Sach Moan Carii — Red Khmer Chicken Curry

At a Khmer wedding, when the ceremonies are done and the tables fill, the dish that most often arrives is sach moan carii — a red chicken curry with sweet potato, carrot and coconut, ladled beside a basket of sliced baguette. It is festival food and Sunday food both, rich enough to mark an occasion but gentle enough that children eat it happily. Its lineage is written into its bowl: the curry logic came up the rivers from India in the Funan era, the coconut and kroeung are pure Khmer, the mild yellow curry powder is a colonial-market convenience, and the baguette on the side is the protectorate's most delicious souvenir. Few dishes hold so much of the country's history in one fragrant pot.

The trick that separates a good carii from a flat one is blooming the paste in cracked coconut oil. Simmer thick coconut cream until it splits and the oil rises, fry the red kroeung and curry powder in it until the kitchen smells like a wedding, and only then add the chicken and the thinner milk. Keep the chilli restrained — this is a curry that should perfume the room, not clear it — and let the sweet potato go soft enough to thicken the sauce as it dissolves at the edges. Balanced right, with palm sugar rounding the salt and Thai basil thrown in at the last, it is exactly the kind of generous, coconut-warm bowl a celebration calls for, and reason enough to bake bread.