Southeast Asia's Top Ten Food Books

Feasting on the foods of Southeast Asia has become one of the great attractions of visiting the region. The delights of tom yam in Thailand, mohinga in Mandalay, and lahp in Luang Prabang, are rivalled by lumpia on Luzon, satay in Singapore, and even cha gio in the Cholon area of Ho Chi Minh City.

Yet, strange to relate, these foods were not considered delightful even a few decades ago, at least by the majority of visitors from further afield. Early guidebooks to the region say next to nothing about food. Major Eric Seidenfaden's guide to Bangkok, written in the 1920s, makes no mention of local food whatsoever and contains only the barest comment on food served anywhere, the Phya Thai Hotel being said to have "unrivalled" - doubtless Western - cuisine. As for the Oriental Hotel, although "a firm favourite with visitors", Seidenfaden writes not one word about its food.

Elsewhere, such as in French Indochina, it was no different. Wondrous Angkor, published in Shanghai in 1937, tells us that both the Grand Hotel d'Angkor and the Bungalow des Ruines offered room and board but gives no clue as to the style and quality of meals served. By contrast, reliefs at Angkor's Bayon, showing barbecued fish and other viands being prepared almost a millennium ago provide a more interesting and compelling indication that Cambodian food might indeed be tasty!

Nevertheless in earlier times much was written about the fish, fruit and beverages, of the region. Marco Polo is quoted as saying the fish in Southeast Asia were the best in the world, a sentiment echoed by many after him. As for fruit, almost all the European visitors to this part of the world in the 1600s and 1700s described the fruits they discovered and tasted for the first time.

Magellan's diarist, Antonio Pigafetta, extolled the coconut and its juice in 1521 as "clear and sweet and very refreshing". This praise extended even to the redoubtable durian, so often disparaged by later visitors. The early travellers who encountered the fruit described it favourably - one Portuguese wayfarer named Mendoza in 1588 not only heard it said that the durian "doth exceed in savour all others [fruits]" but went so far as to suggest that it was by tasting this fruit that "Adam did transgress"! As for local alcoholic brews, many visitors sampled them not just because Europeans liked to imbibe, but because the water in Southeast Asian cities was not always of the cleanest. Thus, even the saintly Francis Xavier mentions arrack.

This tradition carried forward at least to the 1920s when the semi-anonymous "H.L.S" penned Popular Drinks of the Far East as They are Mixed. From this one can learn how to mix a "Gin Sling" (Singapore), a "Yellow Peril", or a "Stay Down" (a pony each of Crême de Cassis and Hennessy Brandy, mixed with soda and ice) to settle the stomach.

As for how the food was prepared, there is little if any praise, Pigafetta dismissing what he tasted as "half-cooked and very salty". A century and a half later, the French traveller, La Loub�re, seems to have been challenged by the dishes of the Siamese which he described as "not sumptuous". He wrote that they "do very much esteem a liquid sauce, like mustard, which is only crayfish corrupted" and added later that of "more than thirty dishes of wherewith we were served in Siam, after the fashion of the Chinese, it was not possible for me to eat of one".

Of course in the Netherlands East Indies, local food served in the form of rijsttafels ("rice tables") with many different dishes served together, have long been popular. At the end of the colonial period, major hotels like the Hotel des Indes in Batavia (Jakarta) and the Savoy Homann in Bandung served popular spreads. However, although popular with colonial officials and planters, the food was barely mentioned in guidebooks and not exported to the Netherlands until after, finally, the Dutch were kicked out. Although one of the 36 Old Streets of Hanoi is named Hang Cháo (Rice Gruel), no guidebooks directed anyone there or to other Vietnamese food destinations until relatively recently. Even when the Manila Hotel's Bamboo Room opened in the 1950s with an all-Filipino menu, it failed to become a tourist attraction.

Part of the reason for this was that the best indigenous cooking occurred either at home or in the palace. The Guide pratique de Vientiane noted in 1974 that of all the cuisines available in the city, Lao was the worst represented. Here, as elsewhere, local residents when going out for a meal, headed for the Western or Chinese restaurants which emerged in Southeast Asia from the early-20th century onwards. This prevented them from tasting the more refined fare served in the great houses or palaces of the time and limited their experience of strictly local fare to the coarser market foods.

Except, perhaps, for the Netherlands, it was not until later in the 20th century that food from Southeast Asia grew popular in Europe and North America. Thus in the early-1970s, when one of the earliest Thai restaurants in Southern California, the Theparot, opened, news of the extraordinary event spread rapidly through the then small expatriate Thai community. Only a few cookbooks of Southeast Asian food were written in Western languages prior to 1970, one being Sibpan Sonakul's Everday Siamese Dishes completed in 1952.

Since those early days interest in Southeast Asian food has grown - and continues to grow - exponentially. Dozens and dozens of cookbooks on all the region's major cuisines have been published. Yet the main criterion for selecting the books listed below is content concerning the background of the food and the culinary culture of each country. These ten books should enable the reader better to understand the food in its appropriate context as well as the entire process of culinary presentation. This will permit the astute Western reader to learn, for example, that most Southeast Asians eat rice dishes not with chopsticks, but with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left. And in Thailand, while chopsticks are used in eating Chinese noodles, the spoon is held in the right hand while the left hand holds the chopsticks.

THE TOP TEN

Alan Davidson, Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos. Rutland: Tuttle, 1975

Before writing the Oxford Companion to Food, Ambassador Alan Davidson was posted in Laos. Covering all aspects of the fishes of Laos, from breeding areas through preparation to the dining table, Davidson gives recipes, illustrations, and translations of various species of fish in many local languages. He also discusses "oddities and mysteries" (such as Siamese Fighting Fish and River Dragons), cooking ingredients, and the Giant Catfish (Pa Beuk) and all else you might ever want to know about freshwater fishes of the region.

Alan Davidson, Seafood of South-East Asia. Singapore: Federal, 1976.

Doing for sea creatures what he did for the freshwater, Davidson starts with herring-like fish, big and small, and proceeds to edible seaweed, bird's nest soup, and fish sauces. Writing from The World's End in West London, Davidson's appendices provide recipes from half a dozen countries, with such titbits as "a little lexicon of Filipino fish cures", Malaysian fish balls, and a trio of Sulawesi recipes for skipjack. Encyclopaedic, erudite, and extensive.

Alan & Jennifer Davidson, eds. Traditional Recipes of Laos. London: Prospect, 1981.

Drawing on his interest in the Classics (he holds a double first in Classical Greats at The Queen's College, Oxford), Davidson here provides a translation of the manuscript recipe books of the late Phia Sing of the Royal Palace at Luang Prabang. In his typical exhaustive style, he explains Lao culinary terms, equipment, and ingredients, thus presenting the entire range of royal Lao cookery. Although the first edition provides the Lao text, later editions have only the English translation.

Doreen G. Fernandez and Edilberto N. Alegre, eds. "Sarap" Essays on Philippine Food. Manila: Mr. & Mrs, 1988.

Although some old hands claim that Filipino cooking is insipid, Alegre seems to disagree as he negotiates us through an agreeable exploration of the country's varied fare. There's no better place to understand the roots and variety of Filipino cuisine than in Sarap (which means "savour" in Tagalog). The book also provides discussions of the Philippine market, the Chinese connection, the Spanish legacy, street foods, goto (rice porridge), poor man's fare and the Filipino Christmas table. If you do not like Filipino food after reading this, "sorry ka na lang".

MacLeod, M.A. The Home Cookery Book for Burma. Rangoon: American Baptist Mission, 1903.

Surely the earliest cookbook in a Western language on Southeast Asia, this little work was written to overcome "the ignorance so often displayed by many housewives on matters culinary". To do this the author includes old recipes for jams and jellies using local fruit such as mangoes and a selection of cakes "learned from several Burmese ladies", as well as an entire range of foods from Cobs a la Burma, to coffee syrup ("for camp use"), to a recipe for snakehead (nga yan) in plantain leaves.

Mi Mi Khaing. Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1978.

Cooking and presenting food is placed within the country's way of life by an author well aware of the refinements inherent in Burmese culture. Besides the recipes, she discusses the flavours of the local cuisine, the composition of a meal, and sample menus. As for the table atmosphere, the ideal is "convivial closeness", beauty derived from dishes fully filled, and "loud music to discount serious talk" - for Mi Mi Khaing the diners must concentrate on the food rather than chatting.

Nguyên Xuân Hiên. Glutinous-Rice Eating Tradition in Vietnam and Elsewhere. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001.

Glutinous rice is the original staple of people in a zone running from Assam to the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam border. Glutinous rice is nutritious, rich in ritual lore, and often mentioned in local literatures. In reviewing its genetics, archaeological studies and gastronomy, Hiên points out profound links throughout Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia. Links from individual dishes such as boiled rice (lemper in Indonesia and bánh tét in Vietnam) to liquors, such as the similar way they are consumed in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the Philippine island of Palawan.

François Robinne. Savoirs et saveurs: L'identité culinaire des Birmans. Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1994.

In Myanmar, according to Robinne, there are six principal tastes (saveurs): bitter, sour, salty, astringent, sweet, and hot which can be affected by warmth or coldness when consumed. By analysing how the people use terms regarding their food, Robinne comes to an understanding of their culinary identity. Ample information is provided on all aspects of food production and consumption, from the growing of the rice, to the preparation of the meal, to betel chewing afterwards, for which he provides mixing instructions.

Rafael Steinberg and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Pacific and Southeast Asian Cooking: New York, 1970.

Well-illustrated and part of the popular Foods of the World series. A visually appealing and erudite introduction to the foods of Southeast Asia is presented herein. No better introduction to the foods of this region exists despite its relative antiquity. The most lusciously illustrated of all the books on the list, the reader gains a visual appreciation of the foods, settings in which meals are taken, and the dishes themselves. Comprehensive coverage from Thailand to the Philippines, including even a section on the remote Spice Islands

Kaarin Wall, A Jakarta Market. Jakarta: American Women's Association, 1983.

Although aimed at shoppers in Indonesia's capital city, this book can be used throughout the region. The many vegetables, roots and herbs, spices, noodles, and beans are attractively and accurately sketched as well as identified in Indonesian, English, and, when possible, by the scientific Latin term. Thus the reader will be able to show a picture of the root known as "Laos" and be sure to get greater galangal - called kha in the Vientiane market - or indeed whatever else may be required.

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