The Rice Paddies and Their Fish

The flooded rice fields of Thailand, from the Chao Phraya plain to the rain-fed paddies of Isan, have long served as both granary and fishery. As the rains arrive and the water spreads across the land, fish move out of the rivers and canals into the fields, and the people who farm the rice take them from the same water that grows the crop. Thompson records in Thai Street Food that much of what is sold and eaten in the country's markets and roadside stalls rests on this double harvest of grain and freshwater fish.

The paddy is a managed shallow water, and its fish are those that tolerate warm, slow and often muddy conditions. Among the species that Thai cooks reckon with are the snakehead, Channa striata (pla chon), the climbing perch, Anabas testudineus (pla mo), the walking catfish, Clarias batrachus (pla duk), and the small silver barb, Barbonymus gonionotus (pla tapian). These fish are caught as the fields fill and again as they drain, when the water falls and the catch is concentrated in ditches and low pools. Thompson describes how the fish of the fields reach the table in several forms, fresh and grilled, fried until crisp, simmered in sharp curries, or preserved against the dry months. Preservation is the logical consequence of a catch that arrives in a glut. Small fish are salted and fermented into pla ra, the pungent fermented fish that seasons the food of Isan and the north-east and lends depth to salads, relishes and soups, while larger fish are split, salted and dried in the sun. The fermented fish is not an afterthought but the salt and savour of the household, and its presence marks the cooking of the paddy country as distinct from that of the coast, where fish sauce made from marine anchovies holds the same place. Thompson sets these seasonings within the street food he describes, where their character is evident in the sharp, salty and often fiercely hot dishes of the region. The preparations that suit paddy fish follow from the nature of the flesh. Snakehead has a firm, white, sweet flesh that grills well over charcoal, often wrapped in salt, and that is also pounded into fish cakes or dropped into sour soups. Catfish, richer and softer, is fried and torn into a salad, as in the crisp pla duk fu, in which the fish is puffed in hot oil and dressed with green mango and a sharp sauce. The small fish are fried whole until they can be eaten bones and all, or pounded with chillies into relishes eaten with vegetables and sticky rice. In each case the cook meets the fish with sourness, heat and salt, which answer the muddy sweetness of freshwater flesh. The paddy also supplies more than fish. Frogs, crabs, snails, eels and the larvae and insects of the wet fields are gathered, and the edges of the bunds and ditches yield leaves, shoots and herbs that are eaten raw beside the rice. The field is thus read by the Thai cook as a whole pantry, not simply as ground for a single crop. Thompson's account of street food makes clear how much of this tradition survives in the stalls and markets, where grilled fish, fermented relishes and sticky rice continue to be sold to people who know them from the countryside.

The fish of the paddy carry a sweetness of the mud and slow water, and the cooking of the fields is built to answer it with sourness, heat and salt. Tamarind, lime, green mango and sour leaves cut the softness of catfish and the richness of fried small fish, while bird's eye chillies and the salt of pla ra, the fermented fish of Isan, give the flesh a sharp and savoury frame. Pla ra is the seasoning of the paddy country where fish sauce from marine anchovies serves the coast, and its depth, pungent and lingering, underlies the salads, relishes and soups eaten with sticky rice and raw vegetables. At the table the pattern is one of contrast: a plain grilled snakehead, Channa striata, with a fiercely hot and sour dip; a crisp fried fish dressed in a salad; a bowl of rice to temper the salt and the fire. The bitter and aromatic herbs gathered from the bunds, eaten raw beside the rice, refresh the palate between mouthfuls and complete a meal in which no single flavour is left to stand alone.