It's morning in Bangkok. Motorcycles zig-zag treacherously through the lines of cars clogging the streets. You're walking along grand boulevards and down narrow side streets. Overhead, great masses of electric wires snake through the city and skyscrapers gleam in the skyline. You're hungry, searching for something to eat. But you don't have to try hard to find food, because in Bangkok, food usually finds you.
You can't go far without passing a cluster of umbrella-covered stands, selling mammoth pink segments of pomelo or skewers of meat or noodle soups. Finally, you stop at a vendor set up beside an alley, a woman presiding over more than a dozen aluminum trays, each piled with dish you can't for the life of you identify. Still, you want to eat them all.
It's in this type of restaurant, called raan khao kaeng (roughly, curry-over-rice shops), where many visitors to Thailand, not just to Bangkok, come across kai kaphrao, a stir-fry of pork or chicken seasoned aggressively with garlic, chiles, fish sauce, soy sauce, and a touch of sugar. It's a common morning food (Thais don't eat breakfast the way we do), but it's also lunch, it's a late-afternoon snack, it's whatever you want it to be. Served beside a heap of jasmine rice and perhaps a crisp-edged fried egg, it is a fine example of aahaan jaan diaw, what Thais call a one-plate meal.
The dish is defined by a last-minute dose of kaphrao (holy or hot basil), an ingredient so essential that the dish is named for it. For short, people often order it as phat kaphrao, literally "stir-fried holy basil." In the US, we'd never give top billing to an herb. Dill salad? No, it's egg salad. Grilled rosemary? No, it's a charred steak -- so what if it happens to be perfumed by a few sprigs?
The herb has a very particular flavor, to be sure, a distinctive peppery heat, but in Thailand, it's prized for its powerful aroma. The notion of aroma eclipsing flavor can sometime confound us Westerners. Ask a Thai person to describe holy basil and the first thing they'll say is hom, or "smells good." You'll notice that versions that people have cooked for themselves and their families, compared to those sold by street vendors, contain even more holy basil, which is relatively pricey in Thailand. That's one benefit of making it yourself -- you control the size of the handful. The other is being above the hot pan when you add that handful, the pleasure of being in a room overtaken by its scent.
Flavor Profile: Aromatic, salty, spicy, sweet