"Don't Improvise!"

Chef Rhoda reached a breaking point when she saw that Alex and Andrew had added the noodles to the soup. "The noodles are served separately! You didn't read the recipe!" The boys, working as a team, were a veritable sideshow of hilarity, cracking each other up with one liners and silly voices, working all the while. Andy put together the tray of condiments that accompany the curry soup ("kao soi"):Meanwhile, Alex worked on the soup itself, a blend of chicken stock and yellow and red curry pastes, full of chicken chunks. Chef Rhoda told us that this was one of her favorite dishes, and here they were, not following directions. Andy looked at me sheepishly. "Well, I've done it again," he said. I suggested that they strain out the noodles and rinse them off. It really was wonderful soup.Thailand is unique among Southeast Asian countries: it has never been occupied by a Western nation. It is a very functional nation, with Western-savvy rulers who adapted yet remained autonomous. Consequently, Thai cuisine is relatively free of outside culinary influences, and therefore quite distinctive.

Derrick and I made this morning's "appetizer," Miang Kum, a plate full of garnishes, some special sauce, and spinach leaves. You pile little spoonsful of the minced garnishes (dried shrimp, toasted coconut, fried peanuts, shallots, chilies, ginger, and lime -- including the rind) onto a spinach leaf. You drizzle on some sauce, made with coconut sugar, fish sauce, and ground coconut and peanuts. You fold it up and stick it in your mouth and seriously: it explodes with flavor. Party food, without a doubt.

With our mouths exploding, we all set about cooking. Fish sauce is the soy sauce of Thailand. It's remarkably stinky but mellows immediately when mixed with other ingredients. They use a lot of coconut cream and tamarind juice, as well as that great almost clear sweet chili sauce that comes in the tall bottle. We had Chiang Mai chicken salad.These are super-sticky Spicy Angel Wings.We had to have pad thai.My dish was the only disappointment of the day, and thanks to Chef Rhoda for saying, "But it's not Cooklady's fault." I was assigned to make sweet sticky rice, but the afternoon Chef apparently soaked jasmine rice (or something equally unsuitable) instead of the glutinous rice necessary for successful stickiness. It was a disappointment. He should have listened to Chef Rhoda: "Don't improvise!"