Real Thai: The Best of Thailand's Regional Cooking

We've been using this book as our Thai cooking bible now for eight years, from LA to Baltimore. We became so addicted we even bought a kaiffer lime tree (sadly, had to leave in LA.) We love the tome kai gia, the clay pot shrimp with bean thread noodles, crab fried rice and use the dipping sauce for beef to marinate pork ribs. Once you master the flavors, the recipes are easy to adapt to your taste. We add ginger to the dipping sauce, and cut down on the coconut milk in the tome kai gai. However you do it, it's an amazing cook book. You will need to find a Thai grocery store in your area, though.

The second Thai cookbook I bought the first was The Original Thai Cookbook by Brennan. This book just didn't do anything for me. I attempted to make Pad Thai dish that turned out inedible. Anyways, I bought Real Thai in 1994 while on a daytrip to Mendocino, CA. Boy, was I rewarded many, many times over. This cookbook firmly established my reputation as being a great cook. I kept telling everyone it's because of this cookbook. My husband raves about my cooking and just about tell everyone about it. The recipes are very forgiving and flexible. Many times, I didn't have all of the ingredients and yet it still came out delicious. McDermott has such a finely honed and refined taste that her combination of seasoning is so vibrant and yet balanced. And very Thai authentic. You don't sense that it's lacking or overpowered by one seasoning over the other. Just about every recipe works. Yellow curry chicken, basil chicken, spinach soup, the noodles with broccoli to name a few is absolutely delicious. Her curry paste recipes are delicious which if you have the time is worth the labor. I try hard not to submit to my compulsion to collect cookbooks so after 13 years I finally honed it down to - Hazan's Essential of Italian cooking, Kennedy's Essentials of Mexican cuisine, Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, Bach's The Classic Cuisine of Vietnam, Jaffrey's indian cooking and of course McDermott's Real Thai. The rest of my cookbooks I chucked it out, donated to Goodwill and gave away to my family and friends. My book is splattered with stains and pages are falling apart. You will not regret buying this book if you are into Thai cooking. Another book I found good is Simply Thai Cooking. With these two on hand, you'll establish yourself as a bonafide Thai cuisine chef.

I picked this book up on a whim and have not stopped reading it and cooking from it for two weeks. The recipes are incredibly easy and straightforward, but definitely as good as anything you can get in any thai restaurant I've eaten in (and I've eaten in them from San Francisco to Atlanta). I've always wanted to be able to make Larb, yum nam toke and just about everything else that is in this book, and every recipe I've tried has been wonderful. I agree with some of the other reviewers: you can add more chili. Though it has no pictures, I find the simple, friendly text very soothing late night reading and I have already read this book several times more than my fancier cookbooks. I recommend it to novices and experts.