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True Thai : The Modern Art of Thai Cooking
by Victor Sodsook
William Morrow & Company
ISBN: 0688099173
Reviewed by Adam Hiller
This review discusses whether Victor Sodsook's book, True Thai, converted our humble Yuppie suburban two-bedroom Baltimore condo into an authentic Thai kitchen. To round out the survey, we invited over my in-laws, your average New York couple; one of the world's finest gourmet chefs (who happens to loan me money whenever I need it); my sister-in-law, who told us ahead of time she would hate everything; my grandmother; my aunt and uncle who describe themselves as "not very adventurous"; and my college-student sister, whose vote might not count because her hair was a normal color this week. Oh, and my wife is a very good cook (you hear that, honey?) and I am an incompetent bumbling idiot in the kitchen, who happens to be a former waiter at a fairly authentic Thai restaurant and Thai food lover supreme.
We tried to prepare a good variety of recipes from the book, including 3 appetizers, a soup, a modification of one of the salads, 3 entrees, 2 desserts, and, of course, Thai iced tea and iced coffee. Most were recipes we had heard of and tried elsewhere, but a couple we had not. Specifically, we made the following:
1. Chicken
satay w/ a curried peanut dipping sauce
2. Salmon toast
3. Steamed chicken dumplings
4. Chicken
coconut soup
5. Spicy cucumber
relish (modified not to be spicy)
6. Fried Tofu
7. Khanom Chine (a curried tuna sauce over noodles)
8. Fiery Jungle w/ beef
9. Crispy beef
10. Sticky rice w/ mango
11. Coconut ice cream
The crowd we had invited was not a big seafood crowd, so only a couple of the recipes included seafood, and this admittedly omits what I understand represents the gem of Thai cooking.
Most of the recipes called for various curry pastes. We also made the most of the those, although many can be bought in Asian food stores. Many of the dishes were served on a jasmine rice and could be topped with a golden garlic, a Thai classic.
We rated the book from many angles. From the viewpoint of food
quality, the group as a whole declared nearly all the food to be very good.
The appetizers and soup rated better than the entrees. Unfortunately,
I think the entree recipes may have been too spicy for many of them.
We tried to tone down the amount of picante by sometimes using fewer than
the called-for number of peppers, but 10 people went through about 6 pitchers
of water, 2 pitchers of iced coffee, and 1 pitcher of iced tea in the course
of an evening. You do the math.
From the viewpoint of recipe authenticity, we, who have had experience with many Thai restaurants in the U.S. but have never been to Thailand (the closest I've come was to see the musical "One Night in Bangkok"--but that's another review), found most of the food to be close or identical to their restaurant equivalents. The chicken coconut soup (my personal favorite) was perfect, and so were the dumplings. The Chicken Satay was pretty good, although we had to cook it longer than the time prescribed. Our only real flop was the coconut ice cream, which was nothing like the coconut ice cream we had had in restaurants (and do not recommend from this book). With a couple of dishes, like the Khanom Chine, any suffering in quality is probably attributable to the fact that we were preparing a 10-course meal in our 30 square-foot kitchen rather than in a large restaurant-style kitchen. Thus, many dishes had to be prepared in advance and reheated. We discovered that Golden Garlic does not refrigerate well.
I was pleased to observe that, unlike some cookbooks (especially Asian cookbooks) I have come across, it was not a book of grossly similar recipes. Moreover, I would imagine the section entitled "Bangkok Street Cooking" would engender much criticism if the author did not have at least some experience with the food on the streets of Bangkok.
Also, I was disappointed that it did not have my all-time favorite
classic Thai recipe, Spicy Drunken Noodles. There is a Drunken Spaghetti
recipe, but it's entirely different. Perhaps Spicy Drunken Noodles
is a regional recipe with which the author was not familiar, namely the
area of Thailand about 2 hours south of New York.
From the viewpoint of turning written recipes into fine gourmet cuisine (or in my case, edible foodstuffs), I found most of the recipes fairly easy to work with. However, as one who can't quite call himself an "amateur chef," much less a "professional chef," it should be said that this is not a book for the beginner. The book does pre-assume that you have at least a running knowledge of basic kitchen concepts, which I imagine for the advanced chef is a blessing. Also, at a couple key points during the preparation, we wished we had a picture of what the meal should look like.
I should point out too that many recipes called for various "curry pastes," which pastes are often available from larger Asian grocers. An entire section of the book is dedicated to making these curry pastes from scratch, usually with nothing more exotic than Thai chilies and Japanese chilies (actually, the book also called for New Mexico chilies--I think the author tried so hard to make sure all of the Thai ingredients were accessible that he forgot that only in his home region of the American Southwest can one obtain New Mexico chilies!). We tried a few curry pastes and they are good but a lot of trouble. Also, a couple times the over-powering fumes of chili peppers in the food processor expelled my wife from the kitchen. I'll have to remember that the next time I need to expel my wife from the kitchen.
It does not seem clear whether the book itself was meant to be a cookbook or a coffee table book. On one hand, it comes in a sturdy hardback binding with a tastefully colorful jacket, has many decorative (as opposed to demonstrative) black and white watermark photographs, includes a significant amount of background, history, and explanation, requires some ingredients that are a little hard to find in your average Baltimore suburb, and refers to itself as "The Modern Art of Thai Cooking." On the other hand, the nearly 400 pages contain almost exclusively recipes (around 250 recipes, according to the jacket), many substitutes, variations, and garnishments are specified, and the text itself seems to be more explanatory than entertainment-oriented. It could probably double as both a cookbook and a coffee table book, although we would suggest you photocopy the recipes ahead of time . . . .
For the Thai food lover, True Thai makes an excellent foundation
for a Thai recipe collection.
Notes from Mimi:
1) I am the person referred to early in this review as the one who lends the reviewer money, though this is not the case; my son is very self-sufficient. :-)
2) The part of the review where he describes how he toned things down a bit in terms of spiciness...I can only tell you that it was still VERY spicy and recommend that those who generally cannot withstand the "heat" should consider minimal use of the spices.
3) I will have to remember to take Adam shopping
at my favorite Asian supermarkets the next time he visits. It might
help him restock his kitchen sufficiently.
