Thai Food: An indispensable cookbook with traditional and modern South-East Asian recipes

This book is a classic. Well researched, extensive background information and full of excellent original recipes.

It's refreshing to explore recipes that have been researched extensively, written with care and passion. The recipes do ask for more ingredients, time & patience but the end result is authentic thai food. David explains the historical background of many of these dishes, so it's clear this book is a lifetime of research and I'm glad he's been able to put these into a book that helps celebrate and preserve the recipes. Many modern day cookbooks corner cut with an emphasis on speed, this book doesn't so that extra step or two or another ten minutes prep make all the difference.This will be a book that I will use for years to come.

A very handsome book, with a clear, detailed, informative style of writing. Probably not the book you want just for a curry on the odd Friday night. But if you want to learn how to build Thai flavours from scratch, look no further. A lot of people on here are whingeing about the impossibility of obtaining various esoteric ingredients. Hello? It's food from the other side of the world, what were you expecting exactly? Happily, the author describes each dish well, and the book contains extensive glossaries and explanations, so any half-decent cook should be able to run with it and knock up something spectacular. Only today, I made the Smoked Catfish & Green Mango Salad for lunch, in ten minutes. Catfish (smoked or otherwise) are rare round here, so smoked mackerel it was, and although I can occasionally get green mangoes, I only had pink grapefruit to hand. Nevertheless, my guests were amazed by it. Thai cooking is nothing if not eclectic, and I'm sure the Thais who live in England make frequent use of clever substitutions, rather than sulking about, complaining about the lack of stuff...NB. This book seems to have been reprinted, and as such, is now an absolute steal. I was looking for it a while back, and it was only available at very high prices, second-hand. Don't let it slip through your galangal-scented fingers again!

Honestly? A slow burner for me. I'd had this book for a while and whilst I had dipped in and out of it, cooking some great dishes, it never quite pulled me in....until I was stuck with some pork mince that needed using up and tiring of the usual repertoire, I pulled this from the bookshelf and made the most amazing, simple soup with soy sauce and rice noodles. Since then I have cooked so many wonderful things from this book both quick and complex, I can't recommend it enough. A little preparation is needed - some ingredients are a bit obscure but if you grab some cupboard staples like coconut cream, soy & fish sauce, freeze dried kaffir lime leaves and freeze some others, Lemongrass, chillies and galangal then you can pretty much grab some meat or veg and jump right in. Honestly? Just brilliant.

Beautiful book which is extremely comprehensive. I do find however that it doesn't make recipes all that achievable with an all or nothing approach to some ingredients with no potential substitutes or alternatives offered on certain ingredients. Still a fantastic book though for anyone interested in very authentic recipes.

If you are looking for the authoritative guide on how to prepare proper Thai food then I would say look no further. After years of owning this book there have been a myriad of 'oohs' and 'aahs' as we've enjoyed a variety of Thai dishes cooked at home.If you are looking for a very simple introduction to Thai cooking (and just want to whip up a quick Thai green curry), then this is probably not the best place to start, as many of the recipes involve some quite specific and time-consuming preparation.Whilst some of the other reviewers have mentioned a number of hard-to-find ingredients, you should be ok if you have either an asian/international/large supermarket nearby. Most of the time, the large majority of ingredients will revolve around galangal/palm sugar/tamarind etc, but I generally found that more often than not it was just one ingredient that ended up being hard to source; 'hydrolysed lime water' being one such memorable culprit!This however is the necessary evil that comes with having such an authentic guide to Thai food and on that front it's an absolute winner. On more than one occasion in the last few years we've visited Thai restaurants and found that what we could cook at home was actually tastier, which is all thanks to this book. If you love Thai food, live near a good/large supermarket and know your way around a kitchen then I would heartily recommend this!

Absolutely amazing Thai cookbook, if you have a favourite dish it will be in here. Love the pink cover colour as it really stands out from my other cookbooks

I really wanted to love this book. After much research on the quintessential Thai cooking book, I found this one. David Thompson not only has owned Thai restaurants in Bangkok, Australia and London (one of them from memory may have even been awarded a Michelin star or two), but put together recipes that are certainly authentic. The issues with this cookbook are too many difficult to find ingredients and too long to make the dishes. Perhaps that's what's needed with traditional dishes, but it's not user friendly for the most of us.

The book gives a brief history of Thailand(formerly Siam) and how different foreign influences affected the development of Thai cuisine. Very interesting. The author was taught by older Thai women cooks who rarely followed recipes, but rather went by taste, texture, colour, so the author attempted to dissect what they did and formalize the various nuances.I bought this book to help my Thai daughter-in-law with Thai cooking after her mother goes back to Thailand.

Literalmente es la biblia de la cocina Thai, no tiene demasiadas fotos, pero si muchisima información y recetas bien documentadas.Muy interesante si te gustan los libros de cocina tipo enciclopedia.

It’s have been 22 years since I think to buy it. In the end I bought it😀

O livro apresenta uma parte histórica, aonde o autor destaca alguns pontos da cultura tailandesa. Também, existe uma parte do livro que fala sobre os utensílios, etc. As receitas estão divididas por tópicos e são em grande número. Só não dei 5 estrelas pois o livro poderia ter um número maior de fotos.

I've been at Dave Thompson's restaurant Nahm in Bangkok I was celebrating my graduation at a Thai cooking academyI was very impress by the quality of food and the love for the traditional Thai cuisineThis book is essential, but I wouldn't recommend to beginners