I came to Thai food the wrong way. No family connection, no grandmother's kitchen smelling of galangal. Fifteen years later the water keeps getting deeper, and that is precisely why I haven't stopped.

I remember the first time I put a jungle curry on the menu at Farang. A few customers looked at it like I'd made a mistake. Now those same customers come in and ask for more chilli with it.

I've been cooking Thai food in London for fifteen years. For most of that time I was having the same conversation. Thai food is more than pad thai and green curry. Give it time. The time is now.

Pad Thai is not Thai food. Or rather, it is, but it's about as representative of Thai cooking as a fish finger is of British cuisine. After nine years running Farang, I'm done being polite about it.

The first kitchen I worked in, everything you couldn't use went straight in the bin. Thai cuisine changed that for me. Here's what Farang actually does with the parts most kitchens throw away.

The call came on a Tuesday. The Royal Thai Embassy wanted to know if I'd be interested in cooking a demonstration for Thailand's Prime Minister during her official UK visit. I said yes before I'd finished reading the sentence.

The fishmonger texts me at dawn. Not every morning, but often enough that I check my phone before I've had a coffee. Sometimes it's a load of British mackerel just landed. That's what working with suppliers who care actually looks like.

The first thing you learn about curry paste is that it takes longer than you think. The second thing is that your arm will hurt. The third is that it's worth it by a distance that makes every other shortcut in cooking feel trivial.

Britain's relationship with chilli used to be simple. There was curry, which came in mild, medium or hot, and there was vindaloo, which existed as a dare. Then came the heat challenge era. That's not what chilli is for.

Green curry is the most misunderstood dish in Thai cooking, at least in this country. Most people in Britain have eaten it, or think they have. What they've eaten is a sweet, mild, pale green soup from a takeaway box. It is categorically not the same thing.