Essential Ingredients

While recipes will vary between cooks, there are some essential ingredients that I have become accustomed to using regularly when cooking Asian dishes, such as Thai or Vietnamese. If you want to start working with these sorts of recipes there are definitely a few items that are good to keep in stock. These are my recommendations:

• dark soy sauce (used mostly for cooking)
• light soy sauce (used mostly as a condiment)
• ginger (fresh)
• garlic (fresh)
• lime
• red chilli (chilli flakes can be useful as a reserve)
• lemongrass
• palm sugar
• stock cubes
• fish sauce
• oyster sauce
• salt + pepper
• sesame oil
• sunflower/vegetable oil
• star anise
• rice vinegar/white wine

If you are unsure of what these products are or look like, check out Thai Food Online, which has a comprehensive guide to ingredients that you can also by, or ImportFood.com, which does good recipes as well as being an online supermarket.

Don't forget you will also need a good wok, and a lot of chopsticks!