World Cuisines

World cuisines and international food guide

with information on foods from countries
around the world, cuisine recipes and cuisines
such as Italian, French, Mexican, Indian,
American, Japanese, Chinese, continental and
much more. Whether you enjoy domestic or
international food, or both, here you will find
ample information about many foods, cooking
traditions and practices associated with
various cultures. Chefs, food professionals,
and amateur cooks alike will learn about food
from many cultures and ethnic groups and
history of international cuisine.
South East Asian Cuisine- Cousins all
China, Thailand and India share more than
just a geographical clustering, they are the
next door neighbors, together taking up a
huge part of the Asian continent, its history
and its cuisine system too.

China and India have one of the worlds oldest

civilizations and their culture, society and of
course, cuisine speaks for that.
In all these countries, food is no merely
sustenance. It is a way of life. No Indian,
Chinese or Thai person eats without
ceremony, not a physical but a sociological
one. In each of these cultures, days have
been identified for eating or not eating certain
things, food items have been identified as
having different properties. Clearly food is not
only meant to grace tables and fill stomachs,
it is both an offering to the Gods as well as a
thanksgiving.
Most Indians, traditionally start their meals

with a short prayer, sprinkling of water around

their food and folding their hands. Food
cooked for any meal is first offered to the
Gods, then to the cow, the Mother. Only after
food grains have been thrown to birds
(believed to be spirits of ancestors returned to
safeguard their descendents), do the
householders sit down for a meal. The belief
that animals have spirits of benevolence and
malevolence is shared by almost all Asian
cultures.
A vast majority of Indians, Chinese and Thai
are rice eaters. If not in the cereal form, it is
made into noodles and then used as a staple
diet. So the accompaniments, in many cases
are similar. In China and Thailand, the staple
food is rice, but India differs in that the staple
food of the northern plains is wheat and the
coarser grains like millets, hence the
accompaniments differ too. Most wheat eaters
are not fish people, they stick to vegetables,
some meats and other dairy products. But the
entire coast and the Eastern regions, as the

northern hilly areas are staple rice eaters, so

the similarity between coastal Indian foods
and Chinese is very great, except for
seasonings.
All foods start with a strong soup, in South
India, there is a spicy tamarind soup called
rasam, while the Thai have their soups
flavored with kafir lime and galangal, the
purpose being to cleanse the tongue and
activate the salivary glands. In coastal areas
of India, rice is eaten in courses, with a fiery
or bitter dish to begin with, vegetables paired
with legumes and finally the meats or fish
dishes. The same system is followed in
Thailand, and in China.
Rice is almost always an accompaniment.
In rice eating areas of India, a rice soup is the
staple food, called by different names in
different areas. In the South, in the East, rice
is cooked in its starch and eaten. In China,
there is Conjee, which is basically the same

thing, but served with meat or fish dumplings,

and even vegetables.
The wide range of soups available in Chinese
cuisine takes care of all the nutritional
requirements. In India, these soups are
popular in rice eating areas. The Bengalis
have their Jhol, which is essentially a
vegetable and fish soup and the South Indians
have similar dishes. For instance, the
traditional steamer of dumplings that is
indispensable for Thai and Chinese food is
also a staple cooking implement in South
India were steamed rice and lentil dumplings
(idlis) make up a large part of daily
refreshments.
Thai food, essentially, is a combination of
Indian and Chinese, and derives from both.
However, the end result is a completely
different taste, tangy and spicy by South
China and Canton standards, but still mild by
South Indian standards. The generous use of
galangal (the Thai cousin of ginger used in

India) and Kafir lime leaves (Thai cousins of

lemongrass used in China and lemon used in
India), gives it a distinctly strong flavor. It is
difficult to come across mildly flavored Thai
food, which is the reason why most Asians
enjoy Thai food, but it is catching up with
western tastes only now.
There are greater similarities Thai has with
Indian food, than Chinese, probably because
of the geographical similarities, similar
climate and terrain, and of course, a large
amount of cross-migration in the region.
Indian and Chinese food has managed to find
its hinges in western markets but Thai is still
somewhat of a rarity. It is, however, a cuisine
that takes the best from both Indian and
Chinese, more often the staple rice and
noodles from Chinese and the curries from
Indian cuisine.
One of the most important things that Thai
curry shares with Indian curries is the

generous use of spices, natural flours. It may

be with or without coconut milk but never
without a range of spices. Across India too,
spices play the most important role in
flavoring curries, whether vegetarian or nonvegetarian.
Among the other common dishes, the Kaeng
ka ri which is closest to Indian cooking is a
mildly flavored chicken and potato curry in
gravy. Sometimes other meats are also used,
but in most cases, it is chicken. The chicken
curry made almost across the Indian
subcontinent is almost the same. Except
perhaps the Indian curry has more of gingergarlic and onion gravy while the Thai curry is
characteristically thin gravy. Similar in taste is
the Kaeng kai which does not always have
potatoes. This could be compared to any of
the Indian chicken curries available across the
world. The Kaeng som is another curry with
traces of Indian tastes, a fish curry with
vegetables. Though the vegetables differ, the
concept is very common in East of India,

which is largely rice and fish eating.

Noodles and rice, as mentioned earlier, are
almost the same for Chinese as in Thai food.
So there is a very great brotherhood of
staples here.
We can see that the three major cuisine of
South East Asia have a lot in common as far
as their food and cooking systems are
concerned.
Read more at Buzzle:
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