Thai Food — David Thompson

Thompson spent decades studying Thai cuisine in Thailand, in Thai, from Thai cooks. This is not a simplified Western adaptation — it's the definitive English-language reference on Thai cooking, covering curry pastes pounded by hand, the balance of hot-sour-sweet-salty in every dish, and techniques like charring chili for nam prik that most Western cookbooks skip entirely. It won the James Beard Award for Best International Cookbook. At 673 pages, it treats Thai cuisine with the scholarly depth French cooking has always received.