With spending more than just my childhood in Thailand, I have loved this country none less than my home. From its beautiful fun-filled beaches to its color enriched hills, I have experienced it more than my home country, India. Spending your vacation without trying its local food is the biggest mistake you can ever make. I shall talk about it more in a future post, but today I’ll share with you just one but my main delight that makes up every single day of my stay there, how long or frequent, it may be. I’m sure this goes for many more people and they definitely can’t deny this. Coconut.

Healthy but Tasty. Sweet but Salty.

With many health benefits and its great savory taste, this definitely is my favorite. Thai dishes are incomplete without this but yes rice as well, especially the Thai sticky rice. The great thing about these desserts, also known as Khanom in Thai, is that they consist of an equal balance of salt and sweet. The rice base provides the salty flavor while the coconut cream gives the essential sweetness. Here are the dishes I can’t live without and are among the reasons for my trips to Thailand.

Khao Neow Ma Muang

Mango Sticky Rice

It is the most famous and easily available Thai dessert. This extremely scrumptious dessert consists of glutinous Thai sticky rice mixed with coconut cream. It is served along with riped golden-yellow mango slices. This dish is topped with coconut milk with moong dal and at times sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Kaeng Khiao Wan

Coconut Green Curry

When it comes to eating healthy and extremely nutritious but tasty, Thai cuisine definitely is A-listed. Kaeng Khiao Wan is a part of this cuisine’s mains which has my fav Coconut cream at its core. It would put your tongue on an outrage with its hot and spicy chilies. Yet it will fulfill your hunger with the sliced Thai eggplant; whilst the lemongrass and basil leave serving the much-needed freshness.

Coconut ice-cream

This sweet and crunchy dessert is served in the half-cut empty original coconut shell. The soft coconut skin is peeled to be left curled up. The hawker then adds scoops of fresh coconut ice-cream. It is then topped with coconut cream, and at times chocolate sauce as well. Peanuts are then sprinkled on top to complete the serving.

Coconut water

Thai coconut water is naturally sweet in taste which provides extreme freshness in the hot weather there. The taste is definitely incomparable to those found elsewhere. This delight is completed after having the soft coconut skin, to be peeled off from the shell’s inner wall.

Coconut Shake

This chilled beverage is my go-to beverage with spicy Thai dishes. With coconut skin flakes along with crushed ice filled with coconut milk, you can experience a mind spinning texture of both soft but crunch. It's extremely refreshing. I first, tasted it during my trip to Krabi, when I went to have lunch in a food corner beside Holiday Inn Krabi. THis food corner has many amazing beverages and food to offer and has developed well over the years.

Khanom Tako

Thai Coconut Jelly

These 3x3 cms squared jellies are traditional to Thailand with the jelly wrapped up in banana and pandan leaves. These sweet-salty delights have jasmine rice jelly as its base stacked with thickened flour and coconut cream. It is ultimately topped with moong dal or golden corn or... yes! Topping of choice. The base can at times variate with black bean, water chestnut jelly and much more.

Khanom Krok

Coconut-rice pancakes

Khanom Krok is an ancient coconut dessert often prepared by street vendors but can be still harder to find. It is an extremely delicious pudding-like pancake with rice and coconut milk as its base. The rice makes up its salty batter while coconut makes up the sweet one. These are cooked in a hot frying pan. They can be served to make a circular dish or also flavored with toppings like green onion, golden corn, pineapple or anything that you feel can add to its simple yet sumptuous taste.

There are way many more dishes made up with the coconut love, and I love them no less. I definitely suggest you try them and then fall for them as well! I would love to hear your palette of coconut dishes, so do comment them down. I'll surely give them a try and tell you about my likes for it!