopsticks. SHE STARTED EATING HER THAI FOOD WITH CHOPSTICKS.
I was speechless, I was sick to my gut - and it wasn't just the green curry, which looked a little too green. I grabbed her hand and said, "What are you doing! You NEVER eat Thai food with chopsticks," and she said, "But I like using chopsticks," and I said, "Chopsticks are for Vietnamese food, Chinese food and certain Singaporean non-soup dishes, but Thai food is exclusively fork-based," and she said, "Oh, sorry," and I said, "All right, but don't EVER let me see you do that again," and then I made sure she ate the rest of her meal with a fork - although I did let her use a spoon for her beverage.
And the reason I tell this fascinating story is, I happen to be the perfect and proud example of the new multiculturally mature Australian food-eater. Yes, across this great nation, a culinary revolution is happening. People everywhere are becoming food-literate, they're turning cuisine-sophisticated, THEY'RE GETTING GASTRONOMICALLY GROWN-UP. These days, just about every Australian knows the difference between sushi and sashimi and so-sue-me, which I believe is a Japanese legal firm in the city.
These days, just about every Australian can walk into a restaurant and order a nasi goreng or a buoi phuc trach or a bowl of shito sauce without cracking a single tasteless gag. These days, just about every Australian can cook a fancy-schmancy exotic meal at home. Gone are the days of roast dinners and veal forcemeat and the great Australian curry made out of chump steak, sultanas, banana, strawberry jam and a teeny pinch of Keens curry powder; for that proper spicy Indian flavour. You now go around to a friend's place for a Sunday barbie and they're whipping up Tuscan lamb shanks and mini polenta cakes on a barbecue with six burners, eight wheels and a snow-traction system.
Gone are the days of school lunches consisting of a peanut butter sandwich, a dried-out mandarin and a space-food stick. Now, schoolkids are eating tandoori-yoghurt wraps, Turkish pide pizzas and New York-style corned beef on rye, kept moist in their Bob the Builder Thermal Lunch Box Humidor. Gone are the days of getting together with friends for a nice cup of tea and a plate of Monte Carlos. Now you go visit old Aunty Nola in Balwyn North and she'll bring out a platter of marinated tofu blocks with extra fish sauce, and a nice cup of tea made of slippery elm bark and Taiwanese oolong.
AUSTRALIA HAS GONE CUISINE CRAZY, and it's spreading to all aspects of food preparation. No more will you find good-old kitschy kitchens with floral lino tiles, Copperart rangehoods and Early Settler fittings. Now, everyone wants a BIG, INDUSTRIAL, PROFESSIONAL, HEY-LOOK-AT-ME-I'M-FREAKING-NEIL-PERRY RESTAURANT KITCHEN. Now it's all walk-in glass refrigerators and built-in chapatti-kilns, and massive stainless-steel commercial ovens. My friend Gavin recently bought a massive stainless-steel commercial oven with rotisseries and wok burners and don't-wok burners, AND THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO COOK - he only uses it to boil water, so it just sits in his kitchen, doing nothing all day, like a great silver bus with a little kettle sitting on top.
And there's a whole new scary sickness sweeping through Australian society: Kitchen Benchtop Greediness. We're no longer happy with basic laminated benchtops in a flecked white or a lovely '80s salmon-pink. Now we want benchtops shaped from reconstituted porous volcanic rock that need to be resealed every 24 hours and can't be exposed to beetroot, red wine, lemon juice, or any other type of liquid, including water.
IT'S A WHOLE NEW AUSTRALIA WE'RE LIVING IN, and I'm proud to be a part of it, so to all my fellow Aussie food-lovers, enjoy your bowl of shito sauce on your 244-burner Smeg, and remember: Thai food is strictly a FORKING cuisine.
(Notice that those American foodies are mostly hardcore leftist short of traditional Communist politically, but Australian foodies seem to be evenly distributed between left and right)
Also notice the type of food they enjoy. It is a far cry from the traditional barbecues.
The truth of the matter is that Thais use spoons to eat with forks used just to push the food into the spoon. Eating with just a fork is considered odd and not polite. Rama V introduced the spoon and fork some 100 + years ago when folks ate primarily with the hands as in the Middle East and India. Just for the record.
Not such a curry fan. Personal opinion is that tumeric and cumin taste bad. It seems that a lot of curries have those spices. And palak paneer has another spice that tastes bad—sort of going off on a tangent.
Curry is an aquired taste..but what you can do, fairly easily..get a spice grinder, and through trial and error, find out what works for you and grind your own spices into a curry powder you like..
This is quite true, but I think in modern restaurant settings froks and spoons are normally used. (probably need to dust out David Thompson’s Thai Food on my bookshelf to investigate)
Interestingly in much of the Chinese-speaking world, many people still think Thais use chopsticks for eating all kinds of Thai foods.
For sure. Plus Chopsticks are used with noodle dishes such as khao soi and quetio nam (my spellings, sorry).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.