Shrimp and grits. The ultimate comfort food. This past winter I made shrimp and cheese grits for some dear friends. It’s one of my family’s favorite – a warm homey dish especially for those of us who grew up far below the gnat line. I’ve been tinkering with this dish for years. It’s my go-to for potlucks, teacher luncheons and friends or family in need of a warm food hug. The shrimp and grits were a hit and my friend thanked me with a lovely Facebook post, calling the dish “Thai Shrimp and Grits” and that got me thinking…. what makes a dish Thai? What’s in a name?
Roam if you want to
I was born in Bangkok but spent my formative years in a small town in the deep south. My cooking is influenced not only by my heritage and upbringing, but also by all the places I’ve lived and visited. And vagabond that I am, that’s all over the globe. I collect spices and cookbooks the way that other travelers collect souvenir shot glasses and tee shirts: with reckless abandon, shipping the cookbooks home when the load got too heavy for my luggage.
The Spice Worlds
In my spice cabinet lemon myrtle from Australia sits next to white peppercorns from my cousin’s garden, baharat from a little Lebanese grocery store in Atlanta and lavender from an apothecary in Paris. I collect spices the way some kids collect Pokémon cards, trading them with my other spice hunting friends. And I use all these different spices in my dishes, guided by fragrance and flavor, not origin. Is the resulting dish Thai because I am Thai? French because the spice was purchased in Paris? Or American because I’m American?
Tell me who are you
My Australian cousin and I discussed our frustrations with identity on a trip we took together to Thailand. We’re both comfortable in our own skins, assured in our self-identity. It’s how others try to define and categorize us based on appearance alone that’s annoying. Some days we felt like strangers in our homeland. My cousin was born and raised in Melbourne to Thai and Chinese parents. Except for her looks and genes, she is completely Australian in every sense of what the world attributes Australian to be: adventurous, outdoorsy, jolly world travelers.
And though I spent the first eight years of my life in Thailand, in no way do I act like a stereotypical Thai woman, however she is defined these days. I have the Thai vocabulary of a third grader from the early seventies. I don’t know how to curse in Thai. I don’t know any of the “adult” words nor any of the slangs that modern Thais use.
Thai language has evolved since the seventies. When my mom watches Thai TV on the internet at her home in Georgia, she complains of unfamiliar words and slangs. Often these garbled words are acronyms or variants of English words, intentionally mispronounced in the way that Asians often mispronounce English words, combined with a Thai prefix or suffix for good measure. Complete gibberish to the thousands who have long since left the homeland. It’s the Thai version of Spanglish — Thai-lish if you will. Dad complains that the younger generation no longer speaks “real Thai”, as if that were some long-lost dialect only spoken by the diaspora who have remained untainted by the rampant global electronic media.
And speaking of unfettered satellite TV and the internet, we are all really just one giant melting pot now — the entire wired and wi-fi’d world. Influence is no longer one-way. Cultures are fluid and ever evolving, harder to define or pin down. We all appropriate the best and worst of each other’s native foods and make them our own. Korean hotdog pizza bun made by a Korean-French-Vietnamese bakery in Virginia, kimchi carnitas tacos made by surfer dude food trucks in LA, Peruvian chicken hawked by Mexican cooks but actually invented by a Swiss chicken farmer. No wonder we are confused about nomenclature.
The Name Game
Defining a dish by its stereotypical ingredient is one way to name it. Notice how some people call a dish “Thai” just because there are chopped peanuts in it? Yet peanuts are New World crops, more Peruvian than Thai. Few Thai dishes actually have peanuts in them, and when they do, the ground up peanuts are there only as garnishes. Same goes for fiery hot chilies, which originated in the Americas but are associated with Thai food. Such dichotomy is lost on most, but amateur cultural anthropologist that I am, it drives me nuts.
Back to those shrimp and grits. Traditional southern shrimp and grits is flavored with bacon or salt pork, but I like to substitute andouille for the bacon because it’s spicy and less greasy. So is my shrimps and grits really Cajun because of the andouille? If I substituted chorizo for the andouille would that make it Mexican Shrimp and Grits? What’s in a name?
With the exception of a splash of Thai hot sauce and the Thai lady stirring the pot, the dish is more Cajun (andouille sausage) than Thai. But whatever you call it, it’s all good. The Thai Shrimp and Grits recipe can be found here.
