RPCV Nancie McDermott's `Quick & Easy Thai' lives up to book's name
`Quick & Easy Thai' lives up to book's name
Baltimore Sun
Fans of Thai cooking, rejoice. With Nancie McDermott's new cookbook, ``Quick & Easy Thai'' due out this month, you can cook a Thai dinner in less than an hour.
About all you need are a few pantry staples, a couple of cans of coconut milk, fish sauce and red curry paste.
McDermott, who learned Thai cuisine as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, delivers quick and tasty recipes with easy instructions.
She makes a few concessions to the American palate, allowing substitutions of brown sugar for palm sugar and peanut butter for mashed peanuts. But the 70 recipes reach beyond familiar favorites such as pad Thai to regional specialties such as Issahn-style minced pork salad with crunchy rice and fresh mint.
McDermott includes menu suggestions and lists of pantry items and helpful utensils. I used nothing more exotic than a frying pan and a colander in testing half a dozen recipes.
Her Chiang Mai curry noodles proved to be a filling meal of bite-size chicken chunks cooked in a broth of coconut milk, turmeric, curry paste, soy sauce and garlic and served over egg noodles. Spinach with black pepper and garlic was tasty and easy. But the best dish was the classic Thai snack, chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce.
