My first-ever blog post was about eating Rick Stein's beef-dripping fish and chips by the harbour at Falmouth in Cornwall.
I enjoyed Rick's TV series on 'local food heroes' a few years ago. He visited food producers and restaurateurs all around the UK who were doing great things with local produce and bringing great food into the lives of local people.
In Koh Samui, Thailand, on a week's holiday for a friend's wedding, we found our own local food heroes. Three ladies cooking simple and delicious food in a roadside shack opposite the resorts lining Lipa Noi beach.
They just served the basics: red curry, green curry, papaya salad, pad thai, crispy pork, tom yum goong, tom kha gai, stir-fried meat and vegetables. But it was authentic and cheap and delicious.
Several of the wedding guests could be found there every lunch and dinnertime for the whole week, sitting on plastic stools around the plastic tables and washing down plates of delicious food with ice-cold Singha or Beer Chang.
Our food heroes' cooking was full of fresh local ingredients: shallots, chilli, spring onion, fish sauce, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, coriander, bamboo shoots, prawns, fish and meat. Every dish had zing, fire and the perfect balance between sweet, salty, sour and hot flavours.
It wasn't just the food that made them heroes. They offered an authentic, real eating experience on an island that is dominated by large resorts and tacky neon-sign bucket-drink nightclubs. The resorts opposite their roadside shack all had restaurants, but the food was invariably mediocre and incredibly overpriced by comparison.
Our food heroes' basic eatery was a place to escape to, where we got a friendly welcome and a taste of the real Thailand every day.
I enjoyed Rick's TV series on 'local food heroes' a few years ago. He visited food producers and restaurateurs all around the UK who were doing great things with local produce and bringing great food into the lives of local people.
In Koh Samui, Thailand, on a week's holiday for a friend's wedding, we found our own local food heroes. Three ladies cooking simple and delicious food in a roadside shack opposite the resorts lining Lipa Noi beach.
They just served the basics: red curry, green curry, papaya salad, pad thai, crispy pork, tom yum goong, tom kha gai, stir-fried meat and vegetables. But it was authentic and cheap and delicious.
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| Papaya salad |
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| Prawn green curry |
Our food heroes' cooking was full of fresh local ingredients: shallots, chilli, spring onion, fish sauce, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, coriander, bamboo shoots, prawns, fish and meat. Every dish had zing, fire and the perfect balance between sweet, salty, sour and hot flavours.
It wasn't just the food that made them heroes. They offered an authentic, real eating experience on an island that is dominated by large resorts and tacky neon-sign bucket-drink nightclubs. The resorts opposite their roadside shack all had restaurants, but the food was invariably mediocre and incredibly overpriced by comparison.
Our food heroes' basic eatery was a place to escape to, where we got a friendly welcome and a taste of the real Thailand every day.
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| Our local food heroes on Koh Samui |
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