This is a quiet, unassuming little cookbook - small size, no glossy
pages, almost no pictures - but it's become one of my favourites. I've probably
only cooked about 10 things from it so far, but that's partly because many of
those things are so tasty that I keep making them again. The curry pastes are
authentic and delicious, some of the salads are electrifyingly flavoursome, and
the Coconut Galangal Soup blows me and my wife away every time (and never fails
to impress guests). I've had one recipe misfire on me so far (it was a curry
mousse dish, which came out too runny), though I suspect that it was my fault,
and not the recipe's. Overall, Buddha's Table is a little gem that definitely
deserves a place in your cupboard if you like to cook Thai from time to time.
Vegans please note that although it isn't
mentioned on the cover, this cookbook is vegan. Or at least, I haven't found
any animal products in its recipes yet. Dairy is practically non-existent in
Thai cuisine anyway, and I've found one or two recipes where the author has
purposefully used a vegan substitute instead of egg.
- Blejowski, Amazon.com
`Budda's Table' by Chat Mingkwan looks like a
typical `little cookbook' you commonly see published by Chronicle Books, some
of which are decent and some of which are a waste of money compared to other
titles available for a similar price. This book, published by a house with the
incredibly modest name of `Book Publishing Company' out of Summertown,
Tennessee, has lots to offer, even if it isn't published by Alfred A. Knopf,
Harper Collins, or Artisan.
Unlike the dominant cuisines of India, Thai
cooking is not inherently vegetarian, and yet Buddhism, a religion with strong
vegetarian tendencies is the most important religion in Thailand. This gives
rise to the book's title and subtitle, `Thai Feasting Vegetarian Style'. This
means that fish sauce, one of the most important Thai ingredients, has been
removed from all recipes. This is probably about as dramatic as removing
anchovies from all Italian dishes. Fortunately, the wealth of southeast Asian
fermented bean pastes are up to filling in the gaps left by removing the famous
`Nam Pla' from all recipes.
This is not to say Chat Mingkwan has abandoned
Thai traditional cooking. He begins his book with an excellent little guide to
Thai ingredients which is no replacement for good references such as Bruce
Cost's `Asian Ingredients', but it is an honest coverage of the field with a
firm commitment to the belief that there are a lot of Thai ingredients with which
you cannot substitute and expect to achieve the right Thai taste. Foremost of
these in my mind is galangal, a rhizome with some resemblance to ginger. But,
based on the scientific names of the two plants, they are not closely related.
They certainly do not belong to the same genus. Another unmistakable and
unreplacable ingredient is tamarind. While I have never knowingly tasted
galangal, I have tasted tamarind and can think of nothing in the western pantry
that comes close to its taste. It is sharp, but its bite is somewhere between
cassia (Asian cinnamon), licorice, and vinegar.
Thai cuisine is an ancient fusion of Indian and
Chinese cuisines, jolted to an entirely new level with the addition of the
capsicum chilies from the New World. I know less about Indian cooking than I do
on just about every other major cuisine you can name, but it seems to me that
the primary transformation from Indian to Thai cuisine seems to be the shift of
curry mixtures from powders in India to pastes in Thailand. This generalization
may be all wet, but it is quite true that virtually all curry bases described
in this book are pastes, making the mortar and pestle a very important tool in
the Thai kitchen. I agree entirely with the author and millions of Mexican home
cooks and Jamie Oliver and everyone else who wants to weigh in on the subject
that the mortar and pestle is simply a superior tool for making pasty mixtures
than any modern blender or food processor. If you want to make serious use of
this book, get a good, heavy set and find yourself a good source of Thai
ingredients.
To reinforce this point, the author opens with a
15-page chapter devoted to chili and curry sauces. These recipes also reinforce
the fact that you will not succeed with these recipes unless you can find a
source for galangal, Kafir lime leaves, and lemongrass. Most of the other
ingredients should be no problem in Mittelamerica. In my darkest Pennsylvania,
my local farmers market carries fresh lemongrass and cilantro with roots and my
local megamart has all the chilies, bean pastes, and tamarind you want.
The next chapter on salads and snacks includes
easy recipes with that oh so distinctive Thai taste based on peanuts,
lemongrass, chiles, cilantro, and tamarind. This chapter includes a recipe for
the famous Pad Thai salad, where, unlike many famous French salads, the only
difficult task is finding all the ingredients. The chapter also presents rice
as a salad ingredient, something rather uncommon in western menus. And, if rice
isn't your dish, there is always tofu.
The chapter on soups brings back my most indelible
memory of eating Thai food when I asked for clear Thai soup to be done `spicy'.
It was very, very, very spicy hot! Chef Mingkwan immediately scored points with
me when I saw his vegetable stock recipe. My fussiest and most highly respected
French sources on stocks insist that vegetables are simmered no more than an
hour in a stock, and Chef Mingkwan puts his daikon and cilantro and chiles to
the hot water for no more than 45 minutes. This chapter also includes a great
foodie talking point recipe with a `Hunter's Soup'. This is the Thai vegetarian
version of the soup one makes when the hunting has not gone too well.
The next chapter deals with stir-frying, one of
the strongest influences from China on the cuisines of Southeast Asia. I have
seen street food people from Burma to the Philippines use woks with almost
exactly the same techniques as you may see in Shanghai or Beijing. The
introduction to this chapter is a fair example of the author's sense of humor
as he points out that uses for the wok include steaming, smoking, deep frying,
floating on flood waters and sledding in the snow. While the stir fry recipes
are very good, this book is no primer on stir-frying technique or stir-frying
equipment. If you are not familiar with the wok through experience with Chinese
techniques, I suggest you check out Ken Hom's `Quick Wok'. I suspect Martin
Yan's earlier books are also good sources, but I have not gotten around to
reviewing them yet.
This is a sample of the good Thai cooking
experience available to you in this book. The value of this little book is
capped with an excellent bibliography that oddly omits a reference to the
definitive new work `Thai Food' by David Thompson.
Download the book torrent:
Download the password:
0 comments:
Post a Comment