Buy Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking here, one of many top quality Classic Cooking
books at Chef2Chef. We greatly appreciate your patronage at Chef2Chef and look forward to offering you great products and prices in the future.
Current Page: Cookbook Store : Classic Cooking : Item 105 of 201
|
|
![]()
|
|
Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking
by Su-mei Yu
Available from Amazon
$21.90
|
Features
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition August 1, 2000
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0688165427
ISBN-13: 978-0688165420
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 8 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
Product Review
Americans love Thai food. Among the best cookbooks exploring this rich, tantalizing cuisine is chef-restaurateur Su-Mei Yu's Cracking the Coconut. Insisting that there can be no true Thai cooking without homemade "core" preparations (such as various chili pastes), Yu includes precise, accessible recipes for these and other essential ingredients while outlining fundamental techniques in vivid detail. Readers learn the proper hand motions for cracking a coconut, how to wrap ingredients in banana leaves, and how to work a mortar and pestle, the central Thai-kitchen implement. The book's 175 recipes are divided between chapters devoted to essential ingredients or dishes. The chapter on Thai curry ("the signature dish") explores the basics of preparing this exciting fare and includes such delicious recipes as Red Curry with Roasted Pork and Green Banana and Sweet Green Curry with Meatballs. A chapter called "The Secret of Thai Salads" offers recipes for a small repertoire of essential dressings and such tempting recipes as Apricot, Shrimp, and Pork Salad and a salad-feast called, simply, Lamb and Roast Duck. Yu provides cultural notes and cooking lore throughout the book, often drawing from her recipe-hunting travels abroad. It's hard to imagine a better start for anyone wishing to "cook Thai" than this fully illustrated book, which perfectly balances recipes and instruction to make it an innovative standout. --Arthur Boehm
From Publishers Weekly
Owner of San Diego's Saffron Restaurant, Yu takes her Thai cooking seriously: she expects readers to pound curry pastes by hand in a mortar and pestle (a process that takes about 30 minutes)Dand don't even think about using canned coconut milk unless absolutely necessary. In compensation for all this work, Yu provides flawless and authentic recipes full of the fresh flavors of Thailand, such as Grilled Mackerel Salad with pickled garlic, coconut and peanuts and Beef and Pumpkin Stew with kabocha squash and cilantro. Recipes are organized loosely according to main ingredients, and in one chapter simply because they represent "The Thai Philosophy of Food," which consists of juxtaposing contrasting tastes. A chapter on fiery curries includes Red Curry with Roasted Pork and Green Banana and Sour-Orange Curry with Tender Vegetables. Aside from the work of grinding the curry paste, these can be assembled relatively quickly. Another chapter focuses on "The Big Four Seasonings," or salt, garlic, coriander root and peppercorns, and provides a recipe for a paste of the four that can be used in everything from fish batter and deep-frying batter to meatloaf. Noodle dishes are both hot (several types of Pad Thai) and cold (Cool Noodles with Jungle-Style Sauce). Thai salads are original and refreshing: Pomelo and Shrimp Salad and Banana Blossoms with Chicken Salad. Yu also writes beautifully of her own experiences cooking and eating in Thailand. For Thai novices and for those who are seeking to delve more deeply into this sophisticated and often surprising cuisine, this book is a must-have.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader Reviews
I had some hesitation in purchasing this book because the name didn't seem very thai, (half thai myself and was raised on the "real deal" as well as have been in several towns in thailand for months at a time pre-cooking years, I didn't want an americanized version of thai food) but then I had seen you on the show Cooking Live where your methods were in the same manner my mother cooks, but more of an easier measuring manner as opposed to trying to write down her recipes by watching her and her "eyeing" measurements! I just have to know the measurements before trying to alter it! I love this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who would want to learn the basics in traditional and not americanized thai cooking, and also who is not wanting to take the lazy way out as that other reviewer was referring. The book is to show you how to make it from scratch, and not looking for a review of canned goods or just out of the can. If all of the ingredients were exactly the same and just in a can, why would a cookbook even be needed? I don't know of many grocery stores, let alone asian markets, ESPECIALLY in California that wouldn't have fish sauce! I've lived in 4 different parts of the country since leaving home, and haven't ever had any problem in finding the majority of the ingredients shown in this book. From Indianapolis, to Phoenix, to Las Vegas and now a very small town in Michigan, they have their own asian section in the local grocery stores! Also, such as the other reviewer criticized Pad thai, each creation varies in the preparation per cook as it would in any family, just as I'm sure everyone has a different way to prepare something as simple as meatloaf. I love this book and its a good substitution for moms cooking, but yes every time I'm at home, I do put in my orders for my moms home cooking, just as any other person would with a great cooking mom! Khap Kuhn Ka Su-Mei!
|
|
|
Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking
by Su-mei Yu
Available from Amazon
$21.90
|
|
|
|
