Product Description

Light, Fresh, Exotic, and Delicious!
Tangy, sweet, and savory traditional dipping sauces. Mouthwatering soups. Innovative stir-fries. The Best of Vietnamese & Thai Cooking offers just that—the very best! Weaving a fascinating memoir amidst her splendid recipes, Mai Pham recreates the almost magical reverence with which food was prepared and enjoyed in the Vietnam and Thailand of her childhood. Inside she discloses the secrets to preparing her personal favorites—delicious dishes such as:
Firecracker Prawns • Minty Thai Chicken Salad
Hot and Spicy Chicken with Lemon Grass • Spicy Red Beef Curry
Crispy Spring Rolls • Eggplant and Broccoli in Ginger
Spicy Thai Cucumber Salad • Rice Paper-Wrapped Salad Rolls
Bangkok Beef with Basil • Lemon Grass Stir-Fried Jasmine Rice
Vegetarian Pad Thai • Perfectly Roasted Peanuts • Thai Tea
Evocative, lyrical, and eloquent, The Best of Vietnamese & Thai Cooking is more than a collection of great recipes—it’s a pleasure to read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #194345 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-11
• Released on: 1995-10-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
Mai Pham has woven wonderful memories between the recipes of this beautiful book: memories of her childhood in Bangkok, her Vietnamese family and their reverence for good food, her husband's search for the best pho recipe in Saigon. The recipes themselves are light, healthy, and loaded with the unique flavors -- strong and delicate, tangy and mild, sweet and mouth-puckeringly sour, always exotic and delicious -- of Southeast Asia. Pham owns the Lemon Grass Restaurant and Cafes in Sacramento, and is a well-known teacher of Southeast Asian cooking.

Review
Light, Fresh, Exotic, and Delicious!

Review
Light, Fresh, Exotic, and Delicious!

Customer Reviews

this book is not about authenticity...all recipes been revised
i could not even use any of her recipes, because its like a mixture of recipes that she has revised for people who aren't asian to cook and eat. i am asian and i know that these are not the real recipes, any wannabe could write a book like this. and she tries to hard to be all fancy and high class with her food. she even makes up these strange names for her recipes, what a waste of money. the worst recipes ever!!!!!!!!! her thai recipes are horrible. i don't think she realize that she is vietnamese. please get back to roots lady!

Not bad
When I first bought this book I thought it was great but since then I have purchased Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors which is much more detailed and authentic. This "lemongrass" book is good for an introduction to both THAI and Vietnamese cuisine but I find it leans more towards "Americanizing" its flavors and for someone like myself who is trying to learn Vietnamese cuisine for her husbands sake..isn't the best. I being Hispanic, like the recipes but my Asian husband said they lacked TRUE flavor..hence my second purchase, which is a big hit. I like the Thai recipes in this book but tend to turn to the before mentioned book for Vietnamese recipes.

Overall good Vietnamese/ Thai cookbook.
I'm Vietnamese-American & grew up eating lots of Vietnamese food but never actually knew how to make anything myself so it is nice to have a cookbook that includes many of the traditional Vietnamese recipes, like carmelized ginger chicken, congee (chicken & rice soup), pho, etc. Also, the book includes Thai recipes which seem interesting though I haven't tried them yet. I've followed a couple of the former recipes and they provide good guidelines for the dish, however, I don't like how the author has "Americanized" the recipes and seems to make the highest priority presentation because I'm really just interested in eating simple, good food that's easy to make. Also, her narrative often includes "plugs" for her own or her husband's businesses which is a turn-off and detracts from the focus and authenticity of the book (which is supposed to be about cooking, not personal advertising). Still, the recipes seem ok and serve the purpose for Vietnamese-style cooking.