Customer Reviews

The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this to be an excellent book, not just for its recipes but for its intimate and personal anecdotes. I recently gave birth and my mother had cooked for me to help in my recovery. As a Canadian born Chinese, I had little understanding of what my mother was making for me and the reasons why. She tried to explain to me but I reverted to my childhood responses of skepticism. This book helped me to put her recipes into a cultural and nutritional context and helped to bridge the cultural divide between me and my mom.

It was well illustrated in terms of showing the ingredients but it lacked enough images of the actual dishes themselves.

My wife and I came from Hong Kong a LONG time ago and we miss a lot of the Chinese dishes. We found most of them in this book and we had been using it quite often. The instruction is clear and dishes are relatively easy to make. However, I would like to see more pictures (of the final product and the preperation steps) in the next edition. We like the book so much that we purchased multiple copies as gifts to friends.

Highly recommended. If there are more pictures, I will give it a 5.

This is one of the few cookery books which I have enjoyed reading, as opposed to referring. I benefitted from the many tips that were woven into her story telling and the description of her dishes. For example, I now choose the more flavoured end-parts when buying a winter-melon (not forgetting to prefer those with more white powder on the melon surface too). I no longer throw away the water used to soak dried mushrooms, scallops & oysters as I could use it to add flavour to soup. I will remember to start with low fire when using a sand-pot and gradually increase to high if needed - not high straightaway - so as to avoid the sudden temperature changes that would crack and ruin the pot. Although it was obvious physics, I cannot help laughing at myself for not seeing, on my own, the simple logic of Grace's father's method of using a bowl to ensure equal parts of egg and water for the Steamed Egg Custard.

However, this book is written, I opine, for the benefit of experienced cooks, esp Chinese and Cantonese, who can picture the dishes from their names - be it English, Chinese or Cantonese. If you have limited experience in Cantonese cooking, little exposure to Cantonese dishes, or if you are not a Chinese or a Cantonese, think again before buying this book. But if you have other Chinese cookbooks with pictures to give you an impression of the end-state of the dishes in Grace's book, then this book will be suitable for you, especially her tips. Otherwise, this book may not be as beneficial although the tips still are.

Just one minor point. Although not a Cantonese, I know enough to note that some of the romanised Cantonese are inaccurate. The Cantonese for duck, such as in roasted duck, is romanised as "Op" which is a far cry from "ngap" or "aap" which is how the Cantonese pronounce it in their dialect.

In response to Mike Simm's comments on the recipe on page 32, here's a contrasting view. I'm from Singapore and am cantonese. There are lots of cantonese hawker stores that sell food for eating in or take out, prepared a la minute. For tourists, the best food isn't at fancy cafes or restaurants, its in the neighbourhood hawker centres or our version of coffeeshops under housing flats.

Go to any of these, and order Hong Kong noodles. Go another day and order Singapore noodles. There's a high chance you will get the same thing. I asked the chef (A cantonese) at a RedHill shop why the Hong Kong mee is called Singapore noodles and he told me that the noodles were being cooked in Singapore, so why call it HongKong noodles?

The cantonese took the foods from the different cultures they met and made it their own. They moved to other countries and it becomes associated with the new country. Case in point being Hainanese chicken rice, made famous in Singapore with roots in Hainan. Curry was just another spice they incorporated into their repertoire. Also, by using the words Madras Curry Powder, it would be more easily understood by Western readers. What if they had used the red African curry powder also available in USA?

Migration of humans and food have happened throughout history, some recorded and some not. Take for example fish sauce originating from China and made famous by the Thais. Another would be Catherine De Medici from Italy kicking off French cuisine like we know it today by introducing techniques and foods such as truffles and quenelles to the French. The former was unrecorded, but the latter was.

So who's to say Singapore noodles is not a cantonese dish? Sure as heck all the chefs here that cook them are cantonese. Maybe it was made famous here. Let the people in HongKong throw their jokes. Between Hong Kong noodles and Singapore noodles, which one appears in cookbooks more and is more likely to be recognized by westerners (Eileen Yin Fei Lo's Chinese Kitchen book has Singapore noodles too)?

I'd say Singapore got the last laugh, because we stole their recipe and made it ours. And yes, I've tasted fish sauce in some Singapore noodles too. Does that make it any less authentic?

Who cares, as long as it tastes good right?

I am a Chineses food lover. I have tried several recipes in this book. They are not impressed me. I would prefer The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo because her recipes taste closer to some of the best Chinese Cooking we have tried.

Though the recipes are authentic and described by Chinese characters, pronounciation, and English descriptions, the organization of the recipes makes it difficult for a reader to build a menu or track down a favorite recipe.

The author has sorted dishes by techniques/rice/produce, those for celebrations, and those for their traditional healing properties.

Unfortunately these categories aren't helpful if you wanted to browse say for a chicken dish. Your only recourse is to turn to the index and look up chicken and hop to and fro from section to section as chicken recipes (along with others) are strewn about the different sections of the book.

Check out the table of contents and you'll get a sense of what I mean.

(Last point: I'm not sure if I'd agree with the accuracy of the Cantonese pronounciations of the dishes)

Growing up in Chinatown, my family ate Cantonese food pretty much every meal, every day. When cooking Chinese food on my own, I try my best to mirror how my parents cook because there are no written recipes to follow. With this book, there are finally written-down Cantonese recipes that a real Chinese family would cook at home and are perfect for those people who want to cook like mom & dad used to. Most of the recipes are for everyday dishes such as Steamed Pork Cake with Salted Duck Egg, Stir Fried Egg with BBQ Pork or Soy Sauce Chicken. But there are also a few special occasion recipes such as Shark's Fin Soup. Extremely helpful is the index/description of common and not so common ingredients and their Chinese characters/ Cantonese pronounciations for those who don't speak Chinese. I couldn't attest to the 100% accuracy of the history behind the dishes as other reviewers have been critical of, but I'm just looking for recipes, not stories. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's The Chinese Kitchen is okay but seems more complicated so I find myself gravitating to Grace Young's book more. If you prefer Chinese food like you find at a mainstream American Chinese restaurant, then you'll probably be disappointed with this book. This is a good book to buy if you're interested in Cantonese food that goes beyond Cashew Chicken and Sweet & Sour Pork (both authentic Cantonese dishes and found in this book - but taste very different from what is found in most restaurants). A valuable find!

Hailing from Singapore and being Cantonese, I have searched for recipes representing food that I remember from home. The recipes in this book are authentic and wonderful. I've enjoyed discovering wonderful dishes and have loved every one of them. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants a taste of authentic chinese food.

My parents are from Hong Kong and I was born in Canada. I grew up with the foods Ms. Young describes in her book, but because of my limited ability to read Chinese, I have never been able to follow any Chinese recipe books written in Chinese. When I first bought this book, my aunts thought it was pretty funny. They said "how can a book that is written in English be authentic?" - and considering my spoken Cantonese is accompanied with a fairly strong "Canadian" accent, they were sure the book was full of "westernized" Chinese foods. Well, after looking through the book themselves, they were sold and bought their own copies.

The recipes are good. But what I find most helpful is the inclusion of the Chinese name for the dishes and some ingredients - written in Chinese characters and translated phoentically into "English"(between the combination, I can usually figure out the dish or ingredient and relate it back to what my Mom used to prepare).

I am humbled by the eleoquence of some of the reviews already in the database. I am particularly comforted by those written by the Chinese that have been born and raised in America who are sympathetic with her desire to preserve her hustory as well as record good recipes.

I am ready to start cooking.