No comments about On the Back Burner #6 (Dish).

5 comments about The Chinese Way: Healthy Low-Fat Cooking from China's Regions.

1. We can't say enough about this book since we began cooking with it. Although it took a little time to stock our pantry with the ingredients, it was well worth the time. Thankfully we have some local Asian markets. There has yet to be a recipe that we've made that we have not thoroughly enjoyed. Surprisingly our picky 2 year old has also enjoyed the food. The book is extremely well written with straight forward step by step instructions that allow us to make exceptional cuisine. By no means does the food taste low in fat. The tastes are superb. We plan to purchase another recipe book by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.



2. A great book. I had been searching for an authentic Chinese cookbook for some time. I took a gamble on this book by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, and it was a rewarding pay-off. This book has everything. Some information on the history of Chinese cooking, on buying and seasoning a wok, on steam-proofing dishes, on some of the more hard to find ingredients, and personal stories from her upbringing. Not to mention, some fantastic recipies including one I've wanted to try for some time, fish soup. While prep-work is not one of my favorite parts of cooking, (although somewhat necessary in these recipies)the reward of a fantasic dish is well worth it. Added bonuses are sections on how to properly make rice (harder than you may think), and calorie counting information for every dish. I can't wait to try some of the other books by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. If they're 1/2 as good as this one, they already have my approval.



3. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo is an excellent teacher and I have several of her books, and love them all, but to be real honest, this is not a low-fat low-cal cookbook. This is a tiny portion cookbook.

   At first glance her recipes seem to be low-cal, low-fat, but look again. For instance, tonight I made the pepper steak recipe. Delicious yes, but the recipe called for 4 oz. of meat and 3/4 lb. of peppers and this was supposed to feed 6 people! Maybe that would be satisfactory if you were making several dishes and soup, but for a Sunday night one pot dinner it was just enough for two, tripling the calorie and fat content listed.
   Yes buy the book and cook from it, just take a real look at portions and how many a dish is supposed to feed and then ask yourself is this really going to feed my family?




4. I have made several dishes from this cookbook and all of them have turned out great. My husband is Chinese and has not been impressed with dishes I've tried from other cookbooks, but he has really enjoyed the dishes prepared from this book. The flavors are very authentic, and not overly sweet or oily, like you normally find in restaurants.
   
   The layout of the recipes are very easy to follow. She breaks the ingredient list into separate categories, such as "marinade", "sauce", "to complete the dish", so you can easily prepare the dish in stages.
   
   I also like that the recipes are healthy, and I don't feel that taste is sacrificed to make the dishes healthy. She also uses many of the same ingredients throughout the book, so you'll probably need to stock your pantry with items that you'll need to go to an asian market for, but once it's stocked, you'll be set for a while.
   
   The only modification I normally make is adding about double the meat to the dishes. Her versions are more authentic, being that in China meat is not as central to meals like it is in America, but I like having more meat.



5. The author was actually born in China hence her authentic recipes. Her books are a treasure and are like having a family friend giving you all their rich culinary history. We are so lucky that she writes in English.
   
   I read that the author's husband lost 20 pounds in one month eating these recipes and 55 pounds by the time she had completed the book.

2 comments about Cooking Light Stir-Fry Cookbook (Cooking Light).

1. I bought this book because I've been trying to avoid Chinese take-out! I love Chinese food, but take-out can be so greasy. By making my own, I can control the oil and sodium in each dish.

   An avid collector of Cooking Light books, I had to pick this up! More than 100 recipes; lots of fish, poultry, and beef selections; lots of variety. Got it yesterday; made the beef with spinach and ginger sauce for dinner that night. Got good reviews from my testers!

   Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the book covers more than Asian stir fry. Cuisines covered include Mexican and Italian, with fajitas and other quick cooking, high-heat dishes.

   Enjoy!




2. So far we have tried 15 of the 150 recipes and they have all been good. We rate dishes on a 1 to 10 scale, and all in this cookbook have been 7 or higher. It is taking us a while to get through the recipes because we are repeating so many of the 8's and 9's! Also, all of the recipes include the calorie and carb counts, which is very helpful.

5 comments about Korean Cuisine.

1. I actually own 3 of Wei-Chuan books because all of the books have great pictures and easy to follow instructions. I'm a beginner so it was easy to follow; however, it didn't quite
   explain what some ingredients are like tzuyoum, mirin, five-spice power and more. As a beginner, I had no clue where to
   find these ingredients besides that they are in a Chinese market. Problem is, I don't know what it is supposed to look like and the Chinese people there don't understand what I am looking for.



2. I must admit this book is great for its visual appeal. It makes my mouth water just looking at the pictures. But aside from this, I think the final dishes taste less authentic in my opinion (fyi.. I am Korean) As another reviewer pointed out, the owners of Woo Lae Oak put this book out. Those restaurants are more geared towards the Western palette- food is much, much sweeter and different from what I am used to. If you are looking to emulate the taste of the dishes in Korean restaurants in a Korea-town area of a certain city then these recipes will not give you that..



3. this is a great book! I'm chinese american- so korean ingredients are similar to ingredients i'm used to- but at the same time completely different! the ingredient list with pictures in the beginning of the book- greatly helped me in the korean grocery store. ie my best friends mom always had these big bags with a picture of a raw steak on the front. everytime i walked through their pantry- i thought- "man they must need to tenderize a lot of meat." It turns out the "meat tenderizer" is actually beef soup base! And it's REALLY good soup base for those who like to cheat with food prep! i also liked the fact that it had photos of the different kinds of dried seaweed used- because in korean and japanese grocery stores- the seaweed section can make your head spin with all the different choices you have!
   
   i really liked the recipe for chapchae- most of the other korean cookbooks have meat strips or ground meat in them. this one was simple- and if you keep a well stocked pantry you can make this whenever you want! I like to add julienned dried black mushrooms to the recipe as well. the spicy tofu stew with clams is so completely easy to make- and honestly- i leave out the clams and fresh shrimp- and it's still wonderful without! I do like to throw large pink dried shrimp with their heads on- into the soup- primarily because it adds flavor- and because there's a korean restaurant that does the same.
   
   The cooking tips that are found throughout the book are priceless. like throwing in dried anchovies if you don't have anchovy stock. I never knew what to do with those things- and now i do. and despite they're smell and appearance they add wonderful flavor to soups.
   
   if you have a korean market nearby and you're too lazy to actually cook- i would recommend getting a few bags of the different types of dried soup stock powders. in the same section they should also have these yellow boxes of freeze dried soup. there's no english- except- what type of soup it is- i personally like the pollack soup and the beef and vegetable soup. (and what you see in the picture is actually what is in the box!) one box with 2 cups of water- throw in half a container of soft tofu, some dried shrimp and a dried anchovy and some hot sesame oil and you've got yourself instant goodness.
   
   this book really helped me experiment with korean ingredients. (ie putting a tablespoon of the beef soup base powder in the above soup mix adds flavor and is really good) i've even expanded my pantry to include fernbracken. A little scary looking dried and in the package- but i'm sure it's going to be wonderful! i absolutely love this book and the entire wei-chuan series.



4. This book has excellent recipes, particularly the sauces. I have been able to cook Korean at home to satisfy my love of the Korean cuisine. The pancake sauce is exactly like my favorite restaurant's!



5. It came in a nice condition. It has great translation in English with photo of each dishes. That's very important to me. If you like Korean food. This is a good one to have to make your favorite dish.

No comments about The Completelete Step-by-Step Chinese & Asian Cookbook: The very best of Far Eastern food in one easy-to-follow collection.

4 comments about Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook.

1. Joy Larkcom's excellent introduction to growing Asian vegetables is informative, well-designed, and ably illustrated by Elizabeth Douglass. The section on vegetable cultivation and technique in China is particularly interesting. The recipes are helpful to Western gardeners exploring the savoury variety of Chinese greens, peas, and beans for the first time.
   

   Havi Hoffman
   




2. `Oriental Vegetables' by English gardening writer Joy Larkcom is the real deal. For foodies like myself, the most important thing to know about the book is exactly what deal it is real. I bought it with a bunch of other books on Asian ingredients without paying attention to much about the book except for the title, being lead to it by Amazon's cleverly surfacing books related to the books you have already chose to buy. Especially do not be deceived by the very nice blurb on the cover from Alice Waters and play extra attention to the subtitle, `The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook'.
   
   This book is much more about gardening than it is about cooking, and it tackles the subject of gardening very, very well. It does an exceptionally good job on detailing for us the ins and outs of growing the primary subject of the book, oriental vegetables.
   
   The very best news about this book is that it was published 14 years ago, just as commerce between the West and China and Indochina was warming up. This trade has had these 14 years to mature into something that makes the access to unusual seeds even easier. A corollary to this is the fact that the book also predates the blooming of the Internet, so most of the sources Ms. Larkcom gives from the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan will probably be joined by others and be themselves more accessible.
   
   Ms. Larkcom began her inquiry into her subject already an expert on growing vegetables. She enhanced her credentials by making long trips to China and Japan and by enlisting the assistance of a large stable of translators. All of this linguistic help was probably even more necessary for Oriental plants, as the systematic naming of plants in China and Japan is probably far behind that in the west, plus the fact that there are simply so many different species to deal with. I have seen in other horticultural books that China is the source of far more plant species than any comparable region on the earth. Even a cursory look at Ms. Larkcom's table of contents gives weight to this observation. This lists 77 species or groups of species by `common name'. This is substantially less than Elizabeth Schneider's approximately135 species covered in `Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini', but this book is limited to less than a quarter of the world's land mass while Schneider covers the entire world (as seen from western Europe).
   
   If you already own Bruce Cost's classic `Oriental Ingredients', you have not touched the surface of what Larkcom's book can offer. Cost gives us the culinary and economic scoop. Ms. Larkcom focuses on the horticultural.
   
   Ms. Larkcom's favorite subject may very well be the cabbages, as they are her first subject and she lovingly describes them as being very easy to grow in western soils and climates. In her general introduction to these brassicas, she covers climatic factors, stages of use, fitting the oriental brassicas into Western gardens, cultivation, pests and diseases, grouping the oriental brassicas, and specific hybrid brassicas. The introductory section finishes up with an excellent diagram of how oriental brassicas are related. This may do nothing to improve your salads or stir-frys, but it's great in helping to choose substitutes when one species is out of season and a related species is in full bloom.
   
   For each individual species, Ms. Larkcom follows Bruce Cost's practice by giving the most common English name, the biological family, the two part Latin name, other common English names, plus names in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese. Even among the Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, some plants may have several different names. After this linguistic heading, there are paragraphs on background, use, characteristics, types, climate, soil, cultivation, intercropping, pests and disease, harvesting, storage, and varieties. Whew! All this information includes a culinary aspect I have simply not seen elsewhere. This is the fact that several plants go through different stages and while some stages may be commercially less desirable in western eyes, they are really quite highly prized by Oriental users.
   
   After Brassicas, the other major groups of plants are beans, cucurbits (gourds and melons), onions, radishes, water vegetables, tubers, and herbs and wild plants. If I were to take away one plant from this book and give it a shot at growing in my back yard, it would probably be the radishes. The rich assortment of oriental radishes is in strong contrast to the variety available in even a better than average American megamart.
   
   The biggest surprise I found was that ginger received a light coverage as an herb and its relative, galangal is not mentioned at all. I am certain this is because neither of these two plants is easy to grow in home gardens, and growing is what this book is all about. This reinforces the fact that for the foodie with a black thumb, this book needs a companion with a culinary focus to fill out one's picture of Oriental veggies.
   
   The main body of the book dealing with individual plants is supplemented with an excellent chapter on growing techniques. I am not as familiar with the soil as I am with the stove, but from what I can see, this chapter is first rate, covering techniques which you may not find in your average Better Homes and Gardens title. This is followed by a chapter on cooking which is even better than what I saw in other books on vegetables where the emphasis was more on cooking than in this horticulturally slanted book.
   
   The appendices to this book alone are worth the price of admission with its excellent tables of gardening terms, growing calendars, plant names, and bibliographies. While there is some danger that the references to suppliers may be out of date, I do recognize several current major players such as W. Atlee Burpee and Johnny's Selected Seeds.
   
   If any of this interests you, this book is for you!



3. The author focusses on China and Japan, paying far less attention to Korea, Southeast Asia and the South Asian region. This probably accounts for the omission of galangal (as noted by one reviewer above) and for the omission of important herbs such as rau ram (Polygonum odoratum), alluded to only vaguely by a Polygonum entry which says (roughly) "there are many oriental polygonums; you can find them sold in stores".
   
   However, she goes into *exhaustive*, blinding detail on a whole range of arcane Japanese and Chinese vegetables. I learned critical things about okahijiki and yomogi from reading this book, as well as the procedure for blanching mitsuba, and read about a veg I had not heard of before - Chinese artichoke - when I've reached a point where few things surprise me. On the better known vegetables - edible chrysanthemum, gobo, ong choy, Chinese celery, celtuce - she gives helpful information and detailed growing instructions, and an overview of actual Asian growing practices, which I have not found elsewhere. Sadly it is not possible for Kitazawa Seed to cram all this information onto the back of seed packets and into its catalogue headings; if it had, several prior sowings of mine would have grown better.
   
   Finally, the author includes information on the CORRECT method for sprouting mung beans, which people (like me) who have been cursed with ratty bean sprouts will welcome!



4. This book has really helped me understand the wonderful variety of Asian plant seeds offered by Johnny's and Fedco Seeds. It has an emphasis on the brassicas, probably because the author lives in Britain, and those crops can grow there all year. Keep her climate in mind when you read this book (average of 60 degrees in the summer, minimum low of 20 degrees in the winter, and plenty of rain).
   
   Oriental vegetables, especially the brassicas, seem to be easier to grow and hardier than the traditional cabbages, broccoli, etc., that I've grown side-by-side with them. It is great to have a book that helps sort out the confusing names. For example, I learned that Senposai (a seed I bought from Fedco - called "one thousand treasure vegetable" in Japan) is a cross between ordinary cabbage and komatsuna, and tastes much like ordinary cabbage. Then there is a lot of information on komatsuna, chinese cabbage, pak choi, mibuna mizuna, choy sum, etc., with a chart to help you sort them all out.
   
   In the back, there is all the obligatory information on gardening techniques that is covered better in other books, but with helpful some references to Asian techniques and tools. She speaks with authority on plant protection, telling you specifics on what works for her. There is a nice, but small section of recipes. The growing information and plant name charts are VERY helpful. And finally, the index is thorough.
   
   If you are planning to grow Asian vegetables, especially brassicas, this book is worth consulting.
   
   If it were updated, I would give it five stars.

2 comments about Martin Yan's Invitation to Chinese Cooking.

1. this book has lots of super delicious recipes, and their easy to follow too. 1 of my fave recipe books 2 thumbs up! :O)



2. This is one of my most used, most favorite cookbooks and believe me, I have a lot of cookbooks. I love this book b/c every recipe tastes great! I love the pictures, the text, everything! Do yourself a favor and buy this book. Just the soup recipes alone are worth the price but really, every recipe I have ever tried is great!

5 comments about All the Tea in China.

1. I found this tea book to be a very good reference book on tea's origin, how and when it's popularity spread to other realms, how to enjoy tea and what kinds of utensils are used to make and drink tea. I would have enjoyed more pictures and the ones that are here are in black and white, but this is an information packed read.



2. No fetishism nor fussiness in this volume, just excellent information and tips for the tea drinker and interested historian/gardener/travel buff/philosopher/health-seeker. If anything, this book demystifies Chinese teas with its clear and readable presentation -- instructive but not school-bookish. If you think there's more to life than powdered iced-tea mixes -- or even if you don't -- this book will tell you the rest of the story of your favorite brew.



3. This book might be useful to someone looking for a book with general information about tea, but for someone who wants to learn about the real art of Chinese tea, this book is useless . The book does not go into any detail about important elements of Chinese tea drinking such as Yixing teapots and the gongfu brewing method; it just tries to explain them in a few sentences. After reading this book, you will hardly have gained any knowledge of Chinese tea at all.
   The book is obviously an imitation of John Blofeld's "The Chinese Art of Tea", which is an excellent book on the subject of Chinese tea. This book even copied the format of "The Chinese Art of Tea" by inserting small drawings in the margins, and they also copied the teahouse section of "The Chinese Art of Tea". The only thing they forgot to copy was all the good information.

   The section in this book on tea brewing, entitled "How to Make a Nice Cup of Tea", provides instructions on making tea that could only be used to make tea for your dogs. The book does not explain any of the Chinese brewing methods, it seems like the authors just read the back of a Lipton box and copied into their book. If you are interested in Chinese tea, it is much better to find a few good websites on Chinese tea than to buy this book. Anybody who has even a small amount of knowledge of Chinese tea can see that this book is very badly made.




4. A great general introduction to the topic of tea. The title may be a bit misleading as the book broad-brushes tea on a worldwide basis not just Chinese tea. It covers origin, history, production, health and techniques. Well illustrated, with plenty of useful lists in the back of the book including names of many teas in both English and Chinese.



5. I have a dozen or so tea books, but this is pretty much my favorite. Partly because I prefer Chinese teas, but also because it covers the production of tea in great detail. It also has a good overview of many famous tea varieties.

5 comments about Practical Korean Cooking.

1. first of all- if you're going to buy any books by noh chin-hwa- make sure this is the one. i bought traditional side dishes by the author- and it was basically just a chapter cut out of this book. i should have listened to the person who also stated the fact in a review.
   
   i'm twenty something- and this cookbook reminds me of my mom's chinese cookbooks from the 70's. Sure it's photography and dish ware are dated- but the recipes and instructions are fantastic. i'm completely leery of the recipe for raw liver, and it is true the instructions do seem very time consuming... however i read in Korean cuisine by wei-chaun- that a lot of traditional korean cooking techniques are very daunting tasks.
   
   i bought about 6 korean cookbooks after eating at a korean restaurant- they all seem to have the same dishes with very little variation. this book however expands beyond the bulgogi... the chige...and the kimchi. One such item would be the fermented soy bean lumps. now i don't intend to try this recipe- but i found it really interesting that the instructions include- "remove the mold and dust from the fermented soybean lumps two days before using" I'm chinese american- so i'm pretty much used to weird ingredients. the american side of me however is pretty nitpicky about "is this clean? is that mold? is that still good?" i often buy dried wood ears- but because they have a faint white moldy look to them i'm reluctant to actually use them.
   
   anyways this is what i consider to be what a cookbook should be. pictures of every single recipe and photos of instructions as well. i wish it also had photos of the ingredients- with the glossary area- but there are plenty of photos of the ingredients pre cooking- to get an idea of what to look for in the korean grocery stores. fabulous! worth the $$ !!!!



2. I found the book very easy to use, and the finished Korean dishes tasted just like those at my favorite Korean restaurant. Then one day I discovered the Korean cook in that restaurant had a set of "recipe cards" in Korean, with the exact same photos and same recipes! These recipes are "real."



3. Having been stationed in Korea, being taught a few dishes while there, eating at Korea House Restaurants in the US, I found these recipes to yield authentic flavors I initially found in Korea.
   
   Over the years I've consistently stuck with and cooked a few traditional Korean dishes. The recipes in this book are wonderful and the flavor and aromas that have come from my own attempts at new and familiar recipes just splendid!
   
   Highly recommended.



4. I refer to this book as the Betty Crocker of Korean Cooking because it reminds me of my mother's Betty Crocker from the 70s. The layout is very glossy with lots of colour photographs and step by step instructions in very dry, matter-of-fact, subject-verb-occassional predicate style. This book is probably not for you if you need it as a complete primer on Korean food or if you are the kind of cook who needs to know everything down to the last 1/8 of a tsp you will find this, and probably most Korean cookbooks, kind of frustrating as Koreans (like many cooks worldwide) are not really known for their exacting measuring in cooking ;-) If, however, you are the kind of cook who is familiar with Korean cuisine and wants guidelines on how to do it, this is THE BOOK for you!
   
   For novices I would recommend Kwak's Dok Suni and for those more experienced cooks interested in a more cultural bent or just more background I would bundle this book with Heppinstall's Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen, which covers a lot of the same recipes but in a completely different format.



5. The book is good, there is a good variety of dishes, but not completely for the Korean palate. The first recipe I expected to see was at least dwenjang-cheegae, but it wasn't there...
   However, I've been using the book for more complex recipes, and it's been working out well.

3 comments about The Dumpling Cookbook.

1. This book is wonderful!! It spans numerous cuisines to provide a nearly complete listing of dumplings from around the world. The work includes recipes for Chinese dim sum dumplings, Italian gnocci, Jewish knishes, Eastern European perogi, and many more. A must for dumpling enthusiasts!! On the bad side, many of these dumplings are really time consuming to make. Some of the ingredients are also expensive/hard to find so it might prove a fun read but not a useful, everyday cookbook. Still, if you love dumplings, check out this book!!



2. I have to say that Maria Polushkin has outdone herself with the recipes in the "The Dumpling Cookbook." I have made approximately half of dropped dumplings in this recipe book and they get better each time.

   The other night I told my husband I was going to make Ricotta Gnocchi for dinner. I've made them before using many other recipes, but they were always like lead balls. He and I were very disappointed in the final product. When he sat down to eat, he bit into one and said, "WOW", these are incredible. He was right; they were the best I've ever eaten. They were like slicing into butter. It was difficult to push myself away from the table.




3. I don't eat wheat, and so I almost tossed this book out. But I started using it as a reference for my non-wheat recipes, and was surprised at how well everything turned out. Dumplings are one of those "lost arts" in our society, but are also amazingly easy to make. And very filling. One of the very best comfort foods! They are not nearly as time consuming as you might think. My first batch took about 20 minutes to make. Most of these recipes have very few ingredients, and there is a huge variety.
   
   My favorite so far is the wonton wraps, which I made using sweet rice flour instead of wheat flour. This made the tastiest egg noodles I've ever had, plus some really great wonton, which I hadn't had in years (no one makes gluten free wonton wraps yet).
   
   Anyway, my recommendation is to get this book, plus a Norelco stainless steel pressure cooker to make some good broth, and your family will be very, very happy.