Thai Food & Travelwith Kasma Loha-unchit

Kasma Loha-unchit · Thai cooking 1985–2020

Authentic Thai recipes, ingredients & stories

For 35 years Kasma taught Bay Area cooks to balance hot, sour, salty and sweet the way it's done in Thailand, and led food lovers on trips across the country. She retired in 2020. Her recipes, ingredient guides and essays are preserved here so they stay easy to find, search and cook from.

60 recipes · 34 ingredient guides · 16 favorite brands · 90 articles

Green Papaya SaladGreen Papaya Salad Stewed Beef Rice Noodles – "Boat Noodles"Stewed Beef Rice Noodles – "Boat Noodles" Spicy Basil ChickenSpicy Basil Chicken

Recipes by course

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Kitchen favorites

Recipe · Noodles & Rice Dishes Pad Thai Thai-Style Stir-Fried Noodles Recipe · Salads Green Papaya Salad Som Tam (or Som Dtam) Recipe · Soups Coconut Seafood Soup with Galanga Dtom Kah Talay (or Tom Kha Talay)Coconut Seafood Soup with Galanga (Dom Kah Gai) Recipe by Kasma Loha-unchit. Recipe · Curries Chicken and Roasted Eggplant in Red Curry Sauce Gkaeng Ped Gkai (or Kaeng Ped Kai) Recipe · Main Courses Spicy Basil Chicken Gkai Pad Gkaprow (or Gai Pad Kaprao) Recipe · Desserts Coconut-Flavored Sticky Rice with Mangoes Kao Niow Ma-muang (or Khao Niow Mamuang) Recipe · Soups Hot and Sour Prawn Soup Dtom Yum Gkoong or Tom Yum Goong Recipe · Salads Northeastern-Style Spicy Minced Chicken Salad Lahb Gkai or Laab Gai or Larb Gai

The essential Thai pantry

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Learn to cook Thai

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Article The Spirit of Thai Cooking What is authentic Thai food and how ingredients can vary, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Article Cooking "to Taste." Cooking 'to Taste' - never blindly follow a recipe, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Article Creating Harmonies with Primary Flavors Creating Harmonies with Primary Flavors to create authentic Thai tastes, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Article Making a Curry Paste from Scratch Making a Curry Paste from Scratch, page 1, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Article Using your Wok Using a wok, how to adapt the wok to your situation, an article by Kasma Loha-unchit. Article Thai Fast Food: Crowded Sidewalks and Waterways Street food in Thailand, an article by Kasma Loha-unchit Article Learning to Cook Thai (Page 1) Learning to Cook Thai (Page 1) -- how to go about learning this cuisine by Michael Babcock

About Kasma

Kasma Loha-unchit grew up in Thailand, outside Bangkok, learning to cook from her mother. She began teaching Thai cooking classes in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985 and leading trips to Thailand in 1986, and wrote two cookbooks: It Rains Fishes, winner of the Julia Child Cookbook Award, and Dancing Shrimp. She retired from classes and trips in 2020 after 35 years.

Her story & cookbooks

About this archive

Kasma and her husband, Michael Babcock, put thaifoodandtravel.com online in 1998, and it grew into one of the web's deepest resources on Thai cooking. It hasn't seen new content for many years. This site brings the cooking material — recipes, ingredients, brands and articles — into a fast, searchable home, with the original pages' words and photographs.

Much more of the original site is still available at the Internet Archive, including the blog, trip journals and class menus. Pages there can load slowly, not every image was captured, and some blog slideshows no longer work — but it's well worth exploring.