Ever heard of Thailand’s vegetarian festival? The event happens annually, and each year Thais all over the country give up meat for around two weeks. We’re celebrating this year by providing info on the occasion and popping up at a few fun events this month from the 17th of October until the 25th.
The dates of Thailand’s Vegetarian Festival may vary each year, but there’s always a few constant themes from the celebration:
Health & Mysticism – Many of the legends about the Vegetarian Festival point to the tale of malaria stricken Chinese opera singers who began paying homage to the gods with a vegetarian festival. The desperate faith of these Chinese immigrants to Phuket, combined with rituals brought from China resulted in a miraculous healing for those involved. As a result, the festival became embedded in the culture, being held year after year with increasing fanfare. Unlike secular medicine in the West, health in Asia during this time would have been strongly tied to religious beliefs. Pointing to the mystical healing aspect of the origin story may help explain the resulting traditions to festival newcomers.
String of yellow ‘jae food’ flags adorn this local restaurant offering a vegetarian buffet.
Yellow Flags – When October rolls around the yellow flags come out abruptly and they’re everywhere, starting a few weeks before the festival. The flags are the most visible signs of the celebration and are used to demark where vegan or ‘jae‘ food is available. The Thai symbols on each flag look like the number 17 written in red text. You find them lining some popular street food territories, to products in your local grocery and convenience stores. Knowing the flag and the term can help vegan and vegetarian travelers identify food vendors during other times of the year as well.
Merging Culture – Southern Thailand because of trading routes on both sides of the peninsula, was an area with lots of merging cultural influences. During the last quarter of the calendar year, there are many other festivals, mostly with origins in the harvest season. The Vegetarian Festival is no different, but the unique blending of Thai, Indian, and Chinese culture is so fluid and unquestioned you may have a hard time distinguishing these traditions from each other. Chinese dragon dancers may appear in a parade juxtaposed with men carrying the likeness of a Hindu deity, and it may be one of the only times where locals visit modern Buddhist temples, traditional Chinese Buddhist temples, and Hindu temples in the same period.
Self-Deprivation – The period is a time of reflection, merit-making, fasting, asking forgiveness, and other tasks associated with purity. This is especially done by forsaking the most common desires. The way participants observe the festival varies by the beliefs of the practitioners with people abstaining from everything from sex to indulgent foods. The most iconic evidence of these practices is the event’s parades of people in trance-like states with a variety of objects impaling their faces.
Eating Vegan in Thailand
Fortunately for most of us, you can participate in the festival without walking on hot coals or driving sharp objects through your face. If there’s a form of austerity most common, it is observing the rules around food. You’ll find people around Thailand participating in this practice, even if they have no connection with the tradition. Most commonly in addition to not eating meat, there’s an added restriction of not eating pungent aromatics like onions and garlic. Since so many people do participate, the corresponding flags tell people where they can safely eat without worry of breaking the rules.
As a result of how widely celebrated the festival has become, everyone understands the concept of veganism. This is true, even if they don’t know the word vegan itself. This can be to your advantage if you’re vegan or vegetarian and need to request your food be cooked without animal products. Simply attaching the term ‘jae’ (pronounced jay) to the name of the dish will make it clearer to people, than anything you can enter into your translator.
Tofu becomes an important ingredient during the Vegetarian Festival and we’ll be demonstrating how people can make it at home.
If you’re a fan of Thai food, especially street food, a break from meat and spice heavy Thai dishes either feels like a welcome reprieve or cruel and unusual punishment. While many street food vendors may close their shops to enjoy a break, many will also begin offering quick-fire dishes minus the meat elements. When you’re exploring during this period, it’s important to double-check whether or not the vendors you’re visiting will be open as normal.
We recommend you’re informed, so you’re prepared to enjoy the festival. Vegetarian and vegan cooking in Thailand is having a revival. So this period is the best time to seek out special dishes that may not be otherwise offered, visit veg-friendly restaurants, or check out the best restaurants around the city to see if they’re accommodating observers in any special way.
The Courageous Kitchen team hosting a plant based cooking workshop at Err, now you’ll have a chance to taste some of the featured dishes on the upcoming special menu.
Special Menu at Bolan Err
We’re teaming up with the duo from the restaurants Bolan and Err to showcase a special menu this month. This effort piggybacks on momentum from a recent plant-based cooking workshop we offered at the restaurant. The menu includes familiar dishes like a spicy red curry with local gourd (pictured below). In this special version, where you might normally find pork or chicken, we’ve used our homemade organic tempeh instead. The curry covered tempeh is not only filling but nutrient-rich and promotes healthy digestion as well. For a lesser-known dish order ‘Lon‘, a coconut-based dipping paste that is served with fresh vegetables.
The aim of the menu is to introduce more people to plant based Thai food. All too often, much of the information surrounding plant based eating is limited to western perspectives and recipes. However, it would be a shame if people thought plant based food was only salads and pasta. The truth is that the abundance of nutritious Thai ingredients allows a large majority of Thai food to pretty seamlessly adapt to a variety of healthier diets.
Encouraging Thais to eat healthier and more plant-based may be as simple as having them reflect on how people ate during their grandparent’s generation. Much of this mission is in line with the ethos at Bolan, whose namesake calls diners to harken their palates back to the golden age of Thai cooking. This means carefully crafted food, organic ingredients, and no processed enhancers like msg, white sugar, or condensed milk.
Thai plant based menu coming soon to the menu at Bolan / Err in Sukhumvit 53.
During the vegetarian festival, pop into Bolan (located in Sukhumvit 53) and choose from two special plant-based menu sets. Each of the sets are taken from dishes our Courageous Kitchen team loves to cook. We hope you’ll enjoy, and while doing so you’ll be helping us fundraise as well.
Plant Based Kick Off Festival
Any festival observers or plant based foodies won’t want to miss the upcoming Root the Future Festival at Sansiri Backyard. The large, 2-day event will bring together a variety of vendors with all sorts of products. You can think of it as a sequel to the previous Plant Based Market, but with an even greater array of products to choose from. The weekend also coincides with the beginning of the Vegetarian Festival, so it will be a fun, first of it’s kind way to kick off this yearly tradition.
Find our booth at the event and grab fresh tofu and tempeh. But that’s not all! We’ll be teaching tofu making in two sessions each day, at 3:40pm and again at 5pm. This will be great for tofu lovers and families interested in working together to create this unique and delicious ingredient. There will be lots happening, but please come say hello while enjoying the festivities!
We’re excited to share the latest fun activity between our junior chefs and the super chefs over at Bangkok’s Marriott Marquis Hotel. If you’re unfamiliar, the hotel is one the largest in the region and they often play host to the internal conferences and other activities for the brand. The hotel chefs recently invited our Courageous Kitchen students to participate in a family lunch event they were organizing for the upper management from hotels in the region. The activity brought the families of local Thai staff to create their favorite home recipes in the hotel, with our Courageous Kitchen students helping out.
The recipes the families chose exhibited the diversity of Thai cuisine. A few of the dishes were popular Thai foods, like one granny’s recipe for pad thai, but not all of them. In fact, many of the recipes brought regional foods and little known homestyle recipes to be showcased. However, before we were welcomed into the hotel, the head chefs came to find out more about our charity and how we teach Courageous Kitchen students. To do this, they visited our outreach center in the outskirts of Bangkok to demonstrate two recipes for the students. One of the dishes was a crab curry and ended up looking and tasting amazing!
Not long after the chefs visited the community, we joined the chefs in their kitchens to help during their event. Our students began the day with a buffet lunch, and a behind the scenes tour of the hotel’s back kitchens. The students, most of whom have never visited a hotel, were introduced as “guests of the head chef” and treated to tastings, and conversations with the chefs about what they were working on. In the bread making kitchen, our students made all sorts of miserable faces as they tried sourdough bread for the first time! This was a big contrast with their elated reactions to all of the sweets on display in the pastry kitchen. Afterwards, the students came back to the banquet room where they helped prepare and serve the special Thai recipes, fruit, and desserts to the guests.
This kitchen exchange was the highlight of our activities over the past few months. Memories we made with the students and chefs will long be treasured by all involved. Most importantly, our students, who may likely think of street food when imagining a career in food and beverage, had the chance to visualize what’s possible if they continue to excel in the kitchen. Finally, to show their commitment to the development of the youth we serve, the hotel has also designated a special donation for improving our educational efforts. Bravo to all our students for doing so well in a new environment, and thank you to everyone for so warmly welcoming us!
Big special thanks to everyone at the Marriott Marquis for welcoming our students so warmly, especially the head chefs and their teams!
“Food is the ultimate equalizer… at the end of the day, everybody has to eat.” – Chef Yia Vang
Typically, you won’t find the Courageous Kitchen team giving you advice on which riveting television shows you should be watching. However, that may be able to change with the exciting new arrival of a show called, “Refugee Chef”. In six episodes the show will poignantly examine the challenging origins and immense contributions refugee chefs are making on the culinary scene all over the world. This includes Chef Yia Vang, a friend of Courageous Kitchen, who we were proud to feature in last year’s Courageous Family Dinner.
Watch the trailer for “Refugee Chef” on Channel NewsAsia:
Here’s the full list of chefs to be featured on Refugee Chef:
Episode 1: Queen of Nordic Vietnamese
Featuring: Anh Le
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Origin: Chef Ang Le and her family arrived in Denmark after escaping Vietnam by boat.
Episode 2: Hmong and Here
Featuring: Yia Vang
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Origin: Chef Yia was born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents escaped Laos during the Vietnam war.
Episode 3: Afghan at Last
Featuring: Javed Ghaderi
Location: Wollongong, Australia
Origin: Chef Javad escaped Afghanistan and would be deported three times, and spend his life savings before being resettled to Australia.
Episode 4: Beyond Bali
Featuring: Anita Saborn
Location: Paris, France
Origin: Anita’s family fled Indonesia to China where they traveled on fake passports to Paris, where they were granted political asylum.
Episode 5: Redefining Shangri-La
Featuring: Lobsang Dorjee Tsering
Location: Washington, DC
Origin: Dorjee was born to nomadic parents in Tibet, and had been a monk for 18 years before fleeing his homeland.
Episode 6: Aleppo Supper Club
Featuring: Ahmad Abo Aziz
Location: London, UK
Origin: The war in Syria brought danger and great tragedy to Ahmad and his family, and they left the city the loved looking for safety.
“People don’t see us refugees but we are there.” – Chef Anh Le
In today’s political climate, giving anything a refugee label is to condemn it to controversy and scandal. This show, however, bucks the trend and takes the weighty topic head on. In doing so the show humanizes the refugee situation in a way not always possible in today’s news headlines and sensational political commentary. We’re challenged to take a look into the lives of each of the chefs and to have a sampling of the obstacles they overcame to achieve success whether with their restaurants, efforts to challenge or their efforts to help others.
The show airs on Saturday, February 24th on Channel NewsAsia at 7:30pm Bangkok time. You can also stream the episodes on demand for free, here.
On October 9th, top chefs from Bangkok came together to raise money for the Courageous Kitchen at the W Hotel’s House on Sathorn. The event called Courageous Bangkok brought together the chefs in a benefit for Courageous Kitchen, which saw each restaurant provide special drinks and food. The event included the following restaurants:
The Oyster Bar
Quince
Bunker
The House on Sathorn
Bolan
Little Beast
Crab & Claw
Lobster & Oyster
Le Du
Sloane’s
Luca Cesarini
EAT ME
Appia
Lavanille
Blair Mathieson
Sensi
The nearly 130 year old house and former Russian embassy was a beautiful venue, the band “The Drivers” were rocking, and all the hard work that went into making this an awesome event from our hosts, sponsors, and participating restaurants was humbling. The event was part of larger initiative coming to Bangkok that aims encourage responsible and sustainable lifestyles among local consumers, starting with sustainable food. In addition to the restaurants on hand, there were representatives from Big Trees encouraging people to make pledges not to contribute to pollution, and Scholars of Sustenance explaining their plans to promote composting and food rescue throughout the city.
Our Courageous Kitchen students also stepped up by supporting the chefs and kitchen teams preparing and serving food. The were responsible for both simple tasks such a distributing utensils, and more complex tasks such as plating and garnishing dishes prepared for guests. Funds raised at the event will be used to continue to improve our cooking space, safety equipment, and to provide all the needed supplies on into 2017. Thank you to everyone who participated in any way during the event and we hope there will be many more happenings to share with you in the future!
Photos by volunteer photographer Kelly Tobias. For more photos from the event, be sure to visit the Courageous Kitchen Facebook Page.
In the main community where Courageous Kitchen operates, people struggle to feed their families. It’s not uncommon in this poor neighborhood outside of Bangkok’s tourist sites to see families scavenging through the trash for leftovers that can be used to feed their families.
“Food isn’t a Fun Topic for Everyone”
Often, this includes children who can dig through trash piles without drawing ire or attention from those nearby. So when you bring up food in this community, versus the food loving crowd of teens a similar age at Bangkok Patana (a prestigious international school in Bangkok), the reactions are drastic.
I’m proud to say we’re changing that and if you’re new to our organization we do it in three important ways:
We distribute nutritious food, most often fresh produce, to the families in the community.
We provide a pre-school for students 3-6 years old, and a Saturday school with English and cooking lessons. Lunch is provided to all of the students and adults participating.
Courageous Kitchen identifies the most vulnerable families and provides emergency support for housing, medical expenses, or emergency needs.
This three-fold, holistic approach to reaching out to the community means we’re changing attitudes about food and our students anticipate cooking classes and opportunities to practice their cooking skills at home. The proof is the look on their faces when it’s time to cook!
We couldn’t do this without your support, thank you!
