Thai Home Cooking

I borrowed this book from the library first and then I had to buy it after trying some of the recipes. Most thai cookbooks are so complicated and tedious. This one was so easy with very clear instructions and it even shows pictures of each exotic ingredient (and how to clean and prepare them) so you'll know what to look for in the asian food store. Buy this; it's worth it!

My husband and I have spent several months in Thailand and have been looking for a way to replicate authentic Thai dishes...this book is it! The pictures are just stunning...we were paging through and found a dish my husband had had many times for lunch in Thailand(Phad krapow neua); he knew how to say the dish (phonetically) but we didn't know how to spell it so we had no way of looking it up...but a picture is worth a thousand words! It came out perfectly, just like in Thailand.The section for ingredients was extremely helpful, too. I just took the book with me to the asian grocery store, and pointed out what we needed (I can't believe we found Thai basil!) Can't wait to try more dishes!

The recipes in this book are wonderful. I have cooked the green and red curries, the pad thai, and the tom kha gai. I'm going to cook the Chang Mai noodles next. I was looking for a good approximation of the wonderful Thai food I had in D.C., and with some tweaking, was able to match it. A couple tips: If you're new to cooking thai food, DON'T SKIP ANYTHING UNLESS THE DIRECTIONS SPECIFICALLY SAY YOU MAY! There is a section devoted to ingredients that you should read carefully. In my opinion, a thai curry is NO GOOD without genuine kaffir lime leaves, which are hard to come by. I found them in the frozen section of an asian grocery store. Also, if you fry the curry pastes, they stay for up to 2 months. Last, a note on flavor. The curries needed a little more sweentess for me to be perfect. Try adding 1/2 tablespoon more palm sugar to the red or green SUACES if you have the same problem. Also, don't be afraid to reduce the number of chilies in the SAUCES (don't know about the pastes themselves though). Lastly, a food processor makes any of these dishes relatively easy. Besides that, once you get the basic ingredients, you can make many of these dishes, over and over again, making it cost efficient. This book is a wonderful intro to tasty thai food.

I wrote this book, and I can say unequivocally, it is authentically easy. With recipes supplied from the Chiang Mai Thai Cooking School in northern Thailand, proving true to Thai cooking became my labor of love. Tips for time saving are regularly added, as are substitutions for those without an ethnic market in their vicinity. Chili afficionadoes will relish that capsicum quantities have not been decreased, but not all dishes are hot. And when the real Thai foods are very hot, variable quantities are recommended. Northern-non-coconut based curry are included, and as befits Thai cooking, numerous vegetarian variations also provided. But most of all, this book begins with curry pastes -- either store bought or home prepared -- and then shows myriad dishes using these delicious pastes. These are recipes as Thais cook them at home -- but written with a Western understanding. As with any home made meal, these recipes are variably easy -- not etched in stone. People around the world -- whether in Anchorage or Australia, Minnesotta or England, will be able to cook from this book. And the vibrant, authentic flavors will be the final test.