Love Thai food! Fresh ingredients, strong well blended flavours. A variety. Spices and herbs. Rice and noodles. Curries and papaya salad. I can’t get enough. Not so keen on the spicy stuff. “Mai ped” (no spice) was one of the first Thai phrases I learned, ensuring I could order food and not feel like a fire breathing dragon. But I love the flavours. Lemongrass, garlic, pepper, kaffir lime leaves, chillies, cilantro, basil, ginger and Thai ginger “galanga,” coconut milk. One thing I have learned is that large quantities of sugar help make the taste amazing. The hot, humid environment means your body craves sweet and the sweet balances out the chilies – Thai cooking often has a balance of spicy, sour, and sweet! And MSG is also commonly used as a flavour enhancer. It amplifies the flavours. North American cultures tend to avoid msg and it has a bad reputation. However most Asian cultures make use of the flavour enhancement.
Our house ran out of sugar a few weekends ago. I was staying at the volunteer base and the volunteers who were around those days were craving sugar for their tea. Lotsa tea grannies in our group! So I sent a message out to various staff if they were around town to get some sugar.
My coworker dropped off a clear bag of white granular condiment with a cool Thai serving spoon. The writing was all in Thai with some Chinese characters.
I didn’t think it was sugar – the texture was much like salt. And somebody put it in the salt container. I made two massive bowls of popcorn as I am known to do, for volunteer movie night and generously added lots of salt to one bowl and only a little to the other.
Wellll. The popcorn tasted funny but delicious. We couldn’t figure it out. Did I add sugar instead of salt? Did the salt and sugar get mixed? Ummmmmm. Nope. My coworker bought msg. Hilarious mistake but it was probably the best popcorn I ever ate. We had tonnes of it, adding some real salt as well.
I recommend trying it. It was great. Though I’m not sure at home you’d find a kilogram of msg in the sugar and salt aisle at the grocery store!!!!
