Books — Chinese Cooking

Chinese Cooking

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories

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Author: Grace Young

Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation Award for International Cooking

The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. It is the rare culinary practice that makes less seem like more, and by which small amounts of food feed many.

For centuries the Chinese have carried their woks to all corners of the earth and re-created stir-fry dishes, using local and sometimes nontraditional ingredients. The old expression: "One wok runs to the sky’s edge" means "one who uses the wok becomes master of the cooking world." And as the wok user becomes master of the cooking world, so does he become master of the stir-fry, one of the greatest techniques of Chinese cookery.

The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of years. In Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, James Beard Award-winning author Grace Young shares more than 100 classic stir-fry recipes that sizzle with heat and pop with flavor, from the great Cantonese stir-fry masters to the culinary customs of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as other countries around the world. With more than 80 stunning full-color photographs, Young’s definitive work illustrates the innumerable, easy-to-learn possibilities the technique offers—dry stir-fries, moist stir-fries, clear stir-fries, velvet stir-fries—and weaves the insights of Chinese cooking philosophy into the preparation of such beloved dishes as Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli, Chicken Lo Mein with Ginger Mushrooms, and Dry-Fried Sichuan Beans. In honoring the traditions of her cultural ancestors who traveled the globe, Young offers delectable crossover recipes for Chinese Jamaican Jerk Chicken Fried Rice, Chinese Trinidadian Stir-Fried Shrimp with Rum, Chinese Burmese Chili Chicken, and Chinese American Shrimp with Lobster Sauce.

Expert home cooks and professional chefs teach you the foundations of stir-fry mastery in the modern kitchen—everything from how to choose, season, and care for a wok and the best skillet alternative; the importance of marinades and the proper technique for slicing meat and poultry for optimum tenderness; to how to select and handle Asian vegetables; ways to shortcut labor-intensive preparations; and tips on how to control heat and choose the best cooking oil.

Fascinating personal portraits illustrate how stir-frying is not just a cooking technique but a vital element of China’s rich culture. With this book, Grace Young has created the authoritative guide to stir-frying, a work that is at once rewarding and beautiful, much like the technique of stir-frying itself.

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Easy Chinese Recipes: Family Favorites From Dim Sum to Kung Pao

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Author: Bee Yinn Low

Growing up in a Chinese household in Malaysia where cuisine and culture were inseparable, Bee Yinn Low developed a deep love and appreciation for food. Her early memories of helping her mother prepare steamy and fragrant Chinese meals solidified into a way of life for Bee as a working woman in Southern California. A love of Chinese food didn't translate well to a modern Western lifestyle due to time and ingredient constraints. Rather than give up her favorite foods, Bee experimented with recreating the unforgettable flavors of her youth with her limited time and using ingredients found in local supermarkets. She managed to develop versions of her favorite Chinese dishes that had all the taste—but were a lot less work!

In Easy Chinese Recipes, Bee shares her passion and expertise in Chinese cooking. It features a collection of Bee's all-time favorite dishes—the foods she loves to cook and eat at home. She includes updated traditional family recipes along with her own versions of the best Chinese restaurant dishes from around Asia, such as Crispy Shrimp Dumplings, Kung Pao Chicken, Sweet-and-Sour Pork, Homestyle Chow Mein Noodles and Mongolian Beef.

Building off her passion, expertise and the avid following she has on her website, rasamalaysia.com, the Internet's most popular Asian food and cooking site, Easy Chinese Recipes is sure to become the go-to book for cooks interested in creating Chinese meals at home.

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White Teeth: A Novel

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Author: Zadie Smith

'White Teeth' is a comic epic of multicultural Britain which tells the story of immigrants in England over a period of 40 years.

Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range, guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again.

Still, the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks."

Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided, and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's... parts." And the men, of course, have their own involvement in bodily functions:

The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man.

Not all of White Teeth is so amusingly carnal. The mixed blessings of assimilation, for example, are an ongoing torture for Samad as he watches his sons grow up. "They have both lost their way," he grumbles. "Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave." These classic immigrant fears--of dilution and disappearance--are no laughing matter. But in the end, they're exactly what gives White Teeth its lasting power and undeniable bite. --Eithne Farry

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The Chinese Classics - Volume 1; Confucian Analects

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Author: James Legge

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Chinese literature; China;

Chinese One Pot Meals Home Cooking: 12 Recipes with Photos

Author: Hongyang

This photo cookbook contains 12 Chinese recipes: Chicken with dried Mushroom, Carrot, Bamboo Shoot, and Broccoli; Chicken Wings with Pineapple (Honey garlic spicy); Pork Ribs with Chinese Cabbage and Mushroom; Beef with Tomato, Zucchini and Potato; Beef Flank with white Turnip; Fish with white Asparagus, Mushroom in Cream Sauce; Tofu Spice Pot; Glass Noodle with Chinese Cabbage and fried Tofu (Vegetarian); Eggs with Mushrooms and Pork; Vegetarian Pot; Fish Balls With Fresh Mushrooms (Curry Spice); Duck with Baby Corns and Dried Mushrooms.
There are 185 photos showing individual steps and making it very easy to follow. There is an extra chapter with 42 frequently asked questions and answers on Chinese ingredients and basic rules of cooking Chinese One Pot Meals, also photos are provided for being clear at a glance.

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The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore

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Author: Grace Young

When Grace Young was a child, her father instilled in her a lasting appreciation of wok hay, the highly prized but elusive taste that food achieves when properly stir-fried in a wok. As an adult, Young aspired to create that taste in her own kitchen. Her quest to master wok cooking led her throughout the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Along with award-winning photographer Alan Richardson, Young sought the advice of home cooks, professional chefs, and esteemed culinary teachers like Cecilia Chiang, Florence Lin, and Ken Hom. Their instructions, stories, and recipes, gathered in this richly designed and illustrated volume, offer not only expert lessons in the art of wok cooking, but also capture a beautiful and timeless way of life.

With its emphasis on cooking with all the senses, The Breath of a Wok brings the techniques and flavors of old-world wok cooking into today's kitchen, enabling anyone to stir-fry with wok hay. IACP award-winner Young details the fundamentals of selecting, seasoning, and caring for a wok, as well as the range of the wok's uses; this surprisingly inexpensive utensil serves as the ultimate multipurpose kitchen tool. The 125 recipes are a testament to the versatility of the wok, with stir-fried, smoked, pan-fried, braised, boiled, poached, steamed, and deep-fried dishes that include not only the classics of wok cooking, like Kung Pao Chicken and Moo Shoo Pork, but also unusual dishes like Sizzling Pepper and Salt Shrimp, Three Teacup Chicken, and Scallion and Ginger Lo Mein. Young's elegant prose and Richardson's extraordinary photographs create a unique and unforgettable picture of artisan wok makers in mainland China, street markets in Hong Kong, and a "wok-a-thon" in which Young's family of aunties, uncles, and cousins cooks together in a lively exchange of recipes and stories. A visit with author Amy Tan also becomes a family event when Tan and her sisters prepare New Year's dumplings. Additionally, there are menus for family-style meals and for Chinese New Year festivities, an illustrated glossary, and a source guide to purchasing ingredients, woks, and accessories.

Written with the intimacy of a memoir and the immediacy of a travelogue, this recipe-rich volume is a celebration of cultural and culinary delights.

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Ching's Everyday Easy Chinese: More Than 100 Quick & Healthy Chinese Recipes

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Author: Ching-He Huang

Enjoy fresh, simple, delicious, and satisfying Chinese food—including many takeout classics—without ever leaving home!

With her trademark passion and deep appreciation for Chinese cooking, Cooking Channel star Ching-He Huang brings her charm and expertise to an eager audience with this outstanding cookbook. Ching fuses Chinese and Western cultures to create one hundred quick dishes full of natural ingredients and bursting with flavor.

Ching’s Everyday Easy Chinese makes it simple for home cooks to prepare their favorite Chinese dishes faster, cheaper, and more healthfully than their local restaurant. Enjoy a diverse selection of favorite recipes for every occasion and taste, including:

Traditional Hot and Sour Soup
Five-Spice Salted Shrimp with Hot Cilantro Sauce
Crispy Sweet Chili Beef Pancakes
Kung Po Chicken
Black Pepper Beef and Rainbow Vegetable Stir-Fry
Singapore Noodles
Egg and Asparagus Fried Rice

Interspersed with entertaining personal stories and suggestions for exciting variations on classic recipes, Ching’s Everyday Easy Chinese takes readers on a culinary journey that delightfully blends ancient and modern, yin and yang, experimentation and intuition—and ends with perfectly balanced and tantalizing fare that will inspire even the most stalwart takeout devotees.

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The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

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Author: Jennifer B. Lee

If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

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Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

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Author: Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

This new masterwork of Chinese cuisine showcases acclaimed chef Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's decades of culinary virtuosity. A series of lessons build skill, knowledge, and confidence as Lo guides the home cook step by step through the techniques, ingredients, and equipment that define Chinese cuisine. With more than 100 classic recipes and technique illustrations throughout, Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking makes the glories of this ancient cuisine utterly accessible. Stunning color photography reveals the treasures of old and new China, from the zigzagging alleys of historical Guangzhou to the bustle of city centers and faraway Chinatowns, as well as wonderful ingredients and gorgeous finished dishes. Step-by-step brush drawings illustrate Chinese cooking techniques. This lavish volume takes its place as the Chinese cookbook of choice in the cook's library.

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The Everything Chinese Cookbook: From Wonton Soup to Sweet and Sour Chicken-300 Succulent Recipes from the Far East (Everything Series)

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Author: Rhonda Lauret Parkinson

Featuring hundreds of recipes, such as Snow Pea Stir-fry, Hot Chicken Salad, General Tso's Chicken, and Traditional Mu Shu Pork, The Everything Chinese Cookbook makes preparing authentic Chinese dishes fun and easy! From basic Chinese flavors and dipping sauces, such as Quick and Easy Sweet-and-Sour Sauce, to Chinese cooking methods and meals, including Stir-fried Orange Beef, The Everything Chinese Cookbook offers a diverse set of recipes perfect for both vegetarians and meat-eaters. Featuring delicious recipes for: Appetizers, such as Crab Rangoon; Soups, such as Wonton Soup; Vegetable dishes, such as Stir-fried Baby Bok Choy; Beef dishes, such as Mongolian Beef with Rice Noodles; Pork dishes, such as Sweet and Sour Spareribs; Mouthwatering fiery dishes, such as Spicy Chicken with Cashews; Desserts, such as Sweet Baked Pineapple and Banana. The Everything Chinese Cookbook will have you serving up tasty Chinese cuisine to tempt anyone!

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