Like many northern Thai curries, this recipe calls for the chillies, shallots and garlic that make up the spice base of the curry to be roasted. Thai cooks will often use a barbecue to roast the ingredients, but an oven broiler or toaster oven will work as well. Cook the spices until they begin to blacken, turning as necessary to roast through. The outer layers are then peeled off the spices before using.

Perhaps the most unusual ingredient in this dish are the Szechuan peppercorns, the small pink seeds that look like, but aren’t really, peppercorns. They come from a completely different plant family. While pepper grows on a vine, Szechuan peppercorns come from a small shrub in the prickly ash family. You should be able to find them in Chinese grocery stores.

Northern style pork salad (Larb bab neua)

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Peal the roasted shallots and garlic. Grind together with the chillies and salt. Add the galangal, coriander seeds, lemongrass and Szechuan peppercorns. Grind to a fine paste.
• Mix the finely chopped or ground pork with the curry paste and pork stock.
• Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or skillet over high flame. Add the fried garlic and fry a few seconds to release the fragrance. Add the pork mixture and stir-fry until cooked through. Season with added salt if needed, then add the mint and sawtooth coriander.
• Transfer the cooked larb to a bowl. Mix in the spring onions and coriander. Transfer to a serving plate. Sprinkle some fried garlic on top. Serve with a selection of fresh coriander, spring onion stalks, long beans, sliced cucumber, mint, cabbage and pickled vegetables.

Fresh Coriander for sale

The most unique aspect of coriander’s role in Thai cooking is the use of the root in many curry pastes. Ground fresh coriander root is probably the true "secret spice" in Thai cuisine. It’s what gives Thai fried chicken that extra flavor and provides the undertone to dishes ostensibly flavored with garlic and pepper. The use of the root presents a problem for many cooks trying to master the true taste of Thai food, since most western supermarkets cut the roots off. Some solve this problem by growing the herb themselves.

Coriander seeds are perhaps the least used part of the plant in Thai cuisine. The small round seeds resemble white peppercorns, although not quite as hard. When called for, the seeds are usually dry roasted in a frying pan before being ground up as part of a curry paste.

Although most of the coriander used in Thai food is similar to that used elsewhere, another strain of coriander is sometimes called for. Known as pak chee farang or "foreigner coriander" in Thai, in English it’s known as sawtooth coriander, understandably because of the herb’s long narrow grass-like blades with sawtooth edges.