The Coconut Groves of Samut Songkhram

Samut Songkhram is the smallest province of Thailand, lying at the mouth of the Mae Klong river where it meets the upper Gulf of Thailand, a short distance south-west of Bangkok. Its low, tidal, brackish land is threaded with canals and given over largely to orchards of the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, and it is closely tied in the culinary imagination of the central plain to the neighbouring coconut and palm-sugar country of Phetchaburi.

The delta here is flat, silted and touched by the tide, and the coconut palm suits it. Groves stand along the banks of the canals, and the produce of the palm is the foundation of much of the central Thai kitchen: the milk pressed from the grated flesh, the water of the young nut, and the sugar boiled down from the sap of the flower stalk. Leela Punyaratabandhu, writing of Bangkok's cooking, treats coconut milk and palm sugar as ingredients whose quality shapes the dish, and the districts around the Mae Klong are among the places that supply them to the capital. The sugar is the more particular product. Sap is collected from the cut flower stalks of the palm, then cooked in wide pans until it thickens and is poured into moulds or tins. Palm sugar made in this way is darker and more fragrant than refined cane sugar, with a soft caramel depth and a faint savour, and it dissolves slowly into curries, dressings and sweets rather than sweetening them flatly. The cook who buys it should look for a sugar that is fragrant, pliable and not gritty, since adulterated blocks lose that character. The table of the central plain shows what the groves provide. Coconut cream is split in the pan to carry the paste of a curry, and thinner second-pressed milk lengthens a soup. Palm sugar balances the salt of fish sauce and the sourness of tamarind in the relishes and salads of the region, and it gives the glaze of sweet pork and the syrup of many desserts. The same sugar, boiled with coconut cream, is the basis of numerous Thai sweets, so that the groves furnish both the savoury and the confectionery sides of the kitchen. The waterways that carry this produce also shape the way it is bought. Fruit, sugar and coconuts have long moved by boat along the canals of the delta toward the markets of Bangkok, and the floating and canal-side market is the form of trade most associated with the province. For the cook in the capital, the provenance of the coconut and its sugar is therefore a question of the lower Mae Klong and its neighbours, and the habit of asking for it by origin is worth keeping.

Coconut milk from the groves is rich, sweet and faintly nutty, and its fat carries the aromatics of a curry paste. Palm sugar adds a smoky caramel sweetness that is rounder and less sharp than cane sugar, and it is the counterweight to the salt, sour and heat of central Thai food.