A Culinary Odyssey [Kindle Edition]

Andrew X Pham (Author)

Book Description

This is a cookbook diary of travels, flavors, and memories of Southeast Asia, written by award-winning writer and food critic Andrew X. Pham.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

This is the culmination of a lifetime of passionate eating, traveling, writing, and cooking: 45 of my favorite and simplest recipes from the cuisines of my roots, then and now.

But it's so much more than a cookbook. It's love, it's life. It's everything I know about living, culture, and food from the land of my birth and my chosen home for the past decade.

Product Details

• File Size: 3999 KB
• Print Length: 162 pages
• Publisher: Cloudtiger Productions (April 8, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007SJFAZ6
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #189,330 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #88 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Gastronomy > Essays
  • #90 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Forty-five favorite recipes from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia May 20, 2012

By T. Pham

Format:Kindle Edition

What I like about Andrew X. Pham's new cookbook,"A Culinary Odyssey":

+ Step by step easy to cook recipes
+ Mouth watering photos accompanied each recipe
+ Insightful cooking tips and insights
+ 45 favorite recipes from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia
+ Andrew's Southeast Asia culinary travel stories

Personally, some of my favorite recipes are for salad/spring rolls, papaya salad, egg rolls, garlic chili eggplant, tom yum gung(popular Thai sweet, sour, spicy shrimp soup), beef luc lac(aka shaking beef), claypot catfish, and mango and sticky rice.

In short, "A Culinary Odyssey" makes a great addition to a kitchen's collection of cookbooks.

btw - Did you know that Andrew X. Pham worked as a food writer and restaurant critic in the San Francisco Bay Area for five years before he wrote his first award winning book,"Catfish and Mandala"?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a cook book! May 20, 2012

By Grant

Format:Kindle Edition

Do you want to feel like visiting South East Asia while seating at home? Try one dish from the 45 recipes in Andrew X. Pham's "A Culinary Odyssey". You will be happily surprised by the authentic favors of South East Asian cuisine and you will want to try all 45 dishes in no time.

I traveled to Thailand, Laos and Khmer (Cambodia) many times and I always miss the wonderful taste of South East Asian dishes. Surprisingly I found that just one of those dishes in Andrew's book would take me right back there.

In addition, Andrew X. Pham's vignettes accompanying the recipes were both literary and insightful; his writing on South East Asian etiquette is amazing. This cook book worth $30, not $3!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular cookbook! May 14, 2012

By Sheabody Butter

Format:Kindle Edition

"Does the world need another cookbook?" Andrew X. Pham asks himself, and answers his own question: "Probably not."

But Pham writes one anyway, because he believes that "the pursuit of exceptional food, great literature, and meaningful adventure is a life-long pleasure."

"A Culinary Odyssey" is no ordinary cookbook. It is peppered with poignant personal anecdotes of culinary delights and spectacular shoots of Southeast Asian countryside. While most cookbooks, if not all cookbooks, only provide photographs (or illustrations) of a small percentage of recipes detailed in the volume, Andrew X. Pham's "A Culinary Odyssey" graces the book with page after page of breathtakingly beautiful photo spreads of dishes for which recipes are given.

There is no doubt in my mind that Andrew X. Pham is passionate about food and cooking. He shares his zest with readers in lovingly tendered cooking delineation.

"A Culinary Odyssey" is the result of a successfully funded Kickstarter Project which Pham started in the year 2011. All one-hundred-fifty-eight of his Kickstarter backers believed in the project and pledged over US$10,000 to enable him to fund this project. Pham has exceeded all expectations in this exquisite culinary odyssey.

If all Kickstarter projects were this stunning.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "I cook the way I live: simple and intense." May 20, 2012

By dao

Format:Kindle Edition

"I cook the way I live: simple and intense." These are the words that introduce Andrew X. Pham's approach to cooking on his website, and these beautifully minimalist principles resonate throughout A Culinary Odyssey. The recipes are deliciously accessible and yet are so authentically steeped in the diverse flavors, colors, and realities of Southeast Asian food and culture, there is no need to boast or exoticize anything. At the same time as they are simple and use easy-to-understand layman's terms for recipe names (i.e. "BBQ Pork and Rice Noodles" is exactly that at the same time so much more...), you quickly get the sense that Andrew X. Pham knows what he is talking about - he is not just a traveller gathering recipes from various countries he is passing through; he is a keen, compassionate eye and mind, giving SE Asia travel and etiquette tips, drawing on a well of real experience of having lived, traveled, and eaten across this region for over a decade, gathering, blending, and reinventing recipes and techniques with the imagination and confidence of an artist and an adventurer.

Being a minimalist in many areas of my own life, I also appreciated the informality of Andrew's kitchen - simple enough and few enough elements as to fit into one suitcase; rice cooked without dependence on a fancy electric rice cooker; meals done in a single wok over a single fire/stove. While this might sound a bit like "extreme" cooking, it's surprisingly not - Andrew's instructions make it all so easy that you begin to realize it is true: you don't need a lot to accomplish these amazing dishes. I think it is the mark of a true artist (and a pragmatic one too) that he can encourage others to delve into the adventure of food without advocating need for lots of fancy tools and techniques.... There is also the relevance of our times in this instruction (also from Andrew's website): "In life as in cooking, if you know what you're doing, you can do a lot with a little."

In the current reality - where indulgence and strain on resources are becoming things to be more aware of - this is a cookbook that instructs that we don't necessarily need to sacrifice flavor, adventure, delight, even when called to be more pragmatic and conscious of food sources and resources.

Lastly, this book is wonderful and different than other cookbooks also simply because it is written by an award-winning literary writer. You'll find lyrical excerpts and passages that immerse you even more deeply in the experience of the food and the cultures surrounding the dishes. I think more cookbooks should be written by real storytellers - making the whole cooking/reading experience altogether more immersive. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious! May 19, 2012

By sean nguyen

Format:Kindle Edition

What a wonderful cookout with delicious recipes. I love Vietnamese food and this book has simple and easy to understand instructions on how to make great Vietnamese food at home. This is a must cookbook for every aspiring chef!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What an awesome collection of fav dishes from S.E. Asia! May 19, 2012

By Res ipsa loquitur -

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

OMG, $3 for this? This ought to be at least $10! I've given copies of A Culinary Odyssey to two friends of mine who own Kindles, and have a copy of this book myself on my iPad3.

The book contains 45 easy to make recipes for some of the best dishes Southeast Asia has to offer. The pictures are large and gorgeous, and the recipes are easy to understand. What I appreciated too was that ingredients and local customs are explained so even readers who have already traveled to that region of the world would still learn a few things. It was also a great read for the stories that filled the pages between the recipes. Great book from the author who gave us the famous novel Catfish and Mandala! An awesome book to own whether you cook or not!

More About the Author

Andrew X. Pham trained and graduated from UCLA as an aerospace engineer. He worked at United Airlines as an aircraft engineer before switching career to become a writer while pursuing dual graduate degrees, M.B.A and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, specializing in orbital debris. His brother's suicide was the catalyst in his pivotal life changing decision.

He writes and lives on the Thai-Laos border in a traditional wooden farm bungalow he built on the Mekong River. He teaches writing and occassionally lead bicycle tours in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He has launched a culinary project on Kickstarter.com, titled A Southeast Asian Love Affair: My Cookbook Diary of Travels, Flavors and Memories, a literary work that tells the stories of his life in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He can be found at andrewxpham.com

He is the author of  Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999)  and The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (2009). He is also the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (2008).

Catfish and Mandala won the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize,  QPB Nonfiction Prize, and the  Oregon Literature Prize. It was also a Guardian Shortlist Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Book, a Border's Original Voices Selection

The Eaves of Heaven was a National Book Critic Circle Finalist and a Asian Pacific American Librarian Association Honorary Book of the Year. It was also the Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association and named as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Washington Post Book World, One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Portland Oregonian, One of the Los Angeles Times' Favorite Books of the Year, and One of the Best Books of the Year by Bookmarks Magazine

Andrew X. Pham also won a  Whiting Writer Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Montalvo Fellowship.