- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Clarkson Potter (Oct 28 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0609610678
- ISBN-13: 978-0609610671
- Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 2.2 x 26.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#99,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Chinese
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
You may want to put all your other cookbooks on waivers for a while and simply settle in to Simply Ming by Ming Tsai and Arthur Boehm. Tsai's the chef and owner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and the host of Food Network's East Meets West. This particular book ties in with a show of the same title he's doing for public television.
Tsai has cut a wide swath through the food world with his creative blending of Eastern flavors and techniques with Western ingredients and presentations. Consider Asian Pesto Turkey Spaghetti, for example. This is Tsai-style spaghetti Bolognese, and it demonstrates the structure of the book. First comes the master recipe for Asian Pesto. Instead of basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, and ground Romano--your classic pesto--Tsai calls for jalapeno chilies, garlic, sugar, ginger, macadamia nuts or salted peanuts, lemon zest, mint leaves, cilantro, salt and pepper, and basil and olive oil. For the Turkey Spaghetti you'll use ground turkey, red onion, button mushrooms, and white wine, as well as the Asian Pesto. In this particular chapter you'll also find recipes for Asian Pesto Chicken Salad, and Grilled Asian Pesto Shrimp and Radicchio.
This is a book about assembling major flavor statements ahead of time and storing them in the refrigerator. The actual cooking becomes a relatively rapid process while delivering maximum flavor. The sections in Simply Ming include Flavored Oils and Sauces; Sambals, Salsas, Chutneys, and Pastes; Dressings, Dipping Sauces, and Marinades: Syrups; Broths; Rubs and Coatings; Doughs and Desserts.
It's fast. It's flavorful. It's from both sides of the world. --Schuyler Ingle
From Publishers Weekly
Tsai, the irrepressible host of the Food Network's East Meets West and chef of Boston's Blue Ginger restaurant, is doing things differently on this print venture. Rather than embarking on a parade of salads, soups followed by vegetable, proteins and starches, he organizes this book by dominant flavors, like Hoisin-Lime Sauce, Roasted Pepper-Lemongrass Sambal and Soy-Dijon Marinade. Besides making the book easier to use (no more flipping around looking for sub-recipes), the sauce-based structure makes the most daunting part of the cooking easy to prepare ahead of time. Big flavors and easy prep-as in Roasted Miso-Citrus Chicken, Scallion-Crusted Cod with Mango Salsa, and Broiled Stuffed Eggplant with Black Pepper-Garlic Sauce-are essential to the Ming method. This isn't virtuoso cooking or high-concept pan-Asian like Patricia Yeo's. But Tsai (Blue Ginger) is a culinary magpie who creates the oddest juxtapositions with the fewest ingredients: Carrot-Chipotle Syrup, Kimchee "Choucroute" with Seared Dijon Halibut, Tea-rubbed Salmon with Country Mash, Potato Pancakes with Apple-Scallion Cream. Cultural borrowing on this order of magnitude can be intimidating for the home cook, which may be why the chef has concentrated the considerable force of his winning personality on making the recipes accessible. His cuisine may not win converts among the fusion-phobic, but only the hopelessly incurious will fail to find some inspiration here.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good recipes/techniques, but monitor salttiness...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Simply Ming: Easy Techniques for East-Meets-West Meals (Hardcover)
I've just made the fabulous fried calamari with the thai-lime dipping sauce, absolutely the best we've ever had! Only problem was the dipping sauce on its own is too salty to use alone as a dipping sauce, but when used to marinate the calamari it imparted wonderful flavor. The next time I make the calamari, I would make the spice mixture but not mix it with salt as the dipping sauce had more than enough saltiness. I also made the curry oil, which was very light and flavorful, great for light stir fries. Chocolate ganache and creme anglaise recipes were very good as well, especially the warm chocolate cake recipe. Overall a very nice book and a good companion to the PBS tv shows.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not for the novice cook!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Simply Ming: Easy Techniques for East-Meets-West Meals (Hardcover)
I think this cookbook has great potential in the hands of an experienced cook who can read the recipes and make necessary adjustments, but for the novice, following the recipes to the letter, results may be frustrating and disappointing. As an example, the Tea-Rubbed Salmon (using the Five Spice Chile Tea Rub) looks very enticing. The recipe for the rub calls for very large quantities of several spices, and yields six cups. The recipe states that the rub will keep for three weeks in the refrigerator. The salmon recipe calls for only one cup of this rub, and following the recipe exactly, I found that using this amount of rub completely overwhelmed the flavor of the salmon, rather than complementing it. The dish was barely edible. Just a sprinkle might have done the trick nicely! As it was, I was left with five cups of an incredibly intense spice rub, and there is no way on earth I'd want to use it six times in three weeks (before it expired)- this proved to be an enormous waste. I feel that the same lesson may be applied to other master recipes; they yield very large quantities of very intense flavor bases, and one might not want to use the same flavor base multiple times in the span of just a few weeks. I'd strongly recommend preparing a fraction (say, one-sixth) of a master recipe to make sure you -really- like it before investing in a full batch. I made up an eighth of a batch of the Thai Lime Dipping Sauce to use in the Thai Lime Chicken Salad, and this worked extremely well. The master recipe for the dipping sauce makes 5 cups, and the chicken salad recipe calls for only 1/2 cup... the dipping sauce keeps for only a week, so unless you'd like to eat this salad 10 times in a week, waste is inevitable. I don't think Ming scaled these recipes down enough to be useful for the home cook.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fresh and Interesting Ideas if you have lots of time,
By K.Smith (Sunnyvale, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Simply Ming: Easy Techniques for East-Meets-West Meals (Hardcover)
I was so excited when I got this cookbook, but I had no idea what was in store for me....I think the average recipe takes about 3 hours to prepare. Many of the the recipes call for two master recipes which take an average of an hour. I tried to make the the Meat Broth master recipe...it took 2 days. Try to find 10 pounds of veal bones in one day....It took the store 3 days to save enough for me. The cooking techniques are not that difficult but most of the time will be gathering all the ingredients. I don't recommend this cookbook for anyone that does not live in a metropolitan area because you will not be able to find certain things and he doens't really suggest substitutions.
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