Flat rice noodles stir-fried in a wok with egg, dried shrimp, firm tofu, garlic chives and bean sprouts, seasoned with tamarind, fish sauce and palm sugar, and served with crushed peanuts, chilli flakes and a wedge of lime: pad thai is the dish most of the world orders first in a Thai restaurant, and it is younger than it looks. It was promoted by the government of Plaek Phibunsongkhram in the late 1930s and 1940s as a national dish, partly to reduce rice consumption and partly to give the new nation of Thailand a food of its own, drawing on the Chinese noodle-frying tradition already in Bangkok. Its name means Thai-style stir-fry. In Thailand it is street food cooked to order in a single wok over a charcoal or gas burner, often wrapped in an egg net, and it is sweeter and more sour than the versions most restaurants abroad serve, which lean on ketchup or extra sugar.

The noodles are sen chan or sen lek, thin flat rice noodles soaked in room-temperature water until pliable but still firm, never boiled. The sauce is made ahead: tamarind pulp soaked and strained, dissolved with palm sugar and fish sauce into a thick brown liquid, balanced so none of the three dominates. In a very hot wok, shallot and garlic are fried in oil, then pressed tofu and dried shrimp, then the noodles with a splash of water and the sauce, tossed until they soften and take colour; the noodles are pushed aside, an egg is cracked and scrambled in the gap, and everything is turned together with garlic chives and most of the bean sprouts. Prawns or chicken go in early if used. The plate is finished with crushed roasted peanuts, a lime wedge, raw bean sprouts, more chives and a small pile of dried chilli, and the eater adjusts it. One portion per wok is the rule, because a crowded wok steams instead of fries.

Judge the balance first: sour from tamarind, salty from fish sauce, sweet from palm sugar, each present and none in front, with a faint smokiness from the wok. The noodles should be separate, chewy and lightly coated, not clumped, not swimming, not mushy. Mark down a dish that is mainly sweet or tastes of ketchup, which is the most common failure outside Thailand; noodles that have broken into short pieces from overcooking; a greasy plate; peanuts ground to dust or missing; and a version with no dried shrimp or tofu, which removes two of its defining flavours. The egg should be in visible pieces, not a uniform coating. Lime should be fresh and on the side so the sourness can be adjusted at the table. Prawns, when present, should be cooked just through.

Pad Thai

Rice Pudding

Rijsttafel, Dutch for "rice table", is a colonial-era banquet format rather than a single dish: plain rice at the centre and a dozen to forty small plates of Indonesian food around it, served all at once so that each diner builds their own plate from sweet, sour, hot and savoury components. It was assembled by Dutch planters and officials in the East Indies in the nineteenth century, who took the Sumatran habit of serving many side dishes with rice, as in nasi padang, and inflated it into a display of wealth with a servant carrying each dish. After Indonesian independence the format faded there, and it survives mainly in the Netherlands, where Indonesian and Indo-Dutch restaurants in The Hague, Amsterdam and Leiden serve it as their set menu, and in a reduced home version, the nasi rames, which puts a selection on one plate. In Indonesia today the word is rarely used, and the dishes are eaten separately.

A credible rijsttafel is built around a core of recognisable Indonesian preparations rather than a random spread. Expect white rice and often yellow nasi kuning, a slow braise such as rendang or semur, a satay with peanut sauce, a coconut-milk curry like gulai or opor ayam, a vegetable dish such as sayur lodeh or gado-gado with its peanut dressing, a fried egg or telur balado in chilli sambal, sambal goreng of green beans or tempeh, krupuk crackers, serundeng of fried spiced coconut, acar pickles, and at least two sambals of different heat. The dishes are cooked separately and in advance, most of them improving over a day, and are kept warm at the table on small burners; the restaurant's work is in the balance of the selection, so that no two dishes share a dominant flavour, and in the quality of the sambals, which are made in house or should be.

Judge it as a set, then dish by dish. The spread should have genuine range in temperature, texture and heat, with the rice plain enough to carry everything; the rendang should be dark and dry with the sauce cooked into the meat, the satay grilled over charcoal rather than steamed in sauce, the vegetables still green, and the krupuk crisp. Mark down a table where everything tastes of the same sweet soy and coconut, dishes that have clearly sat in a bain-marie since lunch, satay that is boiled chicken under peanut sauce, a sambal from a jar, and padding with non-Indonesian items such as spring rolls or plain fried noodles to reach a dish count. Quantity is not the point: twelve well-made dishes outscore thirty tired ones.

Baran Ozoglu

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