With a history dating to the 7th century, gaaeng buaan (แกงบวน) is one of the oldest known Siamese dishes and a significant culinary treasure offering a fascinating glimpse into the eating habits of a bygone civilization. The dark, hunter-green broth of gaaeng buaan is replete with various large animal offal, including heart, lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. These ingredients are simmered with a brew of medicinal leaf extracts, aromatic herbs, and a rustic paste featuring roasted ingredients, along with an array of salted and fermented fish ingredients. These elements bestow the dish with a complex, savory persona holding a range of different flavor notes, depending on the specific type of leaves used. This distinctive dish reflects the Mon-Dvaravati culture, pre-dating the mid-16th-century culinary revolution precipitated by the introduction of the spicy red chili peppers that brought a red-tinted gloss to Siamese cuisine.
Rather than relying on the heat of chili peppers, the pungency in gaaeng buaan comes from peppercorns and astringent roots. The dish’s savoriness is derived from fermented and salted fish products, a staple of the Mon-Khmer cuisine. Remarkably, the recipe for gaaeng buaan has remained almost unchanged for centuries, providing an authentic experience of old-school Siamese cuisine.
If you’re captivated by the intriguing history and forgotten flavors of Thai cuisine, then you’ll find the story of gaaeng buaan (แกงบวน) absolutely riveting. This dish not only represents the deepest culinary roots – the heart and soul of the region – but also serves as a reminder today for us to exert our best efforts to preserve its thousand-year legacy.
This water-based, spicy chicken curry is made with corn-yellow rendered chicken fat instead of coconut cream. Dark reddish-brown in color, this full-bodied and fatty beak-to-tail curry presents the chicken identity and personality in both a corporeal and tasty manner. Spices such as cardamom, nutmeg, mace and clove are added into the curry paste to temper the gamey-irony flavor of the offal and deodorize the meat, resulting in a luscious dish that is beautifully layered with textures and flavors.
Gaaeng raawn (แกงร้อน) is a colloquial Thai term that refers to ‘hot curry’. Today, gaaeng raawn is used to denote soups or curries served with steamed rice. While the precise origin of the term is unclear, gaaeng raawn (แกงร้อน) was deployed in the 1800s for a specific dish – a Siamese soup featuring glass noodles, cooked as either a coconut or a water-based soup with an assortment of dry ingredients revered in Chinese cuisine. The soup’s potential health benefits, combined with its ease of preparation and subtle yet profound flavor, made it a popular choice for entertaining large groups of people, of all ages and backgrounds. The soup is often augmented with fresh proteins: in its more luxurious versions, multiple proteins may be added, including a combination of chicken, pork, shrimp, squid, and crab meat. Thus, over the years, gaaeng raawn (แกงร้อน) was established as a staple source of comfort and warmth for people of all walks of life in Siamese society.
Gaeng rawang (แกงระแวง) is a curry bearing an unusual name and contradictory accounts regarding its appearance, lineage and origins. When I cook this dish, it is a rich and thick coconut-based curry made with a paste of fresh chilies, aromatics, spices and generous amounts of fresh turmeric, which adds warmth and gives the green chili color a slightly earthier, muted tone that resonates beautifully with the duck meat.
The duck meat is prepared separately and slow-braised in coconut cream before being cooked in the curry. This slow-braising process allows the coconut cream and duck’s fattiness to melt together, resulting in moist and flavorful meat with a hint of sweetness. The curry itself is seasoned to a salty and slightly sweet flavor profile.
This is a classical Siamese spicy curry that displays a spicy, salty and sweet flavor profile, and uses common curry ingredients such as pea eggplants and young green chilies with an interesting dry spice profile.
