Night + Market: Delicious Thai Food to Facilitate Drinking and Fun-Having Amongst Friends

by Kris Yenbamroong, Garrett Snyder

If you love to eat Thai food, but don’t know how to cook it, Kris Yenbamroong wants to solve your problems. His brash style of spicy, sharp Thai party food is created, in part, by stripping down traditional recipes to wring maximum flavor out of minimum hassle. Whether it’s a scorching hot crispy rice salad, lush coconut curries, or a wok-seared pad Thai, it’s all about demystifying the universe of Thai flavors to make them work in your life.
 
Kris is the chef of Night + Market, and this cookbook is the story of his journey from the Thai-American restaurant classics he grew eating at his family’s restaurant, to the rural cooking of Northern Thailand he fell for traveling the countryside. But it’s also a story about how he came to question what authenticity really means, and how his passion for grilled meats, fried chicken, tacos, sushi, wine and good living morphed into an L.A. Thai restaurant with a style all its own.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Asian Literature, Food and Wine, Nonfiction

535 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 3, 2017

Reviews

[Jodi Geever · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the closest you’ll get to a full immersion experience without a passport.

It’s full of full size photos of the country, and the food. Many of the recipes call for particular hot peppers, but all of the food looks tasty. There’s a photo included with most recipes, and I’m excited to devour authentic Thai fried rice!

[Amar Pai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pad thai recipe is delicious and not that hard! Ditto Grapow Chicken. Some of the recipes in here are more esoteric but I really liked the simple ones so far. This book is fun and lavish like the Momofuku Cookbook, but a little more manageable in terms of ingredients and preparation. I checked this out from the library, but now I want to buy it.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another one of those, I went to the restaurant and loved it, so I thought I'd buy the cookbook and make it at home, situations that ended up teaching me a lot about flavor and technique.

While the ingredients would probably be difficult to find outside of a place with a significant Thai population, I can say the hunt is well worth it, if only to experience the alchemy that happens when making the sauces in this book. Every time I was like, wow, what a magical transformation of ingredients to make something sweet, salty, sour, spicy, and umami!

I also learned a lot about cooking things in a wok, which is difficult and intimidating because you need to get it ripping hot and thus don't have a lot of wiggle room with your ingredients, and about intermediate steps that have large ripple effects down the line (the fried duck roll recipe where Kris Yenbamroong tells you to drain the filling after cooking and add the white pepper last immediately comes to mind).

Notable favorites: pad see ew, pad thai, papaya salad, banana blossom salad (I sub endive), khao soi, and a lot of the pantry and basics recipes

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

two summers ago, i was in london for a week and one of my friends hosted a southeast asian bbq in his backyard. he made the best chicken/pork skewers along with a variety of salads, noodles, and dips. it was such an amazing variety of items that went well together, and naturally i was curious about which cookbook he followed. he pointed me to night + market and said it was one of his favorite cookbooks ever. i finally bought it since i want to host my own thai potluck dinner soon, and this was way more than just a cookbook. i didn't know about this restaurant the last two times i went to LA, but i will surely be making a stop the next time i'm in the city. the chef's stories are extremely enjoyable and sentimental, the food looks amazing, and I love the shoutouts he gives to his family and the explanations he gives on the various Thai regions and how they affect the dishes.

[Aasinathena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book indeed is to facilitate drinking and fun with food ! Asian stir fries have always found and ruled the drinking tables of many people ans specially coming from Asia I can vouch for that ! Some ingredients are a little hard to find but most are available online.

Cultural aspects of Thailand have been beautifully written. I would go for this book for the bite size servings and noted the Pad Thai recipe to try out in the future.

But this won't come close to my affection for Leela's Bangkok book.

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the recipes are solid (they'll work, and they're largely written for Western-style kitchens), I don't know how practical or appealing they'll be for most home cooks. Some of the ingredients/flavors are a little odd (even for Thai food) and I find trying to recreate "food stall food" at home usually doesn't work out so well.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for authentic Thai cuisine. It's not overly complicated but does tend to require some hard to find ingredients. I also found that the estimated time for the recipe is usually not very accurate (I guess if you cook Thai food all the time maybe but for a general home cook not so much). The pad thai is amazing, we have made it many times and would HIGHLY reccomend it!

[Brigham Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly takes some shortcuts with "authenticity" to create approachable, practical recipes with delicious results. Very interesting read, everything I've cooked from here has been a success so far.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I likely won't make a damn thing in this book (other than maybe the Microwave Sticky Rice :) but the chef's stories are enjoyable, the food looks amazing and I love the photos of his staff and family and Thailand.

[Ambur Taft · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me, they lost me at blood soup....I got a few hot tips on some of the Thai favorites we already cook but overall it seemed like stuff you’d be better off finding on the streets of Thailand, or very authentic Thai restaurants in big cities.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love cookbooks that are about loving food - going back to roots and finding new ways. The recipies in this book range from complex to simple, from things you would have easily in your kitchen to some more far flung ingredients- and all made with the idea of facilitating connection.

[Isaac Lambert · Rating 4 out of 5]

yummm 🇹🇭🇺🇸🌶️🌶️

big fan of night + market, when I worked near here I went a bunch of times. that spice.

the recipes mostly seem feasible. I made the pad thai--- soo much oil, and being a home chef, don't have super high wok temps 😵‍💫

but it was good, hard to mess up pad Thai

[Colleen Asmussen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative

Great book for different and authentic techniques. He makes it easy to cook these incredible dishes. Not your basic boring recipes

[Andee Marley · Rating 3 out of 5]

1) LA is so cool, I miss it when I see hipster/curated/Silver Lake photos in books
2) Grandmas + Grandpas are SO IMPORTANT

the food looks amaze, beyond my powers, but cool to look at :/

[Margery Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

useful

[Donut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the philosophy behind this book, intrigued by the recipes and inspired by the essays which explain the issues surrounding authenticity and creativity.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot seems daunting, and that has to do with my access to needed ingredients. It's a beautiful book and I'm going to try to cook what I can from it.

[Lizfig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite cookbook and now I make larb gai better than most Thai restaurants!

[Charles Eldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the past two years, this has been my most-used cookbook. It is accessible in its recipes and presentations. It’s fun to read and look at. And everyone who’s enjoyed a recipe from it at my home has been wowed. I once did five straight weeknight meals that all took less than 30 mins to complete and stunned by family with the taste. I cannot say enough good things about it. The chef gives great guidance and alternatives if an ingredient isn’t widely available. It is the antithesis of the non-accessible “Pok Pok” cookbook with that book’s stringent, hard-to-source ingredients. “Night + Market” is a fun crowd pleaser.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kris’s Night + Market is doing for Thai food what I did with pizza and other classics at Spago three and a half decades ago: reimagining them for adventurous modern tastes and creating the kind of food that’s meant to be enjoyed with wine and other drinks and shared happily with your friends. I’m excited to see how easy, accessible, and delicious Kris’s recipes are, and how entertainingly, smartly, and honestly he writes about them, and I can’t wait to cook his food in my own kitchen for my family and friends.
Wolfgang Puck

---

Cult Flav

Sarah
@sarahberus
5.4
Long story short: I think this book was under-edited. Some of the ingredients were listed at the bottoms of the pages in light blue or purple which — don't get me wrong, looks cool — but makes it pretty easy to forget those items when creating a grocery list.

That being said, when the dishes finally came together they were packed with flavor and absolutely delicious. Not exactly what you would get at the restaurant, but pretty damn close and Kris usually offers a unique wine pairing suggestion to go with your meal.

flavor 9
value 8
writing 4
accessibility 2

[Kate]

I am about to eat the meatball curry which seems to taste fine, though I took a few shortcuts (didn't make the spice mixture). In terms of the collection of recipes, I found the Pok Pok cookbook more exciting, but this is fun too. Pretty good headnotes and some stuff that is different. If I had more time and cooked more these days I'd try the "startled pork," too, because it has a funny name.

[Kathy]

I’ll give this collection of essays, photos, and recipes after I try a dish or two, starting with its first entry, Pad Thai.

[Mills College Library]

641.59593 Y458 2017