Bangkok: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand [A Cookbook]

Beautiful photos and charismatic writing. Fan of her blog so had high hopes- this book is my new favourite recipe book! So far everything I have made from here has been spot on (shrimp dip, morning glory salad, pad Thai, going ob woon Sen, tapioca pudding). If you are familiar with thai food then go for this. A few recipes for things that you might not have heard of and lots of charming anecdotes:) It is up there with Andy rickers and David Thompson's books.

Memories of Thailand come flooding back whan the wok's in action. This book is one of 140 in my wife's collection of cookery/recipe books and one of the most used.

Loved Leelas first book and adore this too. Beautiful quality.

Over priced not great recipes

I am a huge fan of the authors blog and wanted to love this book but so far the recipe success ratio isn't that great. I've made 4 recipes from the book so far .... one wonderful, one pleasant enough I guess, one edible but dull and one not nice at all. The regional variations that she covers are great and the range of recipes very interesting . The food photography is lovely but quite misleading ....what you see is not what you get. I loved that fact that there is little compromise on ingredients so be warned that if you don't have access to a very well stocked Asian supermarket you will struggle to find some of the ingredients. Personally I don't think that's a negative....I'd rather it was authentic but something to consider. At the end of the day it's a recipe book though and while I'm not naive enough to expect every recipe to be a show stopper this falls a bit short of the mark so far. Rather than buying this book I urge you to read her blog which is wonderful, packed recipes and lots of Leelas writing which is always interesting.

beautiful cover and photos. the kind of recipes you will never have time or effort to cook.

Great recipes and great background stories about the recipes! Good Job Leela! Grab her first book as well.

I had always thought Leela Punyaratabandhu is a talented and extremely smart writer, and yet this book has managed to show me I've underestimated how much her work contributes to the body of literature on Thai cuisine. The writing is beautiful, fascinating, informative, intelligent and funny all at once. The photographs are gorgeous. The recipes are very authentic and unusual. You feel like you're traveling and eating through the city of Bangkok with the best tour guide who can cook. I own almost every book on Thai cooking and I can say unequivocally that this beautiful volume is the best one to date. The only caveat is that the recipes are very authentic to the point that they may be too authentic for people with casual interest in Thai food. I was looking at the recipes and feeling somewhat fearful for the author. If you're the type that doesn't like to look for specific ingredients online or go out of your cooking comfort zone, this book is too advanced for you. But if you love Thai food and want to learn about the cuisine and the culture from a true expert, your library should never ever be without this amazing book. I have tried only 2 recipes so far and they turned out very good.

Good and on time

This is my favorite kind of cookbook. Beautiful to look at, it's the kind of book you can read for pleasure, to learn about another place and another kind of life, and get a sense of what it is to be Thai, through beautiful descriptions and photographs, as well as recipes you can taste as you read them. The recipes do require some [slightly] challenging ingredients, but you can get them at any Asian grocery store, or on line here at Amazon. The cooking techniques are not difficult, and the end product looks wonderful. If you are interested in cooking delicious Thai food, these recipes are absolutely accessible. If you want to learn something of what it is to live in Thailand, the writing is beautiful and vivid.

Still reading through the book. Does anyone else read their cookbooks like I do? Enjoying the recipes, but don't have a favorite yet.