The Southeast Asian Pantry: Ingredients from the Region and Beyond

The Oxford Companion to Food describes lemongrass, Cymbopogon citratus, as a perennial grass of tropical Asia, and Wikipedia places its native range in maritime Southeast Asia. In the kitchen it is used fresh, bruised or sliced, and it is a defining aromatic of Thai tom yum, which is why the path begins here.

Galangal is a rhizome related to ginger but sharper and more peppery in flavor, and it sits beside lemongrass in tom yum soup. Wikipedia traces its culinary and medicinal uses to Indonesia, while the wider genus is native to South and Southeast Asia.

Fish sauce is made by fermenting fish, most often anchovies, with salt for months, and it is foundational to the cuisines of Thailand, Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian coast. Wikipedia notes that sauces of fermented fish with meat and soybean were recorded in China 2300 years ago, so the Southeast Asian tradition builds on an older Chinese one. In Vietnam it becomes the base of nước chấm, a dipping sauce that is salty, lightly sweet and can be sour and spicy with lime and chili.

Tamarind supplies the sour note, as the tangy pulp inside the tree's pod, in South and Southeast Asian cooking, including the sweet, sour and salty sauce of Pad Thai. The Oxford Companion to Food and Wikipedia both place the tree in tropical Africa, with its native domestication in the dry savannas of the Sudanian belt, so this souring agent of Asian kitchens is an African arrival.

Rice noodles are made from rice flour and water and are a staple across Southeast Asian and southern Chinese cuisines, central to dishes such as Pad Thai. Wikipedia dates their origin to China during the Qin dynasty, when people from northern China settled the south and adapted their wheat noodle tradition to rice.

The mung bean, or green gram, is a legume mainly cultivated in East, Southeast and South Asia. It is used as an ingredient in both savory and sweet dishes, which makes it the pantry item here that crosses the line between the two.

Star anise is the star-shaped fruit of Illicium verum, an evergreen tree native to South China and northeast Vietnam, harvested just before ripening. Its flavor closely resembles anise, and China is its primary producing country, followed by Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.

Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the myrtle family, native to the Maluku Islands, or Moluccas, in Indonesia. Wikipedia dates their earliest recorded use to about 1500 BC, a long history that makes a fitting end at the region's own spice islands.