If you are not familiar with Phaidon’s “__________: The Cookbook” series, they can be hit-or-miss. This is a series designed to be visually appealing on the coffee table. Some are excellent to cook from, some have errors in the recipes, all are beautiful. I had a hankering for some Thai food, so I decided to give Thailand: The Cookbook a try. The author, Jean-Pierre Gabriel, is not listed on the outside of the book, which I take as a worrying sign. On the other had, every recipe is associated with a distinct region of Thailand, which is cool, so let’s reserve judgement.

Spicy Catfish and Jackfruit Curry, a recipe from the northern region of Thailand, checks a number of boxes for me: I get to work with catfish and jackfruit, both new ingredients for me. This also has a notable amount of galangal in the curry paste, which I have not worked with in a couple years. It’s also a curry that I can make heaps of and eat for a few days.

Cooking Notes: The curry paste did not get as uniform as I would have liked (see image), but I think this was ok. I used fresh catfish instead of dried and reduced the amount of water in the base by 1.5 cups, which was perfect. The added 2 tsp of sugar was totally unnecessary. It comes out more of a stew than a curry texture. Next time, I would experiment with blending the liquid, paste, and a portion of the jackfruit into a thicker curry sauce. There is a lot of jackfruit in the balance, so blending a bit while cutting sugar will help to consume it more evenly with the catfish. Save the greens additions for individual serving garnishes if you are preparing for others. Note: this book generally doesn’t make explicit salt additions, so make sure you are doing them.

Tasting Notes: The flavor is very good: sour-sweet with a bit of heat (a bit too sweet, but would be good cutting the sugar / also consider adding tamarind to taste). If I was making it for myself in the future, I would add a few more chiles. The texture is a bit soup-like. Goes well with rice, but also as a bowl of soup. The galangal did not stand out, which surprised me given its strong medicinal aroma. Rather, I did get a distinct note of fish sauce, which was still in balance. The cilantro and green onions were also added in large enough quantities to give it a fresh herbal note. The jackfruit was lovely; I noticed a lot of variation in the intensity of aroma between the two pre-wrapped chunks I bought. Make sure you do a smell test in the store. The catfish was denser and meatier than I was expecting, maybe a bit more dense than bass. I recall thinking: good chicken substitute, although it’s still not that dense.

The overall dish is nice. I wish the sauce were saucier, but the flavors carry the dish. Still, with only 5 sentences of instructions, I found it difficult to to learn much in terms of technique or to know if my version of the dish approached the original. I’m looking forward to trying another Thai adventure with Pok Pok, a cookbook with fewer regional and obscure dishes while being much more detailed with context and instruction.

Joe’s Rating: 6
Difficulty: 6.5