Joy of Thai Cooking

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book!!
Review: Ravadi tells us, in her book, that she was the child of Chinese immigrants to Thailand, and that she later opened a Thai restaurant in the U.S. So you might expect that these recipes would be a bit biased towards the "Chinese style" of Thai cooking, and you would be right. Such ingredients as cornstarch, sesame oil, and white wine make frequent appearances, and sometimes Ravadi "leaves out" the fish sauce. :-)

But the recipes are SUPERB!! In particular, her recipe for Cashew Chicken is the best I have ever found, and my Thai friends swoon with pleasure when they taste it -- along with her Sweet and Sour Pork (Bangok style). I also think her recipe for Chinese Hot and Sour Soup is fabulous -- well, let me not go on too long, but just say the book is worth its weight in gold. It is definitely available in Thailand; I just bought it three weeks ago at Suriwong Book Center in Chiang Mai.

This, along with "Real Thai," constitutes my entire active library of Thai cuisine, and I'm cooking something from these books almost every day!

Highest recommendation!

P.S. In the recipe for "Yam Wun Sen" -- a kind of noodle salad made with wun sen noodles, there is a missing step, which my Thai friend noticed immediately. The missing step is where you plunge the noodles into boiling water and actually COOK them. It should only take a few seconds to do this: Thai noodle shops have a special perforated container with a long handle which they use to do this. This step probably got left out because it was so "obvious."

Enjoy!!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book!!
Review: Ravadi tells us, in her book, that she was the child of Chinese immigrants to Thailand, and that she later opened a Thai restaurant in the U.S. So you might expect that these recipes would be a bit biased towards the "Chinese style" of Thai cooking, and you would be right. Such ingredients as cornstarch, sesame oil, and white wine make frequent appearances, and sometimes Ravadi "leaves out" the fish sauce. :-)

But the recipes are SUPERB!! In particular, her recipe for Cashew Chicken is the best I have ever found, and my Thai friends swoon with pleasure when they taste it -- along with her Sweet and Sour Pork (Bangok style). I also think her recipe for Chinese Hot and Sour Soup is fabulous -- well, let me not go on too long, but just say the book is worth its weight in gold. It is definitely available in Thailand; I just bought it three weeks ago at Suriwong Book Center in Chiang Mai.

This, along with "Real Thai," constitutes my entire active library of Thai cuisine, and I'm cooking something from these books almost every day!

Highest recommendation!

P.S. In the recipe for "Yam Wun Sen" -- a kind of noodle salad made with wun sen noodles, there is a missing step, which my Thai friend noticed immediately. The missing step is where you plunge the noodles into boiling water and actually COOK them. It should only take a few seconds to do this: Thai noodle shops have a special perforated container with a long handle which they use to do this. This step probably got left out because it was so "obvious."

Enjoy!!

Rating:
Summary: The word authentic is overused but...
Review: The word authentic is overused but really applies to the recipes in this book. I bought my copy in the Royal Palace in Bangkok. It was the last day of my week-long visit to my mother who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in the high plains east of Bangkok. Most of the recipes included taste remarkably similar to those I enjoyed at the homes of my mother's native friends.

Why then, you may ask, did I give it only 4 stars? Although the "Guide to Thai ingredients and utensils" is very good I thought it could be a little more thorough. Also, a few I the recipes, I thought, could use a little more explanation in the methods section or in the ingredients.

Rating:
Summary: My de-facto Thai cookbook
Review: With all the Thai cookbooks that have appeared on the market lately, it's a shame that this one isn't more widely available in the United States, because it really is one of the best. I bought it secondhand on the strength of the other reviews here, and I haven't been disappointed. There's a number of other excellent recipe books of Thai cuisine, like Nancie McDermott's Real Thai/Real Vegetarian Thai, but most of them seem geared toward making the type of meal that takes fifteen ingredients and half an afternoon to prepare everything from scratch. That's fine and good, but most of the time I don't have the energy or time for that kind of cooking.

So probably 75% of the time when I want to make a Thai meal, I pick up the Joy of Thai Cooking. I've probably tried two-thirds of the recipes in the book, and I have yet to find a stinker, or something that I wouldn't make again...and the majority of them are simple enough that I can make them at the end of a long day without much stress. Almost all the recipes are straightforward enough that I can find the ingredients either at the local grocery store or with a quick trip to any Asian grocery store, but they taste just fantastic. I really can't find anything bad to say about this recipe book, except that I wish it was even longer! If you're considering buying the Joy of Thai Cooking, you won't regret picking this one up.