The average Bangladeshi person is not accustomed to Thai food. Dishes like Thai Style Garlic Prawn are less likely to be cooked at home. It is something you usually eat in a restaurant in Dhaka. And trust me when I tell you there are way too many restaurants in Dhaka. If the Mughals saw Dhaka now they would probably call her the city of restaurants rather than the city of mosque. To be honest Dhaka would probably snatch a bunch of other nicknames like the city of pollution, city of traffic and so on, but none of those names are related to cooking so I’ll just put a lid on it.

The reason I brought up eating Thai Style Garlic Prawn in one of the many restaurants is because these restaurants are not very stringent about naming their dishes or respecting the culinary arts. Like pizza chains in Bangladesh use beef curry as topping for pizzas. Now does that taste good? Maybe, I never dared to try it. Is it forbidden? No. not at all. But my question is why would you add beef curry on pizza? It is possible to do it but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It is like eating a kitkat without breaking off the fingers and just biting the whole thing. It is not illegal but it is just disrespectful towards the food.

Now my little tangent was to badly explain to you that Bangladeshi restaurants do not follow tradition at times. So the “thai” food offered in most Bangladeshi restaurants could not be labeled as proper Thai food. The high end restaurants do offer actual Thai food but they are hugely outnumbered by the restaurants I am talking about. These have names like Ma-Babar Doa Chinese & Thai (Father and Mother’s Blessing Chinese & Thai) or Thai Chinese Indian Fast Food. To make matters even more confusing, Chinese and Thai food are considered to be very similar by most Bengali. Generally Thai food falls under the umbrella term Chinese food.

While cooking one of Moni Dadi’s other recipes I was able to distinguish between Thai food and Chinese food. Soy sauce is more commonly used in Chinese cuisine, while Thai cuisine prefers the use of fish sauce. This is what I had learned previously and I was satisfied then. But today I wanted to learn more about how these two cuisines differ and if what Moni Dadi made actually qualifies as Thai Style Garlic Prawn.

Thai cuisine’s history is actually more interesting than I expected. At first I asked AI chatbots what defines Thai cuisine but what they told me was just a vague answer that could be applied to almost any style of cuisine. But one thing they were right about is Thai food preferring stir fry. But from a little digging of my own, I learned that the tradition of stir frying or deep frying came into Thai culture with ancient Chinese migrants almost 1,400 years ago.

Thai food prefers the use of more herbs and spices as well to have a strong flavor and aroma. And historically fish, plants, and herbs were more used in Thai cuisine while large quantities of meat was avoided due to the influence of Buddhism in the area.

After the 17th century Thai cuisine saw the influence of the west in the form of Portuguese, Dutch, and French. Luckily Thailand was never colonized but the west left its mark on Thai food. So today Thai cuisine is considered to be a simple yet flavorful combination of Eastern and Western cuisine.

So does today’s recipe of Thai Style Prawn Garlic qualify as Thai food? Well Moni Dadi used soy sauce and based on my learning from the internet that would disqualify it from being Thai. But we all know that there are more nuisance to the art of cooking. And does it really matter if the dish matches the textbook requirements for being Thai food? Having a wonderful home cooked meal that you can share with everyone is the most important part.

The last line is probably the justification the average restaurant owner uses while serving noodles that they call spaghetti.

Now about the dish itself, I cannot confirm if it is Thai or not but I can say that it is delicious. I had it with Thai Fried Rice, another one of Moni Dadi’s recipes, and the combination was spot on. I would highly recommend trying them together.