I love Thai Food

So, I’m obsessed with Thai food. When I say obsessed, I mean I would literally eat it every single day if I could, but I can’t because my husband would divorce me for the lack of cheese in our culinary relationship. The beginning of my obsession happened in 1997, but that is a different story for another post. What I am talking about today is the fact that I am teaching myself to cook Thai food so I can have it whenever I like, as delicious as they make it in authentic Thai restaurants, forever and ever and ever. Amen.

There are plenty of books, blogs, and websites that can confidently guide you as an apprentice of Thai cooking and cuisine. I am currently building a list of these, and will provide them.. again, in another post on another day. The challenge is finding some of the ingredients that authentic Thai recipes call for. Galangal, Kaffir lime leaf, various curry and fish pastes, snake beans, and Daikon just to name a few. Most cities have gourmet shops that carry these specialty items or entire ethnic neighborhoods, like Chinatown and Little Korea, where you can travel to and find everything you need to stock your pantry. Small town groceries usually do not carry ingredients such as these and online purchasing or a day trip to the closest specialty store may be needed.

As for my town; we have an abundance of Thai food restaurants close by (which are curiously much more expensive than New York City Thai restaurants) and many specialty shops including a huge Chinese grocery in East Hanover, NJ called Kam Man Foods. Now, I have been eying this store for months, and only entered for the first time this past weekend. As for my first impression, all I can say is… woo-hoo.

The store is huge and bustling with Asian families. One side is a full-service restaurant, serving up every Chinese dish you can imagine, including Beef Tendon Stew which apparently is thought to improve leg strength if eaten but scarily looks like, well, tendons. The middle of the store holds rows and rows of packaged Asian goods from teas and spices to a million types of noodles and smooshed, dried squid. The other side is a fresh fish market, butcher and produce section with crazy big fish and packages of fancy mushrooms that are so cheap I held them up in the air and said, “hey, look how cheap these mushrooms are!” Don’t do that, by the way.

The place is nothing more than the norm to most Asian folk who cook their delicious cuisine on a daily basis. But to someone like me, a novice and admirer, it is a wonderland of flavors, sights, scents and people-watching that I truly crave and adore. I can get lost in places like this… exploring ingredients, looking at packaging and dreaming up my next meal. It’s way better than Disneyland. Check out some of my pics and look for my future Thai Food posts.