PING COOMBES – MALAYSIA

So……. Truth be told, if it was up to me, I would probably not have bought this book! Thai food is something that I have never had a big love for in the past. I am not sure why as recently I have been a convert, but I always dismissed it in favour of the Chinese, Japanese, or Indian cuisines. Maybe it was a bad experience or the lack of exposure this sort of food  – I never really got excited about it.

Roll on 2014…. And my I introduced my then partner, now wife , to the joys of MasterChef – I liked the show back then, not so much now but that’s another story – and it was Ping, Jack Lucas and Luke Holden in the final and we really connected with that series – we even ended up visiting the MasterChef pop up that ran London after that series. My partner just “loved” both Ping as a person and especially her cooking.

Roll forward 2 years and Ping’s cookbook comes out… well with my low will power when it comes to a new book I purchased it with a view to trying to extend my “range”

The things I like……

Well…. I was very pleasantly surprised with this book to be fair, and now regularly pick out recipes to try and a couple have become firm favourites in our house.

The book itself is well laid out, with a good ratio of pictures to recipes, and good “honest” photographs at that – ones that look good but make you feel like you can achieve them…

I also like the personal introduction to each recipe. Far too many chefs make this a token gesture but as I have said before on this blog I like to “read” a cookbook and as such a connection to a recipe by the chef that is genuine is a great feature.

As a person new to this cuisine, I particularly liked the introduction to the ingredients and techniques – this in sometimes far too longer list, or too hard to get hold off. Whilst there a few specialised ingredients in the book, as must be expected, it does not affect many of the recipes and the majority can be found easily in supermarkets or online

I personally like the section on Pastes, Sambals and Condiments and use this regularly due to their versatility and speed in making dishes and have one ready to make a quick stir fry or curry style dish by adding some coconut milk.

The things I don’t…..

There are only really two things that I do not like in this book…

One is the “English Section” – I can see what was the intention one here but to me it is not really a fit for it. I do like the way it is a dedication to Ping’s mother and can see why she would want to include in such a book, but the recipes just do not work for me

Secondly, I was disappointed with the Fish Section and would have liked to see more fish/seafood recipes than there are. The section starts with saying “there is an abundance of fresh, affordable seafood available in Malaysia” yet there are only 10 recipes. It may be my misunderstanding but I  was hoping there would be far more seafood dishes.

A couple of my favourite recipes…..

Here are a couple of my favourites from this book and my take on them! Took me a while to get this down to two to be honest as some great dishes in this book when I re-read it…. I have gone for two of the small plates which I quite regularly cook

Follow the links to get to the recipes themselves

Page 52 Spicy Minced Chicken & LemonGrass Parcels(Sang Choi Pau)

Page 49 Chicken Satay (Satay Ayam)

You can see details of the book, background to Ping and some of her recipes on her website… https://www.pingcoombes.com/

And if you want to buy the book it can be found on Amazon in the UK….

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Malaysia-Recipes-Kitchen-Ping-Coombes/dp/1474601499