Whilst shopping for my New Year’s Eve dinner at my favorite 99 Ranch Asian megamarket, I grabbed a big package of Thai basil.
I’m not sure why. I rarely use Thai basil. But I’ve been making vaguely Southeast Asian rice noodles lately as my wife takes one of her periodic breaks from gluten, and so I suppose the zeitgeist was right for the herb to capture my passing eye.
Thai basil is different than Italian basil. When you hold it in your hands and then smell it on your fingers, it evokes not vineyards and villas but temples and tuk tuks. It’s scent is exotic and sultry. Because it is spicy and insistent, I find it less useful for the wide variety of applications appropriate to Italian basil. So I made noodles, I used a little for a sauce in my Asian-accented New Years Eve dinner. And still, the bulk of it was left on the bottom shelf in my fridge. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 