Walk through a Bangkok market at dawn and you smell the curry pastes before you see them, pounded fresh in stone mortars at every other stall. I grew up in that air, and I have cooked across Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore long enough to know that "Southeast Asian" is a dozen kitchens, not one.

My job is to teach the balance that holds all of them together (sour, salty, sweet, hot, sometimes bitter) and to make you taste the difference between fish sauce from Phú Quốc and fish sauce from Phuket. Curry paste from a stone mortar, broth simmered slow, a balance check at the end.