A friend recently lent me a book called "Curry Cuisine: Fragrant dishes from India, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia." I'm normally a little weary of the use of the phrase "curry" -- it's just not accurate, nor fair -- to describe the enormous variety in Indian cuisine (or the rest of South East Asia...

This noodle-based soup gets a slight sweetness from coconut milk, but that flavor is much more subdued than similar Thai dishes. It's spicy, but not actually hot -- it's a very gentle heat. The main taste is the amazing array of flavors that comes from the homemade paste, which includes both ginger...

This dish (Gang keo goung) calls for a Laotian all-purpose curry paste called Kore -- or in a pinch, a store-bought Thai curry paste. Since this dinner was a little involved, I decided against making Kore, and instead added some of its ingredients to a Thai curry paste: freshly grated galangal,...