Vatch's South East Asian Salads by Vatcharin Bhumichitr

This is the first book dedicated solely to Southeast Asian salads. From a culture that has brought us so much of our convenience food, salads seem to have been little explored.

Vatcharin Bhumichitr came to Britain in 1976. He founded three of London's best Asian restaurants, Thai Bistro, Chang Mai, which specialises in Northern Thai cooking and Southwest W9, which offers food from across Southeast Asia. With over 120 recipes and background narrative, this book is true inspiration to those of us who have tired of coronation chicken and bog standard green salad and are broadening their horizons.

For those who are treading on virgin territory, Vatch carefully guides the reader through the ingredients and their preparation. The recipes do not call for too many new additions to your larder and there are suggestions for substitutes for some of the ingredients that may be difficult to come by. The recipes are easy to follow and will suit beginners and the more advanced cook and both will achieve the same results.

Vietnamese beef salad (goi bo) is a combination of fillet steak, beansprouts, basil, mint and salad leaves. The magic is in the marinade, which calls for lime juice, fish sauce, lemon grass and chilli. Or what about pork and cucumber salad (wetha thakwather thoke), with a dressing of ground dried shrimp, dry fried sesame seeds and crisp fried shallots.

The book is richly illustrated with beautiful photographs by Gus Filgate and combined with Vatch's writing, makes this book a gastronomic journey through his homeland in Southeast Asia. For the salad season, this is a must have.

Publication details
144 pp. Photography by Gus Filgate. £14.99
Published by Kyle Cathie
ISBN 1856264033
2001

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