Southeast Asia Specialties (Culinaria)

Rating:
Summary: A Journey for the tastebuds!
Review: After having spent 6 months in Hong Kong and enjoying the regional cuisine of Southeast Asia, I was hungering for an authentic book on the subject. I have found it through Culinaria. I have since purchased the other editions in the series. The photography is stunning and the recipes are quite authentic and varied. I have never disappointed a guest using these recipes. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: A Journey for the tastebuds!
Review: After having spent 6 months in Hong Kong and enjoying the regional cuisine of Southeast Asia, I was hungering for an authentic book on the subject. I have found it through Culinaria. I have since purchased the other editions in the series. The photography is stunning and the recipes are quite authentic and varied. I have never disappointed a guest using these recipes. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: Only wish it was bigger
Review: Like the rest of the Culinaria series, this book is full of beautiful, National-Geographic-quality photography of food, ingredients, and scenes from the region whose cuisine it describes. But it's not just "food and travel porno": the writing on the food and culture of the region is also extremely informative and fascinating, and the recipes I've tried have turned out delicious. And as in all the other Culinaria books, the pages and pages of photographs and descriptions of various categories of ingredients are an invaluable reference for someone familiarizing himself with the cuisine.

My only quibbles are that it's only a fraction of the size of the other volumes I have, and that it only covers a portion of Southeast Asia. Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia are the foci of the book: I wish the authors and the Konemann editors had expanded the scope of the project and worked their literary and photographic magic on presentation of the cuisines of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and perhaps even Burma and the Philippines. But I guess that's why this one is named "Specialties".

So the book gets four stars for being excellent at what it does cover.

Rating:
Summary: south-east asian eating delights
Review: This book is one of the best south-east asian cookbooks I've ever seen. There are plenty of pictures to show you what each dish should look like and there is an index of all the different ingredients you will have to find. The directions are easy to follow and the recipes that I've tried are wonderful. Just like being back in Malaysia. Even my mother has bought the book and she's Malaysian and a great cook! This book is also just a great book to learn about the different culture in south-east asia, but turning the pages will make your mouth water. Great recipes like penang laksa, assam chicken and rojak will make any meal authentic and delicious.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favourite cookbooks!
Review: When I got this for Christmas, 1999, I thought it was interesting...but more of a coffe table book than an actual working cookbook. And to some degree I was right: the print is rather small, making it hard to use in the kitchen, the recipes are the bare minimum and assume you absolutely know what you are doing, and the book is more photos of scenery than photos of dishes. But some of the recipes intrigued me, so I gave it a shot...and wow! I have not made a thing in here I didn't like. The Indonesian stuffed squid in spicy sauce ("cumi-cumi isi") is fabulous, and the Malaysian mutton in soy sauce with onions and tomatoes ("kambing kecup") is now a standard of mine -- I make it whenever I have some meat (I use any kind, including fish) and I can't be bothered to be ingenious! Another thing that makes me very fond of this book is the photos of ingredients, like galangal and kaffir limes leaves and candlenuts, with the names of things in several Asian languages, which I have found indispensible.