Delightful Thai Cooking

This is my favorite of this series. It makes thai cooking accessible to the beginner. The dishes come out even better than some of the best restaurant meals I've had. The instructions are simple and well-written. This book took the mystery out of thai cooking and allowed me to make awesome dishes that impress friends. Eng Tie Ang has obviously dedicated her life to food, and it shows in these books. The recipes take a few short cuts here and there, but the quality doesn't suffer as a result. This makes them even more useful for the mother who's cooking for the family. I love that!

I've never actually been to Thailand, but I have eaten at some incredible Thai food restaurants. I found this book to be a cinch at helping me re-create some of the basic Thai recipes. We eat a lot of shrimp in the Canadian maritimes, so the Garlic Shrimp is a fave. I've known the author for over 16 years, and she won't let you down in this wonderful collection of books.

I bought this book at a cooking class giving by the author, she signed it in 1992. Fast forward 16 years and this is my most used cookbook! I have over 300. I simply love the easy fresh preparation of Thai food. Other reviewers have commented on the simplicity of the recipes; in my mind that's a good thing. My favorites are Chicken in Coconut Soup, Beef Salad, Cucumber Salad, Phad Thai (note: they actually DO use ketchup in Phad Thai in Thailand) and Prawns in Green Curry. You can even save more time if you buy authentic curry pastes at your nearest Asian store. I've used the recipes so often that I have many memorized and mix and match ingredients depending on what is available.

Can't be beat. gets right to the point. Preparation is easy: what an Asian housewife would do after work, so you can forget about the five pots and the special tool for peeling bamboo shoots. And what I love best: the recipes WORK. They come out just right, they taste like a Thai restaurant and they don't seem to have come from Woman's Day. The spring rolls are AWESOME. The green curry with shrimp caused people to keep talking about it to me two years later. Not fussy.

My wife took classes from the author. She has taught many of the Thai chefs in Seattle. This is not the only Thai cookbook we own but it is the best. I love the Phad Thai, curry chicken and the coconut milk chicken soup (Tom Ka Gai). It has lots of other great recipes.