Chiang Mai pork curry
Stir-fried beef with basil leaves
Dried fillet steak with chilli sauce
Stir-fried chicken with chilli jam
Stir-fried chicken with crispy basil
Sweet water chestnuts with coconut cream and syrup
Black glutinous rice with fresh coconut
This book is dedicated to the memory of Khun Akorn
My thanks to:
The Intercontinental Hotel, Bangkok
Pakistan International Airways
The directors and staff of the Burasari Hotel, Phuket
My long-suffering editor Barbara Dixon
My wife Tess (thank God she knows how to use a laptop!)
With thanks to Nirun Jirapermpoon
and the Siam Royal Orchid restaurant 367 Uxbridge Road, London W3 for their help with translation
Introduction
On this early Bangkok morning, the waiter brings me a bowl of plump, duck red Thai curry. I am drinking apple juice, it is six o’clock in the morning and yet the Intercontinental Hotel, where I am staying for free, is buzzing. Multilingual businessmen are eating with one hand while the other clamps their mobile phones to their ears. If you suffer from a hangover or jetlag, there is nothing better than this exquisite spicy food I am eating. My very good friends at Pakistan International Airways kindly flew me to Bangkok, but by the global scenic route (of course, I am not complaining because the flight was free – thank you, PIA) and, I must say, the in-flight Pakistani food is delicious. The reason I am wrecked at breakfast time like a wet sack of rice is because I flew from Heathrow to Lahore, from Lahore to Islamabad, from Islamabad to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to Bangkok and did not sleep a wink.
My driver, Pata, is waiting to take me away on this Sunday morning to the huge market where I will have another breakfast, this time of succulent, ripe mango and creamy sticky rice. A hawker, standing behind his mobile kitchen, built on an elaborate tricycle, laughs with charming disbelief when I request crushed, dried chillies to be sprinkled on my mango. That, washed down with the milk from a freshly decapitated coconut, has brought me and the morning back to life. For four hours I walk up and down the crowded stalls, while my photographer is taking pictures.
A superb meal aboard Pakistan International Airways.
Naheed Tabassum, a charming member of the crew.
My good friend Mr John Nielsen of the Intercontinental Hotel, Bangkok.
