The Family Chef

Aw married my son Steve a couple of years ago. They met on his second back-packing trip through Thailand and eventually she visited Canada to check out his relatives and if we hadn't passed muster she was not marrying Steve.
Family is all-important to Thai culture and she wanted family support. She has it.

Her formal name is Ladawan and the custom is to use a nick-name so hers became Aw.

Bringing her into the family also gave us an inspired cook and this is what we learned from law Aw's cooking : deep fried tofu is amazingly good and one chicken breast is enough to supply meat for two for a week.

The Thai mainstay is noodles, mostly very thin noodles that are first soaked in water and then tossed with oil in a wok-like pan along with meticulously sliced veggies and eventually a small handful of shrimp or a hint of chicken.
And the wonderful spices--she doesn't give us Thai strength because she says she is afraid she'll hurt us.
The results are out of this world delicious.




Aw watches carefully while one of us is cooking and takes notes or simply remembers all the steps and can reproduce the dish with her own embellishments. She also absorbs the cooking shows and takes careful notes.

I had always done ribs by parboiling and finishing off by basting them briefly on the grill. Aw dry-rubs them with her brought-from-Thailand spices, tents them and cooks them at a low heat for hours. When she serves them they look dry and that's misleading --they're out of this world succulent.

When I have the family over for Saturday evening barbecues she gently nudges me out of the way and her cooking results are brilliant.

She attends ESL classes and her fellow students appreciate her enthusiasm and her lack of shyness; she regularly shepherds them to restaurants to teach them how to order North American food. They wanted to but didn't know how.

Here she is finishing up a dish.



Bon appetit.