Paper Palate

Asian Ingredients: A Guide to Foodstuffs of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam by Bruce Cost, published by Quill, New York, in 2000. Paperback, $18.00.

Asian food has gotten a lot of press for being healthy. If the number of Asian restaurants in the US is any guide, Asian food is popular. The standard Chinese and Japanese restaurants have been joined more recently by Vietnamese, Burmese, Korean, Malaysian, Thai and others. But one big thing holds many people back from trying to cook Asian food: those mysterious “exotic” ingredients. Some of these have long since been naturalized; soy sauce and tofu, for example. There are many other ingredients, however, that remain mysterious to the neophyte. Preserved vegetable? Sansho? Galangal? Fish sauce?

Restauranteur and chef Bruce Cost has come to the rescue of anyone wanting to make sense of what’s on offer at the local Asian market with Asian Ingredients. Although it isn’t the sort of portable guide one can slip into a pocket on a shopping trip, it is a very useful text to study while making up next week’s shopping list.

Cost divides the book into Fresh Ingredients; Preserved and Processed Ingredients; Condiments and Sauces; Spices, Sugars, Nuts, and Seeds; Noodles and Wrappers; Flours and Thickeners; and Cooking Fats and Oils. There is also a bibliography and index.

This book is an eye-opener for anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with Asian cuisines. A typical entry includes several names for the ingredient in the languages of different countries, a history of its use in cooking (often reaching back millenia, particularly for ingredients used in Chinese cooking) and tips on what to look for when purchasing the ingredient, including brand recommendations when applicable. Many ingredients are shown in a black-and-white photo. Then, just so you know what to do with your ingredients when you get them home, the book is filled out with recipes.

The array of food dealt with here can seem daunting at first glance, but Cost is a good guide. His practicality is balanced with intriguing nuggets of food history. It’s probably best to start by focusing on a few ingredients and then expanding one’s repertoire.

Any criticisms of this book fall into the realm of nitpicking. However, the mention of Korea in the subtitle is slightly misleading, since Korea has many more of its own characteristic ingredients than are mentioned in the book. Those committed to Southeast Asian cooking (from places like Singapore or Malaysia, for example) will also wish for more space devoted to those cuisines. Still, this is all the introduction to Asian ingredients that most people need. If the reader grows beyond its limitations, than the book has done the job of getting that reader comfortable enough with Asian cooking that he or she is ready to seek out new frontiers.

Pros: Clear organization, wide scope, practical tips.

Cons: Some cuisines covered in more depth than others.

Rating: 9 out of 10.