Palace Cuisine

Palace Cuisine Within the palace walls: refinements of the royal cuisine
It "was a town complete in itself, a congested

network of houses and narrow streets, with gardens, lawns, artificial lakes and shops. It had its own government, its own institutions, its own laws and law-courts. It was a town of women, controlled by women."

Dr. Malcolm Smith, who served as physician to some members of the Thai royal family in the early years of this century, was describing the innermost part of Bangkok's mile-square Grand Palace known as the "Inside," where the women of the court lived. At its peak, during the reign of King Rama V, the "Inside" had a population estimated at nearly 3,000, a select few of them bearing the exalted rank of Queen but the great majority ladies-in-waiting and lower attendants.

The "Inside" was misunderstood by many outsiders, particularly foreign missionaries, who viewed it as the most obvious manifestation of polygamy, an institution of which they strongly disapproved. Even a few outsiders who were granted entry, like Anna Leonowens, insisted on referring to it as "the harem," its female guards as "Amazons," and its inhabitants as quasi-prisoners. This view actualty had a lot more to do with Western fantasies than with fact.

In truth, the inner palace can be more accurately viewed as a kind of ultra-ex-clusive finishing school, a place where the most refined aristocratic skills were perfected and passed on. The daughter of a nobleman who had spent all or part of her youth in this rarefied atmosphere was regarded as highly desirable by any future husband, for she would surely be adept at supervising an elegant household of her own in the outside world.

During their ample leisure time, the royal women learned such delicate arts as traditional Thai floral decoration, threading fragrant blossoms into intricate wreaths and molding clay into miniature dolls of marvelous detail. Above all, they learned how to prepare various foods that were not merely more subtle in flavor than their outside versions but highly memorable in visual appeal.

The hallmarks of the so-called "palace food"— which was, in fact, to be found in most aristocratic homes as well—were painstaking hours of preparation and an artistic sense of presentation. Foi Thong, for instance, is a blend of egg yolks and sugar transformed into a nest of silky golden threads, while Look Choop are tiny imitation fruits shaped by hand from a mixture of bean paste and coconut milk and colored to exactly match their real-life models. Mee Grob, which one writer has called "the epitome of palace cuisine," involves crisp rice noodles and shrimp in a sweet-sour sauce, so time-con-suming to make properly that it was once seldom found in restaurants.

The most visible of palace skills was the art of fruit and vegetable carving. Watermelons, mangoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, spring onions, chilies, ginger root and innumerable other garnishes and delicacies became realistic flowers, leaves and abstract designs through the deft use of a knife, sometimes requiring as long to prepare as the dishes that they adorned.

Royal polygamy ended under King Rama VI. A few resisted relocation—at least one was still in residence as late as the 1960s—but gradually, the ladies of the "Inside" and their numerous attendants left their protected existence and entered another, very different one outside the high walls. Even today, the once-teeming streets and elegant palaces are closed to most outsiders, though some women continue to come and, sitting in the shade of venerable trees, continue to make the beautiful garlands and other flower arrangements presented by the royal family at the countless ceremonies over which they preside.

Fortunately, though, palace cooking did not vanish along with the hidden world where it originated. It survived through the descendants of the royal women and, especially in recent years, has been discovered by a wider public through several restaurants that take pride in their re-creations of this unique cuisine.