Cooking with Poo
by Saiyuud Duereh
Let’s address the situation immediately: “Poo” is the author’s nickname. It is a common Thai nickname. The food is Thai street food. The book is a legitimate, well-reviewed cookbook that won the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, which is a real award given out by the Bookseller magazine since 1978.
Chef Saiyuud Duereh runs cooking classes in Bangkok and this book collects her most beloved recipes — pad thai, green curry, mango sticky rice. It is, by all accounts, genuinely good.
The publisher knew exactly what they were doing with that title. The cover design was not an accident. And yet here we are: a legitimately excellent cookbook that you cannot give to anyone without a thirty-second explanation.
The best part? The people who buy it expecting a joke end up with a cookbook they actually use. The people who buy it as a gift end up explaining Thai naming conventions at the dinner table. Everyone wins.