Warorot Market at Dawn and a Northern Thai Kitchen Lunch

Warorot Market — Kad Luang in Northern dialect — is where Chiang Mai feeds itself. I go at 6am, before the heat and before the tourist market opens nearby. The vendors here sell sai oua (Northern pork sausage pounded with lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime), fresh turmeric that you can barely find in Bangkok, and the specific dried chillies that go into a proper nam prik noom dip. I buy everything we need for lunch and explain what each ingredient does as we move through the stalls. Back in my kitchen on the edge of Nimmanhaemin — a local neighbourhood, not the coffee-shop strip — I show you how to cook khao soi, the curry noodle soup that Northern Thailand is famous for and almost never makes well in restaurants: the roasted coconut paste, the slow-cooked chicken, the fermented mustard greens that cut through the fat. We eat together with whatever extra dishes I decide to make that morning. Lunch is always a surprise after the market.