Customer Reviews

The Lhasa Moon Tibetan Cookbook

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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Tsering Wangmo has written down recipes that are both simple to follow and delightful to create and enjoy. These are very traditional types of recipes from Tibet that I would venture to say would be difficult to find in any other cookbook. She includes interesting trivia and ways of life of the Tibetan people. Even if I wasn't that interested in the food, the knowledge I gained about the customs, likes and dislikes, and attitude of the Tibetan people was well worth the price of the book. The Paley (flat bread) is quite good and goes well with any dish that requires a side bread to dip with...I like it with chili. The Chicken Curry is cooked with tomatoes and is exceptional! The Stuffed Dumplings (Momo) are addictive and the Tukpa broth (meat broth Tibetan-style) brings a whole new taste to soup! I was delighted to find recipes for such things as Butter Tea, Tsampa (parched barley flour), Dried Cheese and even Chang (barley beer). This book is a jewel!

I purchased this book about 3 years ago, and really enjoyed it. Being somewhat of a self-taught chef I readily buy new cookbooks. The book is well written and reads top-notch. The recipes are simple and DELICIOUS. The authoress includes a few personal ruminations from her past while a refugee in India. It doesn't take up a lot of shelf space and has a lot of practical tips. I was recently in San Francisco and had the chance to eat at the Lhasa Moon Tibetan Restaurant and meet the authoress. She is a delightful hostess and the food was fabulous and very affordable (and this was in San Francisco). Take my advice, buy the book, cook the food, and visit the restaurant!

To an armchair traveler like me, reading this cookbook was a very
special way of learning about Tibet and its people. And even though
I'm not planning or recreating the dishes, I can almost taste them in
my mind by reading this book.

The authors, Tsering Wangmo and Zara
Houshmand not only bring recipes from The Lhasa Mood Tibetan
restaurant in San Francisco on to the printed page. They also give the
reader a feeling of the role that food plays in the way of life of the
Tibetan people.

For example, in the Tibetan diet, butter and is much
more than food. It is accepted as currency for trade or taxes, burned
for light in butter lamps, smeared on the face as an ointment for
protection against wind and cold, and consumed medicinally. And the
salted and buttered tea, known as Poecha, is consumed in large amounts
as people sip it all day to keep warm and avoid dehydration in the
high altitude.

Another interesting insight about Tibetan food is
appreciation for the Buddhist belief that all lives are equal, so
larger animals are preferred as food. In his writings, His Holiness
the Dalai Lama has expressed his utter dismay at the loss of lives in
a whole plateful of shrimp making a meal for a single person.

I'm
lucky to have several Tibetan restaurants to enjoy in New York City,
but if I ever get to San Francisco I would definitely check out the
Lhasa Moon.

It is an excellent book! Also, its an easy to follow one!

An excellent introduction to cooking in the Tibetan style. Ms. Wangmo's instructions are clear and the food is delicious!

Tami Swartz - Foodie

Some things I did not notice in reviews mentioned was that it is thin (small page count), black&white and has not as many pictures as I would have liked. But the dishes themselves are all wonderful. I just wish more time was spent on the production value of the book itself.

I lived in Lhasa, Tibet for over a year so when I found this cookbook I was eager to try out my favorites. As I had been missing my tsampa (barley flour) porridge the most over the past month so I started there. Even though I followed all of the instructions -- at the end of the process it just didn't taste 'right' so I was a bit disappointed. I used the ordinary barley from the bins at Whole Foods - maybe so-called "Indian barley" would be better but I can't be sure. There is no mention of what kind of barley to use so I was left feeling incomplete.

Undeterred, I started in on the vegetarian recipes in her book. Although I eat meat and have eaten my fair share of yak in Tibet, I was curious to see if her adaptations could capture the same flavor palate without the meat. I was actually really saddened here because the food tasted nothing like I had in Tibet at all. I realize that there are two schools of Tibetan cooking (those more Indian influenced and those more Chinese-Sichuanesque) but I still felt that all the dishes were bland by either standard. Also, I found the quantities that each dish produces to be quite large (at least enough for four people) making each mistake more annoying. Finally some notes about Asian cooking style are assumed (how much oil to use, how exactly to cut the vegetables etc etc) so that I probably would have been lost had I not been cooking in this style for over a year now.

On the positive side, her cultural notes about each dish are very accurate and I appreciated her notations so that I could more easily modify the recipes to be more authentic if I chose. I wasn't bothered at all by the black and white pictures or the paperback.

I'm going to go through some of the meat recipes now as they seem to have gotten good reviews from other customers but all-in-all I'm left wanting more.