A weighty taste of Thai recipes

If there are any readers out there who haven't heard of Australian chef David Thompson, they haven't been reading their Caterer. Chef-owner of the legendary Darley Street Thai (now closed) and Sailors Thai in Sydney, Thompson made waves in the UK when he relocated to London and won a Michelin star for his restaurant, Nahm, at the Halkin hotel - the first for a Thai restaurant anywhere in Europe.

Thai Food, the book, is the culmination of years of Thompson's research and travels throughout Thailand. He first discovered the place after a last-minute change of holiday plans more than 20 years ago, and since then he has become one of the world's leading authorities on the country's food and culinary history.

This book is a labour of love that will have you salivating over recipes for nahm pla raa (fermented fish sauce) and yam mangkut gap kai pla (mangosteen salad with roe). Well, perhaps "salivating" may be a little extreme, in the case of the fish sauce, but there's something about the way Thompson writes that keeps you glued to the pages.

Interestingly, the recipes in this heavy fuschia-pink, silken-covered, 673-page book don't even start until page 187. Before that, you're taken through a cultural and regional history, with another 20 pages purely on rice.

With so many pages of background and history, it's a relief to see that it is also a terrific recipe book. Recipes have been gleaned by word of mouth and from traditional Thai memorial books. We learn there's something termed "rot tae" (correct taste), but also hear of an old saying: "Brung rot dtam jai chorp" ("Season according to your heart's desire").

Thompson teaches us the basics with an enormous amount of recipes to cook from according to the "proper" way, but we are encouraged to make personal adjustments to suit our preferred sourness, saltiness, sweetness and hotness.

All the recipes I've tried out work, but you may need to do some extra shopping.

There are chapters on curries, soups, salads, snacks and desserts. Curry pastes are well explained - you'll soon be cooking steamed guinea fowl curry, minced rabbit curry and jungle curries. Recipes use ingredients that most British chefs will be familiar with, ranging from wild mushrooms and crab through to shrimp paste, Thai celery, catfish and pandanus leaves.

If you're after a comprehensive book on Thai food, you'd be hard-pressed to find one better than this. The only complaint I've heard is that the recipes often start halfway down a page and end up spanning three pages, necessitating toing and froing when following one through. But if each recipe started on a brand new page, I fear the book would be another kilogram in weight.

Peter Gordon, joint chef-proprietor, Providores, London

Thai Food
by David Thompson
Pavillion, £25
ISBN 1-8620-5515-9