How I came to love the tastes of the East

The Thai New Year and Easter share the same dates this year, which means that while some of us are munching hot cross buns and hunting for eggs hidden in the garden, members of the Thai community will be cooking celebratory New Year dishes. Thai New Year traditions, which include sprinkling scented water from silver bowls on a Buddha image, can be traced back to the pre-Buddist rituals of spring festivals where water was thrown to symbolise the good rain needed for the crops. This was later converted into a religius custom of cleansing the Buddha statues once a year. Naturally food plays its part in the celebrations.

The Thai New Year Songkran began yesterday with Maha Songkran. Today is Wan Nao, the day that rests between the old and new when celebratory foods are prepared. The New Year officially begins on the third day, Wan Thaloeng Sok, and is followed on Sunday by Wan Parg-bpee, the day on which the ancesters and elders are honored.

My own introduction to Thai food began many years ago in a small, but popular, Thai restaurant in Rathdowne Street, Melbourne. It was here I discovered that Thai curries taste quite different from Indian curries and that Thai food was exquisite so good, in fact, that having got to know the proprietor, I wanted to spend time in her kitchen learning the basics of the Thai cookery. With a generosity of spirit Thai people appear to possess in abundance, she was soon teaching me how to make the green and red curry pastes on which so many of the Thai dishes are based, but, more importantly, she taught me to respect the ingredients being cooked.

I was shown how to caress the lemons before they were cut and take time to thank them for the juice they would yield. This act of gratitude, she explained, was as important as getting the recipe right. Everything that went into her meals had to be handled with respect. The food she prepared was a gift of love. She saw her food as a thing of beauty too, spending considerable time creating exquisit garnishes from spring onions, radishes, carrots, chili and other vegetables, all of which were sliced or carved by hand, then placed in ice cold water before use to encourage them to open up into the shape of a flower. I was taught how to create these too.

Once the kitchen was ready, we had to feed the Buddah image sitting in a high corner of the restaurant. This act ensured that he would give his blessing to the food served that night. Regardless of the anxious customers queuing to get in, she would keep the door locked until three or four recipes were prepared and placed in small dishes beside the Buddah for his approval.

Thai rice (kao niow), was always included among the foods prepared for Buddah. This is the rice that sets Thai food apart from other oriental cuisines. Known as glutinous rice, or sticky rice (though it contains no glutin), it has a delightful chewy texture, which comes from steaming it dry after a prolonged soaking. Sticky rice was once the staple of northern and north eastern Thailand only; now it's widely enjoyed throughout the world.

By mixing sticky rice with coconut milk and palm honey you get a delicious sweet rice which is often the basis of a Thai pudding. A purple/black rice sticky rice can be used for puddings too, or mixed with the white rice to create a superb speckled effect.

According to Thai tradition, sticky rice can send you fast asleep if you eat more than a couple of handfuls in one sitting. Once, sticky rice was eaten by forming it into small balls with the tips of your fingers before dipping it into a spicy sauce. Now a spoon and fork are the accepted eating implements a knife is never needed as the food is prepared from ingredients that are always chopped fine. Knives are reserved for the kitchen.

It must be pointed out that Thai food differs from region to region, but mostly it's unforgivingly hot: in fact the natural response to the first spoonful of a Thai curry is often a painful cough and streaming eyes. But the second spoonful usually goes down quite smoothly and by the third you are convinced that you want more. Drinking water between mouthfuls is not the way to cool it down; the water only spreads the burn round the mouth. By continuing to spoon it into your mouth you reach that magic moment when the heat no longer dominates and the fragrant flavours begin to come through.

d=3,3,1There are several remarkably good Thai restaurants in Oxfordshire. We even have a few pubs that serve a Thai cuisine, including The Crazy Bear in Stadhampton, which because of its amazing decor must rate as one of the wackiest pubs in the county. Where else will you find old gnarled beams covered in red crushed velvet?

Another unlikely venue for Thai food is Chiang Mai Kitchen, situated in a historic timber-framed building dating back to 1630s, which is tucked away in Kemp Hall Passage, off The High. It's here you can enjoy authentic Thai food cooked by proprietor Suthat Pun, a native of Thailand's northernmost provence, Chiang Rai, which borders Burma and Laos. Using ingredients flown in from Thailand, this restaurant attracts lovers of Thai food who yearn for that unmistakable taste created from coconut (ma-prao) green chili pepper (prig), galangal root (hea-uh kah) and Thai fish sauce (naam pla) which is one of the main seasonings, and made by fermenting tiny shrimps with water and salt.

Should you wish to buy authentic ingredients and cook your own Thai meal this weekend, you will find most of them at the Wah Chong store, in Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, right next to Bangkok House, where you can also get a jolly good Thai meal.

And, in keeping with Thai New Year customs, you can express your good wishes by tying strings round another's wrist, reciting short prayers or a blessing as you do so.