Cooking Thai cuisine, like giving George Washington Carver a massage, requires skill, patience, and just the right amount of peanut oil. Enjoy carefully measured flavor with today's Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of Thai cuisine at Jaded Thai in Hoffman Estates.

Jaded Thai introduces naive taste buds to an extensive menu of authentic Thai dishes, such as fresh soups and spicy noodle dishes. Signature entrees include the battered soft-shell crab, adorned with intricate hot chili, ginger, or garlic sauce ($14). Moonlight chicken marinates in yellow-curry paste before sizzling in a frying pan and then making a plate appearance atop a bed of spinach, sprouts, and tomatoes ($9.50). After an encounter with squid panang curry stewed in coconut milk with straw mushrooms, baby corn, and broccoli ($10), tongues laden with savory spices can explore sweeter avenues with a coconut-battered fried banana, which began only as a functional boomerang until it landed squarely in its inventor's mouth ($4.50). Other tongue coolers include green-tea ice cream ($3.50), stifling mouth flames after rendezvous with chili peppers or heated insult volleys with the street urchins who refuse to stop feeding marshmallows to your beagle.