Nyum Bai! A Cambodia Cookbook

#210
Title: Nyum Bai! A Cambodia Cookbook
Editor: Yvette Elliott
Publisher: Lane Cove, N.S.W. (available here)
Year: 2007
96 pages

This cookbook, sales of which support the Green Gecko Project for children in Siem Reap, Cambodia, is probably fine for experienced cooks. However, it demonstrates a problem with publications that aren't edited by a professional. Most importantly for a cookbook, there are some recipes that don't list all of their ingredients or include instructions that are difficult to understand. On a textual level, the provenance of the recipes is unclear; are they recipes from the restaurants that sponsored them, or from editor? The photos are colorful but the focus is often on an odd point (for example, the edge of a cilantro leaf in the foreground), leaving the rest of the image slightly to very blurry. In addition, the dishes as photographed are not all prepared according to the description given in the recipe (for example, the Kari Sach Moan (Red Curry Chicken) is pictured skewered on lemongrass stalks but the ingredient list calls for finely chopped lemongrass and the instructions do not include skewering). At the level of copy editing, the book appears to suffer from multiple authors whose work has not been standardized, a persistent its/it's problem, and some disorganization. Finally, the recipes themselves have a lot of sugar even by Cambodian standards.

There is an incredible dearth of Cambodian cookbooks in English, so despite these problems, I'd still recommend picking up a copy while they're available. The sale also supports services for children, a good thing. If you plan to buy only one Cambodian cookbook, try Ghillie Bassan's The Food & Cooking of Cambodia or The Food and Cooking of Vietnam and Cambodia instead.

Edited to add: One of my colleagues recommends the cookbook From Spiders to Water Lilies, available from Monument Books.