Being Thai and taught to cook Thai food by my mother, I use Thai cookbooks
as guides or reminders for any dishes that I might be either unfamiliar with or
need refreshing. The Elegant Taste of Thailand is a pretty good book in that it
gives you a picture guide of Thai food products that you would need to cook with,
plus a glossary of ingredients and a short directory of Asian grocers in the
United States.
A good point about this book is the curry recipes. This is helpful for those
who may have dietary restrictions, since Thai curries contain shrimp paste and fish sauce,
to name a few exotic ingredients. Readers can experiment with the recipes to come up
with a more palatable curry paste.
The pictures featured are first-rate, giving you an idea of how the dish should
look upon presentation. Good for cooks on all levels.
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