She taught me the foundations. The curry pastes made from scratch. The mortar and pestle she called the bong bong. The rice cooker always on. The fish sauce, the galangal, the kaffir lime. She carried all of it from Thailand to Maryland and rebuilt it from memory in every kitchen we ever had. She never wrote any of it down. She just kept cooking until I knew it too, the way you learn something you were always meant to know. What I do with those foundations is mine. Forty years of Thai cooking meeting a life lived in America, in Maryland kitchens and North Carolina kitchens and Florida kitchens, cooking for boys who came in from practice still in their cleats, for a husband who ate everything without asking what was in it, for grandchildren who stand at the counter and wait for the bowl. Her flavors finding new shapes in new kitchens for new people who have never been to Thailand and love this food anyway. Her roots. My branches. These are the dishes that happen when both of those things are true at the same time.
