The Cookbook Club reviews Hot Sour Salty Sweet

Buying a new cookbook can be a tricky task. After all, a store is much less inclined to take a book back after you've spilled olive oil all over it. So how on earth are you supposed to know if what you've got in your hands is a gem or a dud?

That's where host Michael Bhardwaj and the In Town and Out Cookbook Club come in. Each month, they bring a new cookery tome into the CBC test kitchen and let you know whether or not it's worth slaving over the stove for.

This month, Bhardwaj was joined by Simmi Dixit and Norm Villegas to tackle Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Alford and Duguid are fairly well known for writing award-winning cookbooks, like Seductions of Rice, that are born from their passion for travelling to exotic places. Hot Sour Salty Sweet is the result of their travels (with their two children) along the Mekong River through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, documenting the cuisines and culture along the way.

This is the first time many of the recipes have been published in a cookbook for a Western kitchen, and the collection includes some very special highs.

"One of the knockouts that I had was the roasted chicken," Norm Villegas said. "Basically [it] asks you to marinate some chicken in a peppercorn coriander-root flavoured paste. Just by making the paste, just the smells and the aromas from it, it felt like I was making something special. Something different."

Unfortunately, according to the Cookbook Club, those highs are too few and far between. Dixit, Villegas and Bhardwaj all agreed that most of the recipes were fairly middle of the road, and there were even a few total flops. Where Hot Sour Salty Sweet excels is as a reference guide for flavour combinations and techniques. And, as Dixit pointed out, the beautiful photos of the trip make it a wonderful book for the coffee table.

"They delivered a journey, just not a culinary journey," she said. "They seemed to put a lot more emphasis into the images and the stories, while not so much energy was put into making sure that the recipes actually panned out and reflected Southeast Asia."

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid offer a selection of recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen. Visit their website to test them for yourself.