Customer Reviews

Cooking the Thai Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks)

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I happened upon this book in the library and took it home with me. It has 70 pages and includes about 24 recipes, with many photos of different foods. It is one of those books that you pick up and immediately like the way it looks. The recipes are easy to read and instructions are fairly simple. That same day I took it home, I tried the recipe for Lemon Chicken Soup, which only required 9 separate ingredients,and none difficult to find. I have made plenty of thai soups and none came close to what I would get at a thai restaurant. I didn't expect a whole lot out of this recipe as it was simple to prepare, but when I tasted it, it was the best thai style soup I had ever made. I couldn't believe it was one of the easiest to make,but the best tasting. I then went on to try the thai fried rice. Their recipe includes using pork or tofu, but I just left those out. Once again, the ingredient list was simple and the technique not at all hard. The cayenne pepper was what made it nice and spicy and it was an easy and quick recipe to make. I made it twice in the 2 weeks I had the book. There was also a Panaeng Beef Curry recipe which I had to try. I can't say mine came out as good as I hoped, but it may have been because I used lite coconut milk instead of the regular, the sauce was thinner that I would have expected. Nevertheless I copied the recipe down and will try it again with nice fatty coconut milk. In the end, I copied onto 3x5 cards several recipes and think this book was a great find. I only wish they had more recipes in it.

... sparse on the recipes. It is very basic (and I was a bit surprised to see that in the publication info at the front of the book, it's also listed under "juvenile literature"). There is good info on Thailand, it's customs, people, etc., but a full half of the book concentrated on that and a few silly things like describing the term "boil". Definitely not enough recipes. A grand total of 24 recipes, including how to cook rice and recipes for simple sauces. I'm disappointed with this (and the book "Cooking the Vietnamese Way" which I ordered with it) but hate to return things so I'll just have to make the dozen or so recipes that interest me. Then get a nice, comprehensive Thai cookbook where I can preview it before buying!

Edited years later.

A (vegetarian)friend is very interested in Thai cooking so I dug this out to give to her and, well, I just can't. First, the title includes the words "... include low-fat and vegetarian recipes." Nope. The only vegetarian recipes are for a salad or two and a dessert. And, actually, none of the recipes which include fish sauce are vegetarian since, well, fish sauce is made from fish.

This book does include some good general info on Thai cooking, and some very basic ingredient descriptions, but in the past years I have only used this book for the Nam Pla Prig (condiment) and Spinach Salad with Chicken recipes. Better recipes are available online.

Note, other than snacks, desserts and salads, there are really only about ten main-dish or noodle recipes included in this thin volume.