Review: Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, published by Artisan, New York, in 2000. Hardcover, $45.00.
At first glance, cooking and travel might seem to have little in common. Cooking is part of the domestic sphere, a “nesting” activity devoted to enhancing a happy home (or the idealized notion of it). Travel, in the meantime, is about going out into the wide world and encountering different landscapes, people, and cultures, possibly suffering hardship or adventures to boot. Food may be a catch-as-catch-can proposition for travelers who are more interested in the sights than in sustenance.
The truth is that all people need to eat, whether they are globetrotters or they never stray more than a few miles from their birthplace. We live on a planet with a multitude of climates and ecosystems; these places are inhabited by millions of different plants and animals. The increasing globalization and technological sophistication of the world make it easy to forget that food traditions arise out of a specific landscape and ecology. Cooking comes from a group of people using what is available to sustain them in their local landscape.
Hot Sour Salty Sweet takes as its local landscape the length of the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. The river flows through or borders on China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Although the cuisines of these countries all have unique variations, there are overarching commonalities as well; the title lists the combination of tastes that are esteemed in the cuisines of this region. This cookbook won the James Beard Foundation’s KitchenAid Award for cookbook of the year in 2001.
Alford and Duguid met on the road in Tibet in 1985. They have written several other cookbooks, including Mangoes and Curry Leaves, Flatbreads and Flavors and Seductions of Rice. They exemplify a type of traveler that likes to get off the usual travel circuit and connect with people. Travelers who prize the experience of getting to know another culture in an intimate way know that eating local food is an essential part of the journey. Not only does one learn to love “exotic” foods that will never be found in a supermarket back home, but the very act of sharing food with another person creates a connection that can transcend differences of culture and language. Alford and Duguid also travel with their children, another thing that makes it easier to connect with people from different cultures.
This is a coffee-table cookbook that a messy cook will dread to bring into the kitchen. Recipes alternate with gorgeous photographs (both of the recipes and of Southeast Asian people and landscapes) and travelers’ tales. After introductory sections on the geography and cultures of the region and meal-planning suggestions, the recipes are divided into “Sauces, Chile Pastes and Salsas,” “Simple Soups,” “Salads,” “Rice and Rice Dishes,” “Noodles and Noodle Dishes,” “Mostly Vegetables,” “Fish and Seafood,” “Poultry,” “Beef,” “Pork,” “Snacks and Other Street Food” and “Sweets and Drinks.” Bringing up the rear are a glossary of ingredients, a bibliography and an index.
Apart from the cost, this is an excellent introduction to the cuisines of this region. Readers who find all of these areas terra incognita will appreciate the sampling of recipes from a variety of countries. Cooks who have already delved into the cooking of one or more of these places, however, would probably prefer a cookbook focused on the cultures that they have not investigated yet. The thing is that some of these cuisines are better represented on the cookbook shelf than others; Thai and Vietnamese cooking, for example, are not too difficult to research, while cooking from Myanmar is more of a challenge.
Another thing the intermediate-level student of Southeast Asian cooking will find is that many of the recipes are for characteristic dishes such as pad thai, Chiang Mai curry noodles and steamed jasmine rice. If you have already started cooking Southeast Asian food, chances are you already have recipes for these dishes in your library. It’s always instructive to seek out new variations on tried-and-true favorites, but someone with a little experience is probably more interested in recipes for off-the-beaten-road fare.
Pros: A beautiful book that would make an excellent gift for someone learning to cook Southeast Asian food; great travel stories; good cultural and regional context for the food.
Cons: Cooks may be afraid to bring the book into the kitchen, due to its expense; intermediate-level cooks will already have recipes for some of these dishes.
Rating: 9 out of 10.
I got this book as a Christmas present from an old roommate back in 2000. And I agree with one of your cons. It’s too precious and gorgeous to bring into the kitchen. It’s more of a coffee table book that has recipes than it is a cookbook, and I’ve found that most of the time that I’ve spent with this book was out in the dining or living room, paging through the photographs for inspiration.
then, I’d logon to Epicurious or crack open my copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s South/East Asian cookbook to actually look up the recipe that I’d want to use.