Customer Reviews

Dining With Headhunters: Jungle Feasts and Other Culinary Adventures

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I've never been sure whether this was a cookbook, a travel book, or a wonderful life narrative. Or, I'm sure it's all of the above. If you love life and you love food and you love people, you have to have this.

And you really can omit the fire ants without damaging the recipe...

If you are a fan of food writing this is the book for you. From peanut butter and crackers (a story about quitting smoking)to a bowl of Philipino dog stew this book makes for a wonderful read.

Sterling's pursuit of culinary exotica - he particularly likes spicy food - has taken him all over the world. He began his odyssey, and begins this unusual and entertaining book of essays and recipes, with his navy tour of southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

The early essays of his youthful navy days - quitting smoking while moving nuclear missiles ship to ship during typhoon conditions, a bittersweet dalliance with a Malaysian prostitute, in pursuit of pepper among Borneo headhunters - are hilarious, moving, and riveting.

As the years pass, his travels become more food focused, and the anecdotes more general and nostalgiac. But as his knowledge of food becomes more sophisticated, so do the recipes. And Sterling remains game for anything, including fried locusts, blood soup and dog, specifically puppy. And he includes recipes for everything - with substitutions for less adventurous palates.

There are numerous mouthwatering curries, satays, stews, soups and streetfoods includng traditonal dishes like pad Thai, chile prawns, green mango salad and Cambogee beef, along with Navy classics like boiled coffee and El Rancho beef stew. Exotica includes fish grilled with large red ants and two versions of grasshopper or cricket snacks. Great stories and good food.

Rollicking, rowdy, not infrequently ribald, and occasionally romantic --Richard Sterling takes us with him as he wanders over half the world and twenty years, eating, drinking, gathering pepper with headhunters and, er --rollicking. Lots of recipes for food and drinks and I've never had a crash with a Sterling recipe, either. You just have to admire a guy who can devise a recipe substitute for Bornean Red Warrior Ants, though he overdoes the tarragon a bit, in my opinion. (Different Warrior Ants?)