Meet Pim

Pim, dining out for a change at Big Bowl in Chicago.

Pim is my lovely wife, and this is my ode to her Thai cooking.

Unlike me, Pim can really cook. She, of course, knows by heart all the favorites of her Northern Thailand. But she's also a consummate improviser, and can substitute to great effect the fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat she finds here in her temporary home of LA into the traditional dishes of her homeland.

Another thing I admire about Pim's cooking: she's remarkably frugal and resourceful. Rather than letting a bag of limes go bad, she'll surprise me with a glass of iced lime-aid at dinner time.

After a few months of watching me over indulge in her cooking, Pim is now teaching me to cook Thai, and it's my intention to impart what I learn to any farang (foreigner) who wants to cook Thai.

Why? Because at the age of 37, after having slopped up untold buckets of Count Chocula cereal for dinner, I've just awakened to the pleasures of real food -- of Thai food, in particular, but of home-cooked, zero-processed, un-microwaved, let's-sit-down-together-at the-table food in general.



It's my plan to break down the preparation of each dish I cover in a way that all we farang can understand, with careful attention on where to find the sometimes exotic ingredients, and when it's OK to substitute the common for the esoteric, the ginger for the galangal.

Since I'm a bit of a history geek, it's also my plan to explain in brief the origins of each dish I cover -- unless that just gets too boring to read or to write.

So, now, with many thanks to Pim, without whose knowledge, I couldn't continue, let's move on to the few but necessary tools you'll need in the kitchen.