Author(s): Jennifer Brennan
Publisher: Perigee Trade
Publication Date: 1984-06-04
Pages: 318
Review: I’m really impressed with this old-school cookbook. I can’t imagine many of the ingredients were available back in the 80s and even now probably only in major metropolitain areas.
Anyhow, I am impressed by the authentic recipes inside the book. Yeah there are substitutions, but she puts down the original ingredients for each recipe.
If you love authentic non-americanized Thai food, I’d definitely suggest this book. I have been collecting Thai cookbooks for years - and I still go back to this one. Starting eating Thai food in LA, CA - where you could get the “real” thing. It was hard to find Thai cookbooks back then and this was one of the first available. It isn’t fancy like the newer cookbooks, but I don’t buy based on them being a “coffee table book”. “Pad Thai” is like spagetti (sp), so many variations on a theme - the recipe in this book is good, and I adjust it to suit my tastes. For a real delight, try her soup recipes - wonderful!I was an exchange student in Thailand in 1975. I was lucky enough to live in two homes during that year’s stay that had outstanding cooks, one in an affluent home and one on a ranch/factory where I ate in the “executive” dining room three times a day. Meals would usually consist of 4 or 5 entrees, so during that year I sampled about every conceivable Thai recipe.
Jennifer Brennan’s book’s recipes produce the taste of real Thai cooking. If you want to cook Thai food like you get in a Thai home or on the streets in Thailand this is the book for you. Start with the Green Chicken Curry. For me this is the acid test, any Thai restaurant or cookbook that doesn’t do curry right should be avoided. Other recipes I think are great are the Combination Fried Rice, Hot & Sour Shrimp Soup, Braised Chicken in Spices(outstanding), Chicken in Peanut Sauce, Sate, Thai Beef Salad(just like a Bangkok restaurant), Sweet & Sour Cucumbers, and Chopped Beef with Garnishes.
Unfortunately, many Thai cookbooks focus on glitzy pictures and the “Thai” food that you find in American Thai restaurants. The only time I every ate Pad Thai in Thailand was on a Western Hotel’s tourist lunch buffet. If you spend the time to make your own curry pastes and cook these curries you will be rewarded. You will have authentic Thai food. This book is your guide to the real deal!I’ve had this book for years and although there’s a lot that’s good about it (and the recipes are tasty) this book has a pretty typical problem: it was written in 1981. Most experienced cooks know that cookbooks from this time period suffered from at least one of two problems: 1 (and this is not this book’s problem) the confusion that oleo or veggie oil is butter or 2 (and this is this book’s problem) a general lack of availability of authentic ingredients which leads to ridiculous substitutions which just don’t quite work. No matter how many great stories JB tells, she still substitutes ketchup for tamarind paste and as much as I love my Pittsburgher Heinz 57 Lovin’ soul, ketchup ain’t tamarind.
Otherwise, not a bad cookbook, which I do reference often, if just to read JB’s stories.Recipes would be more user-friendly if formatted to make it possible to, at a glance, peruse the steps to follow, rather than have to read through the paragraphs and try to separate out the “to do” information. We like recipes to appear on one page, if possible, or at least to lay out so that ingredients and at least most of the preparation steps appear together.
Recipes could be simplified by using–or at least pointing out– possible shortcuts making use of products available through Thai grocers. This cookbook would make Thai cooking more accessible if it informed users/cooks that these products are an option that in many cases, could simplify the recipes.
Price: $15.95 Buy This Book