Nok Suntaranon credits much of her success as a chef to her mother, Kalaya, who ran a curry paste stall in Thailand's Trang province.
"I grew up helping my mother around the house, in the store and all of that," said Suntaranon, the chef behind Kalaya in Fishtown. "My family, we all love food and dinner time is always the best time and my mother is such a great cook. So when I moved here, I just wanted to cook for myself and my husband."
Suntaranon is sharing her home recipes in a cookbook, "Kalaya's Southern Thai Kitchen," due out Tuesday. Her restaurant, Kalaya, which draws its name from her mom, has received many accolades, including a James Beard Award and a spot on the New York Times' 2023 list of the best restaurants in the country.
Suntaranon began working on the cookbook in October 2020, not long after she opened Kalaya in Queen Village. The restaurant moved to its current location at 4 W. Palmer St. in 2022. In choosing which recipes to include, Suntaranon said she focused on the meals she like to make at home – much like she did with her restaurant's menu.
The cookbook includes recipes for Gaeng Som Pak Thai, a sour curry with shrimp and pineapple; the curry paste Suntaranon made at her mom's market stall in Thailand; and Tom Yum Goong, which is the same base recipe as her restaurant's Tom Yum soup.
There are sections on the "building blocks" of sauces, pastes and spice blends, breakfasts, salads, soups, stir and wok frys, grilled and steamed dishes, and desserts. Many are quick recipes, Suntaranon said, noting Southern Thai food is typically served family-style with lots of shared dishes.
Provided Image/Michael Persico for Clarkson Potter
'Kalaya's Southern Thai Kitchen' is out Nov. 5.
At Kalaya, Suntaranon said, customers sometimes express concerns about the spiciness of her dishes. Some of the dishes included in the cookbook pack in the heat, though she urged cooks not to adjust the spice levels, saying they create important flavor profiles. But Suntaranon said she included plenty of recipes for milder dishes, ensuring there's something for everyone.
"No matter what page you turn, you will have something for yourself, you will pick something up to cook," Suntaranon said. "If you have soy sauce, you have garlic, you have pepper, you have some oil, you can cook something. It's very, very user friendly, I would say."
Suntaranon suggested home cooks initially make a dish exactly as the recipes calls, because they have been tested to ensure its taste. But then she encouraged cooks to then start experimenting with the recipes by making substitutions. Good ingredients also matter a lot — Suntaranon shops at First Oriental Market at Sixth Street and Washington Avenue, and the cluster of stores at Seventh and Jackson streets.
Suntaranon said she hopes people will be adventurous when selecting recipes, and she's eager to see how readers respond.
"The book is unlike the food that we cook in the restaurant, where we can have direct communication with the customer who come into the restaurant and see if they like our food or not," Suntaranon said. "The book is totally different because we leave it in the hands of the reader, how they interpret the recipes, how they're gonna do it."
