If you live with someone who grew up eating a specific cuisine, chances are that you either avoid cooking that food or beg and plead to learn the special techniques and recipes from that person’s family. In my case I first avoided then pestered and finally amassed a slew of books on Southeast Asian cooking. While no Asian cookbook can replicate the kind of skilled, hands-on instruction that my husband’s Vietnamese step-father provides, Jeffrey Alford’s and Naomi Duguid’s Hot Sour Salty Sweet comes close. With over 175 recipes from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and southern China their book details the cuisines of the Mekong River region.

Broken into 12 chapters, Hot Sour Salty Sweet looks at what everyday people living along the river eat. It covers everything from spicy hot sauces and warming soups to vibrant street foods and refreshing drinks and sweets. Rice and rice dishes as well as noodles and noodle dishes have their own chapters. Likewise, salads, vegetables, meats and seafood receive their due.

For each recipe Alford and Duguid give a history of the food and/or its main ingredients. In ‘Fish and Seafood’ I learn that Vietnamese squid boats go out at dusk to catch the star of muoc tuoi, squid with ginger-garlic sauce. In ‘Poultry’ I find out about the prominence of lemongrass in Khmer-Cambodian cooking while ‘Beef’ discusses the popularity of sun-dried beef or neau kaem in Laos and Thailand. From each page I glean new insight into the Mekong and its style of eating.

Truthfully, if I didn’t enjoy cooking, I could read Hot Sour Salty Sweet as a travel narrative and culinary history. The authors first started traveling through Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Through their journeys they witnessed the changes in and enduring traditions of this region. As a result of their long history, they offer riveting insights and anecdotes about life along the Mekong River. They also include breathtaking color photographs of food and daily life in Southeast Asia.

Since I do love to cook, I can vouch for the recipes in this book. In ‘Noodles and Noodle Dishes’ I’m taught, through step-by-step instructions, how to make fresh noodles and noodle sheets. I then receive recipes in which to use my homemade ingredient. Similarly, if I want to know how to make my own rice crackers, rice balls or tamarind or peanut sauce, I’ll discover how to do so in this cookbook. You name the Southeast Asian dish. By the end of Hot Sour Salty Sweet you and I will be able to recreate it in our own kitchens.

Needless to say, Alford and Dugoid’s Hot Sour Salty Sweet is an essential cookbook in my collection. Perhaps it will become one in yours, too.