Vegetarian recipes from Thailand

Meatless Thai cooking starts with an aromatic paste pounded in a mortar: lemongrass, galangal, shallot, chilli, kaffir lime zest. Crushed and loosened with coconut milk, it becomes the base of vegan green curry and, with more acidity, of vegetarian tom kha. Fish sauce, everywhere else, is replaced here by light soy sauce, fermented bean paste or tamarind, which supply the same salty, fermented background. Rice is the pivot of the meal: jasmine rice day to day, sticky rice in the north-east, rice noodles when the dish is eaten from a bowl.

A Thai meal is built on the balance of salty, sour, sweet and hot, adjusted at the table rather than fixed on the stove. Plant protein comes from tofu and peanuts: pad thai with tofu uses both, while Thai fried rice recycles yesterday cold rice with whatever vegetables remain. som tam, pounded green papaya salad, plays the raw sour counterpart to the rest. Sweetness does not always close the meal, but mango sticky rice shows how coconut milk crosses from savoury to dessert.