Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking (ISBN 0688165427)

Amazon.com Review:
Americans love Thai food. Among the best cookbooks exploring this rich, tantalizing cuisine is chef-restaurateur Su-Mei Yu's Cracking the Coconut. Insisting that there can be no true Thai cooking without homemade "core" preparations (such as various chili pastes), Yu includes precise, accessible recipes for these and other essential ingredients while outlining fundamental techniques in vivid detail. Readers learn the proper hand motions for cracking a coconut, how to wrap ingredients in banana leaves, and how to work a mortar and pestle, the central Thai-kitchen implement. The book's 175 recipes are divided between chapters devoted to essential ingredients or dishes. The chapter on Thai curry ("the signature dish") explores the basics of preparing this exciting fare and includes such delicious recipes as Red Curry with Roasted Pork and Green Banana and Sweet Green Curry with Meatballs. A chapter called "The Secret of Thai Salads" offers recipes for a small repertoire of essential dressings and such tempting recipes as Apricot, Shrimp, and Pork Salad and a salad-feast called, simply, Lamb and Roast Duck. Yu provides cultural notes and cooking lore throughout the book, often drawing from her recipe-hunting travels abroad. It's hard to imagine a better start for anyone wishing to "cook Thai" than this fully illustrated book, which perfectly balances recipes and instruction to make it an innovative standout. --Arthur Boehm

Very nicely done!:
I had some hesitation in purchasing this book because the name didn't seem very thai, (half thai myself and was raised on the "real deal" as well as have been in several towns in thailand for months at a time pre-cooking years, I didn't want an americanized version of thai food) but then I had seen you on the show Cooking Live where your methods were in the same manner my mother cooks, but more of an easier measuring manner as opposed to trying to write down her recipes by watching her and her "eyeing" measurements! I just have to know the measurements before trying to alter it! I love this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who would want to learn the basics in traditional and not americanized thai cooking, and also who is not wanting to take the lazy way out as that other reviewer was referring. The book is to show you how to make it from scratch, and not looking for a review of canned goods or just out of the can. If all of the ingredients were exactly the same and just in a can, why would a cookbook even be needed? I don't know of many grocery stores, let alone asian markets, ESPECIALLY in California that wouldn't have fish sauce! I've lived in 4 different parts of the country since leaving home, and haven't ever had any problem in finding the majority of the ingredients shown in this book. From Indianapolis, to Phoenix, to Las Vegas and now a very small town in Michigan, they have their own asian section in the local grocery stores! Also, such as the other reviewer criticized Pad thai, each creation varies in the preparation per cook as it would in any family, just as I'm sure everyone has a different way to prepare something as simple as meatloaf. I love this book and its a good substitution for moms cooking, but yes every time I'm at home, I do put in my orders for my moms home cooking, just as any other person would with a great cooking mom! Khap Kuhn Ka Su-Mei!

Delicious food but time consuming:
Su-Mei Yu's book is tasty and yet informative. Not knowing a lot about Thai culture, I found the chapters breaking down the origins of the food to be most interesting. In one instance she gives a synopsis of how important the coconut is to the Thais but also explains how to prepare the coconut so you will be able to prepare the food authentic Thai-style. The instructions on how to prepare the food are very concise and simple. Most of the recipes are from scratch, which means if you have limited time, it is not the cookbook for you (on avg it takes me 2 hrs to create one dish including the chopping/pounding of the curries and cooking time). All the curries/chile waters/pad thai involve many ingredients, so unless you have a strong interest in Asian cooking, it might not be worthwhile to purchase the book for one recipe. For example, she talks about creating tamarind juice from soaking tamarind pulp in water and advises against short-cuts such as pre-processed tamarind juice. Unless you have other recipes you want to use this ingredient for, its going to sit in your cupboard. I also found that the recipes call for a huge amount of spicy chiles, so cut down on it if you can't handle the heat. Also, there are a minimal amount of pictures in the book, if you don't have any idea what certain ingredients look like or haven't had exposure to Thai food, you might have a hard time figuring out what the dishes are supposed to look like. Pictures of the ingredients would be very helpful as well. Overall, the book is one of my favourites. Well written and entertaining, it is a cookbook for serious (and patient) cooks. The recipes are delicious and the flavours are complex. But for beginners of Asian cooking or for people on the go, you might want to try something simpler.

Ignore the negative reviews:
This is the best book on Thai cooking I have come across. I beleive it would be the only book I would like to be a castaway with. I have a great collection of cook books , including all the classics but this is rapidly becoming my favorite. The recipies work, the text is personal and friendly, and the illustrations marvelous. The Thai names for the recipies are funny and authentic but not found in other books. This adds to the fun of cooking the food. I have just returned from Koh Samui where I had Thai cooking classes and these recipies are right in line with what I learned. The American sustitutions are helpful for cooking here but the book tells how to be authentic too. Actually I have found most of the strange ingredients fresh here in good old Texas. I hope to visit the author's restaurant someday. A truely wonderful book. Buy it now.

Excellent, traditional thai cooking...:
I watched Su-Mei Yu's being interviewed locally here in San Diego. After seeing it, I decided to try her restaurant here. It's a great local Thai noodle restaurant and serves her famous excellent Thai Chicken. Upon eating there twice, I decide to buy her 2 books. I absolutely love her book. Her dishes optimizes the combination of sweet, salt, sour, spicy that you REALLY can't figure out the breakdown of elements of spices when you eat the food. After making rounds at the local Asian grocery store to buy all the ingredients one afternoon (couldn't find green peppercorns or Thai white peppercorns), I adventured making her Crying Tiger dish, a Bangkok Chicken dish that they don't serve here in US. It was awesome!! My mouth still salivates when I think of this dish. It's so good that I made it again the next day for dinner. Can't wait to discover some of her other recipes. Being Asian American, Su-Mei Yu also incorporates some famous Chinese dishes as well!!

My favorite book on Thai cooking:
I will probably have to buy a new copy in the next couple of years because the one I currently own is falling apart...especially the sections on making curry pastes. My favorite by far is the Panang Chile Paste. Takes awhile to make, so I usually make several batches at once. I have also substituted chicken, pork, shrimp and white fish for beef in the Panang Neur recipe. I have used several Thai cookbooks in the last twenty years. This is the only one that has satisfied me. I do wish there were more diagrams and illustrations.