Food
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Som Tam
Today I tried Som Tam. We ordered it on Food Panda and it came in this big bag, which is pretty normal in Thai delivery. Thai coffee shops often deliver their drinks in bags like these with a cup of ice next to them.
Som Tam is Thai Green Papaya Salad. It is usually made with unripe or green papaya, Thai chillies, garlic, peanuts, fish sauce, and limes. There are hundreds of other things you could add of course but those are the basic ingredients. This one also had shrimp, green beans, and tomatoes.
Som Tam is one of my dad’s favorite dishes. I loved the flavor. It was a perfect balance of sour papaya and vegetables. One thing they didn’t balance though was the spice level. My mouth was on fire. I was melting ice cubes in seconds by breathing on them. I could only take a couple of bites before my eyes started watering. I offered my sister, Selah, 5 baht (Thai currency. Only about 15 cents, but it goes pretty far.) if she would take a bite. One bite and she was tearing up too. The other thing off balance was the texture. It was crunchy and stringy and kept getting in between my teeth.
I would strongly suggest trying Som Tam, but when you do, order it “not spicy” or prepare for your last meal.
Part of the reason I wanted to order Som Tam is because I tried some potato chips a while back that were Charcoal Grilled Chicken & Som Tam flavored chips. The chips tasted like a BBQ chip at first but then I really got the chicken flavor. And then, when I swallowed the chip, the sour Som Tam flavor hit the back of my tongue. They really did taste almost exactly like Chicken and Som Tam.
P.S. My dad came home and tried the Som Tam and said it wasn’t the spiciest ส้มตำ (Som Tam) he has had. That made me a little mad.
P.P.S I was not lying about the 5 Baht (or Haa Baht). If the exchange rates are good, 35 baht is about one dollar.
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Road Trip Chips
Try saying that 5 times fast.
If you walk into any 7Eleven in Thailand there will probably be a whole row of potato chips. And there will probably be at least 25 different flavors that you would never find in America. But not all of them taste like Thai food. We found these two flavors at an 7Eleven on our trip to Myanmar (or how the Thai say it, PaMaa, or, พม่า,) and we had to try them. First we tried the double cheeseburger. No one in my family liked them. They tasted like over-peppered American cheese with a tiny bit of a pickle taste.
The Carbonara Parmesan weren’t bad but we don’t need to get them again. They taste like Carbonara (creamy spaghetti) with a ton of salt, a little lemon, and much more parmesan than I like.
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Hot Chili Squid Potato Chips
My name is Josiah Keim and I am going to do my best explaining the complex and exotic flavors in Thai Food. Everything from Pad Thai to potato chips.
Speaking of, I tried the craziest flavor of potato chips today: Hot Chili Squid. They might sound gross but I kinda like them. So does my sister Tallulah. But she likes any flavor of potato chip. I tried tricking my siblings into eating them by saying they were Mae Ploy and Potato flavored. Surprisingly, when I tried them I felt like that is actually what I think they taste like. If you don’t know, (which is normal for most Americans), Mae Ploy is a Thai sweet chili sauce. You can buy it in the states and it is amazing with sticky rice and chicken. It isn’t too spicy and the flavor is delicious. My dad even put it on pizzas at our pub before we moved. The chips taste a lot like a raw potato that someone dipped in Mae Ploy, but there is also a salty seaweed taste at the back of my tongue.
Like I said, I like them, my sister Tallulah likes them, my dad hasn’t tried them yet but I bet he likes them. The rest of my family thinks they are disgusting but that is because they expected them to be gross. If you get rid of your expectations you may really like them.
