Keith Floyd - Floyd’s Thai Food

A painted lady noodle seller of Damnoen-Saduak floating market.

The Slam winery vineyard.

The following day we flew back to Bangkok and checked into the Intercontinental Hotel, before taking an air-conditioned (essential) car ride down to Bangkok’s famous floating market. This is a complex of canals with pretty houses built on their edges, where you can take boat rides in cigar-shaped, traditional Thai punts, paddled gently through this labyrinth of waterways by smiling ladies. Tied alongside the main landing stage are dozens of these charming little boats, each with a lady in it, sitting cross-legged, selling their freshly picked produce – all kinds of greenery, lemons, limes and other fruits. Some are making delightful little Thai sweets, or stir-frying noodles, or grilling racks of prawns and small fish.

From there we move to the curiously named ‘Floating vineyards’, which are about 30 km outside the city and which take hours to get to because the Bangkok traffic is appalling. Since there is so much water available, these vines are planted on little raised, rectangular islands and they are irrigated twice a day by the simple expedient of a sluice gate. Hitherto, I had not known that Thai wine was produced in Thailand and, although quite expensive, it was jolly good.

Back to Bangkok and we hurtle around as many restaurants as possible to check out what is happening in this big city. Then, after a sightseeing tour, at lightning speed, of the incredible golden Royal Grand Palace, we get back, exhausted but happy, to the air-conditioned freshness of the hotel. We had been on the go for twelve hours this particular day and, after a shower and change of clothes, I sank happily into the comfortable bar and, as is the Thai custom, had a refreshing Johnny Walker Black Label with lots and lots of iced water.

It might be a precarious way of checking the grapes, but the end product gets my approval.

The stunning Royal Grand Palace, Bangkok.

To my amazement, I saw a chef walking towards me in his immaculate whites and white clogs and, my goodness me, it was an old friend of mine, Marcel Nosari, now the executive chef of the hotel and trying to control 600 cooks, perish the thought! It was an invaluable meeting because he had just opened, in stark contrast to the beach bars and street vendors’ chariots, a light, airy and exquisite Thai restaurant in the hotel, called the ‘Charm Thai’. This served modernized and stylishly presented food, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but because my assistant Adrian cannot take spicy food of any kind, I managed to get special dispensation for him to have a fine steak, fresh vegetables and potatoes. I had a delicious deep-fried fish with chilli and cucumber sauce, followed by a spicy papaya salad and then a relatively hot yellow beef curry. The meal was finished by a sour tamarind sorbet and it was time for bed.

The next day, we took a terrifyingly fast, bouncing, long-tailed boat ride up the river past rickety little shacks standing perilously on stilts, and past the wats, all the while Tony the photographer shooting away like mad.

I rustled up this plate of refreshing papaya salad with my old friend Marcel Nosari, executive chef of the Intercontinental Hotel.

A trip down the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok.

The bananas are creamy and cheap.

The colourful Chao Phraya riverbank.

Scenes from Klong Toey Market, Bangkok.

The city streets were heaving with stalls, food hawkers, errand boys carrying huge sacks of rice on their heads, women with huge wicker baskets filled with fruit and vegetables, open-air butchers, and fresh chickens crowded into igloo-shaped bamboo cages. But, Mark and Mike say it is time for us to go back to Phuket. We had to fly back there to meet the architects and designers who, I hope, are going to follow my suggestions for the creation of Floyd’s Restaurant at the Burasari Hotel in Patong. We spent three days poring over plans, discussing menus and staff requirements, and although it is hard work starting any kind of enterprise like that (especially when you have to be au fait with Thai time), if you approach it gently as, by the way, everything that you do in Thailand should be approached, you will see why one smile makes two.

Keith Floyd

Burasari Hotel

Patong

Phuket

Thailand

2005

Thailand is a magical and exotic country formerly known as Siam, with a famed royal family who endure and are adored by the Thais to this day, and I have been very lucky to have travelled north, south, east and west since I first went there in 1984. Thailand was never invaded or colonized by a European power. It is true there were skirmishes with Burma, but in the grand picture they are, today, completely insignificant. More important, though, are the gastronomic invasions that have taken place, which the Thais have welcomed, embraced and fused into their own rich, culinary heritage.

In Thai cuisine you will find the influences of Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Malaysia and, of course, China. But perhaps the most significant invasion came not from the region but from South America when, in the sixteenth century, Portuguese merchant men introduced to Thailand the signature taste of chillies.

Chillies and Thai cooking are symbiotic. From the explosively dynamite hot, tiny bird’s eye chillies, right through the gamut of this exquisite vegetable to large peppers, green, yellow and red, chillies are extremely important to Thai cooking, and make vibrant displays in huge wicker baskets all over the country. Whether chopped fresh and popped into dishes or compounded into pastes, they are indispensable. Another vital ingredient is fish sauce, which is used throughout South East Asia instead of salt. Tiny fish, often anchovies, are laid out on the beach in their thousands and allowed to dry before being put into vats and left to ferment; incidentally, the Romans had a similar sauce that was called liquamen.

Red chilli paste is available ready-made from the markets.

Juicy, aromatic limes.

Local honey.

The Thais just can’t get enough fresh and dried chillies.

Bowls of fermented fish at Klong Toey Market.

The explosive tastes of Thai food are also enhanced by the citric and sour flavours provided by lime juice, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and tamarind, and are then softened with either coconut water or coconut milk and the indispensable masses of fresh basil, mint and coriander – just loosely ripped up and chucked onto the top of any dish, they give a crunchy freshness and combat the fiery tastes.