Thai Cooking - why no bouquet garni technique?

[David48atTD]

This ...


Or this ...


To the MasterChefs out there, when cooking Thai Food, say a standard Tom Yum Gung/Goong,
why not use the French method of using a bouquet garni?

Using the standard kaffir lime leaf, lemon grass and galagan which admittedly, if chopped finely
can be consumed but are mostly left intact and pushed to the side of the plate, why not use bouquet garni?

If you do use one ... how do you use it?

[nidhogg]

I have no idea, but I do admit the amounts of sticks, leaves, roots, shoots and other inedible bits is one of the things that turns me off Thai food.

[Troy]

I use a bouquet garni for tom yum. I put the galanga, lemon grass and lime leaf into a chinese cabbage leaf, roll it and tie it with string. Works for me but wife does it the traditional way.

[DJ Pat]

I have no idea, but I do admit the amounts of sticks, leaves, roots, shoots and other inedible bits is one of the things that turns me off Thai food.

Especially when I'm ravenously hungry. I just wanna eat without hindrance. My ex wife used to hate it when I put her soups and curries through a sieve or colander. It made food more edible for guests too. She found it very useful though, and admitted it!

Strange that she didn't pass this trick on when her Thai friends would come and eat. As if spending half the meal sifting through debris for meat or veg and chewing on lumps of galanga or lemongrass was part of the experience.

Probably scared of losing face by obeying the farang way over the Thai one, especially in front of other Thais.

I'm glad we split up 16yrs ago.

[cyrille]

Strange that she didn't pass this trick on when her Thai friends would come and eat.

pantip.com went into meltdown a few years ago when Ramsey sieved out what Thais see as 'the good stuff' from tom yam.

I'm guessing that your wife was probably horrified, mystified or both, but there was a time in your relationship when she was too polite to say.

How difficult is it to just leave the inedible stuff in the bowl, anyway? Do you lot struggle with fruit peel too?

[DJ Pat]

I put my fruit peels to one side so I'm only enjoying the tasty flesh.





And I used to put all thoughts of my wife to one side when I enjoyed tastier flesh

[David48atTD]

^^ To me it's just logical to remove ingredients which are primary designed to flavour and not be consumed.

I don't want to keep pushing my food around.


Ditto for the Garlic shell/husk ... FFS, just use a garlic crush

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Jeff, you seem to become increasingly bizarre ...

[Maanaam]

I use a bouquet garni for tom yum. I put the galanga, lemon grass and lime leaf into a chinese cabbage leaf, roll it and tie it with string.

That's quite clever. It's never nice to trawl around the galanga and leaves, or to have to spit them out.

Thai DO use bouquet garni when they cook kha mu. Quite common. The cinnamon, star anise etc are placed in a cloth and tied. Actually, you can buy the little bags ready-made.
There's another dish too, for which herbs tied up in a bag to sequester them is used... racking my brains to recall, but I have seen it also for something that wasn't ka mu.

[DJ Pat]

How about pepper steak sauce packed full of whole peppercorns? Even worse...