Did You Know About Sweet or sour, Pineapple has its pluses

The fruit has been a staple of Thai cuisine for many years, and new varieties are providing the opportunity to create new dishes.

When Thai families of the past planted their kitchen garden, they did not limit themselves to just the chillies, lime and kaffir trees, lemongrass, galangal and varieties of basil usually found in household plots today. They also included pineapple.

There was usually just one, and no one cared when it was going to bear its fruit, or whether that fruit would be sweet or sour. Once it did appear and was fully ripe, if it turned out to be sour it would be used for cooking, and if it was sweet it would be eaten fresh. Then the top of the fruit would be planted and left alone to produce a new plant.

Pineapples can be used to make a wide variety of dishes. First there are the well-known kaeng khuadishes, spicy curries with a sour bite. There are many varieties, like the one originally made from soft-shelled turtle. Sometimes farmers would catch these animals in their irrigation ditches and use the flexible shells or cartilage to make the curry. They would fry curry spices in coconut cream, then add the turtle, some makhuea prio (a sour fruit that resembles small tomatoes), pineapple, ma-uek (a small fruit that looks like fuzzy yellow aubergine) and taling pling (another sour fruit, this one sausage-shaped) and season the mixture with palm sugar and nam pla. These days the turtle is no longer used, and pork belly goes in instead, but people still call it kaeng khua muu taphap nam (pork soft shell turtle curry).

If a cook gets hold of some fresh or dried mussels, or some horseshoe crab eggs, these can also be made into a kaeng khua with pineapple. First the pineapple is chopped finely. The curry spices are fried in coconut cream and the chopped pineapple is added followed by the mussels or horseshoe crab eggs and some sugar and nam pla as seasoning. If the curry is not sour enough, some sour tamarind water can be added.

One of the simplest pineapple curries, and one that is rarely seen today, is made by boiling pieces of the fruit with pork bones. The result has a mild flavour but it is served with the spicy chilli paste called nam phrik ta daeng; grilled, dried, salted snakehead fish or fried mackerel and fresh vegetables.

Today we have a big repertoire of pad prio wan (sweet and sour stir-fries), but in the past there was one basic kind, made using taeng lan (a kind of jumbo cucumber) that had been hollowed out and cut into pieces. It was fried with peppers, pineapple and pork, then seasoned with palm sugar, nam pla and either sour tamarind water or lime. Today these dishes are made with different kinds of meat, fish and shrimp, together with bell peppers of different colours, tomatoes, baby corn and carrots, with tomato ketchup, nam pla and vinegar added as seasonings.

One authentically Thai dish that is often eaten for lunch during the hot season is khanom jeen sao namwith jaeng lawn. Jaeng lawn are balls of seasoned, pounded meat from a saltwater fish called pla krai (knifefish) which have been pressed flat and cooked in coconut cream. They are placed on top of the khanom jeen (fermented rice noodles) together with finely-chopped pineapple, fresh ginger and sliced garlic. Ground dried shrimp are sprinkled on top, and then coconut cream seasoned with nam pla is poured over the dish. Khanom jeen sao nam is easy to make, and can be prepared in 15 minutes if all of the ingredients are ready.

In households where all of the niceties are observed, a between-meals treat called ma haw will sometimes be served. It consists of minced pork fried with coarsely pounded toasted peanuts, palm sugar and nam pla to create a sweet-salty mixture. This is allowed to cool, then formed into pellets and set atop pieces of sweet pineapple to make bite-sized morsels. Garnished with slivers of chilli and fresh coriander leaves it makes a tasty snack that is still eaten today, if not as often as it once was.

Sapparot kuan is another pineapple-based snack made by slow-simmering chopped pineapple with sugar to form a thick paste. Some cooks add a little coconut cream, too, to give it a nutty flavour and prevent it from sticking to the fingers when eaten.

These are just a few of the many tasty dishes made from pineapple.

The development of the pineapple in Thailand has been an ongoing process. The variety originally cultivated commercially here is the Batavia. Most of these were initially grown in Si Racha district in Chonburi. Batavia pineapples are big, with yellow pulp that is very juicy. When you bite into one, the juice can spill out of your mouth and down your front. They are sweet, and in the past Thais loved them.

Over time, pineapple cultivation spread to Prachuap Khiri Khan province, which eventually became Thailand's leading pineapple-growing area. There are many factories there that tin pineapples for export, and the Batavia pineapples are now known as Si Racha pineapples. 
There are smaller varieties that are ideal for eating fresh, but not suitable for cooking. They were first grown in Phuket, and for that reason people call them Phuket pineapples. They are smaller than the Si Racha variety, and the pulp is crunchy, not overly juicy, and the taste has a nice balance of sweetness and sourness.

But they are not the whole story concerning the smaller Thai pineapples, which spread northward from Phuket to Chiang Rai province. There a new strain was developed that was crispier and sweeter than the Phuket variety. This is the origin of the Nang Lae pineapple. 
Today the rising star among Thai pineapples, and the one that growers hope will push past the earlier market champs, is a variety grown in Uttaradit province known as the Phu Soi Dao pineapple. They are sweet, crispy and have thin skin with eyes that do not go deep into the pulp, so that when the fruit is eaten they do not irritate the throat.

The story of the pineapple in Thai cuisine is a long one, and one that keeps branching out in new directions as new varieties are developed. So who knows what marvels may be waiting to take their place in the market for Thai pineapple lovers of the future?