Chinese Cuisine

by Su-Huei Huang

Book Overview

This book contains a selection of 179 recipes that represent a wide variety of Chinese food. The recipes are practical & not difficult to prepare. This 7 1/4" X 10 1/4", 208 page book includes... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941676080
• ISBN13: 9780941676083
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Wei-Chuan Publishing
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.5" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Great first Chinese cookbook

This was my first Chinese cookbook, and I've been using it almost two years now. The food is fantastic and the first few pages gives a description/introduction of cooking methods and indgredients which I thought was nice. There are so many types of Chinese food (since China is so huge), but the author managed to squeeze in a little bit of everything. I will be definately buy more Wei Chuan books in the future. One thing to note, however, is that most of these dishes are banquet family style dishes. If you are looking to make single serving dishes like "Niu Rou Mian" (Beef Soup Noodles), then buy another book. Some other classic Chinese foods that I was hoping I would get, such as fried rice and dumplings are missing from this book, although I'm sure they're present in other Wei Chuan books. Another thing I thought was interesting: This book is in both Chinese and English. If you read Chinese, you'll notice the Chinese versions of many recipes tell you to use msg, and to reuse oil, whereas in the English version, msg is omitted and oil is often thrown out and replaced. I guess the author or publisher took local preferences into consideration...

Great cookbook for Chinese Americans

What's unique about this Chinese cookbook (as well as others in this series) is that it caters to the Chinese palate(rather than adapted for the Western palate). One finds favorite authentic homestyle recipes that one would not find in restaurants or other Chinese cookbooks that cater to an American audience. In fact, the book is written in Chinese with English translations. The fact that this series includes English translations makes it possible for first generation (and beyond) Chinese Americans (who can't read Chinese) to make dishes that they remember from mom's traditional home cooking. Recipes are easy and there is a picture for every dish.

Authentic without all that "mysticism"

I bought this book when I was living in Hong Kong, and given the availability of truly excellent Chinese food, cooking the same dishes at home was always a disappointment. This book makes it very easy and keeps the recipes simple and true.Because I'm Chinese and not fascinated by the history or mysticism or "magic" of Chinese cooking, I cannot tolerate cookbooks that are filled with little details about how some great aunt escaped imprisonment, immigrated across the seas and brought this very recipe to the outside world! Each recipe is accompanied by a full color photo -- not the most sophisticated presentation, and certainly not as slickly produced as other cookbooks -- which is incredibly useful. This shows how large or small to chop the ingredients, how thick a sauce is supposed to be, how everything looks when it's done correctly. In addition, there is a explanatory introduction about Chinese cooking tools, techniques and ingredients. This is a very useful section, and above all other cookbooks in my kitchen, this is the most important part of my collection.

Great all-around cookbook

Several years ago I decided I would learn to cook Chinese food. I was engaged to a wonderful Chinese woman (who is now my wife). She loves good Chinese food but doesn't cook very well. I'm American, and I didn't know how to cook any kind of food, Chinese or American. I started with this book, studied it, and went to the local Asian grocery. Pretty soon, I was competently cooking real Chinese food that my wife liked a lot(and I like it too!).The book is bilingual in English and Chinese, and every recipe has a photograph to help you arrange it and see approximately how it should look. The instructions are generally simple and well organized. The recipes tend to be on the simple side, not particularly elaborate. Where some cookbooks will call for a recipe to have 4 steps and 12 ingredients, this one may call for 3 steps and 9 ingredients. Nevertheless some of my most reliable and delicious recipes come from this book. The Ma Po Tofu recipe is quick and excellent for example. I notice that the book is reticent to call for large amounts of spices, especially for Sichuan dishes. So just double or triple the amount of hot bean paste, garlic, etc. if you like.One drawback I've noticed in this book and the publisher's series is the tendency for the binding to fail, allowing pages to become loose. It doesn't matter that much because if you like it as much as I do, you'll have grease and sauce on the pages anyway.

the best Chinese cookbook available in English

This book lets you make authentic Chinese dishes, from banquet showpieces to homestyle dishes.These are the most authentic recipes for Chinese dishes I have found in English. Here, you will not find, as in some other cookbooks I have seen, the chicken being boiled when the traditional recipe calls for steaming, or julienned carrots substituted for the julienned bamboo traditionally used in the dish. This book and the other, more specialized Chinese cookbooks published by Wei-Chuan (the venerated and most famous cooking school in Taiwan), are the only Chinese cookbooks I use. _Chinese Cuisine_ lets me create exactly the Chinese dishes I loved as a child, for it's the very same book that my mother used, albeit in an earlier edition, as a young wife and mother in Taiwan. These recipes are thoroughly tested, both by the Wei-chuan cooking school and by generations of students and readers. As an American-raised Chinese who knew little to begin with about Chinese cooking methods, I have made about half of the recipes in the book and had spectacular results every time. Each recipe is meticulously laid out, step by step, and accompanied by a glorious, mouth-watering photograph of the finished dish. In each recipe, photographs also demonstrate specialized techniques called for by the recipe. I also find very helpful the introductory section of the book that describes and shows clear photographs of the sometimes unusual fresh produce and preserved foods that are used in the recipes, so that someone unfamiliar with them could walk into an Asian food store and buy them by sight, or even by pointing out the picture and Chinese name of the food to a sales clerk, as I have sometimes done. Also valuable is the introductory section setting forth sample menues for family meals as well as multi-course feasts and explaining the traditional principles that the Chinese have always used in selecting the combination of dishes for a meal. This wonderful book, along with the other Wei-Chuan Chinese cookbooks, is the only one I recommend when westerners ask me which Chinese cookbook to get. It's the best!