In Curry & Kimchi: Flavor Secrets for Creating 70 Asian-Inspired Recipes at Home, Unmi Abkin and Roger Taylor share recipes from their popular restaurant, Coco & the Cellar Bar, Easthampton, Mass., as well as from their home kitchen.
Many of the recipes are inspired by Abkin's Korean and Mexican-American heritage. However, the element that holds the cookbook together is not the flavors used but rather the authors' belief that great meals begin with great sauces. Instead of relegating sauce recipes to a section at the end, they are placed alongside the main dishes. Each sauce--a homemade ponzu, a salsa verde, a rich Mornay--is paired with a specific entree and accompanied by other suggested uses.
In addition to recipes, Curry & Kimchi includes four-step photo progressions showing how to plate dishes, and a useful guide to less familiar ingredients. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins