Customer Reviews

Delightful Thai Cooking

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My wife took classes from the author. She has taught many of the Thai chefs in Seattle. This is not the only Thai cookbook we own but it is the best. I love the Phad Thai, curry chicken and the coconut milk chicken soup (Tom Ka Gai). It has lots of other great recipes.

Can't be beat. gets right to the point. Preparation is easy: what an Asian housewife would do after work, so you can forget about the five pots and the special tool for peeling bamboo shoots. And what I love best: the recipes WORK. They come out just right, they taste like a Thai restaurant and they don't seem to have come from Woman's Day. The spring rolls are AWESOME. The green curry with shrimp caused people to keep talking about it to me two years later. Not fussy.

This is my favorite of this series. It makes thai cooking accessible to the beginner. The dishes come out even better than some of the best restaurant meals I've had. The instructions are simple and well-written. This book took the mystery out of thai cooking and allowed me to make awesome dishes that impress friends.

Eng Tie Ang has obviously dedicated her life to food, and it shows in these books. The recipes take a few short cuts here and there, but the quality doesn't suffer as a result. This makes them even more useful for the mother who's cooking for the family. I love that!

As Thai food becomes increasingly popular in the US (and abroad), hundreds of Thai cookbooks have hit the market, and it's difficult for those interested in cooking Thai food to know what to look for. So let me tell you what you'll get with Delightful Thai Cooking:

In short, you get a small paperback cookbook with a collection of hit-and-miss recipes.

I have been cooking Thai food at home for over 10 years now, and Delightful Thai Cooking is one of the 10 or so Thai cookbooks I own. It was actually the second I ever purchased, and I've cooked a number of recipes from its pages.

Some pointers:
*Some of the recipes in Delightful Thai Cooking are quite good; a few are excellent. Most, however, are lacking in various regards when cooked straight according to the recipe, and require substantial revision to get where you'd want them. Some dishes seem to be too strongly flavoured, others not strongly enough, etc. And there are even a few small errors in a couple of recipes which could trip up new cooks.
*It contains no photos (apart from the cover), and very few helpful illustrations (though the illustrations, where present, are much appreciated). If you need photos, this is not the book for you.
*As I am not Thai, I cannot be 100% of how authentic any book is, but I have never seen another Thai cookbook which recommended some of the American shortcuts found in this cookbook: I seriously doubt that using ketchup and peanut butter (as opposed to home-ground peanuts) are particularly "authentic" Thai ingredients. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd guess that some of the recipes in Delightful Thai Cooking are authentic, and some are quite Americanized.
*All of the curries (as far as I recall) expect you to make your own curry paste. If you would rather just buy canned (or bottled) curry paste at the grocery store to save yourself time, the recipes in this book may taste "off".

On the positive side, most of the recipes are moderately easy to prepare.

If you happen to own the book, the Coconut Custard recipe in its dessert section is one of the few that really stand out (I'd be happy to share a few others if anyone cares to inquire).

Overall, however, I cannot recommend Delightful Thai Cooking when there are so many other quite excellent Thai cookbooks available.

If you are looking for a Thai cookbook, I suggest the following:
For absolute beginners, I recommend Simply Thai Cooking.
For those who prefer to see photos of every single dish in a book and want to try something a little more authentic, Thailand: The Beautiful Cookbook is a personal favorite.
If you'd like something very authentic, True Thai or Thai Food are both good books with delicious recipes.

I notice that most of those posting positive reviews of this cookbook have taken courses from (or otherwise know) the author. Perhaps, when combined with a course where the author can teach you how to prepare the dishes in person, many of the recipes in this book may be excellent (assuming one does things the author has taught them which are not written in the pages of the cookbook). Unfortunately, this has not at all been my own experience when trying to prepare the recipes on my own.

We have had this cook book for 20 years. It is the most used cook book we have. The recipes are fast, easy and delicious. I can't recommend it enough!

Simple recipes, yes. Although there's ketchup (?!) in the pad thai recipe. 'Nuff said.

I've never actually been to Thailand, but I have eaten at some incredible Thai food restaurants. I found this book to be a cinch at helping me re-create some of the basic Thai recipes. We eat a lot of shrimp in the Canadian maritimes, so the Garlic Shrimp is a fave.

I've known the author for over 16 years, and she won't let you down in this wonderful collection of books.

I bought this book at a cooking class giving by the author, she signed it in 1992. Fast forward 16 years and this is my most used cookbook! I have over 300. I simply love the easy fresh preparation of Thai food. Other reviewers have commented on the simplicity of the recipes; in my mind that's a good thing. My favorites are Chicken in Coconut Soup, Beef Salad, Cucumber Salad, Phad Thai (note: they actually DO use ketchup in Phad Thai in Thailand) and Prawns in Green Curry. You can even save more time if you buy authentic curry pastes at your nearest Asian store. I've used the recipes so often that I have many memorized and mix and match ingredients depending on what is available.