Product Description

True Thai is one of those rare and important cookbooks where cuisine and culture meet. Food lovers will come away with layers of understanding, discovering the soul of a country where cuisine is a sacred art.

True Thai takes us from the jostling Bangkok streets and canals to countryside rice paddles and mango groves, from distant mountain villages to Thailand's stately Royal Palace, delivering True Thai taste in every sense of the word.

Victor Sodsook, a native Thai, chef/owner of Los Angeles's celebrated Siamese Princess restaurant, has written the authoritative Thai cookbook that American cooks have been waiting for. True Thai satisfies an increasing public interest in the seductive flavors of Thai cuisine, and a decreasing emphasis on high-fat, high-calorie red meats, eggs, and oils. The lively, easy-to-follow recipes are tailor-made for today's adventurous, aware cook.

Most of the tools and ingredients used in True Thai are probably already in your kitchen. And its wide-ranging glossary of ingredients will help you select the most flavorful spices and freshest produce, as well as the best brands of key Thai ingredients like coconut milk and fish sauce. Among True Thai's 250 recipes, you'll find the many Thai dishes that have already won over Americans, such as Crispy Sweet Rice Noodles (mee krob) and soothing, aromatic Chicken-Coconut Soup with Siamese Ginger and Lemon Grass (tom kha kai). Everything is here, from the deliciously spiced barbecued chickens found in Thai provinces to the elaborate and time honored cuisines served to Thailand's royal family, such as King Rama V's Fried Rice. Since Thailand teems with both fresh- and saltwater fish and shellfish, you'll find an abundance of healthful, provocative seafood dishes, such as Ayuthaya Haw Mok Talay, a scrumptious mousse of curried fish, shrimp, and crab, redolent with chili and coconut milk, grilled and served in fragrant banana leaves.

Surprisingly light preparations for meat include Fiery Grilled Beef Salad, a classic of Bangkok cafe cuisine, and mu kratiem phrik Thai, a simple stir-fry of pork medallions sizzling with garlic and black pepper. The Thai Vegetarian Cooking chapter is really a whole book unto itself, encompassing its own blend of curry pastes, soups, appetizers, entrees, and one-dish meals-all completely free of animal or fish products. The Thai Salads chapter showcases such recipes as Coconut, Lemon, and Ginger Salad or Grilled Lobster Salad with Green Mango that demonstrate the great variety and sensuousness of this branch of Thai cooking. Drinks and desserts include such ethereal treats as Rose-Petal Sorbet and the refreshingly herbaceous Lemon Grass Tea, wonderful either hot or cold. There's also a chapter that shows how to marry these newfound Thai tastes with classic American cooking, through such improvisations as Bangkok Burgers with Marinated, Grilled Onions and Spicy Thai Ketchup.

True Thai is more than a cookbook; it is a collection of grace notes exemplifying Thai cuisine's dedication to pleasing the senses. There's even a chapter on preparing Thai-style table decorations, many of them as edible as they are lovely.

True Thai's 250 recipes, each with helpful and fascinating notes, present Thai cuisine with simplicity and elegance. True That is the most authentic, authoritative, and accessible Thai cookbook ever printed in English.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #295877 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-21
• Released on: 1995-06-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

From Booklist
Sodsook's more than 230 offerings go beyond traditional recipes of satay, pad prik, and iced coffee. Here, country and city cuisines appear. A dozen suggested menus and instructions on carving fruits and vegetables round out this very pleasurable, unassuming, and unpretentious cookbook. Barbara Jacobs

About the Author

Born in Nam Buri, Thailand, Victor Sodsook learned cuisine at his mother's side, in a Thai university, and in the employ of fine Bangkok hotels. He arrived in America more than twenty years ago, opening the first Siamese Princess in 1976. Success propelled him to his present location in Beverly Hills. This is his first book.

Customer Reviews

Good recipes, if you're dedicated. Not for dabblers.
I've had a great time trying to make the recipes from this book. However, I wouldn't generally consider cooking my primary hobby, so a lot of these involved more dedication than I'm interested in. Be warned that a lot of the recipes involve tons of prep time - first making a curry paste from scratch, which is not trivial, before you can really start the recipe at hand. Unless you just want to use curry paste from a jar, but then you hardly need the cookbook at all.

Also, while there is an explanation of some of the more exotic ingredients, and suggestions about where to get them, there are also many exotic ingredients that go completely unexplained, so you just have to hope that you live near a Thai market and can manage to pronounce the ingredient name well enough to get them to know what you're talking about.

These are surmountable obstacles, but they take time. If you're willing to deal with all that, the results are great.

A welcome addition to a cook's library...
This book is a welcome addition to any cook's library. I love Thai food and am now spoiled because I prefer to cook my favorites versus finding them on a menu.

Victor Sodsook is the chef/owner of Princess Siamese in LA and is Thai, himself. He shares tidbits throughout the book that make you feel as if you are talking with a good friend.

His book is broken down in easy-to-use chapters, including a chapter of Ingredients and Equipment, explaining why each is key. The book goes on to highlight soups, rice and noodles, poultry, meat, fish, seafood, vegetarian cuisine, desserts, beverages, and even a menu-planning guide.

What makes this a well-rounded book to me is that it also includes chapters on Bangkok Street Cooking and Royal Thai Cuisine, as well as Fruit and Vegetable Carving and Thai Favors. My favorite has been the chapter on mail order sources for Thai ingredients, as well as plants (Buddha's Hand is a favorite in our garden now) and even cookware.

The one thing I wish the book had was color photographs of the food, as Thai food is so pretty and colorful. It seems a dis-service not to show Tomato and Sardine Soup with Thai Chili and Mint or Miang Kam.

Otherwise, this is a thorough resource, and if you like Thai food, it is essential to your library.

Garlic-crazy...
I'm a Thai food affectionado and always looking for the most authentic stuff around. I'm also so picky that sometimes I take to making the stuff on my own when I can't find it around. This book is awesome. Few points that I noticed:

1. A lot of the recipes call for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy too much garlic. So much garlic that it overpowers the dish. I made the blue shell crab meal and used 4 instead of 6 garlic cloves and still ended up with a rather unpalatable final dish which didn't do those live crabs justice for sacrificing their lives!

2. I'm not accustomed to all the use of the various dried chiles. I suppose it would be difficult to give a fresh chile vs dried version in such a lengthy book.

3. Has tons of great recipes. I was amazed when my red chicken curry tasted exactly like a good restaurant's version! I also now appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into making curry paste, wow. It's labor and time intesive.

If I was to choose a thai cookbook to have, this would be it along with The original Thai cookbook