10-12 September, in Bangkok
The learning so far on this trip is that nothing is quite as venerable as imagined! Take Pad Thai, that delicious stir-fried rice noodle confection that is the defining dish of the national cuisine here and the staple of a visit to any Thai restaurant in the UK – and my first meal here in Bangkok last night. An ancient recipe? Not a bit of it, I discover. Pad Thai has been around for less than 75 years, having been invented after WW2 as a response to post-war food shortages.
The creation of new austerity dishes was a global phenomenon. In England, it was Lord Woolton Pie, named after Frederick, 1st Earl of Woolton, wartime Minister of Food from 1940. Meat being scarce, Woolton Pie was a vegetable pie, and that worked because everyone at home was ‘digging for victory’’ and growing vegetables aplenty. And there were similar dishes in Australia and New Zealand, where meagre meat rations were ‘eked out’ with lentils and beans, and in France, where ‘pain de guerre’ and ‘austerity cake’ saw the abandoning of haute cuisine and the use of whatever was available to make something, anything that looked like bread or cake. “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!”
Pad Thai was an interesting creation because as well as addressing food scarcity (there was far less rice available than before the war), it sought to create a new national dish around which a somewhat diverse people could gather (quite literally) and find a new common focus of unity. Pad Thai was created, in all its umami deliciousness, to eschew excesses of spiciness or blandness or meatiness and or fishiness that might suggest it was associated with a particular geographical region or ethnic grouping, and instead to be a dish of national unity, something for everyone! And so it seems to have become. What is ‘the taste of Thailand?’ Pad Thai!
National dishes define us. They set us apart and make us distinctive. “We eat haggis, the English don’t!” But sometimes national dishes do more than this: they can bring us together, across our divisions and despite our differences, as I was reminded – eating solo in Bangkok last night – when my obvious enjoyment of Pad Thai (despite my very obvious cultural distinctiveness) saw me fall into an enjoyable conversation with the couple on the next table… who were also eating Pad Thai!