Bang Bang Thai Perth

[Jovanna Ponder]

In my Hole in the Wall days I used to crave Thai food more than anything else, particularly on a Sunday evening when my working week ended with cooking around a hundred portions of roast lunch - and while I still adore the slap and bang assault of acidity, sweetness and heat, the coldest, darkest days of the year called for something slightly more warming.

Only once the paste has cooked into a dark, caramel coloured aromatic wonder does it get seasoned with fish sauce and tamarind, and only when the chicken and potatoes are fully tender do the two meet for the first time in joyous harmony. A complex delight, ideal for an early January night when Thailand was in our dreams as well as our bellies.

Several of my family members are currently travelling around south-east Asia, and though I was invited to join the adventures, in the end logistics and costs conspired against my own trip. Which means I\u2019m not currently eating som tam and kao phad on a beach, toes being kissed by the Andaman Sea: I\u2019m nesting in the warm embrace of home in the east of England. This is no bad thing, of course, but \u2013 January, you know. And it was with this slightly bitter sweet (and sour and salty) information in the back of my mind that I picked David Thompson\u2019s detailed masterwork Thai Food to kick off my year of eating from a different cookbook each week of 2023.

Thompson\u2019s epic tome is not for those who merely dabble. It requires commitment. It offers a richly detailed gastronomic and socio-cultural history of Thailand, and that\u2019s before the exhaustive section on ingredients, methods and techniques. Recipes don\u2019t feature until well into the second third of the book. Ingredients lists are exhaustive, methodologies precise and complex. Someone suggested to me on Instagram that we\u2019d need at least two days for any recipe we chose: one for cooking, but one in advance just to track down the ingredients. This was only partly in jest. Shop-bought curry pastes were not an option.

Mussaman isn\u2019t merely a curry, it\u2019s a project: \u2018the most complex and time-consuming Thai curry to make,\u2019 explains Thompson (Thai Food, p. 329). Apparently that\u2019s not quite enough warning, so he goes on to explain that the included version of the recipe, taken from Jip Bunnark, is even \u2018more complicated than the historic recipe that has been suggested as the original mussaman\u2019.

The ingredients list wasn\u2019t quite as daunting as the preamble led me to believe. Far more surprising, though, was the roundabout nature of the technique - one where the curry paste is cooked entirely separately and incorporated into the dish only at the very end, which was a method I\u2019ve never come across before. Rather than the simple one-pan technique I was used to (fry off spices and/or curry paste, add protein or vegetables, add liquid and cook until ready), Thompson\u2019s mussaman is a multi-pan wonder. Roast spices. Cook aromatic ingredient. Crack coconut cream (cook until the fat splits out of the cream). Make paste. Cook paste (slowly and for a long time, stirring regularly to ensure it doesn\u2019t catch or burn or dry out too much). Fry chicken, fry onions, fry potatoes, then simmer all three in coconut milk.

Later in the week I used the leftover ginger, lemongrass, chillies and shallots to make a larp, using a plant-based mince substitute rather than chicken or pork. A larp is a great dish to learn the key basics of Thai cooking and that crucial balance of sweetness, acidity, heat and salinity, on which Thompson writes a lengthy and useful treatise in the chapter introduction on Thai salads. Despite its lightness, a larp is a quickly-assembled salad of robust proportions, yet is satisfying in a way that only a dish that takes a four-pronged assault can be, with the acidity of lime juice ensuring every mouthful is equally fresh and filling. It\u2019ll definitely be in regular rotation for those nights where I\u2019m not sure what to cook \u2013 and as for the mussaman, thankfully the quantities we made were significant enough for several portions to end up in the freezer so I won\u2019t have to make it from scratch again any time soon.

2023 also sees David Thompson return to the UK dining scene for the first time since 2012: Long Chim - of which there are already outposts in Sydney, Perth and Dubai \u2013 is scheduled to open in London at some point this year and is sure to be worth the wait. I might even order the mussaman, particularly as someone else will be doing the washing up.

The name Suvarnabhumi is Sanskrit for "land of gold" (Devanagari:सुवर्णभूम IAST: Suvarṇabhūmi; Suvarṇa[11] is "gold", Bhūmi[12] is 'land'; literally "golden land"). The name was chosen by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej whose name includes Bhūmi, referring to the Buddhist golden kingdom, thought to have been to the east of the Ganges, possibly somewhere in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, government proclamations and national museums insist that Suvarnabhumi was somewhere on the coast of the central plains, near the ancient city of U Thong, which might be the origin of the Indianised Dvaravati culture.[13] Although the claims have not been substantiated, the Thai government named the new Bangkok airport Suvarnabhumi Airport, in celebration of this tradition.

The airport is currently the main hub for Thai Airways International and Bangkok Airways, as well as the operating base for Thai VietJet Air, Thai AirAsia, and Thai AirAsia X. It also serves as a regional gateway and connecting point for various foreign carriers connecting to Asia, Oceania, Europe, and Africa.

The airport is on what had formerly been known as Nong Nguhao (Cobra Swamp) in Racha Thewa in Bang Phli, Samut Prakan province, as well as the districts of Bang Kapi, Lat Krabang, Bang Na, and Prawet in the eastern side of Bangkok, about 25 kilometres (16 mi) from downtown. The terminal building was designed by Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects. It was constructed primarily by ITO JV. The airport had the world's tallest free-standing control tower (132.2 metres or 434 feet) from 2006 to 2014[15] and the world's fourth largest single-building airport terminal (563,000 square metres or 6,060,000 square feet).

Suvarnabhumi is the 17th busiest airport in the world,[16] eleventh busiest airport in Asia, and the busiest in the country, having handled 60 million passengers in 2017,[16] and is also a major air cargo hub, with a total of 95 airlines. On social networks, Suvarnabhumi was the world's most popular site for taking Instagram photographs in 2012.[17]

Suvarnabhumi reassigned the IATA airport code, BKK, from Don Mueang after that airport ceased international commercial flights. Motorway 7 connects the airport, Bangkok, and the heavily industrial eastern seaboard of Thailand, where most export manufacturing takes place.

The need for the new airport was recognized in 1973 when 8,000 acres (3,200 ha) of land was purchased 40 km (25 mi) east of Bangkok. The site, known as Cobra Swamp, was drained and named Suvarnabhumi, meaning "realm of gold".[citation needed] On 14 October 1973, student-led protests led to the overthrow of the military government of Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn and the project was shelved.[citation needed]

The Japanese government would end up assisting the new airport project as ODA, and in 1996, the project took a step forward with the signing of a loan agreement between the Government of Thailand and the Japanese government. Then, in 1996, Second Bangkok International Airport Company Ltd. (SBIA) was established as the project implementation organization, and the project got underway.

A further delay was caused by the discovery that the airport had been built over an old graveyard. Superstitious construction workers claimed to have seen ghosts there. On 23 September 2005, the Thai airport authority held a ceremony where 99 Buddhist monks chanted to appease the spirits.[21]

On 15 September 2006, the airport started limited daily operations with Jetstar Asia operating three Singapore to Bangkok flights. Bangkok Airways moved to the airport on 21 September. AirAsia and Thai AirAsia followed on 25 September and on 26 September Nok Air moved to Suvarnabhumi Airport. During this initial phase, as well as in the previous tests, the airport used the temporary IATA code NBK.[citation needed]

Suvarnabhumi officially opened at 03:00 on 28 September 2006, taking over all flights from Don Mueang. The first flight to arrive was a Lufthansa Cargo flight LH8442 from Mumbai at 03:05.[24] The first commercial arrival was Japan Airlines at 03:30. The first passenger arrival was Aerosvit flight VV171 from Kyiv at 04:30, and the first cargo departure was Saudi Arabian Airlines flight SV-984 to Riyadh at 05:00.[25] Aerosvit also had the first passenger departure (VV172 to Kyiv) around 05:30.[26]

Months after its opening, issues of congestion, construction quality, signage, provision of facilities, and soil subsidence continued to plague the project, prompting calls to reopen Don Mueang to allow for repairs to be made.[30] Expert opinions varied widely on the extent of Suvarnabhumi's problems as well as their root cause. Most airlines stated that damage to the airport was minimal.[31][32] Then Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont reopened Don Mueang for domestic flights voluntarily on 16 February 2007, with 71 weekly flights moved back initially, but no international flights.[33]

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