Best thai cooking, food & wine books according to redditors
We found 64 Reddit comments discussing the best thai cooking, food & wine books. We ranked the 20 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 64 Reddit comments discussing the best thai cooking, food & wine books. We ranked the 20 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
you get 10,000 points for "Sightseeing"!
I can't think of too much fiction... The Windup Girl is an excellent book, but the Thai setting feels a little cringey and forced. It doesn't ruin the book but it doesn't have to be in Thailand either.
Three non-fiction books I think are essential for anyone who hates being clueless:
edit: I remember an
awesomehilarious collection of anecdotes/essays by a prototypical farang sexpat in the late 40s but I forget what it's called, I'll look for it tomorrowedit #2: Lonely Planet's "World Food Thailand" is also excellent and well-researched
edit #3: "Letters from Thailand" is interesting too, it's about a boy who immigrates to Bangkok from southern China in the 1940s and it follows the rest of his life in Thailand.
This is possibly a variation of Evil Jungle Prince, a dish made popular by Keo's Thai Cuisine of Honolulu. The recipe is in Keo's Thai Cuisine and possibly online. It involves making a paste of lemon grass, lime leaves and Thai chiles, then cooking the other ingredients with this paste in coconut milk, and finishing with Thai basil.
edit: here is is: http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/January-2007/Taste-the-World/
https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fragrant-eggplant/
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/03/the-food-lab-vegan-experience-best-homemade-falafel-recipe.html
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/03/israeli-style-extra-smooth-hummus-recipe.html
https://smittenkitchen.com/2009/03/pita-bread/
https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/samosa-recipe-punjabi-samosa/
https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/lemon-rice/
And stuff from these:
Thai Vegetarian Cooking (Thailand)
Real Vegetarian Thai (Thailand)
Teff Love (Ethiopia)
Kansha (Japan)
The Lotus and the Artichoke (Malaysia and Sri Lanka are my two favorites, but also has India, Mexico, and Ethiopia)
Decolonize Your Diet (Mexico)
Tahini & Turmeric (the Middle East)
http://thegreekvegan.com (Greece)
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/topics/chinese-recipes/chinese-vegan-recipes/ (China, especially Sichuan)
https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-vegetarian-recipes/ (China)
http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/recipes/vegan/ (India)
https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com (India)
https://georgianrecipes.net/category/vegetarian/ (Georgia)
https://www.justonecookbook.com/tags/vegetarian/ (Japan)
https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/category/all-recipes/meatless-recipes/ (Thailand)
http://www.phamfatale.com/cat_25/tag_vegetarian/ (Vietnam)
https://thevietvegan.com/recipes/vegan-recipes/ (Vietnam)
Agree with /u/X28.
Andrea's book should be considered as a primary text for Vietnamese cooking (much like David Thompson's Thai Food for Thai, or Paul Bocuse: The Complete Recipes for French).
Luke's books are great (as well as his shows that sort of accompany the books, or the other way around).
id advise to read/buy http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Street-Food-David-Thompson/dp/158008284X for a street style curry or a classic style http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Thai-Cuisine-David-Thompson/dp/0898155630/ref=la_B001MOTLLM_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422352309&sr=1-3
here is a video, he has uploaded a few recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk9Ri238EW0
some may argue whether he's correct/authentic or not, but there are many ways to get the same result, his style is mostly southern style, whereas north Thailand have hotter curries and dont have fresh seafood so they use dried fish more often and have a little burmese influence..
also there is differing styles, such as Royal/Family/Street/Fusion etc, pick what you like and dont be too worried about if its 100% accurate
also if you can get "Healthy Boy Fish sauce" get it, its a pretty solid, not too fishy or salty.
source: was head chef of an award winning thai fusion restaurant 2+ years
Asia's a big, ancient place. Even within each nation there are unique styles of regional and ethnic fare.
With that in mind, I'd love to see some recommendations here for awesome Indian, Filipino, Hmong, Uzbek, etc. cookbooks.
Japanese
Lets get beyond sushi and hibatchi.
Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art is a great starting point. If you want to get technical you should check out Ando's Washoku or Hachisu's Preserving the Japanese Way.
If you want to start simple, Hachisu also has a great book on Japanese Farm Food. Ono and Salat have written a great noodle slurping opus in Japanese Soul Cooking.
Chinese
What we've come to think of as Chinese food in the US is a natural part of human appropriation of food styles, but with all due respect to Trader Vic's, crab rangoon and other buffet staples really aren't the real deal. Food in China is extremely regional. You don't have to go very deep to see the vast differentiation in spicy Schezwan recipes and Cantonese Dim Sum culture.
For your reading pleasure:
Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.
Breath of the Wok by Grace Young and Alan Richardson.
Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees by Kian Lam Kho and Jody Horton.
All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China by Carolyn Phillips.
Some people might freak out that I'm placing Erway's The Food of Taiwan under the Chinese category, but I'm not going to get into a political debate here. Taiwan has had a lot of different culinary influences due to migration / occupation and that is really the take away here.
Go forth, make bao.
Korean
Korea is having it's moment right now and if you want the classics, Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall's Growing up in a Korean Kitchen is a good baseline. It has all the greatest hits.
You also can't cook Korean food without kimchi. The only book I've read is Lauryn Chun's The Kimchi Cookbook which is kind of underwhelming considering the hundreds of styles of Kimchi that have been documented. The process of making kimchi (kimjang) even has a UNESCO world heritage designation. With that in mind, I think it's only a matter of time before we see a English book on the subject that has depth.
Given the cuisine's popularity, there are several other cookbooks on Korean food that have recently been published within the last year or so, I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet, so I won't recommend them here.
Thai
David Thompson's Thai Food and Thai Street Food are both excellent. /u/Empath1999 's recommendation of Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is excellent but it focuses on Northern Thai cuisine, so if you want to venture into central and southern Thai fare, Thompson's the other farang of note.
Vietnamese
Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen provides a nice survey to Vietnamese cooking. Charles Phan also has a couple of cookbooks that are quite good but I'm sure that there are zealots out there who would bemoan authenticity in either Vietnamese Home Cooking or The Slanted Door, but seriously, who gives a shit, the dude has Beard Awards under his belt for fuck's sake.
TL;DR OP means well but its long past time to bury "Asian" as a catch-all for such a large and diverse part of a continent, no?
I cook mostly Asian food, although I'm not Asian. Here are several cookbooks I couldn't live without...
Real Thai (McDermott)
I have David Thompson's epic Thai cookbook, but that's more for special occasions. McDermott's book has excellent recipes from many regions of Thailand. The homemade curry pastes are really worth the effort.
Chinese (Sichuan): Land of Plenty, Dunlop
Chinese (Hunan): Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Dunlop
I can't recommend Fuschia Dunlop's cookbooks highly enough. You will have to search for some ingredients, but these days this is pretty easy.
General Asian: Complete Asian Cookbook (Solomon)
Charmaine Solomon's book is hit or miss sometimes, but it has so many recipes in it that it's worth it, from Sri Lanka to the Philippines to Japan, etc.
My favorite new, specialty cookbook is
Cooking at Home With Pedatha (Giri & Jain)
which has delicious Indian (specifically, Andhran) vegetarian recipes.
I've asked at several Thai restaurants and had them tell me that few if any of their "vegetarian" dishes do not have fish sauce or shrimp paste. Since then, I bought Real Vegetarian Thai and when I crave Thai, I just make it myself.
World Food : Thailand
FYI I'd recommend this book if you're into Thai Food
I got my first copy many years ago and it's a bit of a Thai food Bible.
Thanks /u/booksandstuff13
Mine is pretty neat..
The oldest item on my Origional list when I first got may amazon account is a copy of Bad Taste a movie Item added January 8, 2007 XX
The thing I would probably want though is from my cooking stuff list, [These](https://www.amazon.com/dp/4915249905/?coliid=I3DDOC2YTMKW06&colid=3I75S9M5DLJ5N&psc=0&ref=lv_ov_lig_dp_it) books are really easy to follow, I found the Japanese one at the bin store and I love it.
Fuschia Dunlop is a good source for Chinese food. Her published recipe for Kung Pao Chicken is pretty killer. Eileen Yin-Fi Lo is also a well respected Chinese recipe author, check out My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen.
For Thai Food, Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is pretty interesting (and the restaurants are pretty awesome). There's also a tome, simply called Thai Food from David Thompson, as an outsider, looks complete and exhaustive (it's also daunting to me, but nice to have).
Hot Sour Salty Sweet also features Thai (as well as other SE Asian flavors). And I really like Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges as a more upscale cookbook.
Also, I find this little, unsung book to be a great resource. It has fairly simple recipes that can yield some nice flavors, great for weeknight dishes.
And, Momofuku is a fun contemporary twist with some good basics, but it's not a beginner book by any stretch!
Finally, The Slanted Door is on my wishlist. Looks divine.
I got this japanese one and this thai one for my mum a month ago and she absolutely loved them! Maybe they'll suit your fancy?
> I know, I probably sound like a ridiculous hypocrite
It's not silly or ridiculous. Our bodies habituate themselves to the things we eat, our brains remember foods that taste good (aren't bitter or poisonous, have high fat content, salt content, etc). It's completely legitimate to miss the sensations or the emotional response (comfort) you once associated with them. It just may take some time to change, that's all.
> The vegan cheeses I've tried have frankly been extremely off-putting, and while I've been getting by on coconut and almond milks, I really dislike them.
Every time I step into a grocery store or restaurant, I feel sad and limited
Why don't you try not replacing them for a while? Looking into other vegan recipes, cuisines, and styles of cooking that have nothing to do with dairy? Lots of Asian food doesn't use dairy because of lactose intolerance.
Instead of feeling stifled, maybe try to explore something new. That can help make things feel interesting and different.
Is there an Asian cuisine like
Chinese food, Korean food (some of these are vegan), Japanese food (1, 2), Thai (ingredients for Thai food are less commonly available, but it's an incredibly interesting cuisine if you can find them)
or maybe something else you've wanted to explore?
I'm curious to know how you managed to make it to 2017 w/o being exposed to Thai food...but congratulations! One of the world's truly great cuisines. I highly recommend Buddha's Table: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570671613/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
If you are looking for a great book on Thai food, there is no better book than Thai Food by David Thompson. It is the most complete book you can find on Thai food, the people and how they eat. I also own Pok Pok and it's great. I love how everything is measured out by weight, but if I could only own one book on Thai cuisine, it's definitely Thompson's book.
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amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
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Hey! That's a good idea! There should be these 3 dishes included: Pad Thai, Mango Sticky Rice and of course Gang Kaew Wan Gai ;-) Thai food is soooo delicious...
BTW my recommendations for cookbooks, due to you wanna create your own one, maybe you can check it out:
https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Thai-Kitchen-Demystifying-Authentic/dp/0449017052?keywords=thai+cookbook&qid=1539164147&sr=8-5&ref=sr_1_5
https://www.amazon.com/Thai-Street-Food-Authentic-Traditions/dp/158008284X?keywords=thai+cookbook&qid=1539164147&sr=8-14&ref=sr_1_14
https://www.amazon.com/Thai-Cookbook-Authentic-Thailand-Handbook-ebook/dp/B07J4X5B1W?keywords=thai+cookbook&qid=1539164250&sr=8-1-spell&ref=sr_1_1
I have a group of em, especially if you want any! i love love love the penny books. any of these would just make my skirt fly up.
Fun fact, majority of the Williams-Sonoma books have a penny option, and they have a ton! if you like great cookbooks like i do :D i figured i'd give you a big list so you can add anything you like and get yourself something nice :D
Thai
http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Thai-Food-Classic-Recipes/dp/1607745232
http://www.amazon.com/Pok-Stories-Roadside-Restaurants-Thailand/dp/1607742888
I don't have a tried and true recipe but I just checked my copy of Pok Pok to see if there was a tom kha recipe, there isn't. So why am I writing this? If you're interested in Thai cooking I can't recommend Pok Pok highly enough.
It's a good read, even if you never cook from, but you should cook from it.
If you find a good recipe, put up some pics of the result and share with us!
If you "search inside" this book on amazon you can see their recipe for Tom Kha. It has galangal, kaffir leaves, fish sauce and chilis so how bad could it be?
Pick a classic in a cuisine with which you're generally unfamiliar but for which you feel confidant you can get good ingredients. A few ideas:
You'll be forced to learn new techniques and deal with new ingredients, and get a sense of an entire cooking tradition. Any of those books will give you at least a small sense of the culture that inspired the cuisine, the human context, in addition to culinary knowledge.
If you are serious about getting into thai cuisine, beyond the lime juice, fish sauce, shop bought curry paste get your head around David Thompson's book thai food. It is encyclopaedic, and makes no concessions re hard to get ingredients, but it is epic. The amazon reviews are pretty comprehensive.
This dish turned out awesome--it's definitely going into the rotation. I expected it to taste a lot like pad thai as the ingredients were quite similar but the flavor profile was actually pretty different thanks to the caramel-based sauce and lack of tamarind/lime.
Recipe is from the excellent cookbook Hawker Fare by James Syhabout which has a mix of Lao & Thai recipes. I modified it slightly to reduce the amount of oil, increase the amount of fish sauce & shallots slightly, and incorporate meat & broccoli/veggies to make it a complete meal.
RECIPE: I recommend halving this unless you are cooking for a crowd. Plus half the recipe cooked up perfectly in a regular cast iron skillet.
Ingredients:
OMELET (KHAI JIAO)
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons canola oil
NOODLES
0.5 lb chicken, pork, or 1 block tofu (optional)
any other vegetable you want to include
24 ounces dried medium-wide rice noodles
1/4 cup canola oil
100 grams granulated sugar
1/2 cup sliced shallots
2 tablespoons finely minced garlic
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
3 tablespoons Gold Mountain brand seasoning sauce (can sub soy sauce)
1/3 cup fish sauce
1 tablespoon sweet soy sauce (I subbed regular soy sauce)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon MSG (optional)
2 cups mung bean sprouts
1½ cups scallions, in 1-inch pieces
GARNISHES
Sliced omelet
2 tablespoons Fried Shallots (optional)
½ cup chopped cilantro, stems included
1 cup mung bean sprouts
CONDIMENTS
Prik phong (ground toasted chile) or Sriracha
Directions:
MAKE THE OMELET: Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl and add the fish sauce. Beat with a fork, as if making scrambled eggs. Add the oil to an 8-inch nonstick sauté pan over medium heat. When it’s warm pour in the egg mixture and tilt the pan to ensure the egg covers the bottom. Continue to cook over gentle heat for about 3 minutes—you’ll notice the top of the omelet firming up. (If it starts to color it means the pan is too hot; remove the pan from the heat.) Once the top is firm, flip and cook over low heat for another minute. Slide the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate to cool. Slice into ¼-inch by 2-inch slivers and reserve for garnishing.
MAKE THE NOODLES: Cook the noodles according to package directions, but undercook them by a minute or two as you'll finish cooking them in the pan.
If adding meat or other vegetables, stir fry them now then set aside.
Add the oil and sugar to a saucepan with a wide diameter and mix well; set over medium-high heat. As the oil gets hot the sugar will caramelize. Cook until the caramel turns a deep amber.
Once it has reached the desired color turn off the heat, carefully add the shallots and garlic, and give it a stir with a spoon to sweat the aromatics—at this point your kitchen should smell very good. Sweat the aromatics for 1 minute, deglaze with the water, and stir well. Add the seasonings (oyster sauce, seasoning sauce, fish sauce, sweet soy sauce, black pepper, and MSG, if using) and mix well.
Return the saucepan to medium heat and bring to a simmer. Add the drained noodles and cook, stirring constantly with a pair of tongs. Move the noodles as if tossing a salad—they’ll wilt and slowly soak up the sauce. When the noodles have absorbed all the sauce and the pan is dry, with no residual sauce remaining, turn off the heat and fold in the bean sprouts and scallions, again like tossing a salad. Season to taste with additional salt, soy sauce, and/or fish sauce. Top with the omelet slices, fried shallots, and chopped cilantro, with a side of extra mung bean sprouts. Serve with prik phong or Sriracha.
My favourites for a few of the countries you list:
> Thailand
https://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621/
> India
https://www.amazon.com/India-Cookbook-Pushpesh-Pant/dp/0714859028/
> Korea
https://www.amazon.com/Growing-up-Korean-Kitchen-Cookbook/dp/1580082815
I’m interested in this, based on the bit I’ve read on her blog (shesimmers):
https://www.amazon.com/Bangkok-Recipes-Stories-Heart-Thailand/dp/0399578315
This book is my go to for Thai recipes.
The key flavours you are looking for a tamarind water/paste and fish sauce. If you like Thai food I cannot recommend this book enough - the guy ended up living in Thailand researching recipes for the book and they are excellent. Also pink/faux-silky cookery book ftw. Outshines everything else!
this book is your ticket to Thai food. :)
The Food of Thailand: A Journey for Food Lovers has been in my collection for several years now. It is a beautifully illustrated book with many very authentic recipes, including curry powders and pastes!
http://www.amazon.ca/Food-Thailand-Journey-Lovers/dp/1740454731
a giant granite mortar and pestle is a good tool to have. This is a good book, as long as you can track down the ingredients. Andy Ricker's is probably also good, as I'm sure David Thompson's other book is too.
Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:
Cookbooks
Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
This is it! If you want I can take a picture of a recipe and send it to you so you can try it out. :)
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Vegetarian-Thai-Nancie-McDermott/dp/0811811514
I don't have any that are free, unfortunately. I've got a vegan chickpea curry I adapted from a recipe on the Something Awful forums, and lately I've been doing a lot of Thai curries out of this cookbook.