I'd appreciate recommendations regarding Thai recipes and recipe books. I realize that such a request might be more appropriate for a cooking forum rather than a travel forum, but the purpose of posting it here is because I would especially appreciate recommendations that compare the recipes to those experienced while travelling throughout Thailand.

If I remember correctly that JamesA married into a Thai family, maybe we can coax one or two of the family's favorite home-cooking recipies out of him.

I'll get things going by providing two recipes.

LIME CHILI SAUCE
Serves 2 - 4, depending on how much sauce is applied

1/4 cup fresh lime juice (requires about 1 1/2 limes)
1 1/2 Tbsn Thai fish sauce
1/2 Tbsn sugar
2 tspn bottled jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
*1/8 tspn hot chili oil

*That quantity produces heat that is similar to the lime chili sauce I experienced repeatedly in Thai restaurants. For less heat, use as little as 2 drops.

Combine all ingredients. Cover and chill several hours to allow flavors to blend. Spoon over any flaky white fish.

Will keep in the refrigerator for at least several days.

Wine Pairing: The sauce enhances the citrus flavor of any Sauvignon Blanc or New Zealand Chardonnay.


SALMON WITH THAI RED CURRY SAUCE
http://www.terrarestaurant.com/salmon.html

Though I never saw salmon on a menu in a Thai restuarant, the recipe meets all my requirements of presentation, texture and taste. The red curry sauce is slightly different than anything I ate in Thailand, but that's understandable considering that I always ate it with beef or game poultry. The sauce in this recipe understandably appears to be engineered to accompany the salmon.

If anyone has a great red curry sauce for use with meat or can suggest alterations to the one in this recipe for use with meat, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I forgot to mention that I alter the salmon recipe to use red cabbage rather than white cabbage shown in the picture. That's because I believe the red color improves the presentation.

Mike,

I usually succumb to laziness and use Mae Ploy brand prepared paste, but you might like to try this recipe (note - metric tablespoon used, 20 ml):

4-6 dried red chillies
2 small brown onions, chopped
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp chopped coriander* plant, including root
1 tsp salt
2 tsp chopped lemon rind
1 tsp serai (lemon grass) powder
1 tsp laos powder
1 tbsp chopped garlic
2 tsp dried shrimp paste (kapi)
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp paprika

* in the US, "cilantro"

Remove stems from chillies, but keep the seeds in if you want the curry paste to be as hot as it is in Thailand. Break the chillies into pieces and put into container of an electric blender together with all the other ingredients. Blend to a smooth paste, stopping motor frequently and pushing ingredients onto blades. It may be necessary to add a tablespoon of water or extra oil.

Source: Solomon, Charmaine: "The Complete Asian Cookbook" (Lansdowne Press, Sydney, 1999). Admittedly not a specialist Thai cookbook, but provides excellent coverage of all Asian cuisines and has a good Thai section. Craig Claiborne of the New York Times wrote that this book "is ... thoroughgoing and authoritative in its subject matter, and the recipes are uncommonly well written and authentic". Last time I looked it was available through amazon.com.

Thanks for the tips, Neil. Do you notice that sauces incorporating the homemade paste taste significantly better than sauces that incorporate packaged paste?

Sorry for the delayed reply, Mike - yes, can't argue with that. I used to have a great recipe for phanang curry paste - it involved frying of many dried chillies in the wok and was so toxic that it cleared the house. Gas mask time. But I managed to lose it in a hard disk crash, and nothing I've tried since has come near it for flavour. It was far superior to any red curry paste I've tasted. One prepared concoction I haven't been able to improve on, much, is massaman curry paste.

BTW, your lime chilli sauce isn't a lot different to the ubiquitous Vietnamese nuoc cham (or nuoc mam, depending who you're talking to). A quick-and-dirty version can be made by mixing a little lime juice and fish sauce into some Thai sweet chilli sauce. As my small crop of jalapeno chillies is now bearing I might put the produce to good use.

When supplying that recipe for red curry paste I wondered whether the use of dried lemon grass and laos powder might be due to the fact that the fresh stuff was hard to come by in Australia when the book was first published in the 1970s - but my reprint is dated 1999, by which time all that stuff was being grown in Australia and not hard to find in the major cities, so I'm inclined to trust Ms Solomon on that.

Get a Mother in law!
I try to ask a simple recipe but the answers I get is that everyone does to their taste and whoever cooks tastes as they go along until it's right. There is certainly no precise measuring going on it tends to be a free for all which I keep well away from, but the food tastes great, except for the Fish Curry I had last night which has kept me on Antibiotics and in the bathroom most of today, but we did buy that in from our usual place along the street!! Who said you can't get food poisoning(?)..sorry....gotta run (literally)..

Neil, I look forward to making that paste some lazy day.

James, my mother-in-law never cooked. My wife still doesn't. It must be in the genes. Hope you're walking rather than running to the bathroom today.

James, you need to meet my mother-in-law. Her cooking would counteract your problem.