[Jesse1211]

Hi there. I have two suggestions if you want to learn more about Thai cooking. The first is a wonderful book called Thai Food by David Thompson, an Australian who fell in love with Thai cooking when he visited the country. This book is great not only for the very authentic, although labor-intensive, recipes, but for the beautiful photography and the mini-history at the beginning of the book on the Thai kingdom, its various regions, and how the history and geography of the country shaped the cuisine. This book contains pretty much every Thai recipe you've ever heard of and then some. The only things working against it are these: first, the recipes are a little more difficult for the North American home cook because they require lots of obscure ingredients and often work-intensive techniques. This makes the food itself a bit inaccessible, and means that cooking a meal out of this book is more of a fun weekend-long project and less of an everyday practice--which is a shame, because Thai cooking can (and I think should) be enjoyed often and with little fuss.

Luckily, Nancie McDermott--who learned to cook Thai food when she served there in the Peace Corps--wrote Quick and Easy Thai in order to accomplish exactly that. She skillfully adapts Thai food to Western home kitchens without sacrificing authenticity, and the recipes are delicious and wonderfully simple to make. She emphasizes the street food and the food most Thai people cook at home, where Thompson's book emphasizes palace- and restaurant-style cuisine.

These books complement each other perfectly and (I believe) constitute the only cookbooks you'll need to learn all about Thai cooking and food, so I would suggest getting your hands on both of them. Thompson's is quite a chunk of change (~$50), but it's fairly easy to find used, while McDermott's is less than $20 and worth every cent.

Hope this helped and good luck!