I love vegetables – in fact, probably even more so than your average vegetarian. Yes, I love my pork belly but I love the kale lying on the same plate just as much. I’ve always been brought up on the idea of a meal not being complete without vegetables. When I was growing up, there was never any disguising of vegetables, no blended spinach chocolate smoothies or courgette muffins. You just got used to seeing the colour green on the table. We were given vegetables, and surprise, the vegetables tasted good.

We could have a meal with rice and just dishes of vegetables. There could be beansprouts, fried with a bit of salted fish or cured meat (see here); aubergines, grilled and smothered with fermented shrimp sambal (see here); greens, tossed in a wok with dried anchovies and garlic (see here); or pak choi, simply steamed and drizzled with oyster sauce.

You might have noticed something here. Nothing is vegetarian. Vegetables feature heavily in the Southeast Asian diet, but funnily, vegetarian travellers will find themselves having a hard time there. Meat and seafood, or their derivative fat and sauces, are often used to season and add flavour to vegetables – though only in amounts that serve to emphasize or complement the vegetables. Unlike the Western palate, which tends to swing either towards the meat-heavy or the restrictive vegetarian or vegan, there is a very relaxed balance to the Asian diet.

On that note, cooking is very much intuitive in Southeast Asia. Often, what is on the table is just what happens to look good in the markets or the garden. Don’t be afraid to swap spinach for chard when the seasons shift; with most of the recipes here, you can play around with the type of vegetable used.