A 'ga tip' is a storage box made from reeds that is used to hold sticky rice. It allows the rice to breath to release moisture and is ideal to carry sticky rice on picnics.

Thai people eat a lot of steamed food and they have their own style of steamer. You can see from the photograph that it looks like an upturned hat made of reeds inside a tall (about 20cms, 8 inches) aluminium steaming pan.

Uses
It has some advantages over a regular western pan steamer: The base of the hat sits inside the pan so the food is steamed from all sides not just the base. Also when steaming sticky rice the rice can sit as a ball in the base of the steamer, and to turn the rice over it is simply a matter of 'flipping' it inside the reed basket.

Cleaning
It is not normally necessary to clean this steamer. If it has been used for stick-rice, let the rice dry then brush it off the steamer with a hard brush. It is usually enough to simply let this steamer dry out and brush or shake off food residues.

Notes
Thais also use the Chinese steamer for flatter foods, this steamer is mainly used to steam sticky (glutinous) rice and to steam parcels of food.

This is the Thai mortar and pestle, it's much larger than the western version. In the west the mortar and pestle are used to crush only fine spices, but in Thailand cuisine, many ingredients are crushed in this vessel, chillis, papaya and sauces are all mixed and created directly in the mortar. 'bok bok' is the name used to describe the action of crushing ingredients in a mortar, mimicking the sound.

Description
The mortar is made of clay, 15cms (6 inches) high, while the pestle is usually made of hard wood, 30cms 12 inches long. You can obtain both from a Chinese or Asian supermarket.

Usage
To crush ingredients, raise the pestle and bring it down in repeated blows against the food using the weight of the pestle to help you. This is a very different action to the grinding action used with a western pestle.

Thai people also use the Chinese style wooden steamer shown above. This is widely available and comes in a variety of sizes. The one show above is available in 3 or 5 layers, and fits on a regular 22cm (9 inch) western boiling pan.

Uses
This style of steamer is used for larger items, chinese dishes like dim-sum and for steaming fish and even chicken legs. It's not suitable for rice steaming, as the slots are too wide and the rice falls through, for that use the Thai steamer.

Cleaning Notes
Clean it with water and washing up liquid, these are not suitable for cleaning in a dish washer because the wood soaks up the corrosive chemicals.

Tom yum is a classic Thai spicy soup that is served hot. A tom-yum pan is how it's kept hot when it's brought to your table. There are many variations to this pan, but this is a common shape. Below it, is placed a source of heat, I use an oil burner, but more commonly a special burning tray is used, a charcoal burner, or burning embers from a fire.

A variation of it is used for Isan Suki Yaki; the Isan variation of the Japanese dish. For that variation, the centre is solid - there is no hole in it, meat is fried on the centre section and the juices drain into the soup as it cooks.

You can also use tealight candles with this pan to keep soup hot, but candles can only be used to keep food warm, not cook it.

This is a more fancy variation, the lid shown lower right fits onto the pan, the chimney vents the gases from an oil burner or candles.

And my final tom yum pot. This one is perfect for herbs, some herbs react with the metal pans and this is a great way to cook those.

An essential item in any Thai kitchen is the meat cleaver. Thai recipes use meat on bones, and without a good heavy meat cleaver you will find it very difficult to hack through the bone. I use two cleavers, a large heavy one for bone and a smaller, more controllable one, for chopping meat cuts.