Ahan Phak Klang (the cooking of Central Thailand)

Central Thailand is the alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya river and its delta, the country's great rice-growing basin, where the river and its canals carried both cultivation and trade. Ayutthaya, and later Bangkok, stood on this plain, and the cooking of the region is bound to the courts and markets that grew along the water. David Thompson in Thai Food treats the central kitchen as the one in which the grand cuisine of the palace and the everyday cooking of the delta meet.

The central kitchen rests on rice, and on the water that grows it. Fish from river, canal and paddy, preserved and fresh, supply much of the savour of the table, while the delta's gardens give vegetables, herbs and fruit. Thompson describes a meal built around rice, with the other dishes there to accompany it, and this idea of accompaniment governs how the cooking is composed. The palace kitchen shaped the region's reputation. Court cooks refined the dishes of the plain, favouring delicacy of cutting, fine pastes pounded smooth, and careful carving and presentation of vegetables and fruit. Thanpuying Plian Passakornrawong's Mae Khrua Hua Pa of 1908 stands as the first printed canon of this cooking, setting down in a book the repertoire of a household formed by the court. Thompson draws on that tradition when he describes the central style. The kitchen also carries the marks of the peoples who settled and traded in the delta. Chinese cooks brought the wok, noodles, and the habit of frying and of certain soy-based seasonings; Mon, Lao and Malay influences are likewise part of the wider Thai kitchen, and Thompson notes the borrowings that the cooks of the plain absorbed and made their own. What was taken in was adjusted to the Thai balance rather than preserved in its original form. The central table is distinguished by its balance of tastes. Salt, sweet, sour and heat are weighed against one another within a dish and across the meal, so that a rich curry is set beside a sharp salad, a fried fish beside a clear soup, and a relish with fresh and blanched vegetables. Thompson presents this harmony of contrasts as the organising principle of the cooking, and it is the reason a central meal is understood as a composition rather than as a sequence of separate courses.

The central table seeks harmony among salt, sweet, sour and heat, and Thompson describes the meal as a set of dishes balanced around rice. A rich curry, a sharp salad, a fried dish and a soup are chosen to answer one another, so that no single taste dominates the whole.