The galangal problem
Why we stopped substituting ginger, and the three farms in Chiang Rai that now supply our root every week.
Notes from our kitchen on the slow craft of Thai stock — what we simmer, where it comes from, and why the best things take all day.
Why we stopped substituting ginger, and the three farms in Chiang Rai that now supply our root every week.
A clear tom yam starts in the first twenty minutes. Here is what we pull off the top, and what we leave.
Our overnight pot, the temperature we never let it cross, and how we know it is done without a thermometer.
“Pok pok” is the knock of a wooden pestle against a clay mortar — the rhythm every som tam begins with. We kept the name because everything we make still starts there: by hand, one pour at a time.
First-press nam pla against the supermarket bottle — a tasting across nine producers from Rayong.
Acidity swings with the season. How we adjust the bowl when the fruit turns sweet.
Roasted nam prik pao, aged a week before it ever touches a bowl. The reason for the wait.