Tag: cookbook

Simple Thai Food

This review is by request from my boyfriend. As part of Food 52’s Cookbook Club, I spent April cooking almost exclusively from Leela Punyaratabandhu’’s Simple Thai Food (STF), and my boyfriend loved it. He’s usually reluctant when I go on a cookbook binge because it quickly becomes “too much of the same” or the beautiful photos convince me that this time we’re going to actually enjoy beets. After STF, he wasn’t looking for excuses to splurge on a fun restaurant or to ignore leftovers. “Are you going to write a review of this book?” he asked. “Because you really, really should.”

More signs that this book is special:

I found myself cooking more after long days at work because recipes rarely took me over 20 minutes and were restaurant quality. When we did order takeout, we would throw out the dipping sauces that it came with and use the Satay and Sweet Chili Sauce we had leftover from STF instead. One day I microwaved all the scraggly vegetables I had wilting in the fridge and put them on the table next to a bowl of the STF satay sauce. All the vegetables were devoured before I finished cooking the rest of the meal.

cucumber and red onion
Cucumber Relish

My boyfriend was right; this book deserves my words and the small bit of promotion that I can give it by talking about it on this blog. Not that it needs them; Punyaratabandhu is already food-Internet-famous from running shesimmers.com for almost a decade. Simple Thai Food was her first cookbook, featuring the kind of easy things that she cooks at home on a weeknight as well as the Thai favorites that her U.S. readers are familiar with from their local restaurants. It maintains the delicate balance between “authentic” and flyover state friendly, assuming that readers in the flyover states can find lemongrass and magroot leaves.  She demands that a home chef follow the recipe exactly if you want to do it right, but experience has shown me that the recipes are flexible enough to accommodate changes no matter what she says. My enormous local Asian market didn’t have galangal, which is integral to the sour Tom Kha Gai. It may not have been authentic, but the enthusiastic slurping around my kitchen table that night demonstrated that no one minded.

noodle stir-fry in a wok
Drunkard’s Noodles

If it weren’t as flexible, I would not have stuck to it with the level of dedication that I did. One of the initial drawbacks of the book, for me, was that the book appears extremely meat-heavy. There’s one non-meat mushroom stir-fry and the headnote makes it sound like she only added it a special concession to vegetarians. After experimenting, I learned that in most recipes, the protein can easily be swapped out. She may eat only chicken in her Rice Noodles “Drunkard’s Style,” but the chicken contributes so little that tofu works just as well, maybe even better since it sponges up the flavor. You’ll definitely want something like tofu to mop up the flavor in the restaurant favorite Chicken-Cashew Stir-Fry because the sweet brown sauce that the thin crescents of onion and fried cashews are tossed in is phenomenal. In the Phanaeng Curry with Chicken and Kabocha Squash, the chicken can’t compete with the sweet richness of the pumpkin or the herbaceous sauce. If I make it again, I might swap the protein out entirely for bamboo shoots which are as toothsome as the pumpkin is soft. It might not be as “authentic”, a word that Punyaratabandhu tosses around quite often in the headnotes, but it would not be unrecognizable and will still certainly be delicious.

There, I did it. I can tell my boyfriend that I reviewed the book and without taking up so much time that I can’t step into the kitchen and whip up another stir-fry tonight.

Afro-Vegan: Bridging Traditions

Vegan cuisine lacks tradition.

There are examples of veganism or extreme vegetarianism going back to as far as ancient Greece and India, but most cases represent isolated individuals, not a lineage. There are few rare examples of near vegan cuisine being culturally sustained–Shojin Ryori and multiple Indian foodways for instance–but those are exceptions in the gastronomic world. Instead, veganism is more often associated with eschewing what came before, a deliberate turning away from a culture that shares different values.

As a result, most vegan cookbooks are instructional. The average reader is statistically probably unfamiliar with vegan cookery and in fact may have never had to prepare their own meals before, coming from a culture where meat-laden dishes can be delivered or picked up from a drive-thru. It is risky for a vegan cookbook to dive deeply rather than pan broadly, to presume even basic kitchen skills. This means we are treated less often to rich and uncompromising works like the beautiful and omnivorous Burma: Rivers of Flavor or Gran Cocina Latina.

Bryant Terry has always resisted these trends in modern veganism, seeking to ground his food in history, even an omnivorous history. Starting with Vegan Soul Kitchen, he has linked his recipes to family stories, century old traditions, and modern cinema and music. In his latest work, Afro-Vegan he goes further than ever. He maintains the habit of suggesting other cultural works like songs to tie into each recipe, and of “remixing” classic recipes with new twists, such as combining Southern skillet cornbread with North African dukkah. Unlike his past books, however, he goes further in emphasizing the linkages between what he cooks, traditional African American foodways, and the cuisines of Africa.

The book organization shows his emphasis on African and New World ingredients. “Okra, Black-eyed Peas, and Watermelon” get lumped together in one chapter, while “Grits, Grains, and Couscous” share another. Every recipe showcases some element of African cuisine but no recipe seems explicitly foreign. Terry reworks every ingredient or technique until it fits our modern expectations. Okra is grilled to make a spicy finger food, African black eyed pea fritters appear in a more traditional form and as softer patties for sliders. A whole chapter is devoted to cocktails, demonstrating that this is not intended to be a manual to recreate some kind of authentic African experience, but rather to incorporate tiny bits of tradition into modern life.

Terry does not talk down to his audience or spend much time explaining what’s needed in a pantry or how to deep fry. Because of this, he doesn’t need to water down his vision. Every dish works in concert, delivering a pitch perfect demonstration of Terry’s style. Sometimes this requires uncompromising instructions. Making Slow-braised Mustard Greens–which I would usually toss into one pot and call it a day–requires one pot and two pans, but the result is the creamiest mustard greens I’ve ever had. Za’atar Roasted Red Potatoes included more steps than I would expect from roasted potatoes–including taking the potatoes out halfway through to re-season, then laying each piece back on the baking sheet “cut side up”–but my boyfriend declared them, “the best anything. Ever.” The specifications may seem particular, but in each case Terry reassures that this is worth it. When describing how to meticulously remove the skin from every black-eyed pea used in Crunchy Bean and Okra Fritters, he suggests inviting guests to help. Even in the preparation, he manages to work in ways to make vegan food more about community building than dividing, furthering the book’s message.

Bryant Terry’s Afro-Vegan is one of the few vegan cookbooks I own that both explores a cuisine deeply while elevating it to new heights. It’s one that I’ll grab when I need inspiration for something new and exciting, as well as the one I’ll dog ear and bring to Louisiana on family visits. Hopefully other chefs will be inspired as well, and we can further the cause of integrating veganism into our communities and family histories.