The Fresh Market in Thailand is a sensory overload of sights, tastes and smells. Produce and seafood are incredibly fresh. Vegetables that are strange and exotic .
See the ‘winged beans’ (Thua-phuu) at top center, crushed cucumbers (taeng-kwaa) below and super fresh oyster (het-nang-faa) mushrooms to the left.
Fresh bamboo shoots and strange, licorice type herbs which freshen the breath.
Fresh green peppercorns (Phrik-thai-awn) and tiny pea eggplants (Ma-kheua-phuang) for Thai curry dishes.
The green peppercorns have short bursts of flavor and are added to the curry dishes , more like a vegetable than an spice.
Talking about curries … in the market they sell hills of brilliant curry pastes made of pounded chillies, shallots, garlic, galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime, coriander root, peppercorns, cumin and dried shrimp paste (Ka-pi).
Every curry deserve fresh chillis.
The smaller the chilli , the more intense. Special complement to chillis are water bugs. Insects which look like gigantic cockroaches. Our guide assures us that these are cleaner than any poultry or meat. Exhorbitantly expensive the bugs are purchased one at a time and crushed with chillis into a flavorful sauce. The bugs have a pleasant flowery aroma and if you can get beyond the gross factor, it is easy to see how they complement the fruity palate of chilli flowers
.
The Sandy Chronicles 