EAT IN ASIA / Food destinations / Thailand - thai food
Stir-fried seafood in a yellow curry
Are you as crazy about seafood as I am? If so, you must try Thai dishes with different types of them (Try also Stir-fried seafood with spicy Thai basil leaves). Try Thai meals with squids, with mussels, octopus, prawns and with crabs. Or just pick from the menu any dish that includes a mix of them. Thanks to that you will be able to try many of them at once. Maybe that is not an ideal option, but still, it gives you an overview of what tastes how in Thailand and you will be able to decide which of them is the best one for you. Then, the next step will be to select dishes just with your preferred ingredient. However, for me the best option is to go with a mixed seafood selection. I love all of them and it is hard for me to decide which of them is the best one and which of them should I choose that exact day. If you have dilemmas as I have, just take a mixed seafood option.
Spicy or not spicy – what is your choice?
Well, of course it is always up to you to select the best one, but I will recommend choosing a non-spicy seafood dish at the beginning. Do you wonder why? The reason is very simple – only thanks to that you will be able to define which type of seafood is your favorite. You can always tune it up and add extra chili peppers, but please, try it at the beginning with no excessive spiciness and with no extra sauces. Just have it and try it in the form it is prepared by the cook.
Believe me, I love spicy food, but if you add too many chili peppers, your taste will be cheated. You will not be able to distinguish any other flavor except for the hot one. And while the seafood meat is very delicate and relatively bland, it will be easily dominated by the spiciness.
Thai yellow curry with seafood
This curry is a very good way of trying something typical for Thailand and at the same time something including seafood. Apart from that it is a dish with some oriental notes as all other curries are. Earlier I had a great Red curry paste with fried young coconut and basil leaves served with rice, that you can also have with seafood or with any other meat. Going a step further, the best one would be a yellow curry that is not spicy and has a nice sweety flavor. It is not sweet in a regular meaning; it is just a little bit sweet thanks to all spices that are added to this curry. Some cloves, some nutmeg, cumin, galangal, cinnamon, turmeric, and some coconut. All these notes create a wonderful mix of aromas that pair ideally with a delicate seafood meat.
Thai yellow curry
Although it might be obvious for you how a yellow curry looks like, the Thai version is slightly different. First of all because it includes an egg. Well, for me that was a huge surprise, because the whole dish looked a little bit like a loose scrambled egg with seafood. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but still it could be compared to that. So, the egg was dominating, and the curry sauce was rather a tick one. It was fatty too; however, it was not excessively heavy, just as a curry should be. Remember that curries are not light meals. Even if you select a relatively fit option, your curry will always have oil.
Given above, Thailand is a good place for trying that dish here too. These curries are also very different from those Indian. The main reason for that is that these Thai curries include a lot of meat or seafood ingredients. Thai curry is more like a sauce that has to add an extra flavor to the meal and is not like a soup in which you should try to spot minimal seafood chunks.
Seafood in a yellow Thai curry served with steamed rice
And this seafood yellow curry is what I highly recommend you to try. It is not spicy, it has oriental aromas, is traditional for Thailand and has a subtle seafood taste. It is a delicate dish that allows you to try many things at once. Prawns, squids, crab meat, mussels, and octopus. What is more it has a great texture and pars ideally with a bland steamed rice. Although the rice serving has nothing special, it creates a great composition with the aromatic curry base. It allows you to fully distinguish different types of seafood and find all subtle notes of spices added to the curry. And the plain rice also allows you to calm all your senses and start tasting each bite from the ground.
Author: Beti – A passionate traveler and lover of Asian cuisine, especially Thai and Japanese dishes, Bernadeta brings her culinary and cultural experiences to life in her writing. Beyond her travels, she’s an avid technology enthusiast with a deep interest in data processing, merging her love for exploration with analytical insights.
Photographer: Adalbert – An aficionado of computers and photography, Adalbert captures the essence of diverse cuisines with a discerning eye. A connoisseur of rich flavors and particularly fond of meat-based dishes, he combines his technical skills with his passion for the culinary arts in every shot.
