A dish of rich Malaysian chicken stew, with cinnamon and star anise, from a vendor in Kuala Lumpur. The first photo in our Malaysian Food Odyssey series where our roving reporter Kaitlyn Moore leaves Thailand and heads south of the border to discover the delights of Malaysian cuisine.

If you have ever been to Thailand you will know how important the local Buddhist temple is in every day life. Many Thai people will regularly visit the temple to leave offerings for good luck and a sign of respect for the Buddha. Kaitlyn Moore visits a local flower market in Chiang Mai and ponders the ready-made gift offerings on sale.

People often ask us what a typical breakfast in Thailand looks like. Thai people don’t stick to particular breakfast foods, but there are a few dishes common to morning markets, like rice porridge and fried doughnuts.

Fresh sugarcane for sale at a local Thai market. Throughout South East Asia sugarcane is enjoyed whole as a snack or squeezed for its juice. Thailand is a major exporter of cane sugar.

Makha Bukha Day is an important Buddhist holiday in Thailand celebrated on the full moon of the third lunar month. Many Thai people will visit the temple on this day to take part in candle lit ceremony. We visit the famous Wat Chedi Luang temple in Chiang Mai for the event where hundreds of people form a procession round the temple led by dozens of monks.

A Valentine’s Day Dinner is as much about the atmosphere as it is the food. You can use traditional Thai fruit carving to enhance the romantic appeal of your meal with a beautiful edible rose carving. For this special day we have gone Western with a delicious recipe of roasted beet, goat cheese, and candied walnut salad in a video by Nita Gill professional fruit carving instructor.

Thailand’s second New Year celebration, the Chinese Lunar New Year, takes place for three days in February. Thais offer food and gifts to their ancestors and to the Gods, and gather with their loved ones over huge feasts. Chinese traditions like the lion dance have a place in Thai cities, too.

Chef McDang’s new cookbook The Principles of Thai Cookery has been getting a lot of attention. In this post, I test two of his recipes – Fried fish with garlic, white peppercorn, and cilantro root, and a spicy seafood dipping sauce.

Part 2 of Street Food Inspired Appetizers covers Grilled Shrimp on Lemongrass Skewers and Miang Kam and adapts the recipes from Supatra Jonhnson’s excellent cookbook ‘Crying Tiger: Thai Recipes from the Heart’.

The new ambassador to Thailand Kristie Kenney loves Thai Food. She has set up a Facebook competition asking people to share their favorite dishes and the prize is to meet the incoming ambassador in person in Bangkok.