Tummy - Vegetarian Thai Food: Vegetarian Thai Recipes and Vegan Thai Recipes plus Asian Vegan Recipes

Here are some suggestions on what ingredients to use, substitutions for hard to find ingredients, plus some cooking tips and techniques.

Many commercially made Thai curry pastes are not strictly vegetarian since they contain a type of fermented shrimp. Included in this cookbook are recipes for red, green and Massaman style curry paste that have no shrimp or other animal products. These pastes are easy to make at home and the paste can be stored in the refrigerator or freezer with great success.

Vegetable oil is best for Thai stir-fried dishes, never olive oil. Since Thai food gets most of its flavor from a spicy sauce, an intense curry paste or other strong ingredients, the neutral taste of vegetable oil is preferred to the fruity taste of olive oil. You can use vegetable oil or canola oil or other nut oils as you prefer.

Cilantro and coriander are the same herb. The seeds are usually called coriander seeds (we see these seeds in the curry paste recipes).

Italian parsley is not a substitute for cilantro. Ever. They resemble each other but they don t taste the same.

The flavor in the cilantro plant is concentrated in the roots and stems, not the leaves. If you can buy cilantro with the roots intact, do so. Once you rinse off any dirt and trim off the root tendrils, you are in flavor city (cilantro stems and roots are the basis for the highly treasured and revered Three Buddies cilantro pesto paste recipe in this cookbook). The leaves are used for color and as a garnish in Thai dishes, rather than the basis of cilantro flavor for the dish.

Thai cooking primarily relies on two chiles: the small but potent Thai bird s eye chile and the larger, longer, less spicy Thai sky-pointing chile fruit (all chiles and all things with seeds are technically fruits, as you know, Chef!). If these are not available in your market, we have included specific chile substitutes and their appropriate quantities in the recipes.

When adding strong flavors such as chiles or soy sauce, it is easier to add than subtract. So add a little of the flavoring at a time and taste to see if you need more.

If you have accidentally made a dish too spicy, you can reduce the spice by adding sugar or honey.

Thai eaters eat rice with each spoonful of food, so the food is often highly spiced to serve as a counterpoint to the bland rice. You may adjust any dish to your own level of spice tolerance as eaters in Thailand also do.

The serving sizes in this cookbook suggest how much food the recipe makes in terms of eating a multi-dish Thai meal. Thai eaters like to enjoy several small portions of various foods, plus rice. If you are going to make a recipe as a standalone dish, you will have to recalculate the number of servings from each recipe.

The hardy coconut palm tree can be found all over Thailand s central and southern provinces. The white meat inside is used to make coconut cream for cooking. If you do not have access to fresh coconut, we recommend coconut cream from a can as the thicker cream has a more luxurious taste relative to coconut milk. Beware of using coconut cream intended for making sweet cocktails like Pina Coladas the added sugar in these types of coconut cream is unnecessary. So look for brands of coconut cream that have no added sugar. Reliable Thai brands include Chao Koh, Mae Ploy and Aroy-D.

Tofu for these recipes should be the firm type, not soft. The type of tofu we want is alternatively labelled firm or extra firm or hard tofu on the package. We use the firmest tofu so we can add it to soups or stir-fry it without it falling apart. We do not use the soft type tofu as it disintegrates when subjected to stir-frying. Typically, the tofu we use is sold in 14-ounce containers. Each 14-ounce container has roughly 4 cups of tofu.

When the recipe directs you to stir-fry, this means moving your spatula under the food and flipping it in the pan so the ingredients come in contact with the hot pan, and with each other. Since the amount of heat in your cooking pan will vary according to the heat your stove generates and the thickness of the pan you use, please pay careful attention when stir-frying so the food is moved frequently and does not burn.