Khao So - Northern Fire.

Deep in rural Chiang Mai, Khao Soi is still made the old way - turmeric and coconut milk slow-cooked and simmering in battered black-bottomed woks over open flame, the broth turned by hand until it finds its correct, intense colour, somewhere between amber and monk robe saffron. Northern Thailand inherited these dishes from Burmese traders who passed through its green hills long ago, recipes and techniques carried across borders and refined by generations of home cooks into something unmistakably their own. Egg noodles are boiled soft, then fried crisp as a topping - pickled greens, shallot, chilli oil, lime, each element placed with an instinctive confidence in a recipe not written but remembered like an old song.

Cooked and served two ways here, gai and neua, chicken and beef, but always the same ritual: wood smoke, patience, banana leaf plates and in and woks that have nurtured these firey curries for longer than anyone can remember.