I wonder if you got screwed up with the coconut milk and cream technique. You do kind of have to read the explanatory notes for that. I tend to stay away from coconut-based dishes (not because of that, but because they’re extremely caloric.) One thing you will notice about his recipes is that they are a lot less meat-heavy than what you might be used to at American Thai restaurants.
Thanks to everyone who responded. I wanted to drop in because I didn’t have time to go online yesterday (sick baby) and I didn’t want y’all to think I was ignoring you.
True Thai is a very accessible book written by a chef who loves and understands Thai food. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Way easier/less daunting than Thompson’s book. The food tastes great and wonderfully authentic. I cook chicken and basil twice a month. It takes 20 minutes with prep to get it on the table.
I do live in NorCal where the ingredients are readily available.
Cooks Illustrated tends to be great when it comes to regional, American cuisine but when they attempt ethnic cuisines, some of the decisions they make can be rather questionable.
Glad to know I’m not the only one with this opinion of CI and ATK.
Oh good god, no. You’re not the only one by a long shot.
OK. Good. I read CI (although my gift subscription just ran out) and watch ATK every once in awhile. I’m not a huge proponent of their recipes, but I glean a lot of interesting things from their techniques: from the “reverse sear” in making steaks/roasts to adding gelatin to burgers and loaves made from low-fat meats (like chicken breast/turkey) to salting beans during the soak and things like that. That’s good stuff. But their recipes suffer, in my opinion, from the “design by committee” approach. And that’s most evident in their ethnic recipes. I just remember reading through a recipe for Hungarian goulash that had me (inwardly) screaming at the page for getting everything about it wrong. (That said, I did read a recipe from CI a few years later that actually was well-researched and got it right. Even though they deviated from the traditional approach here and there, they mentioned what they were doing and why. Which I’m cool with.)
I find that last line interesting. In my experience, Thai restaurants in America seem to be less meat heavy than Thai food in Thailand. Maybe because meat costs more than vegetables, or maybe because in Thailand it’s more normal to order and share several dishes. Could just be my memory slipping. IIRC in Thailand they’ll bring side veggies and accompaniments, like long beans, cabbage and cucumbers to chew on, but most of the dishes when they’re meat dishes tend to be mostly meat. This might be less so in high end restaurants.
Interesting. His curry dishes use a lot less meat than I find typically used in American restaurants. I don’t feel like digging up his book to find it, but I did find this thread commenting on his cookbook that says:
There’s at least one other poster in that thread commenting on the meat-to-curry ratio. His (coconut-based) curries are positively swimming in coconut sauce compared with what I’ve experience at the average US restaurant.
Actually, I did dig up the book. I’m still looking for his explanatory note on how much meat is used, but, for example, the referenced beef panang curry has this list of ingredients:
200 g (6 oz) beef brisket or cheek
4 cups coconut milk
3 cups coconut cream (which you first “crack” to get the oil to separate from the solids, kind of like clarifying butter. This may not be possible with many brands of coconut cream.)
etc
Green curry of chicken starts with:
2 cups coconut cream (same note as above)
150 g (5 oz) skinless chicken thigh fillets
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 cups coconut milk
etc…
To be clear, I’m not knocking the less meat thing; I actually like to have more veggies in my food. I’ll have to check out that cookbook and see how it compares to my experience. It sounds interesting enough, although I’d probably prefer to find a library copy or something.
We don’t really have a lot of Thai cookbooks, but the one I can find is pretty nice, it’s called Practical Thai Cooking by Puangkram C. Schmitz and Michael J. Worman.
I love and cook Thai food regularly, having been to Thailand several times, and even got a few lessons from the locals!
For me, the only book to consider is “Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet” by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It won cookbook of the year the year it was published and will give you a good grounding in many Asian cuisines.
Because, in reality, it’s silly to try and strictly separate Thai from Cambodian from Vietnamese from Indonesian - way too much bleeding, of one into the other, for any such thing to be possible, in my opinion.
To clarify more on my part, it’s not like these curries have a lot of vegetables, either. The panang curry recipe, for example, has none. The green curry chicken with baby corn just has 5 oz thigh and 6-10 baby corn. The recipes are just a lot saucier and less meaty than what I’m used to.
Nah, I think Vietnamese and Cambodian are distinct enough from Thai and Indonesian. Otherwise, you might as well lop Rissisn, German, Polish, Hungarian, etc. all together, as there’s a plenty of bleed there–I’d argue much more similarity.
I find Thai food to be completely different from Indonesian and somewhat different from Cambodian. Certainly the northern and southern Thai cuisines differ markedly from Cambodian. (No dog, for one thing.)
A biologist friend of mine studied a species of primate in Vietnam years ago. He was guest of honor at a village celebration and found out halfway through his meal that he was eating dog. He was extremely freaked out, but managed to not embarrass himself
I hope he was thankful he wasn’t eating the primate.
Heh. He woulda rather eaten monkey than dog. I got him to tell the dog story last time I ran into him and he was getting sick even after 30 years.
Thompson’s book arrived UPS today. 
My one little trick that may be helpful is to run galangal and lemongrass over a microplane grater rather than chopping it or mashing it in a pestle. I’ve been much more excited about making Thai curries ever since I learned it.
Subscribe to the weekly newsletter at http://importfood.com/ - lots of ideas and recipes there.