Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking [Hardcover]

Su-mei Yu (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 3, 2000

Contains more than 175 recipes, but this book is much more than just a recipe collection. Su-Mei presents a history of Thai cooking woven through with the people and customs that shaped it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Americans love Thai food. Among the best cookbooks exploring this rich, tantalizing cuisine is chef-restaurateur Su-Mei Yu's Cracking the Coconut. Insisting that there can be no true Thai cooking without homemade "core" preparations (such as various chili pastes), Yu includes precise, accessible recipes for these and other essential ingredients while outlining fundamental techniques in vivid detail. Readers learn the proper hand motions for cracking a coconut, how to wrap ingredients in banana leaves, and how to work a mortar and pestle, the central Thai-kitchen implement. The book's 175 recipes are divided between chapters devoted to essential ingredients or dishes. The chapter on Thai curry ("the signature dish") explores the basics of preparing this exciting fare and includes such delicious recipes as Red Curry with Roasted Pork and Green Banana and Sweet Green Curry with Meatballs. A chapter called "The Secret of Thai Salads" offers recipes for a small repertoire of essential dressings and such tempting recipes as Apricot, Shrimp, and Pork Salad and a salad-feast called, simply, Lamb and Roast Duck. Yu provides cultural notes and cooking lore throughout the book, often drawing from her recipe-hunting travels abroad. It's hard to imagine a better start for anyone wishing to "cook Thai" than this fully illustrated book, which perfectly balances recipes and instruction to make it an innovative standout. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly

Owner of San Diego's Saffron Restaurant, Yu takes her Thai cooking seriously: she expects readers to pound curry pastes by hand in a mortar and pestle (a process that takes about 30 minutes)Dand don't even think about using canned coconut milk unless absolutely necessary. In compensation for all this work, Yu provides flawless and authentic recipes full of the fresh flavors of Thailand, such as Grilled Mackerel Salad with pickled garlic, coconut and peanuts and Beef and Pumpkin Stew with kabocha squash and cilantro. Recipes are organized loosely according to main ingredients, and in one chapter simply because they represent "The Thai Philosophy of Food," which consists of juxtaposing contrasting tastes. A chapter on fiery curries includes Red Curry with Roasted Pork and Green Banana and Sour-Orange Curry with Tender Vegetables. Aside from the work of grinding the curry paste, these can be assembled relatively quickly. Another chapter focuses on "The Big Four Seasonings," or salt, garlic, coriander root and peppercorns, and provides a recipe for a paste of the four that can be used in everything from fish batter and deep-frying batter to meatloaf. Noodle dishes are both hot (several types of Pad Thai) and cold (Cool Noodles with Jungle-Style Sauce). Thai salads are original and refreshing: Pomelo and Shrimp Salad and Banana Blossoms with Chicken Salad. Yu also writes beautifully of her own experiences cooking and eating in Thailand. For Thai novices and for those who are seeking to delve more deeply into this sophisticated and often surprising cuisine, this book is a must-have.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition (July 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688165427
• ISBN-13: 978-0688165420
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Thai

More About the Author

It has been seven years since I started researching and writing The Elements of Life. It came about because of my curiosity about why even the simplest of Thai dishes is layered with bold, vibrant and complex tastes, flavors and aromas. I was to discover that the innumerable seasonal and natural ingredients used by Thai cooks are chosen not only for the end result of splendid fare, but also reflect a deliberate intent to create healthful and irresistible medicine. Food, as traditional Thai cooks would say, is medicine.
The book, The Elements of Life mirrored my latest quest as a Thai cook, author and amateur food historian. My first book, Cracking the Coconut, Classic Thai Home Cooking was written to record traditional Thai home recipes and techniques. It was followed by Asian Grilling, a book of fun and easy recipes with Asian flavors. The Elements of Life explains the concepts and natural philosophy that underlie Thai cooking and the Thai way of life. It is a culmination of my personal journey to study this ancient teaching. Knowing my home element is like having a personal compass. It has guided me to live in full partnership with nature as I cook and care for myself, my family and friends, and the customers of my restaurant. It is also the foundation on which a cooking academy, Prem Center Organic Cooking Academy was founded by myself and my dear friend, M.L.Tri Devakul. The school is located in Mae Rim, northern Thailand where guests and students can learn firsthand how to apply this philosophy by harvesting, cooking and eating seasonal produce from our organic farm.
I hope you will join hands with me in preserving nature's ways, and in turn cooking and eating nature's gifts and being rewarded with good health and contented life.
Please visit my blog: http://www.sumeiyu-thailiving.blogspot.com/ and my restaurant's web site: http://www.saffronsandiego.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nicely done! April 16, 2002

By Angela Watts

Format:Hardcover

I had some hesitation in purchasing this book because the name didn't seem very thai, (half thai myself and was raised on the "real deal" as well as have been in several towns in thailand for months at a time pre-cooking years, I didn't want an americanized version of thai food) but then I had seen you on the show Cooking Live where your methods were in the same manner my mother cooks, but more of an easier measuring manner as opposed to trying to write down her recipes by watching her and her "eyeing" measurements! I just have to know the measurements before trying to alter it!

I love this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who would want to learn the basics in traditional and not americanized thai cooking, and also who is not wanting to take the lazy way out as that other reviewer was referring. The book is to show you how to make it from scratch, and not looking for a review of canned goods or just out of the can. If all of the ingredients were exactly the same and just in a can, why would a cookbook even be needed?

I don't know of many grocery stores, let alone asian markets, ESPECIALLY in California that wouldn't have fish sauce! I've lived in 4 different parts of the country since leaving home, and haven't ever had any problem in finding the majority of the ingredients shown in this book. From Indianapolis, to Phoenix, to Las Vegas and now a very small town in Michigan, they have their own asian section in the local grocery stores!

Also, such as the other reviewer criticized Pad thai, each creation varies in the preparation per cook as it would in any family, just as I'm sure everyone has a different way to prepare something as simple as meatloaf. I love this book and its a good substitution for moms cooking, but yes every time I'm at home, I do put in my orders for my moms home cooking, just as any other person would with a great cooking mom! Khap Kuhn Ka Su-Mei!

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent Thai cookbook February 12, 2001

By M. Zamorski

Format:Hardcover

After looking at maybe 20 Thai cookbooks and buying a few others, I now wish that I bought this one first.

The author grew up in Thailand, and clearly did extensive culinary research in the preparation for the book. In addition to the recipes, she offers some rather specific techniques as well as background on ingredients. In this sense, it is similar in concept to Rick Bayless' cookbooks on Mexican cooking. While I can't claim an extensive experience in Thai cooking and culture to comment on its authenticity, the ingredients and techniques are identical to those I learned at cooking school in Thailand, and the results taste familiar as well.

I agree with some of the comments above as to the need to some of the somewhat labor intensive preparation of curry pastes she advises. I have made them from scratch (not really that hard, if you have done it a few times and have a strong arm for the mortar and pestle) and used prepared ones, and, while I think the homemade ones are better (more subtle, more complex, more "fresh"), I usually use them only for special occasions. And after the homemade ones have sat in the fridge for a while, the difference is less distinct. But I appreciate a cookbook that at least encourages you to try to make your own paste!

I also agree that the homemade coconut milk exercise is not worth the trouble. The coconuts I can get here in Michigan are just not consistently that good, and I can't tell the difference in the finished product. Still, I was glad that I had a chance to try making it at least once.

Yes, the author does offer substitutions, such as miso for shrimp paste, but she also makes it clear that these are substitutions and describes the rationale for them. In this way, I think she is better than some ethnic cookbook authors who write stuff like: "Don't even consider making this dish unless you have access to the special veal kidney sausages made by my dear friend Pierre Gallimard at his family's boucherie off the Place Vendome....."

My biggest complaint is that there are not enough drawings in the book. The author tries to describe certain techniques (like making sticky rice bundles in banana leaves) that would be much easier to understand with a simple line drawing.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, traditional thai cooking... February 1, 2005

By viv_smile

Format:Hardcover

I watched Su-Mei Yu's being interviewed locally here in San Diego. After seeing it, I decided to try her restaurant here. It's a great local Thai noodle restaurant and serves her famous excellent Thai Chicken.

Upon eating there twice, I decide to buy her 2 books. I absolutely love her book. Her dishes optimizes the combination of sweet, salt, sour, spicy that you REALLY can't figure out the breakdown of elements of spices when you eat the food.

After making rounds at the local Asian grocery store to buy all the ingredients one afternoon (couldn't find green peppercorns or Thai white peppercorns), I adventured making her Crying Tiger dish, a Bangkok Chicken dish that they don't serve here in US. It was awesome!! My mouth still salivates when I think of this dish. It's so good that I made it again the next day for dinner.

Can't wait to discover some of her other recipes. Being Asian American, Su-Mei Yu also incorporates some famous Chinese dishes as well!!