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Why holy basil stir fry tastes like Thailand



Food fuels our bodies but also our souls. Every dish is its own form of nostalgia, particularly if you’ve had it for the first time in a faraway city, in some distant land.

Perhaps it’s the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte you had in the forest of Freiburg. The layers of chocolate sponge, the whipped cream and maraschino cherries, the splash of kirschwasser or cherry spirit. As you take your first bite, you delight in the cheesy notion of eating Black Forest Cake in the Black Forest.

Perhaps it’s spending hours exploring the wondrous aisles of a konbini (Japanese convenience store) in Tokyo. You uncover one local delight after another. From picnic ready onigiri rice balls for summer to steaming hot oden for winter. My favourite is the ubiquitous katsusando, a sandwich of breaded pork cutlet and tonkatsu sauce that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps it’s the dà jī pái – large, flattened pieces of deep fried chicken – that you first tasted in the Shilin Night Market in Taipei many years ago. The original night market has since shifted, moved indoors and underground. It’s a different experience now. All that remains is your nostalgia for that very first bite, the crunchy bits of batter shattering and the hot chicken fat smearing your face.

For it’s not the calories but the memories that last long after the meal is over.

What about Thailand, then? I certainly cook enough recipes from the Land of Smiles. There is pad Thai, that quintessential Thai noodle dish, and there is tom yam goong, that spicy and sour soup with succulent prawns. For dessert, you can’t go wrong with mango sticky rice.

These are all delectable and definitely worth a repeat performance in the kitchen, weekend or not. Yet the one Thai dish that has captured my heart – and my gluttonous loyalty – is perhaps the simplest dish of them all: pad krapao.

The name pad krapao comes from pad, which means “stir fry” and krapao, which is holy basil, the herb that imbues the dish with such intense aromatics. Studies have shown that holy basil has pharmacological properties to reduce stress and anxiety, surely something we all need more of!

You can find pad krapao at any street stall nestled away in some small soi or side alley in Bangkok. Restaurant chains offer it as a staple on their menu, sometimes gussied up with bacon or pricey seafood. The convenience stores always carry ready to eat packs of it in their chiller, needing just a few seconds in the microwave oven.

Pad krapao in Thailand reminds me of nasi lemak in Malaysia: beloved by folks from all walks of life. Now that is a taste worth celebrating.

The best pad krapao I ever tasted was a last minute affair, a late lunch after a day of wandering around the Saraburi province. It was cooked by a friendly Thai lady in the front yard of her house. Everyone in the neighbourhood called her Auntie Pin.

The crackle of the holy basil as the leaves hit the very hot wok. The swift stir fry; time is of essence. The unexpected addition of pork liver; utterly melt-in-the-mouth as I later found out. I still remember all that – the sight, the sounds and above all, the smells, oh what a delicious aroma! – till today.

Here’s to that special touch – a sliver or two of tender flash fried liver – and recapturing that taste of that late afternoon lunch in Saraburi.