Customer Reviews

Secrets Of Fat Free Chinese Cooking

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

 

 

This book was disappointing. It does not have the traditional Chinese recipes we are used to i.e. stir fries, etc. Many of the recipes are ones I would never consider making. Not good value.

Okay...first the great stuff! While dieting, its hard to find many options at a chinese resturant besides steamed veggies and plain tofu without sauce and with a bit of rice (unless your low carbing..than you can forget the rice, even) This book has none of the typical sweet and sour heavy gloppy sauces and deep fried anything... And the food is better for it.

According to the author it is more *authentic* to the real cuisine and I can see that she is right. The recipes smack of healthful trasitional ethnic cuisine...with a bit less sodium and fat. In the beginning there are some general guidelines for reducing dietary fats as well as a glossary of asian ingredients...some familiar (green onions) some more esoteric (agar-agar)... and some helpful cooking hints.

The book is separated into chapters of soups, springrolls and dumplimgs, rice and noodles, tofu, veggies, meat, seafood, and desserts.

The soups that I have enjoyed from this book are the tofu spinich soup, the meatball spinch soup,and the chicken rice soup. All the soups were very low sodium, probably much lower than people are accustomed to. Adding a bit more might be necessary for some people.

The steamed shrimp dumplings are delicious! Sodium and fat on this is low as well but you are eating this with a dipping sauce of some kind so it is a highly flavored and delicious dish. The bai zai chicken is easy and wonderful and also makes a great wrap type sandwich. (plus you end up with a light stock after you have poached the chicken!) The steamed turkey cakes were a bit odd to me... I guess Im accustomed to a different texture on ground meat than steaming provides and I don't especially like the smell of ground turkey. There is a shrimp cake recipe that reminds me of a bit of shrimp toast...( the delicious deep fried shrimp on white bread thing)...Its great when I want a good subsitute for that fatty appitizer.

there is a resourse list in the back of the book to locate hard to find items. But the pulication date is 1997 so its hard to know how current that is. There are however many sites on the internet for delivery of these kinds of items if the ones in the book do not work out.

My only problem with this book are design issues. It didnt lie all that flat and so after several uses on the same page, and trying to get it lie flat the binding has cracked on my favorite recipe pages. Im afraid soon the pages will be all over. The pages also arent able to be wiped of spills and are a bit thin, so you can see the type of the other pages thru them. You cant read it, its more of a shadow, but its distracting to me. I would prefer a bigger font on recipes that have more, rather than less ingredients..and some of these do. Im not sure I understand the logic for taking up half a page with a recipe and half with a large cartoon of walking vegetables when a larger font would have made it much easier to read.

But....as i have said...overall this book has more plusses than minuses. It suits many diets as well as just generally tasting very very good. The recipes are simple and dont require complex cooking techniques or a whole host of difficult ingredients sometimes needed for ethnic cooking.

I was interested in buying this book. I read the previews of other readers, and I went to public library to check out this book before I invest money on this book. I am reaserching for the food combination from Suzanne Somers diet. For level one, one combination is that the veggies can combine with carbos but without fat (oil). In Chinese cooking, it is very hard to achieve bringing out the flavors from spice without oil. I am a Chinese housewife, and I have some knownedledge of Chinese cooking. Just by reading it, I can see these dishes might not be very flavory (especially Tofu dishes, which need some effort to get taste into this ingredient(tofu) through stewing or some heavy tasty paste).

In most of the receipes, cornstartch is used very often, which is the thing I try to avoid (refined carbos). This book uses many cooking spray (which is oil) in many dishes. It has some fat free dishes, but I consider they are not significant enough to be called such title as Fat-Free Chinese Cooking. A low fat title is more proper for it. This is a very American-Chinese cookbook taste.

Well, I'll keep looking for some other fat-free (or low fat) cookbook to see if there is some idea to replace oil in Chinese cooking.

Tried recipe #2 Spinach$meatball soup. The meatballs and spinach were ok but don't even bother with the broth. It was so tasteless that I trew it out and served the rest over rice. if you want soup try using beef or low fat chicken broth. I'm brginning to think this lady can't really cook and I certainly can't believe the recipes were taste tesed and still included in a cook book.

tried the tofu hot & sour soup and found it to be soooo tasteless... areal waste of good fresh ingredients. i will try some other recipes but i'm not off to a good start.

Saw the author of the book actually cooking several of the recipes featured in her book on Home Matters with Susan Powell. Simple to make recipes with short-cuts for busy people. Wonderful way to get the taste of take-out at home with half or less the fat.

I picked up this book a few months ago in Boulder, CO. I've been looking for a "traditional" rather than "trendy" cooking light "ethnic" foods book. All those "foofy" recipes out there stray far from their original origins. The recipes that I have tried (my favorite is the cold eggplant in garlic sauce) are quick & easy & taste great! My only suggestion is that there should be more color photos of the dishes would be nice to see within the book - but that's just my personal preference.Lots of recipes to choose from.

As a single guy that wants to stay in shape and does not have the time or patience to make a career in the kitchen, this book is a great find. What is fresh tastes best and the recipes in this book promise dishes that are fun to prepare, healthy and come out tasting remarkably good. For those who believe healthy and nutritious is the way to go and enjoy Asian cuisine, this cookbook will find a prominent place in your kitchen.

This book was recommended to us by the dietician at the local medical clinic after my husband had been diagnosed as a possible diabetic and we expressed our concern about not being able to eat Chinese food. The book has proven useful in helping us adapt favorite foods to a more healthy approach. I especially enjoyed learning to make pan-fried dumplings without oil. (My husband especially enjoys the illustrations!)

For years I had been looking for a good Chinese cookbook because I like Chinese food and know that it is a very healthy way to eat if prepared correctly. Evey book I found seemed to offer tasty looking but heavy, heavy solutions. I found this inexpensive excellent book to be just what I was looking for.

I have found the dishes to be very tasty, and the sauces more than sufficiently zippy. I appreciated the unique way that many meat dishes use the meat as a complement to other ingredients instead of just piling it on. This achieves a healthy tradeoff in protein and fat. There is lots of background information on preparation, finding and choosing ingredients, and many other interesting sidlights. The pictures are gorgeous and a big help in choosing and putting toghther the dishes.

To me the strength of the book is that once you get the hang of the way to cook Chinese dishes using little or no fat, you can modify and extend any receipe you come across in the future using the principles used in this book and know you are eating food prepared in a manner that is healthy. For me, I have found the receipes in the book to be pretty much everything I need for now. I think this is an excellent buy.