Pok Pok The Drinking Food of Thailand A Cookbook - Signed Edition

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The food in this fantastic cookbook is celebratory, designed to be paired with drinks and friends. The recipes range from basic (fried peanuts), to adventurous (Pork Ribs Grilled Underwater), to the really adventurous (Northern Thai Frog Soup). It's (almost) as good as a trip to Thailand. Recommended By Matt K. , Powells.com

A cookbook featuring the rich and varied drinking food of Thailand (and the drinks it’s consumed with), with 50 recipes and travelogue-like essays, inspired by Whiskey Soda Lounge, Andy Ricker’s Portland, Oregon, restaurant.

A celebration of the thrill and spirit of Thai drinking food, Andy Ricker’s follow-up to Pok Pok brings the same level of authority, with a more laid-back approach. Just as America has salted peanuts, wings, and nachos, Thailand has its own roster of craveable snacks: spicy, salty, and/or sour, they are perfect accompaniments for a few drinks and the company of good friends. Accessible and detailed recipes like phat khii mao (Drunkard’s Stir-fry), kai thawt (Thai-style Fried Chicken), and thua thawt samun phrai (Fried Peanuts with kaffir lime, garlic, and chiles) provide all the tools to create the food and the experience of Whiskey Soda Lounge at home.

“Go on a booze-fueled adventure through the pages of Ricker’s latest book, which brings you anecdotes and recipes inspired by his Portland, Oregon, restaurant, Whiskey Soda Lounge. Warning: The Thai-style fried chicken and kaffir lime-tinged fried peanuts will ruin you from the anybar’s bowl of mixed nuts for life.” Tasting Table

"Ricker’s Pok Pok restaurant in Portland, Oregon, was so popular that he opened the Whiskey Soda Lounge across the street to handle the overflow. In like manner, his 2013 Pok Pok cookbook was so well received that he has followed it with this nine chapter collection of snacks inspired by the Whiskey Soda Lounge menu. The Northern Thai tradition of chowing down while boozing up involves foods that are “insistently spicy salty chewy and/or sour.” Ricker offers 50 such delicacies plus appreciations of rice whiskey and Thai beer. There is a drunken logic to the recipe for “chicken three ways” in that it contains no chicken, just peanuts shallots ginger chiles and lemongrass. However, there are frog legs in the Northern Thai frog soup, and in a recipe for fried chitterlings pigs' ears get simmered in a tangy stew before being fried until crunchy and dipped into black vinegar. As for the mouse ear mushroom salad, “mouse ear” is merely a description of a white fungus sold at Asian markets that here adds texture to a pork and vegetable salad. Bangkok-based photographer Austin Bush brings street cred to the recipes with full-color shots of outdoor vendors' sour soup and a variety of chile dips, not to mention pig’s brains in a banana leaf. " Publishers Weekly 

“This is the follow-up to Ricker’s first Pok Pok cookbook, a terrific book that chronicled the food of his Portland, Oregon-based Thai restaurants. Consider this the late night companion, a cookbook devoted to the bar food and booze-friendly snacks that Ricker fell in love with over decades of trips to northern Thailand. Thus, there are recipes for all the spicy, salty, sour things that accompany the bottles of lao khao, or rice whiskey, beer, and other tipples, as well as asides on the making of many of those drinks. The book, it must be said, is also fun for those who don’t drink, as it includes recipes for some seriously heady stuff: aep samoeng muu (pig’s brains grilled in banana leaf), som tam thawt (fried papaya salad), tom leuat muu (pork soup with blood and offal), and sii khrong muu tai naam (pork ribs cooked underwater), just to name a few. Ricker’s prose, written with Goode, is chatty and engaging, and the photos, by Austin Bush, will pretty quickly get you looking up flights to Chiang Mai.” Los Angeles Times

“Ricker, the Portland-based chef who approaches Thai food with something approaching religious devotion, showcases an eye-opening assortment of recipes that are the perfect excuse to have a bunch of friends over for drinks, from crispy red-skinned peanuts stir-fried with lime leaf, garlic, and chiles to kai thawt (dry-fried Thai-spiced chicken wings).” Epicurious

“An outstanding, authoritative, and integral work — the result of years of drinking and eating and drinking more in a country that Ricker has made his second home. Essential.” Anthony Bourdain

A cookbook featuring 50 recipes for Thai drinking food--an entire subset of Thai cooking that is largely unknown in the United States yet boasts some of most craveable dishes in the Thai canon, inspired by Andy Ricker's decades in Thailand and his beloved restaurant, Whiskey Soda Lounge.

A celebration of the thrill and spirit of Thai drinking food, Andy Ricker's follow-up to Pok Pok brings the same level of authority, with a more laid-back approach. Just as America has salted peanuts, wings, and nachos, Thailand has its own roster of craveable snacks: spicy, salty, and sour, they are perfect accompaniments for a few drinks and the company of good friends. Here, Ricker shares accessible and detailed recipes for his favorites: phat khii mao, a fiery dish known as Drunkard's stir-fry; kai thawt, Thai-style fried chicken; and thua thawt samun phrai, an addictive combination of fried peanuts with makrut lime leaf, garlic, and chiles. Featuring stories and insights from the Thai cooks who taught Ricker along the way, this book is as fun to read as it is to cook from, and will become a modern classic for any lover of Thai cuisine.

Andy Ricker worked in restaurants all over the world before settling in Portland, Oregon, where he opened his first restaurant, Pok Pok. He has since gone on to open Whiskey Soda Lounge, Noi, and Lat Khao in Portland, and Pok Pok and Wings in New York City. He has been featured in Food and Wine, Saveur, and Bon Appétit. He splits his time between New York and Portland, OR.

I'm a bit old — raised by hippies in the '70s, I missed the whole punk scene when it was in its prime. I went straight from the Beatles/Stones/Dylan/Hendrix/folk rock/folk music my family raised me on to reggae (my stepdad took me to see Bob Marley on his second to last tour and that was it). During my travels in my early 20s, I learned about a bunch of new things...

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