Our April 2022 Cookbook of the Month (COTM) will be SIMPLE THAI FOOD: CLASSIC RECIPES FROM THE THAI HOME KITCHEN, by Leela Punyaratabandhu.
Use this thread to discuss your preparations to cook from the book. A reporting thread will be posted on April 1.
Remember, there is still over a week left in March, so there is still plenty of time to join us in cooking from Lemon, Love & Olive Oil.
@MelMM Thanks for organizing and in a timely manner! It’s great we’ve a week to read the book and prepare the shopping.
Thanks for adding the tag! We have liked to leave about a week between the end of voting and the beginning of cooking to allow people to acquire the book, get an idea of ingredients, etc. And this thread gives us a space to chat about that process.
Unfortunately I am off chilies of all sorts for medical reasons (sad face), but be sure to check out the author’s blog at https://shesimmers.com/. I learned a lot there.
Just borrowed the ebook from the library.
Gosh I’ve missed my Thai favorites these past few months while I’ve been away!
I should be getting my book from the library in the next few days. I love Thai food. No good Thai restaurants near me. I’m hoping to find a few great recipes in this COTM.
I know that you know that there are many Thai dishes without chiles. I hope you can find a way to participate with dishes that don’t include them and meet your dietary requirements.
Yes, and I am waiting hopefully for someone to write a book about them! I once had a wonderful non-spicy noodle dish at Pok Pok of all places (was really surprised given that chef’s predilection for heat), but unfortunately most restaurants feature the same dishes. I make my own curry pastes so I can alter to my tolerance, but right now I am off chili entirely. I actually flipped through the book and noted a couple things, it is just depressing because I would happily eat chilies if I could. Admittedly, my flair for adaptation pales in comparison to yours–looking forward to seeing your vegetarian creations as always! This is going to be an interesting one to observe given the author’s exacting standards.
I read Food52 Cookbook Club recipe reviews of this book the other day. They had a discussion on white peppercorns I thought was interesting. There were quite a few recipe reviews if anyone is interested in venturing to FB for a read.
I’m not into Asian food so I will sit this month out. Planning to return to Modern Comfort Food and Simply Julia in the coming weeks. Shame that I won’t be able to add to the CH posts.
I agree about not being able to add to old reports - makes me sad. I’ve been wondering if it might be useful to have a Reports from previous COTMs thread? The downside seems like it would mean we would be less likely to do a reboot from those books over here on HO. On the other hand, I would hate to lose the chance to hear about people’s ongoing experiences with COTM cookbooks in the future, and certainly have some recipes still in my queue from past books. What do you all think?
I’m still cooking my way through Simply Julia too, and I think we could either start a new post for a prior COTM and people can add to it as they go, or the combo approach like hirsheys suggested.
The combo approach makes sense to me, where people would state book plus recipe title at the top of the post. Separate threads would mean littering the site with a lot of threads that wouldn’t have a ton of replies or a lot of relevance to many here.
Oh wow, love both these ideas.
Just the other night I remade something from a previous COTM, and thank goodness I was able to look it up on CH because there (and not in my book) I mentioned that I needed to cook it less than called for. I am going to need to be more aware of adding stuff like that to notes in my books.
I will begin a past COTMs thread within the next couple of days.
Thank you so much, Caitlin. I have recipes I’ve RECENTLY made and some I plan make IN THE FUTURE, which I would love to share with folks WHO ARE INTERESTED in that sort of thing.
I scan quickly through the book, lots of chicken recipes!
My first impression and I’m glad the recipes seem simple (suitable for busy days cooking) and the usual ingredients vs the more complicated recipes by David Thompson’s Thai Food.
Also glad that my lemongrass survived indoors this winter and it’s outside again now!
Maybe people with the book can confirm, does every recipe come with a photo? I’ve the ebook, only about 1 out of 4 dishes has a photo, a bit frustrated, but I think I got it when it was on promotion.
@naf I have a hard copy of the book and
there are about 38 to 40 photos in Simply Thai Food. Nice to see that you are excited to begin cooking!
