Jasmine, Sticky Rice, Thai Red

Thai cookery is eclectic: It embraces improvisation and scorns rigidity. We once met a car mechanic in a small village in northeast Thailand who had spent four years cooking for several hundred Thai workers in rural Iraq. He had absolutely no Thai ingredients to work with in Iraq (not even fish sauce), but he had somehow ingeniously managed to create Thai food that was palatable to all. As he described some of the dishes he came up with, there was even a hint of homesickness in his voice for his Iraqi Thai food.