Nong's Thai Kitchen. Nongkran Daks

Friday I rode my bike back home,” she says. “My friends had collected money for me to buy ingredients so I could make them curries when I came back on Monday.”

      Upon graduation from Kasetsart in 1965, Nongkran married Larry Daks, an American Peace Corps volunteer who was teaching at that university; she was both his student and his Thai language teacher.

      Nong shooting the Throw-down at Thai Basil Kitchen. Meeting Bobby Flay. Son-in-law eggs (Eggs with Tamarind Sauce, page 140) being stir-fried.

      Over the years, the couple has lived in the US and in various locations throughout Asia, including China, Laos, Taiwan and Thailand. During one of their stays in Bangkok, Nongkran ran a snack bar called Nong’s Kitchen, which featured Thai and Western food, including an outstanding cheesecake.

      Thailand is also where Nongkran began to teach cooking. Most of her students were fellow Thais who wanted to learn more about their own cuisine and that of neighboring counties, but she soon began to expand her clientele.

      During one stay in Beijing, Nongkran started catering parties for foreign diplomats, because few international foods or restaurants were available at the time. She often catered for the American embassy as well, especially after staff members had tasted and requested her special Chicken Satay with peanut satay sauce (page 34). She also conducted cooking classes in Beijing, where people were just starting to discover Thai food. “There was a lot of demand for Thai food,” she remembers. “And also in Beijing, we were very close to Thailand and people from the embassy went there for R & R. People who had not known Thai food before fell in love with it.” Expats in the American community in particular praised her cooking, and a number of them encouraged her to open a restaurant.

      When Nongkran moved back to the Washington, DC area permanently in 1996, she continued to cook for friends and local Asian festivals, and offered cooking classes in her home. She finally began to look into finding a real outlet—a restaurant—for her cooking passion. She got the opportunity when a Thai friend decided to sell her restaurant in Chantilly. Within days, Nongkran had opened up Thai Basil, which is now a major player in the Washington, DC restaurant world. She also became a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, the prestigious women-only culinary group, and has been asked to give talks and to hold cooking classes and demonstrations throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

      Making Pad Thai (page 114) in Winnipeg. A close-up of the finished dish. Nong and television host Samantha Brown preparing to cook.

      After her victory in the Throwdown and a subsequent appearance on the Travel Channel, Nongkran has become something of a local legend. Thai Basil and her regular cooking classes continue to draw patrons not only from the immediate area, but from both coasts and Canada, and even from Thailand itself. She is widely noted for using traditional Thai recipes without modifying them for Western tastes—she prefers to educate Westerners’ palates. For this reason, Nongkran is particularly proud that Thai Basil is one of the few restaurants in the United States to earn the Thai Select Award, a recognition of excellence awarded by the Thai Ministry of Commerce.

      About Thai Food

      Capturing the hearts, minds, and palates of a global audience, Thai food really is the stuff of gastronomic dreams: its flavors are a balance of sweet, salty, hot, and sour, and a recipe’s components are thoughtfully composed to provide texture as well as balanced flavors. The ingredients may include just about anything that walks, crawls, or swims. In Chiang Mai, in the northern part of Thailand, for example, locals may enjoy grilled snakes or ants or crickets, or even fried bamboo worms. Elsewhere, water bugs and (reportedly) scorpions add a protein element to the diet. And on everyone’s dining table, the produce—from the familiar long beans and the less-familiar marble-sized eggplants to the aromatic durian and crunchy water convolvulus—is supremely fresh. Street vendors, home cooks, and professionals in upscale kitchens alike can use traditional techniques and ingredients and individualize recipes to suit a mood or to appeal to modern tastes.

      Tracing the development of Thai cooking reveals several influences. In studying the numerous cultural and culinary elements that have shaped Thai cooking, food historians have determined that migrant Chinese, Indians, Burmese, and Europeans passing through ancient Siam (now Thailand) left their imprint on the country’s cuisine over the centuries. Neighboring Southeast Asian peoples from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Burma have influenced their Thai neighbors as well. In the north and northeast regions of Thailand, for example, dishes such as the Green Papaya Salad from Laos (page 66) and the hearty coconut-milk-based curry from Burma known as Khao Soi (page 108), have become culinary mainstays.

      Chinese cooks also made three major contributions to Thai cuisine: rice, including the rice porridge known locally as chok (pronounced “joke”); noodles, a key ingredient in many dishes, particularly in the classic dish known as Pad Thai (page 114); and the versatile cooking vessel, the wok. Fish sauce, an essential component of Thai cuisine, also originated in China. Even Portuguese missionaries contributed an important element to Thai cooking: the chili, introduced from South America. The missionaries inspired Thai cooks to incorporate the fiery chili heat into many recipes. In fact, the legend surrounding the creation of one recipe, Crying Tiger (page 44), holds that the addition of chilies resulted in a dish so hot it made tigers cry.

      Thai cooks rely on an array of basic seasonings to impart distinctively Thai flavors tho food. These include ingredients such as fish sauce, garlic, lemongrass, coconut milk, palm sugar, kaffir limes, galangal, fresh coriander and coriander seeds, shallots, and dried shrimp.

      Regardless of nationality, anyone who embraces this Southeast Asian cuisine should understand how a traditional or typical meal is served. Thais prefer communal eating, and their main meals generally consist of multiple courses served family style. These may include a soup; a curry; a grilled, stir-fried, or steamed meat or seafood; assorted condiments; perhaps a salad served as an appetizer; and fruit or a simple sweet for dessert. It is common practice to scoop rice onto the plate and take a portion of one of the main dishes to eat alongside the rice before taking a serving of another dish. All courses are usually served at the same time, except for dessert.

      Breakfasts and lunches are lighter, and may center on fried rice or noodles with a meat or vegetable garnish. As elsewhere in Asia, rice—usually eaten morning, noon, and night—is basic to the cuisine. This staple is a bland counterpoint and welcome relief beside the rich, savory, and spicy stir-fries, curries, and grilled dishes. Thais often turn to rice porridge as a palate cleanser; or, if the meal has been minimal, a filling dish. When not at the table, Thais snack on the portable treats that are seemingly offered at every turn. Street and market vendors— their baskets, stands, and grills full of meats, noodles, soups, and sweets—are a common sight along city sidewalks and in open-air country markets. For a list of basic Thai ingredients, see page 14.

      Contrary to what foreigners may assume, Thais generally use only a fork and a spoon, rather than chopsticks, at meals; the fork neatly pushes the food onto the spoon for easier eating. Except for some noodle dishes, Thai food is not usually eaten with chopsticks.

      Aware of the growing global popularity of Thai food, the Thai government has been working diligently over the past decade to increase both the appreciation of Thai cooking and the establishment of Thai restaurants in such emerging markets as Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as well as Italy, Russia, and the Czech Republic. One of the first governmental pushes to promote Thai food occurred in 2002, when the Thai government sought to make Thai food more widely available across the globe. The campaign has been a resounding success, with the number of Thai restaurants worldwide rising from 5,500 to 20,000 as of 2013, according to a spokesman for the Thai National Innovation Agency.

      According to a 2011 estimate from the Thai government’s Foreign Office, 5,000 of these restaurants are located in the US. In addition, many American restaurant kitchens now borrow extensively from the Thai spice shelf, just to give their menus an exotic spin. Furthermore, most supermarkets have begun stocking Thai-centric