Customer Reviews

Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant

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

 

 

This is a great Thai cookbook. Simple to understand, a variety of dishes so the non-beginner won't get bored, and things uniformly taste wonderful. Apparently the authors run a great Thai restaurant in the East Bay area of San Francisco, California. It's the Thai cookbook I refer to the most of the several I own; and apparently the authors have produced a Thai cooking video as well, which it doesn't look like Amazon.com carries as yet. You can find the Siam Cuisine website, though, for further info, I suppose.

I bought this book when I was 18 and working my way through college as a cook. I loved Asian food, but did't have much experience cooking Thai food. The fact that this cookbook makes you (lets you) make all the curries from scratch is wonderful. It took some searching to get all the ingredients exactly right, but the first few meals I made with this book were just amazing. I continued to cook, and became a professional chef with a giant bookshelf full of cookbooks, well over 200. Now, 14 years later, I rarely use cookbooks, but whenever I do, or if a friend wants to borrow a book for something new, this is the one I give them. I love all of the Charlie Trotter books for the pics and ideas, but this book is the best for recipes. (I know I'm crossing cultural barriers, but I hope you get the point.) After I made my first meal from this book, for a girlfriend, I vowed that I'd go to this restaurant if I ever "made it to San Francisco." Well, now every time I'm there, I make sure I hit Berkeley to go there. The restaurant lives up to all of the recipes, and, this might surprise some, the dishes in the restaurant taste JUST LIKE the ones made from the book. It's one of my favorite restaurants, definitely the best Thai restaurant I've ever been to, and without a doubt, if we're judging cookbooks by the number of times they've been opened, this is the best among my collection. If you're in a smaller city, you might have some trouble getting some ingredients, but if you can't improvise you can always get something from the net. Even if you DO have do substitute some ingredients, I would recommend this cookbook above any other Thai cookbook I've seen, and above any other Asian cookbook as well.

Another reviewer talked about having to make sauces and normally I would agree - it is daunting to have to make sauces first. But in this case, the food you get when you make it is some of the best food ever - better than most Thai restaurants. The Pad Thai is incredible. The yellow chicken curry is the best I have had in twenty years. Just outstanding. If you hunger for really good Thai food, then get this book!

This book is from a great Berkeley restaurant. The recipes are very good but designed for making in a restaurant. One makes base recipes, (which can be frozen in small portions) and uses them in many recipes. Makes for great depth of flavor and phenomenal food but most items need preplanning. Well worth the time they take to make.

A book I keep in the kitchen for quick dinners. You have to have an asian pantry, but if you do the ideas you will find here will be easy to put together.

I was disappointed with this book because too many of the recipes are not self contained, but rather require you use "Special Sauce #1" or "Special Sauce #2". What if I don't want to make a big batch of your special sauce (that intentionally creates more than for just one recipe). I want to be able to see a recipe and follow it to produce a dish for that night. I own a lot of thai cookbooks. This one does not see the light of day.