Thailand’s Street Food : Street Food of Thailand: It’s All in the Open : Market Food: It’s healthy, it’s fast and it’s eaten around the clock.

Her name is Panawan and she wears a white beret in place of a chef’s toque. There’s no reason you would have heard of her, unless you’d prowled the streets of Mai Sariang, a dusty town in northwest Thailand, in search of a quick, inexpensive meal. Her “kitchen” is a rickety table on the sidewalk, piled helter-skelter with bowls of vegetables, seafood, chiles, chopped peanuts and other Asian condiments. Her “stove” is a single gas-fired wok blackened from years of use.

Panawan is one of Thailand’s legions of street chefs. She wields her wok with the mastery of Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Pops. She adds a spoonful of the oil; flames leap skyward. Her ladle dances from one bowl of ingredients to another, adding lemon grass, dried shrimp or diced chicken almost faster than the eye can watch. Her gestures, polished by decades of practice, seem as natural as breathing and as spontaneous as dance.

To go to Thailand without sampling the street food would be a little like visiting France and neglecting to eat foie gras. Hyperbole, perhaps, but it does serve to point out the extraordinary richness and diversity of Thai street food. Stop at any street corner or market in Thailand and you will be enticed by a myriad of soups, dumplings, noodle dishes, stir-fries, beverages and sweets. The selection would make the menu of the average Thai restaurant in the United States seem positively impoverished.

Thai street cooking is the antithesis of the culinary arts in the West. For us, cooking is an arcane science that is time-consuming and costly. It takes place behind closed kitchen doors, shrouded in mystery.

Thailand’s street chefs couldn’t hide their recipes if they wanted to. The cooking is done on the sidewalk in clear sight of patrons, passersby, the neighbors and the competition. Tablespoons and measuring cups are unknown here, and I doubt that the average street cook has ever cracked the spine of a recipe book.

By its very nature, Thai street food is fast food. It is prepared with a minimum of cooking equipment in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Accordingly, the preferred cooking methods are stir-frying, deep-frying and grilling. Thai cooking emphasizes freshness, as each dish is cooked to order. The “chef” (usually an enterprising housewife) tosses some garlic, chiles and dried shrimp into a wok. She adds a handful of rice noodles, bean sprouts, perhaps some shrimp, and--presto--an order of pad Thai (Thai stir-fried noodles) is ready.

Thai street food is also eminently healthy, as it uses plenty of vegetables and a minimum of red meat or fat. We Americans, with our fat-laden fried chicken and mass-produced hamburgers, would do well to take a lesson from the Thais.

Because of their love of snacking, not to mention the lack of a formal kitchen in most Thai homes, Thai street food is eaten around the clock. Breakfast might be a bowl of rice gruel with fried salted fish or a banana leaf tray of khanom krog (dulcet coconut pancakes). Lunch would be one of Thailand’s dozens of types of noodle soup, garnished with coriander leaf, grated peanuts and pickled chiles.

Dinner might start with some sates , which are tiny chicken or pork kebabs marinated in coconut milk, grilled over charcoal and served with spicy peanut sauce. The main course could be a grilled fish on a stick, a ham hock braised to fall-off-the-bone tenderness or a curry fragrant with basil leaves and tongue-blistering chiles. For dessert, there are crisp banana fritters and a myriad of exotic tropical fruits.

For people accustomed to North American standards of hygiene, Thai street food takes some getting used to. Few street stalls have running water or refrigeration. The ingredients are arranged out in the open, covered with towels to keep off the flies. Dishes are washed in a bucket of cold soapy water and the tables are less than immaculate. But I ate Thai street food for three weeks with gastro-intestinal distress no worse than if I’d had one too many burgers.

Just as restaurants in the United States differ in their standards of cleanliness, so do Thailand’s street vendors. I try to patronize stalls where the ingredients are in covered containers and perishables are stored on ice, where general cleanliness and orderliness prevail.

During my first week in Thailand, I ate only dishes that were cooked right in front of me and served scalding hot, like soups, stir-fries and deep-fried items. I gave my system a few days to get used to the local bacteria before I attempted fruit dishes or salads. When I was worried about the cleanliness of the plates, I’d surreptitiously rinse them off with vodka from a miniature airline bottle.

Mindful of the pleasures of Thai street food--and the sensitivity of American stomachs--several of Bangkok’s top hotels have installed food courts at which guests can savor the pleasures of street cooking in the safety of Western hygiene.

Consider Rivernight Market at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel in Bangkok. The “market” takes place on a breezy terrace overlooking Bangkok’s mighty river, the Chao Phraya. The buffet consists of a series of pushcarts and cook stations, where everything from som tam (spicy papaya salad) to tom yam (hot and sour shrimp soup) is prepared to order while you watch. The festive mood is heightened by nightly performances of Thai classical and folk dance.

Another place to enjoy safe street cooking is the Food Court at Bangkok’s Ambassador Hotel. Here you’ll find regional Thai specialties, such as kao soy (curried noodles from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand). Because this food court is popular with Thai office workers at lunch time, it is a great place to meet and interact with the local people.

This fragrant dish is one of the glories of Thai street food. To get the full effect, use fresh basil. If unavailable, use fresh mint.

SHRIMP WITH BASIL

1 pound shrimp

1 bunch fresh basil (2 cups leaves)

2 cloves garlic

2 to 3 hot red or green chiles (serranos or jalapenos)

4 green onions

2 tablespoons peanut oil

2 teaspoons fish sauce

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup chicken stock

Hot cooked rice

Peel and devein shrimp. Wash, dry and stem basil. Mince garlic. Thinly slice seeded chiles on diagonal. Mince white part of green onions. Cut green parts into 1-inch pieces. (Recipe may be prepared ahead to this stage.)

Heat wok over high flame. Swirl in oil and heat almost to smoking. Add garlic, chiles and white part of onions and cook 10 seconds. Add shrimp and stir-fry 20 seconds.

Add fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, chicken stock and green parts of onions and bring mixture to boil. Stir in basil and cook 20 seconds or until leaves are wilted and shrimp is firm and pink. (Dish is supposed to be soupy.) Serve over hot cooked rice. Makes 4 servings.

Flavored with oyster sauce, this dish reflects the strong Chinese influence in Thai cooking. The garlic is added for flavoring--you aren’t supposed to eat the whole cloves. This dish is often made with morning glory vine in Thailand, but it’s delicious with any green.

STIR-FRIED COLLARD GREENS WITH GARLIC AND OYSTER SAUCE

1 pound fresh collard greens

1/4 pound fresh straw or shiitake mushrooms

1 inch fresh ginger root

8 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons oil

2 teaspoons fish sauce

4 to 5 teaspoons oyster sauce

Freshly ground white pepper

Stem and wash collard greens and cut into 2-inch pieces. Wash and thinly slice mushrooms. Peel and mince ginger root. Peel garlic cloves but leave whole.

Just before serving, heat oil in wok over high heat. Add garlic and ginger root and stir-fry 20 seconds or until fragrant and golden brown.

Add collard greens and mushrooms and stir-fry 30 seconds. Add fish and oyster sauces and cook 30 to 60 seconds or until greens are tender. Season to taste with white pepper. Makes 4 servings.

Note: Garlic cloves may be discarded, if desired.

Pad Thai is the national fast food of Thailand. There are as many different versions as there are individual cooks. If sweet soy sauce is unavailable, use equal parts regular soy sauce and molasses.

PAD THAI

4 ounces rice sticks

1 clove garlic

1/4 pound fresh pork (not too lean)

1/4 pound shrimp

2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons dried shrimp

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon fish sauce, about

1 teaspoon soy sauce, about

1 teaspoon sweet soy sauce (kejap manis)

2 to 3 teaspoons sugar

1 1/2 cups mung bean sprouts

2 to 3 green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/4 cup coarsely chopped peanuts, lightly toasted

Soak rice sticks in warm water 30 minutes and drain. Mince garlic. Coarsely chop pork. Peel, devein and coarsely chop shrimp.

Just before serving, heat wok over high heat. Swirl in oil and heat almost to smoking. Add garlic and pork and stir-fry 15 seconds. Add fresh and dried shrimp and stir-fry 10 seconds. Stir in eggs and cook until scrambled.

Add rice sticks and chicken stock and stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes or until noodles are tender. Add 1 tablespoon fish sauce, 1 teaspoon soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, sugar, bean sprouts and green onions and stir-fry 15 seconds or until all ingredients are thoroughly heated.

Correct seasoning, adding soy sauce or fish sauce to taste. Sprinkle with peanuts. Makes 2 to 3 entree servings or 4 appetizer servings.

Bananas are one of the most popular street foods in Thailand. Some vendors fry them in coconut batter, others baste them in coconut milk and grill them. Rice flour makes a particularly crisp batter. The bananas should be ripe but firm.

FRIED BANANAS

1 cup rice flour or cornstarch

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup freshly grated coconut (or unsweetened, dried, shredded coconut)

1 to 1 1/4 cups unsweetened coconut milk

6 to 8 bananas

3 cups oil for deep-frying, about

Combine rice flour, sugar, baking powder and coconut in bowl. Whisk in 1 cup coconut milk. Batter should be thick but pourable. If too thick, whisk in more coconut milk. Let batter stand 20 minutes.

Peel bananas and cut into thick, diagonal slices. Dip bananas into batter.

Heat at least 2 inches oil in wok or electric skillet to 375 degrees. Fry bananas 1 to 2 minutes or until golden brown, working in several batches so as not to crowd pan. Drain on paper towels. Makes 6 to 8 servings.