The World of Street Food: Easy Quick Meals to Cook at Home [Paperback]

The problem with this book is that the cooking directions mostly aren't very good. Seems like the recipes were compiled by people who don't cook much. An example is the Malaysian Chicken Rice, which advised making a glaze of honey, coating a chicken with it, and then roasting the chicken at 400 for an hour. Anyone who cooks regularly knows that a)the honey will burn to carbon and b)a chicken cooked at 400 for an hour will be dry as toast. Other recipes have you frying bits of dough in hot oil "until done." What does "done" mean here? The point of the cookbook is to introduce foods that the reader probably hasn't eaten or in some cases even heard of before. So how are we to know what "done" means?

Otherwise the selection of recipes is excellent, the pictures are nice, and the stories are interesting and well-written. Too bad the actual recipes are sub-par.

If you are looking for a book with a sampling of recipes for various ethnic dishes, then this may be the book for you. Each page features a different recipe and a picture of that dish in a display bowl/plate (like a posed "still life"); the colors & quality of these photos is nice. However, There AREN'T pictures of how the food actually looks at the street vendor stalls, or pictures of the streets/markets that sell these, etc. Also, there wasn't much explanation about the origin or cultural importance of each food that was chosen; basically each dish starts with a sentence about how it is popular in Thailand, etc, and then you get the recipe. So if you are looking for a cookbook, this looks like it would do well; but if you're looking for more cultural tidbits consider other books.

I was really excited to initally get this cookbook because I thought it would be interesting to try foods from different areas of the world. It does have recipes from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

However, I have never travelled to these places so I have no idea what these foods are and can't pronounce half of their names. Many of the ingredients I'm not sure you could purchase here. There's ethiopian spice paste, cassava root, red palm oil, ful beans, desiccated coconut, mangetout, asafetida, garam masala, tamarind, laksa noodles, candlenuts, etc etc. You'd have to live near Whole Foods or a major city I would think to find this stuff. I live in the Mid-West and have never seen these items.

One of the recipes calls for 2 cups of chopped vegetables to cook and retain stock, but doesn't tell you what type of vegetables nor how finely to dice them. Well it doesn't say how to cut them at all. The picture looks like it might be carrots, beets and mushrooms but I can't be sure. It could be sweet potatoes, red onions and chilies. I can't tell. There was an asterisk that mentions using cabbage, carrot, potato, aubergine, squash or turnips. Is that all of them and in equal amounts? And if it doesn't matter than say so. Then it gives no indication what to do with the retained stock.

Another recipe calls for frying bananas and covering with chili powder but then shows a bottle of tabasco. So I wasn't sure if they were using the term chili powder and tabasco to be the same or if it was a mistake. It says to cover the bananas in grated ginger, chili powder and black pepper. If you covered the bananas chunks in tabasco, whoa, that's be some hot bananas! We've had fried plantains in Mexico and it was a side dish, not a dessert. The book didn't mention if this was either.

Many of the dishes I couldn't figure out if they were appetizers, entrees or a snack. Being that many people who purchase this book would have no idea either you think the authors would have provided a little more detail. Also, there were no suggestions of how to combine them to make a truly African meal, or Middle Eastern meal, etc.

I would have to agree with the other reviewer that whoever assembled the ingredients list was not a cook. In most cookbooks the list of ingredients are given in the order they should be used in the recipe. These recipes do not list their ingredients that way. It's a hodge-podge of ingredients then you have to read the instructions to find out that first you make a sauce, or a rub, then you fry something before adding something else to it but the ingredients list does not read in that order. It's just a little confusing.

Overall, I would have to say the cookbook delivers on what it says it does. There are foods from many parts of the world. I'm guessing they are street food/vendors fare. It's just that I'm not sure it's food you would really make at home. I love the funnel cakes at the fair but I have no desire to make them at home.

If you were a world traveller and knew what these ingredients were you'd be in hog heaven. The pictures are beautiful, there is a pic for every recipe. It's 170+ pages long so it's a good sized book. The pages are nice and glossy. There are drink recipes for ginger beer, mojito, daiquiri, la bomba, and others.

Overall, I'd say a 4 star cookbook...only because I guess in street food mentality there is no "main course", it's all the same either way. You just eat what you eat without regard to whether it's an entree or a dessert. Just be prepared knowing it's a list of different, perhaps hard to find, ingredients, there's no rhyme or reason to the way the recipes are grouped, and some of the instructions are rather vague.

Bon Appetit.