How Thailand Transformed My Cooking

Interview by Ellie Cloute - Alex Thorp's Kitchen

Five years ago, my family and I sold our house in Brighton to move to the countryside. We’ve got acres of land, and a large kitchen perfect for cooking up family meals, hosting dinner parties, and for preparing for every kind of cooking occasion. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world with my job, and when I’m not in meetings, I spend my time exploring the local restaurants and street markets. The sociocultural aspect of cooking is the best part of it for me, there is nothing more enjoyable than being able to share good food with good people. Food is increasingly becoming cross-cultural, especially with Asian cuisine, and the less it is originating from location, the more authentic and interesting it is becoming.

I always loved cooking, even making toast was a somewhat enjoyable experience. My late twenties were when cooking became a vital part of my life, the combination of travelling and living independently was the perfect excuse to cook- it was cheaper than eating out, and I’ve never seen it as a chore. Hosting is such a massive part of cooking for me, and if you’re honest with yourself, it’s a little bit of showing off; there’s nothing nicer than having a dinner party and having your guests say ‘that’s lovely’! The socialising that is paired perfectly with cooking is one of my favourite things about it, there’s nothing better than having a good time whilst being able to share your favourite foods with those you care about.

Thai food is my favourite cuisine without hesitation, it has such a raw and natural influence to it that you just can’t beat. My cooking has also been influenced by French and Italian cuisine, but nothing compares to Thai. There are four key pillars of the Thai flavour system that are vital when it comes to cooking; chilli, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Fish sauce, essentially mushed up anchovies, is the elite element that makes a Thai dish, my cupboard is never without it, and if you’re making a Thai dish, I guarantee fish sauce will be in it.

One of my work trips to Thailand in 2012 led me to a fantastic cook. She was working on the streets in Bangkok, and I was mesmerised by the authentically Thai way she was cooking. She spoke very little English but I was so eager to find out what ingredients she was using, we spent two hours working it out together and just had a great time. After blowing my head off with a chilli, and a couple of beers later, I left with another recipe to add to my travelling collection. I am so grateful for experiences like that. She was a totally authentic Thai street cook, with a happy disposition and a pure passion for food that you just see thriving in places like Bangkok. Being able to travel with work enables me to enjoy these incredibly raw yet rich devotions to cooking, and sharing that, with local chefs in their hometowns is something truly remarkable. There is something quite humbling about it. I learnt a lot from that silly experience.

I have done a lot of large scale Thai meals for large numbers of people. Whilst it can be very stressful, I love cooking ten or twelve dishes, and I have done this for several of my birthdays. One that sticks in the mind was my 32nd birthday. We hired a Thai chef from a restaurant in Brighton, and she came and taught us how to cook certain dishes and walked us through them. She also sat down with my two boys and was making Vietnamese spring rolls, including them in the cooking that filled our kitchen. It was brilliant, a couple of friends and I cooked up some really good dishes. We ended up with a spread of very good food, and it was of course, all her work, but everyone said it was me, which is always a bonus!

Anyone who loves cooking knows you will have a favourite utensil, one you simply can’t live without. Mine is a set of Japanese I.O Shen kitchen knives. They’re ludicrously expensive but always sharp, and if I ever cook in someone else’s kitchen, I am endlessly critical of their knives. Either the weighting’s not right, or they aren’t sharp enough, it’s the one thing that genuinely makes cooking so much easier is if you have a good knife. Cutting skills can turn something that can be a pain in the neck into something quite fun.

For me, little tips like how you use an ingredient are critical. In Thai cooking especially, you can offset chilli with sweetness, by using sugar. Usually, the things you do habitually are the best cooking tips you will find. Garlic is an ingredient that can be used in many different ways in Thai cooking, and knowing how to use ingredients is an important tip. If you want to make garlic rice, then usually you would burn the garlic before cooking the rice. However, if you are cooking something where you want to taste the garlic, you should put it in off heat in order to hardly cook it.

I’ve chosen to share two Thai dishes, that are so quintessential, and really represent the common street food in Thailand that I fell in love with. Simple cooking at its finest, the combination of flavours is delicious, and typical Thai dishes are food that everyone can cook and enjoy. Both favourite recipes of mine, Pork Noodle Soup and Tamarind Chicken are two recipes I picked up from my travels in Thailand, and still are amongst my favourites to cook at home.

Sourcing ingredients for Thai cooking is harder for me now. When I lived in London and Brighton, getting your hands on authentic Thai ingredients was easy. Since moving, living provincially means there’s less options available for obtaining niche ingredients. There’s one specific shop in Bexhill-on-Sea, open only on Saturdays, and generally they have everything I need. however, the second I’m back in Brighton again I always make sure I stock up.

The Pork Noodle Soup, ironically called Guay Teow Moo in Thai, is a dish I tried in Bangkok in 2012. Large vats of each soup were lined up in street markets, and to me, the combination of flavours was so exquisite that I made I endeavoured to find out how to make it. And I did. Dissimilarly with the Tamarind Chicken, I found it very simple in its flavours yet utterly delicious, reason enough to learn a dish. My choice of drink would be a jasmine tea or Chinese influence tea with these dishes, as they cleanse the palate. If alcohol is preferred, I always think of a cold beer as that’s what I had in Thailand, like a Chang, but cooking in England, I tend to enjoy a cold, dry white wine.

Guay Teow Moo (Pork Noodle Soup)

1 tbsp five spice stock

10 garlic cloves

1 tbsp fish sauce

2 packs pork loins

1 tbsp soy light

1 tbsp soy dark

2 packs beansprouts

1 tsp sugar

Fist sized piece of ginger

Chopped birds eye chillis, to taste

Rice noodles, cooked

Pickled cabbage

Chilli oil, to taste

Spring onions, to garnish

1 Boil 300ml of water per person and add the five spice stock and the pork.

2 Blend together the garlic and ginger.

3 Remove the pork from the stock and add chopped chillis and 1 tbsp fish sauce.

4 Slice the pork up and discard the fat.

5 Add the pork back into the stock and add the dark and light soy sauce.

6 In individual serving bowls add cooked rice noodles, beansprouts and pickled cabbage.

7 In a separate bowl, put chopped chillis and fish sauce and mix.

8 Add sugar to the chilli oil.

9 Put the pork soup on top of the noodles and beansprouts, and garnish with spring onions.

10 Serve immediately with the chilli oil.

Sang Wa (Tamarind Chicken)

4 chicken breasts

3 tbsp tamarind sauce

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp lime juice

5cm lemongrass, finely chopped

2 tbsp ginger, finely chopped

1 fresh chilli, finely chopped

3 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped

2 iceberg lettuces

Fresh coriander, to garnish

1 Cook and shred the chicken breasts.

2 In a separate pan, heat the tamarind sauce, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice.

3 Heat and mix, then add the lemongrass, ginger, chilli and kaffir lime leaves.

4 Add the shredded chicken.

5 Mix together and remove from heat.

6 Lay out the lettuce leaves on a large plate or platter.

7 Pour the chicken mix in the middle.

8 Garnish with the coriander.

9 Serve immediately.