After a few weeks of travelling around South East Asia we were glad to stop for a while in Bangkok, the “land of smiles”. Bangkok is full of beautiful temples and delicious food, (along with a good helping of chaos, cars and quite weird food!)

 

Most people in urban Thailand actually don’t cook at home - with street food meals available for the equivalent of £1, who would? It would be more expensive to buy the ingredients. Because of this, there's a huge variety of street food, and a lot of it is sold in bags to take home. Here are a few of my favourites from a week exploring Bangkok!

Bags of green curry and rice  Curry - red or green - is very common, made with heaps of lemongrass, galangal (a relative of ginger), chilli and garlic, then served with fresh mint and basil, beansprouts and lime.

 

 

Fresh chillies and spices are the name of the game, and a huge variety are used, making the flavours very complex. The ingredients are chopped very small then pounded in a pestle and mortar, giving a depth of flavour that I've not experienced in UK Thai food.

 

 

 

This stall has all the ingredients set out for making tom yum goong - Thailand's famous hot and sour prawn soup.

 

 

 

 

The broth in tom yum is either clear or cloudy, depending on the quality - the use of actual prawn heads in the stock will make it cloudy, and richer in taste. On top of this seafood broth are fresh herbs, boiled egg and tortilla-like fried crackers for dipping.

Beware: it looks innocent, but the heat of the broth may cause tears of spicy joy!

 

 

 

Another much-loved street food is som tam mamuang - often you'll see vendors shredding green mangoes for this salad.

 

 

 

 

The shreds are mixed with shallots, peanuts and other veg, and then dressed in a mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, shrimp and chilli to make this delicious, crunchy sweet and sour salad.

 

 

 

 

 

Less common: these are definitely spiced fried bugs of some sort. I wasn't brave enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meat skewers are quite a big thing in Bangkok - some pork, some chicken, some offal! Often these are just cooked over a flame, brushed with a sweet and sticky soy sauce.

 

 

 

You can’t really visit Bangkok without trying some pad thai - just go to a touristy area and follow the cries of “Pad thai! Tom yum!” Pad thai is a delicious stir-fried mixture of rice noodles, egg, prawns, chilli, beansprouts and spices. One of Thailand’s national dishes, it’s actually not eaten much by locals, at least in Bangkok.

 

However, while exploring the area of Chinatown, we stumbled across a vendor making the most delicious pad thai I’ve ever had. The method of cooking was something like “add a handful of different ingredients whenever it seems appropriate, stir, crack a few eggs, stir, add beansprouts and eat”. It was amazing.

 

 

 

Often served with pad thai is a spicy condiment called nam pla prik (aka chilli fish sauce).  It's made with very small and spicy chillies, fish sauce, sugar, shallots, lime and garlic, and the tangy spiciness makes a great contrast with the sweet savouriness of fried noodle dishes.

 

 

 

A key ingredient in many Thai street food dishes is dried shrimp.

Here, dried shrimp is being pickled in lime juice and fish sauce with beansprouts and chilli, then sold as a condiment.

While avoiding the crowds near one of Bangkok's biggest temples, we took a side alley and discovered a very un-touristy market. This alleyway had at least 20 stalls, each selling dehydrated fish or shrimp of different types. It's amazing to see the variety available!

And after all that delicious shrimpy savoury food, you can pick up a bag of mouthwatering mango sprinkled with a mixture of sugar, salt and chilli.

 

The salt makes it quite unusual for a Western palate - the extreme heat and humidity in Thailand means that salt is really important for the body, and it's often added to fruits and juices. 

These are kanom krok - little coconut egg pancakes cooked in individual moulds, flavoured either savoury with chives, or sweet with pineapple, mango or black sesame seeds.

This, however, was my favourite Thai dessert: pa thong ko. Pa thong ko are an unsweetened type of doughnut, served with a dipping sauce. I opted for a thick pandan custard - pandan is a sweet fragrant leaf used in a lot of South East Asian desserts, and as well as being appealingly green it's very delicious! Street food can be very variable, and although "eat where the locals eat" helps, there's no guarantee of deliciousness. That said... when the food is so affordable, and cooked right in front of you, it's worth the adventure!