Book review: Kin Thai by John Chantarasak

Ahead of the opening of his AngloThai restaurant later this year in London, cult chef John Chantarasak has published his first cookbook

Kin Thai (eat Thai) contains 60 recipes fusing Thai cuisine with British ingredients, reflecting Chantarasak’s heritage as a Liverpudlian born to an English mother and Thai father.

In Chantarasak’s hands, the classic salad of som tam becomes ‘som tam farang’ (farang is Thai slang for ‘white foreigner’) with the usual unripe green papaya replaced by shredded carrot, celeriac and parsnip, which are pounded in a pestle and mortar with chillies, garlic, palm sugar, tamarind, fish sauce and lime juice to make a dish with the quintessential Thai taste combination of spicy, salty, sweet and sour.

Chantarasak has been generous in sharing knowledge acquired from childhood trips to Bangkok where he ate his grandmother’s food, the 18 months he spent in the city working in David Thompson’s kitchen at Nahm, and as sous chef of London’s highly regarded Thai restaurant Som Saa.

The expansive introduction covers the regional cuisine of Thailand and the British ingredients Chantarasak favours, such as sea arrowgrass, which he says has a flavour reminiscent of coriander, as well as Thai staples including yellow soybean sauce, dried shrimp and white cardamom. He also outlines equipment, such as a traditional clay mortar and wooden pestle, heavy cleaver and spice grinder.

The recipes are divided into chapters covering salads and laab, grilled dishes, relishes, soups and braises, stir fries, curries, snacks and sweets. Some of the dishes, such as Muslim-spiced curry of beef short rib, require numerous ingredients and are labour-intensive, but many, including a classic pad thai or grilled coriander and garlic chicken, are much more straightforward.

The clearly-written methods and informative chapter and recipe introductions mean that even chefs new to Thai cuisine will feel like instant experts after a few days spent studying the book, which, with its mouth-watering food photography and design as colourful as the recipes it contains, would be no hardship at all.

Kin Thai by John Chantarasak (Hardie Grant, £22)