Thailand's Vegetarian Festival

[Guest guest]

March 1, 2009

CHOICE TABLES

In Thailand, Vegetarians Find a Place at the Table

By GREGORY DICUM

 

Participants in Phuket's annual Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods

follow a strict set of moral guidelines during its course,

refraining from drinking alcohol, fibbing, killing, gossiping and,

among other things, eating meat. Yet if the festival is known at all

outside the region, it is for this small detail: In English, it is

usually called the Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

Put this way, it sounds so earnestly wholesome. And to me, a

longtime vegan, it sounded ideal. On many of my previous visits to

Thailand, trying to find meat-free meals had been a challenge,

ending up in forced marches and rumbling stomachs. Even with the

best of intentions — and with Thai friends interceding and

explaining my predilections carefully — I have found Thai cooks hard

pressed to skip the fish sauce. But of late, things have been

changing. So I thought the festival would be a good starting point

for an exploration of a broader growth of vegetarian food within

Thailand's cuisine.

But things in Thailand always turn out to be more complex — and more

fascinating — than one expects. " I thought that it would be a

celebration of our lifestyle, " said Maria Brenner, a vegan from Los

Angeles I had met at the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, " but this is

something else. "

The festival is a wildly syncretic melee, combining elements of

Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the traditions of Ming

Dynasty secret societies. During the nine-day festival, which honors

the North Star at the start of the ninth lunar month, usually in

October, household gods are brought to the city's elaborate Chinese

temples.

In Thailand, food made without animal ingredients is called jeh, a

term generally used interchangeably with the Western idea of

vegetarian food, particularly at restaurants frequented by

foreigners. But it also has a deeper dimension of religious purity:

at the festival, only food made at the ornate, bustling shrines is

sanctified and thus technically jeh. Devout participants come each

evening to collect their jeh meals in steel tiffin carriers. The

food, prepared by cheerful volunteers in cauldrons as big as

bathtubs, is free. If it has a certain overcooked institutional

quality, it is from an institution that knows its way around herbs

and spices: flavors are assertive and complex.

But the real action was in the streets. In front of each temple was

a buzzing sidewalk market of food stalls, each flying little yellow

flags — the color of the Chinese Emperors — signifying participation

in the festival. It was a sort of alternative Thailand; a vegetarian

paradise where I could just plop down and eat whatever mysterious

morsel was dropped in front of me.

The combined influence of newly strict interpretations of Buddhist

principles, Western notions of vegetarianism and prominent Thai

vegetarians like Chamlong Srimuang (he led last year's

antigovernment protests and started Suan Pai, a chain of indifferent

vegetarian restaurants) has resulted in a growing contingent of

restaurants serving vegetarian Thai food — a welcome addition to one

of the greatest eating countries on Earth. It fits in well with

Thailand's culinary sophistication, a tradition that prizes

freshness and bold, but balanced, flavors.

After the festival, I headed to the northern city of Chiang Mai to

taste how the country's vegetarian currents come together most

completely. I visited Khun Churn, a pioneer vegetarian restaurant

that has just moved to a new location in an outdoor garden on a

quiet street. Students from the nearby university, visitors and

stylish but casual locals gather for painstakingly crafted

vegetarian versions of classic Thai dishes. I tried mieang ta krai

bai cha pla, bundles of fresh herbs (including lemon grass, mint and

cilantro) mixed with roasted sesame, peanuts, coconut and chili

paste set atop a pretty flower of dark green betel leaves. I wrapped

one into a zingy little bundle and popped it into my mouth,

marveling at the peppery bite that demonstrated the incomparable

qualities of Thai food in Thailand: rare ingredients, sublimely

fresh and prepared by masters.

 

Chiang Mai has dozens of cooking classes, including a few all-

vegetarian ones. I took a mixed class from Gap's, a highly regarded

school run by a guesthouse that also runs a vegetarian restaurant.

In a big, leafy garden, my fellow students — a pair of French

sisters, an Israeli couple — and I learned that, aside from

uncompromising freshness, the secret to Thai cooking is having

someone else do the prep work. A team of cheerful assistants handed

us freshly chopped ingredients at just the right moments to follow

along with our instructor, who went by the nickname Joe, as we stood

before individual outdoor woks.

Green curry paste? Tom yam jeh? Steamed pumpkin? No problem at all

when the ingredients — farm fresh shallots, galangal, lime rind,

coriander root and so on — are ready to drop in the pot. Still, Joe

worked us relentlessly, moving the group through seven or eight

complete recipes in a few hours. We even left with a to-go bag full

of pad thai and spring rolls we had made. I ate them later that

night, on my way out of the country: easily the best food I had ever

had in an airport, and the perfect — and perfectly ephemeral —

souvenir.

SPLENDOR IN THE LEMON GRASS

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival (www.phuketvegetarian.com) is in the

fall. All events are free; streetside food is inconsequentially

cheap. There is also a more intimate vegetarian festival at the same

time in Bangkok.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/travel/01choice.html