books:

	The Chinese Kitchen: Recipes, Techniques, Ingredients, History, and Memories from America's Leading Authority ... Eileen Yin-fei Lo William Morrow Cookbooks, 1999 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

There are more than 250 recipes in all, including many classic banquet-style recipes, quite a number presented for the first time in the traditional manner, from Peking Duck to Beggar's Chicken. Dozens of the techniques for preparing these elaborate recipes are shown in full-color photographs in the color insert as well. Eileen also includes many of her own creations, such as infused oils and rich, flavorful stocks, essential for cooks who are serious about mastering the ancient art of Chinese cooking.

Everything is here: dim sum, congees, stir-fries, rice dishes, noodles, bean curd, meat dishes, and more. For anyone who loves Asian cuisines, this is the ultimate cookbook, and for cookbook lovers and aspiring food professionals, this is required reading.

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Fried Milk recipe!!!

I'm very happy to have bought this book. There may be some redundant recipes but I still feel that everone should buy ALL her titles. I trust her knowledge so I am very happy that she has included a Fried Milk recipe.


My best cookbook

I was always intimidated by the prospect of Chinese cooking. But now among my dozens of cookbooks, for many types of cuisine, I value this the most. I learned techniques from the pictures and descriptions I otherwise could not have understood. And I found the ingredients in my local Asian market thanks to Eileen's "Chinese Larder" section. And the recipes are delicious.

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Excellent- and difficult

The recipes I've tried in this volume are indeed all excellent, and taste like what I'd expect in the more authentic Chinese restaurants I eat in. The Hainan Chcken Rice is very close to the recipe that was taught to me by a Chinese friend from Hong Kong. Now few of these recipes are easy; this is not a "dinner from your wok in five minutes" sort of Chinese cookbook. Some take preparations that span over two days, or more. If you can take the time to do a proper job, though, you'll be rewarded for your efforts.

But as others have noted, this book does have its problems. The list of ingredients in the beginning is incomplete; many ingredients don't make an appearance until they show up in the instructions for a specific recipe. While there is a small photo section in the middle of the book, showing some of the more obscure techniques (like inflating a Beijing duck) it is woefully inadequate, and in some instances doesn't really help. The photos on making Bao (buns) show the beginning of pleating the top closed, but if you've never seen this demonstrated the photo is not of much help. Many other reviewers have rightfully noted that when cooking an unfamiliar cuisine it's very useful to have pictures to guide you in making a dish that looks right.

So this is a good, but flawed, book. If you're already familiar with many of the dishes presented here, and with the basic techniques of Chinese cooking, and Chinese ingredients, and you're ready to plunge into some time consuming techniques, you'll find this volume very useful. Those with less experience might look elsewhere for a while.

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Truly authentic recipes, but what kind of people are they for...

This book has authentic recipes. But they may be 'authentic' in a way that I suspect most normal Americans (and many Chinese in China to some extent) will be unable to really embrace. What I mean by this is that these are authentic Cantonese aristocratic recipes; i.e. food for the kind of people that can afford servants, or at least have a stay at home mother or father who has enough time to devote multiple hours to cooking dinner each day. Even when the recipes venture into other areas of Chinese cuisine, it holds that same kind overly epicurean complexity.

I grew up with my grandparents cooking Cantonese food for me, and though preparations can get quite complex in the Chinese kitchen, dinner rarely feels like a burden. This book simply calls for too many ingredients, oftentimes obscure ones, oftentimes in trifling amounts. Currently I live in Beijing and the agricultural market is right down the street, but generally speaking I can hardly motivate myself to go gather all the many ingredients in these epic recipes. I feel in many ways that Ms. Lo neglects an important, but certainly not all encompassing, concept in Chinese cooking, which is straightforwardness and letting good ingredients speak for themselves.

To compare, Ms. Lo's recipe for Mah Paw Daufu (not a Cantonese dish) has 22 ingredients listed. Whereas in the "Land of Plenty" cookbook the Ma Po Doufu calls for 12 ingredients. Both recipes create a wonderful dish, but as the recipe in "Land of Plenty" is much less complex I use it 95% of the time. Having grown up with Chinese food and having lived in China for 3 years I would say that "Land of Plenty" is more 'authentic' in that its the home style cooking that most Chinese people do.

Notice I did give this book 3 stars which means I think it is good, just not great. I have tried a good number of the recipes and all of them resulted in very nice dishes. Ms. Lo understands Chinese cooking, Chinese food, and Chinese culture, so the essays about food in this book are extremely informative. I also appreciate that she tries to cover the many regions of Chinese cuisine. Yet in the end, if you are like me, work full time, don't have enough money for an in-house chef, or don't have a stay at home spouse, I would recommend looking for other Chinese cookbooks.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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