The following are some guidelines, which should make your cooking experience more satisfying no matter what your level of expertise. They are not all Thai-food specific, but are all important for the recipes in this book.

• Read the recipe in its entirety before you begin — twice is even better.

• Make sure you have all of the ingredients, pans, and utensils, have enough time, and understand the methodology.

• Always use seasonal ingredients — out of season produce is often tasteless and has an off texture. Inferior ingredients lead to inferior dishes. If the ingredients you are looking for are substandard, either choose a substitute ingredient or a substitute recipe.

• Be prepared. Have your ingredients prepped before you begin cooking — veggies diced, sliced, etc., dry and wet ingredients properly measured, etc.

• Use homemade stocks, curries, and sauces when at all possible: They will give you the greatest depth of flavor. But if time is of the essence, by all means use some prepared products that are on the market. Some of them are quite good.

• When measuring dry ingredients, level them off with the straight edge of a knife.

• Use standard measuring spoons, cups, etc.

• Wash all vegetables and fruits thoroughly and pat or spin dry.

• Take meat out of the refrigerator about fifteen minutes before you are going to cook it, allowing it to come to room temperature. It will cook faster and more evenly.

• Use freshly ground pepper, if you can. Pepper begins to lose its flavor and pungency as soon as it is ground.