Honest Food Tales – Chris Pollard

Roti Love: An Addiction to Thai Desserts

Thai food is famous around the world for its spicy zest, rich aromas and crunchy ingredients. There’s no doubt about it that for me, one of the highlights of living in the Land of Smiles is the grub I’m treated to every day and the volume I can devour at quite minimal costs.

I’m lucky that I have high metabolism and can seemingly eat as I please without ever putting on an extra kilogram. This used to annoy me when I lived in London and worked tirelessly on my diet in an effort to ‘bulk up’. No matter how many calories I would stuff down my gullet the end result would always be the same – 70kg.

Fortunately nowadays, rather than continually aspiring to become a total beefcake I can put my body’s miraculous talent to better use through eating dessert!

Now I’m not sure many people would associate Thailand with great desserts and on the most part I would probably agree — but that hasn’t stopped me from over the 6 months of my life spent here so far acquiring an addiction to all things sweet with the jewel of my heart belonging to the humble street roti.

In its simplest form a Roti is a pan-fried wheat flour bread that, from a Western perspective, would be best served alongside a nice curry to sweep up the saucy goodness.

The Thai folk are no exception to this usage. For sure a good curry in Thailand deserves a roti for company but it is my belief that the tastiest variant of this super thin bread soaked in oily goodness comes from a street vendor with a couple of ‘sweeteners’ in their armoury.

You can find rotis everywhere throughout Thailand and quite typically, as my own desire demonstrates; they are a particularly popular snack for us ‘farang’ (aka foreigners). Thais themselves tend to not be great fans of sweets… But throw a roti under anyone’s nose and they’d find it hard to resist!

To make a roti like a pro first you’ve gotta thin out that wheat flour.

Then throw it on the hot plate and break in an egg if you’ve got a penchant for protein.
Drop in some perfectly sliced bananas.
Fold it all up and chuck in a bit of sugar.
Watch it bronze, brown and glisten in oil.
Slice it up into bite-size chunk before drizzling on some condensed milk alongside a tasty topping of your choice…
… and WELLAH! A simple, calorific yumminess served in a box with a stick.

I. Can’t. Stop. Eating. These! And at 25฿ apiece I don’t really care.

Come to Thailand. Eat banana rotis. Be happy ya’ll. 😉

Fed up of the London life Chris Pollard moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand in early 2013. Chris delights in experiencing local cuisine and is fortunate that Thailand has a lot to offer.