1243. From JIRCAS Southeast Asia Liaison Office #8: What to eat on Thai New Year?

Last week was Thailand's Lunar New Year "Songkran Festival (Thai: สงกรานต์,)". According to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Thailand, 666,180 foreign tourists entered the country during the week of Songkran this year.

Songkran is set to run from April 13th to 15th and is a national holiday in Thailand. It is also known as the "Water Festival" and people celebrate the New Year by splashing water on each other.

Originally, Songkran was a time when families would gather together to purify Buddha statues and purify older family members, but later it developed into simply splashing water on each other. For this reason, it is also called the Water-Splash Festival.

There is a traditional Thai dish that is eaten during Songkran.

It is "Khao Chae."

Khao Chae (ข้าวแช่) means rice soaked in water (ข้าว khao = rice, แช่ chae = soak, cool).

It is said that this dish was originally eaten by the Hmong people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous region of northern Thailand, to celebrate the New Year, and was developed into Thai royal court cuisine during the reign of King Rama V. It was created as a refreshing dish to stimulate the appetite during the scorching heat when appetites tend to wane.

The rice in Khao Chae is soaked in ice water with floating jasmine flowers, giving it a faint jasmine scent. The rice is smooth and slides easily into your mouth.

The side dishes are mostly fried or sweet, and are neatly arranged one by one.

[Khao Chae]
- Rice (cooked jasmine rice is soaked in ice water to remove the slime, and jasmine flowers and other things are floating on it)
- Deep-fried bell peppers stuffed with pork
- Fried small red onions
- Dried sliced papaya? with sweet taste
- Coconut-flavored shrimp floss
- Sliced squid? Simmered in a sweet sauce
- Deep-fried small rolls of salted shrimp 
- Decorative slices of raw vegetables (green onions, cucumber, mangoes)

Most people at the restaurants I visited ordered Khao Chae and enjoyed this traditional dish.

The temperature reached 35°C every day, so eating rice soaked in cold water was a good way to survive the intense heat in Thailand.

Reference: 
MICHELIN GUIDE: Iconic Dishes: What Is Khao Chae, an Iconic Thai Summer Dish, and Where to Find It During Songkran
https://guide.michelin.com/th/en/article/features/what-is-khao-chae-son…

Contributor: KANAMORI Norihito, Representative, Southeast Asia Liaison Office