Aromatics are always the first ingredients I think of when making a Southeast Asian recipe like Thai basil chicken, also known as pad krapow gai ... salty, sweet and spicy condiment passed ...

Its allure lies in its deceptive simplicity: chewy rice noodles, velveted slivers of meat, and crunchy gai lan (aka Chinese broccoli), bound by a sweet-salty soy sauce and enhanced by the je ne ...