Azerbaijani vs Thai food & cuisine

Thailand

SEASONINGS

Enthusiastic use of fresh (rather than dried) herbs, spices, and aromatic ingredients, balanced around spiciness, sourness, sweetness, saltiness, and umami flavors, is what defines Thai seasoning. This harmony ensures layered taste experiences. Let’s take, for example, Tom Yum soup. It blends spiciness from chilies, sourness from lime or tamarind, saltiness from fish sauce, sweetness from palm sugar, and lemongrass aroma seamlessly.

Many sources list five basic tastes for Thai cuisine, but traditional Thai sources place aromatic herbs and their fragrances as an equally crucial component that defines Thai food. This herbal aroma is often viewed as a separate, essential “flavor” element in authentic Thai cooking.

Heat. Chilies revolutionized Thai cooking after being introduced by Portuguese traders. Thai cuisine is intensely spicy; it incorporates very hot, fresh, and dried chilies into the dish, not leaving chilies to serve as a side condiment.  Thai bird’s eye chilies, valued for heat, are significantly hotter than many other peppers. Spur chili (cayenne type), are there for heat, color and body, banana chili add depth, dried red chilies are most used in pastes to create smokiness. Before chilies, Thai cuisine used long and black peppers to add heat.

Acidity. Thai food balances heat with noticeable acidity from key lime, kaffir lime, tamarind or bilimbi (a small, fast-growing, tropical fruit). Bright acidity and tanginess are important in many dishes.

Fermented fish and seafood products are crucial salty umami builders:

• Fermented fish paste, pla ra, is made from mix of freshwater fish, salt and roasted rice; fermented for at least six months. Pla ra has a thick, pasty texture and a strong smell, often reddish-pink in color due to fermentation additives. It’s found in Northeastern Thai cuisine. Pla ra is more nutritious compared to fish sauce and shrimp paste, containing proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and probiotics. It is used in som tam pla ra (spicy green papaya salad with fermented fish) and can also be eaten fried or raw with sticky rice.
• Fish sauce, nam pla, is a liquid seasoning of fermented anchovies and salt. Nam Pla has a rich, salty, and slightly sweet flavor that is essential in many Thai dishes, including curries, stir-fries.
• Shrimp paste, kapi, is made from fermented shrimp mixed with salt, then dried and compacted into blocks or cakes. It has a strong, pungent aroma and is found in curry pastes and dipping sauces.

Herbs. Thai cuisine heavily uses fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, Thai basil, cilantro, and mint. Kaffir lime leaves or rind are frequently combined with galangal and lemongrass, either kept whole in simmered dishes or blended together with liberal amounts of chilies. Fresh Thai basil, which is redolent of cloves, is used to add fragrance to green curries. Other commonly used herbs are culantro, spearmint, holy basil, pandanus leaves, banana leaves, and neem tree leaves.