The Food of Thailand
The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters
American Public Media
4.3 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2020
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Why is Thai food so popular in the United States? We turn to Professor Mark Padoongpatt, author of Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America for some surprising insights. We revel in regional Thai flavors with Austin Bush, author of The Food of Northern Thailand, and Leela Punyaratabandhu, author of Bangkok. Chef Hong Thaimee, author of True Thai: Real Flavors for Every Table, gives us an essential lesson in a vital Thai recipe, homemade curry paste. Plus, America’s Test Kitchen puts coconut milk to a taste test and tells us about their favorites.
Broadcast dates for this episode:
- January 11, 2019 (originally aired)
- January 17, 2020 (rebroadcast)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Frances Lamb and this is The Splendid Table from APM American Public Media, the show for curious cooks and eaters. |
| 0:16.0 | Hey, do you remember your first taste of Thai food? |
| 0:19.0 | I do, and it was not artisanal. |
| 0:22.9 | I was nine or ten years old, and it was a bag of a Thai brand of instant ramen. |
| 0:29.4 | And I remember two things about it. |
| 0:31.4 | One, it was insanely hot for me, and because I was a stupid kid trying to impress his cousins, |
| 0:37.4 | I kept saying it was fine and kept eating it, even though I was a stupid kid trying to impress his cousins, I kept saying |
| 0:38.1 | it was fine and kept eating it even though I was visibly crying. And the other was that the |
| 0:44.6 | flavors were just not like anything I'd ever had before. It was lemongrassy and kaffir lime leafy |
| 0:53.2 | and I'd never tasted those things before and honestly I |
| 0:56.5 | really didn't even know if I liked it but I remember how cool it was to have a chance to taste |
| 1:02.7 | something totally new and of course I love those flavors now but back then I didn't know anything |
| 1:08.5 | about Thai food and I didn't know anyone who did either. |
| 1:12.6 | But in the, well, many years since, something incredible happened. |
| 1:18.6 | In the past 15 years, the Thai population in America has doubled in size, and it's a community |
| 1:24.6 | that opens a lot of restaurants. |
| 1:26.6 | In fact, if you're just looking at the ratio to the population, |
| 1:30.0 | there are 10 times more Thai restaurants than Mexican ones in the United States. |
| 1:35.8 | And in addition to, you know, all the people would just like slinging the greatest hits like Pod Thai, |
| 1:40.4 | there are so many terrific ambassadors and teachers of Thai food in the U.S. |
| 1:45.1 | People like Mai Fam, Chris Yembrung, Hong Thai Mi, who you'll meet in a second, James Seaboot, and Andy Ricker. |
| 1:53.7 | So this week, we want to get a little bit into some of the more popular Thai dishes, some of the ones you may never have heard of, and what they |
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