Cookbooks of Asia and the Pacific
Asian Ingredients
Hawaiian Ingredients
Book Collection
|
Check out the site's
Glossary of Ingredients Find information about fruits, vegetables, spices. It is a work in progress, but, getting there. |
||
|
On-line Grocers:
Indian Groceries Japanese Groceries Thai Groceries Oceanic Foods |
||
|
||
Cookbooks
 |
Asian Ingredients: A Guide to the Foodstuffs of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam - by Bruce Cost - A good, basic book for those who want an introduction to cooking ingredients of the above countries. Asian Ingredients provides in-depth information on many Asian vegetables, fungi, herbs, seasonings, preserved and processed ingredients, flours and thickeners, rice, etc. Not every ingredient has an example recipe, but many do - and they are mostly authentic. This no-nonsense book with black and white photos is well worth the low price. | ||||||||||
 |
Charmaine Soloman's Encyclopedia of Asian Food - by Charmaine and Nina Soloman - A great accompaniment to her "Complete Asian Cookbook" or to any Asian cookbook. Charmaine Soloman's Encyclopedia of Asian Food is a very thorough guide to Asian ingredients that includes recipes using them. Highly recommended. | ||||||||||
 |
Asian Greens - by Anita Loh-Yien Lau - A neat little, nicely designed book with over 70 recipes. Full color photos and descriptions of Asian greens - leafy and flowering plants, herbs, fruits and vegetables, tubers, beans, and seeds. | ||||||||||
 |
Fruits of Hawaii - by Carey D. Miller, et al - A good book for people who live in the tropics or are interested in recipes or information about tropical fruits. Each fruit has a section on description, history in the Hawaiian Islands, nutritional value, supply, how it can be used and how it can be stored. An appendix is devoted to freezing, canning and bottling fruit and fruit juice. Fruits of Hawaii is a great book to have if your household is inundated by seasonal fruits. | ||||||||||
 |
Ethnic Culinary Herbs: A Guide to Identification and Cultivation in Hawai‘i - by George Staples, Michael S. Kristiansen - Though not a cookbook, this little book is packed with information on description, distribution, use, propagation methods, and cultural practices for herbs commonly found in Hawaiian gardens. Ethnic Culinary Herbs is a good book for the serious gardener and cook. | ||||||||||
 |
Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide - by Elizabeth Schneider, et al - Though not all Asian and Pacific, many of the fruits and vegetables used throughout the regions are included in this book. Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables gives much information about each item including its traditional use, varieties, selection and storage, preparation, nutrition, a sampling of recipes, and a useful "Recipes by Category" index. There are no photographs, but each item is represented by a drawing. A very useful book for one who is exploring ethnic stores or wanting to grow these fruits in vegetables in their home garden. |
||||||||||
 |
Seafood of Southeast Asia: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes - by Alan Davidson - The author of Mediterranean and North Atlantic Seafood now has now come out with his second edition of this book. The first part is a scientific catalog of species that is accompanied by equally scientific drawings. Davidson adds culinary interest to this by describing how the catch is filleted and commonly used. Seafood of Southeast Asia is not, of course, just limited to fish but includes seafood and seaweeds as well. There are then recipe chapters from many Southeast Asian countries. Even if you cannot get many of the different kinds of fish cataloged here, this stands alone as a worthwhile and interesting book to have. It should also be of interest to Southeast Asian travelers, especially ones who snorkel or scuba-dive. | ||||||||||
 |
The Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and over 200 Authentic Recipes - by Monisha Bharadwaj - The Indian Spice Kitchen is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Indian food stuffs conveniently arranged by type: spice mixtures, dried herbs, nuts, dals, pulses, cereals and flours to name a few. For each item is a description of how it grows, its appearance and taste, history botanic classification, medicinal/culinary uses and a sample Indian recipe. | ||||||||||
 |
A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food - by K. T. Achaya - A scholarly work for the true Indophile. A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food is not so much an identification guide but a compendium of information about Indian agriculture, history, customs, plant uses, and virtually anything having to do with food from alms to sacrifice - arranged in dictionary fashion. | ||||||||||
| A Dictionary of Japanese Food: Ingredients and Culture - by Richard Hosking - This book helps one solve the mysteries of Japanese cooking, the hows and the whys, and includes regional and cultural notes. A Dictionary of Japanese Food is a really valuable book to have if you are planning to delve into this cuisine. The main part is a Japanese-English dictionary and the glossary is English-Japanese so it is easy to find what you are looking for, | |||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
The Book of Tempeh: The Delicious, Cholesterol-free Protein - by William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi - Half of this book is devoted to the history of tempe and scientific research on its nutrition, digestibility, and on the various methods of its production. Many ways of making tempe at home are described. The Book of Tempeh is really informative. Just the plethora of ways tempe can be used in cooking, as exemplified in the many recipes found here, is a really good reason to buy this book. The Indonesian recipes do not seem to be very authentic, but look like they could be tasty (maybe they left out the shrimp paste because it is a vegetarian cookbook). | ||||||||||
 |
Japanese Cooking: A Kitchen Handbook - by Emi Kazuko - A great primer on Japanese cuisine. The first half of this book is devoted to a fully illustrated, in-depth glossary of ingredients, cooking and eating utensils, cuisine history, and meal planning. This still leaves enough room for many delicious, clearly written recipes, each with several helpful photos. | ||||||||||
 |
Burst of Flavor: The fine art of cooking with spices - by Kusuma Cooray - An exciting addition to any cookbook collection. Burst of Flavor keeps it interesting with its many inventive and delicious fusion recipes using Asian spices and herbs with Western or Hawaiian ingredients and dishes. Cooray is from Sri Lanka, trained at La Cordon Bleu, among other famed schools, and now lives and teaches in Hawai‘i. Most dishes are pictured and there is a description of how the flavors function for each dish. | ||||||||||
 |
The Rice Book: The Definitive Book on the Magic of Rice, with Hundreds of Exotic Recipes from Around the World - by Sri Owen - The Rice Book begins with a large section about rice; including its history, dietary value, cultivation methods, cooking methods, and an interesting section on the future of rice farming throughout the world, its problems and possible solutions. What follows is the author's normal fail-proof recipes. Recipes for rice with everything imaginable from many rice-loving countries. A favorite section of mine is Sweet Rice Cakes and Puddings that includes a recipe for Coconut Cream Rice Dessert with mangoes, ground almonds and orange flower water, and one called Caramelized Congee with Berries. No photos. | ||||||||||
| The Miso Book: The art of cooking with Miso - byJohn & Jan Belleme - One healthy book!! It begins with the beginning, the history of miso, its medicinal qualities, making miso at home, then launches into the recipes. These include a couple of great chapters on dressings, sauces and marinades. No photos, but the recipes, overall, are very simple and packed with flavor. | |||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
The Spice and Herb Bible - by Ian Hempbill with recipes by Kate Hempbill - Well illustrated and comprehensive in its descriptions of the origins, history, processing, buying, storage and use of over 100 spices and herbs, many of which are used in Asian and Pacific cooking. This is an Australian book and there were a few spices that were unfamiliar to me, making an interesting read about their origin and Aboriginal use. "The World of Spices" introduces the reader to spices and herbs by cuisine. "Spice Notes" is an alphebetical listing, and "The Art of Combining Spices" is a chapter on spice mixtures. | ||||||||||
 |
Cooking with Herbs and Spices: by Andi Clevely, Katherine Richmond, et.al - This book is possibly out-of-print, but it is well worth a click to the booksellers that still have it. 500 pages. Its chapters include; Uses, Growing Herbs, an Herb index, a Spice index, Spice Mixtures, Flavored Aromatic Oils, Spice Drinks, and a nice selection of recipes at the end. The Herb index describes the herb and its uses, cultivation, and parts used, The Spice index is similar and adds a description of aroma and flavor. There are a number of books like this out there and I have not looked at every one of them, but of the all inclusive ones, this one seems to have more of an Asian bent, mentioning most of the herbs and spices used in Indian and Asian cooking and many of the recipes are from those areas. Only one slight complaint - the herbs and spices are arranged by latin name, not common name, interesting in one way to see species groupings, but slightly inconvenient. It just takes a look to the main index. | ||||||||||
|
©2005 Cookbooks of Asia and the Pacific, P.O. Box 1255, Pahoa, HI 96778
contact@thebamboochef.com |
|||||||||||