Thailand: The Cookbook

With some luck you can get your oily, curry stained hands on a copy of "Thailand: The Cookbook." This new 500 recipe full cookbook by Jean Pierre Gabriel is stuffed with home cooking as well as everything else that makes Thai food so offbeat - from the street stalls to the markets to the finest sophisticated subtle restaurants.

A Thai table, whether you're out at a fine restaurant or at home or crouching in the street, is about sharing and that's the premise of the book. But to get there the thick green book of wisdom discusses how Thailand's contemporary food scene has been influenced by Laos, Cambodia, Burma and possibly most notably Malaysia. However, it has always maintained its own voice, no matter the consequences. Food and politics are always intertwined of course.

But most fascinating is the migration part of the introduction and how migration has influenced the food scene - Chinese immigrants bringing noodles, the Portuguese bringing desserts based on egg yolks and chilies coming from Portugal and Spain centuries before. But what remains to be the most pivotal factor with Thailand's food scene is that yes, it may have had a few influences, but it remains to be the only South East Asian country never colonized - not by anyone. Drum roll please.

Recipes like snail and noodle salad (with some snakehead fish or catfish), Hunglei curry (pork, pineapple and ginger loving) and crispy curry rice with fermented pork is what I am talking about. Unusual feasts, but familiar enough to not scare one out of the kitchen. The desserts, a smile inducing fare, ring from sesame and sugar coated peanuts, to Pandan leaf noodles in coconut milk syrup (mung bean flour included) all the way to dried rice balls (so much coconut!) and somehow never dries up.

Thailand, with an ousted Prime Minister and a host of unbelievable Aman resorts, is still that destination that honeymoons are made of. It bridges the gap between weird inedible Asian cuisine and a contemporary understanding of portion and flavor. An elephant head-looking country, yes indeed and this book takes that deep breath with its trunk and sucks in all things wondrous about the place.

"Thailand: The Cookbook"
Jean Pierre Gabriel
$50.00
Phaidon