Southern Thai

Southern Thai food, from the peninsula stretching down toward Malaysia, is the spiciest and most pungent cooking in the country, built on fresh turmeric, fierce bird's-eye chilies, and a heavy hand with shrimp paste (kapi) and a fermented fish-innards sauce called tai pla. The benchmark dish is gaeng tai pla, a thick, salty, deeply funky fish-organ curry brightened with kaffir lime leaf. Khua kling is dry-fried minced meat — no liquid — coated in a turmeric-and-chili paste so hot it is usually eaten in small bites with plain rice and raw vegetables. The region's Muslim communities give it massaman curry, a mild, fragrant beef stew with cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, and potatoes that points back to Persian and Indian trade. Coconut shows up constantly, including in khanom jeen nam ya, fresh rice noodles drowned in a coconut-and-fish curry, and meals come piled with raw vegetables and herbs to cool the heat.