Thai Food Jake Phillips
M
y grandma, Yai, cooks the best Thai food. She was born in the 1950s in the province of Petchaburi, during a period of peace. Traditional cuisine was well-evolved and varied regionally. Yai learned to cook from her mother and other women in the family, eventually inheriting the kitchen responsibilities to save her mum from work. When she matured, she found her way to my grandfather’s heart through his stomach, so my mum says because he left another woman to start a family with her.
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then let it go. At heart, he was a gentle trickster, unafraid to be playful, and to laugh with a heavy chuckle before it turned into a severe coughing fit. Yai’s fussing and dieting with him soon became too late.
My grandfather, Da, quickly became fat, then slowly obese over the years. He was also a smoker, one pack a day, and the poor lifestyle caused an early health decline, heart disease, and finally, death when I was about fifteen. The day before Christmas, we got a call in Australia to say goodbye. My mum and I were closest to him, so we left immediately on a plane for Thailand, unknowingly leaving our entire lives behind.
Da’s funeral was held traditionally at a temple, and we grieved for three days over his displayed body. Many relatives came from the country’s farthest regions to pay their respects. Some old divides within the family were healed but later revived through the emotional turbulence of the week, stoked by the intense gossiping that Thai women are known infamously for. On the fourth day, the body was cremated. The smoke was black, thick, and smelled unusual to us. Monks paraded with brightly coloured strings around the temple and chanted prayers for Da’s soul and our family. Some of the rituals seemed superstitious, out of touch with the modern Buddhism of my temple-going days in Australia.
When we got there, Da made a slight recovery but then rapidly sickened after brief hope. Most of the family got a chance to say goodbye, but I never truly did. Instead, my teenage self was empty and confused because I loved him dearly for his big smile, his kindness, and for how funny he was. One time, he rescued me from a daddy-long-legs spider, grabbed it carefully in his hands, and pretended to eat it, to my horror,
After Da’s death, we stayed in Thailand for two more years without any real plan to support my grieving grandmother and uncle. Yai established a new purpose by cooking for us, and she became graceful, providing a matriarch figure that our family needed. She cooked in her little kitchen under a dim light, labouring over a gas bottle in the heat to make our favourite dishes. Mine was Khao Khluk Kapi, a sweet and savoury
