The South food

Southern Thailand consists of a slender peninsula stretching down to Malaysia, and is dramatically different from the rest of the country in both scenery and culture. Lush jungle, craggy limestone mountains and long stretches of beach are the most familiar features of the landscape, rendered fertile by eight months of rain a year and a near-equatorial sun. Cultivated areas tend to be huge rubber and coconut plantations rather than the rice fields and orchards of other parts of Thailand.

The mosque adds its distinctive dome to the landscape, for the South is home to most of Thailand's Muslims, its largest religious minority. They are mostly concentrated in the provinces adjacent to Malaysia, where Malay is spoken as commonly as Thai. In other southern provinces such as Songkhla and Phuket, Chinese predominate.Southern food reflects all this diversity, together with other aspects of the past when traders form India and Java sailed into the numerous ports of the peninsula. The coconut, so much part of the scenery, is used to the full, its milk thickening soups and curries, its oil for frying, its grated fresh as a condiment. Cashew nuts and pineapple also grow in volume, and form a familiar part of the cuisine. The warm seas produce an abundance of fish, big lobsters, crabs, mussels squid, prawns and scallops, prepared simply by steaming or frying, or more elaborately by cooking in a clay pot with noodles. Southerners like their food chilli-hot, and are also fond of the bitter taste imparted by a flat, native bean called sataw.A dish very typical of the South is Kaeng tai pla, a very hot curry made with fish stomach, green beans, pickled bamboo shoots and potato. Fresh turmeric turns this and many other southern curries a distinctive yellow. There is even a dish that is called simply "yellow curry" (kaeng leuang), made from fish, green squash, pineapple, green beans and green papaya. With its many Malay, Javanese and Indian influences, together with its own creativity and abundance, the South Produces an extraordinary range of curries, made from just about anything.The Chinese dish of thin rice noodles known as Khanom chin appears here in a spicy Malay style fish curry sauce, served with dishes of cucumber, pineapple, pickled cabbage and other fruits and vegetables. There is a chicken speciality known as kai betong (named after the town of Betong on the Thai-Malaysian border) that consists of steamed chicken seasoned with soy sauce and then stir-fried with green vegetables. Roti, a round flat wheat bread descended from the Indian breads, is a real southern favourite, totally assimilated into the local culture. There is a large range, including some satisfying breakfast rotis.Coffee, grown in the South, is a popular beverage and coffee shops can be found throughout the region. In some parts, the coffee will be roasted on the premises with a charcoal-fired boiler, and served with a range of snacks that can include steamed buns filled with pork or bean paste, dumplings filled with shrimp or pork, the thick rice soup, and a form of doughnut called pa thong ko.

Reference http://www.sawadee.com/thailand/food/regional.htm