Books

Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen
The Creative Pasta Cookbook
Light, Lean and Low
Around the Kitchen Table: The Lancashire Childhood of Gertrude Bark 1890-1945
The Balti Cookbook: Fast, Simple and Delicious Stir-fry Curries (Creative Cooking Library)
The Low-fat Indian Cookbook: Delicious and Authentic Indian Recipes for Healthy Living (Creative Cooking Library)
20 Minute Cookbook: 50 Delicious, Quick and Healthy Recipes (Step-by-step S.)
Traditional Puddings and Pies: Over 75 Recipes for Traditional Deserts (Creative Cooking Library)
50 Quick and Easy Pizzas (Step-by-step S.)
50 Low Fat Calorie Desserts (Step-by-step S.)
Apples: A Book of Recipes (Little Recipe Book S.)
Chocolate: A Book of Recipes (Little Recipe Book S.)
The Ultimate Low Cholesterol Low Fat Cookbook: Over 220 Healthy Recipes for Every Occaision
Garlic: A Book of Recipes (Little Recipe Book S.)
Mushrooms: A Book of Recipes (Little Recipe Book S.)
The Cook's Gift Set: Cook's Record Book and Cook's Hints and Tips Book
Wine-lover's Guide
The Perfect Christmas: More Than 40 Gifts and Recipes for a Homemade, Handmade Holiday
The Complete Book of Herbs: The Ultimate Guide to Herbs and Their Uses, with Over 120 Step-by-step Recipes and Practical, Easy-to-make Gift Ideas
Low Fat Cookbook: 50 Delicious Recipes for Healthy Eating (Step-by-step S.)
Chocolate Fantasies: 70 Irresistible Desserts to Die for (The Contemporary Kitchen)
Food, Drink and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages
Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin's Russia (Leisure, Consumption & Culture S.)
The Good Book Cookbook
Healthy Home Cooking: Picnics and Barbecues

The Chinese Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Easy and Authentic Recipes

Average customer rating:

Not just a recipe book
Fine content shameful binding
The basic GO-TO book for beginners to gourmets.
R-e-a-l Chinese Food
good information & nice photos

The Chinese Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Easy and Authentic Recipes
Deh-Ta Hsiung
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Cookbooks | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Chinese Kitchen: Recipes, Techniques, Ingredients, History, and Memories from America's Leading Authority on Chinese Cooking
The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing
Chinese Cookery Secrets: How to Cook Chinese Restaurant Food at Home (Right Way S.)
DK Living: Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook
Taste of China: The Definitive Guide to Regional Cooking (Pavilion Classic Cookery)

ASIN: 0312288948

Amazon.com

The Chinese Kitchen is equally useful whether you are selecting your first Chinese cookbook or adding to an already substantial collection. This encyclopedic volume is crammed with detailed information, recipes you know yet probably have not made at home, and color photographs from China that bring the culture and culinary interests of the country compellingly to life. Opening with a useful explanation of the fundamentals of Chinese cooking, you learn how all food is viewed for its seasonal, medicinal, and nutritional values; how color, aroma, flavor, shape, and texture must be balanced in each dish; and how today's cooking goes beyond the classic five flavors. Two-page spreads for more than 100 ingredients include the name in calligraphy and Western letters, the Latin name, and entries for how the item is grown or produced, how to judge its quality, how to store processed foods as well as fresh items, and both medicinal and culinary uses.

In the recipes, precise directions help even beginners get good results: for instance, "Cut the beef across the grain into thin slices the size of a large postage stamp." Recipes make dishes as they would be in China, so Spareribs in Sweet and Sour Sauce are pleasantly pungent without chunks of pineapple, carrot, or onion. From Fujian province, the Stir-Fried Chicken with Cilantro is a delicate combination of sliced breast and ginger, scallions, and coriander. Adventurous cooks will comfortably discover Bean Curd Skin and Asparagus Soup, a simple dish with appealing flavor. For dessert, Chinese Fruit Salad, combining fresh or canned lychees, cubed melon, and other fruits in the scooped out melon, which is nestled in crushed ice, lets you bring the care of Chinese presentation to the table easily.

Though Deh-Ta Hsiung tells little of how he traveled from Beijing, his birthplace, to London, or how he acquired his masterful command of cooking, bits of his personal history weave through The Chinese Kitchen. In all, he is a most welcome teacher. --Dana Jacobi

Book Description

There's no cuisine more rich with flavor, color, texture, variety, and tradition than Chinese cooking. From the familiar to the exotic, this comprehensive and stunningly illustrated sourcebook, organized by ingredient, is a master chef's catalog of what makes this centuries-old cuisine so vibrant today.

Complete with historical background, information on buying and storing ingredients, and exquisite recipes, The Chinese Kitchen is a must-have for everyone's Chinese kitchen. Entries include: Bean Sprouts - Black Bean Sauce - Chinese Cabbage - Dumplings - Eggplant - Five Spice Powder - Ginger - Lotus Root - Peanuts - Plum Sauce - Shrimp Paste - Soft-Shell Crab - Straw Mushrooms - Tofu - Tea - Wontons - Water Chestnuts and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Not just a recipe book.......2007-04-07

There are probably books with more recipes - recipes aren't really the focus of this book. It's a treatise on the ingredients that go into Chinese cooking, an encyclopedia of what goes into the food and how to find it, how to use it, and where it comes from. I found it delightful reading, and I can now go to the local markets without always feeling that I have no idea what I'm looking at. I bought it as a gift for my son, read it before handing it over, and think I'm probably going to have to get one for myself. It's beautiful to look at, too.

Fine content shameful binding.......2005-01-23

The background and recipes are quite good but the paper back book is a disgrace. My copy is less than a year old but nearly every page has separated from the "perfect" binding. The publisher should give a[...]to anyone who has bought this. Five stars for the author, [...], so a two overall.

The basic GO-TO book for beginners to gourmets........2001-10-04

This book presents all the basic ingredients for a Chinese kitchen. If you think you "kinda know" but not really, here is your reference book. The three things that strike me are the accurate descriptions, beautiful photos and pragmatic use of each of the items.
The recipes factually represent authentic old time use.
I would buy this book for the younger Chinese so that they won't forget "what, why and how".

R-e-a-l Chinese Food.......2000-09-09

I have always enjoyed Deh Ta-Hsiung's recipes. They are simple to follow & difficult to get wrong, even for a novice cook like me! The recipes he shares range from tasty family dishes to making your own Peking duck or roasting your own barbeque pork which are difficult to come by in most Chinese cook books. Mr Deh also takes time to explain how different types of ingredients come together, and offers to the uninitiated, methods of preparing an ingredient, and photographs which makes me want to dog-ear all the pages with the recipes I plan to try! Most of all, Deh's cooking leads to the most authentic tasting Chinese food!I'm glad the author has finally released an US edition!My only complaint is there just aren't enough recipes!

good information & nice photos.......2000-09-05

Deh-Ta Hsiung is a British-based mainland-trained chef whose polite opinions keep this nicely organized and illustrated book interesting. Although he ignores much of the Cantonese-style cooking that is prevalent in many Chinese cookbooks available in the US, his information is traditional, accurate, and all of the 10 or so recipes I've tried so far have been good. Ingredients such as tofu, oyster sauce, malt sugar, five-spice powder, and Sichuan peppercorns are presented individually with Chinese characters, Pinyin, English, and Latin (for the plants) and photographs of the ingredient and recipes and photos of one or two representative dishes. There's also information provided on how the ingredient grows or is produced or packaged, what it looks and tastes like, how to buy and store it, some basic medicinal uses,...and recipes! I like to use the book in combination with Nina Simonds' and Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's books--taking the best of each.

Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen: With a Consumer's Guide to Essential Ingredients

Average customer rating:

My Favorite Chinese Cookbook
Great Book
Buy this book if you want to learn to cook Chinese
Best Chinese cook book in the U.S.A.!
With lot of wasted pages & confusing measurements

Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen: With a Consumer's Guide to Essential Ingredients
Ken Hom
Manufacturer: Pavilion Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Culinary Arts & Techniques | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Cookbooks | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 1857938453

Amazon.com

No one has done more than Ken Hom to make good Chinese cooking accessible to Western cooks. Author of Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood and Asian Vegetarian Feasts, among others, Hom's books meld outstanding taste and straightforward, approachable recipes. Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen, published in 1994 in England and now available in the United States, excels not only in its recipes, but also as a concise exploration of the ingredients and fundamental methods of Chinese cooking. Old hands and those new to Chinese food preparation will find the book invaluable.

Half of the book is devoted to a consumer's guide of essential ingredients illustrated with color photos. Ranging from bamboo shoots to wonton wrappers, each entry includes shopping tips with brand-name preferences, storage notes, and useful hints. (Hom tells us, for example, to save and use the peel from fresh ginger to flavor oil before stir-frying with it). The 100 recipes, divided into chapters for soups, fish and shellfish, meat, eggs, vegetables, and rice and noodles, balance old favorites--like Mu Shu Pork with Chinese Pancakes--with uncommon dishes, such as Red-Cooked Oxtail Stew, Steamed Egg Custard with Clams, and Bean Curd-Chicken-Salt Fish casserole (a delectably homey clay-pot specialty that takes about 30 minutes to prepare). Braised Noodles with Crab Meat and Bean Sauce Noodles are two exceptionally simple and exceptionally good noodle dishes. A reference and recipe book in one, Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen deserves a place in every Asian cooking library. --Arthur Boehm

Book Description

From one of the masters of Chinese cooking: a recipe book and reference book in one volume, with scores of savory dishes, a detailed guide to 80 essential ingredients, and 100 color photos. Ken Hom has introduced countless cooks to the pleasures of China's cuisine. Now he has compiled the ultimate practical guide to Chinese cooking--a recipe book and reference book in one volume. He begins with a comprehensive guide to more than 80 ingredients regularly used in Chinese cooking, from bamboo shoots to wonton wrappers, with full explanations of how to buy, store, prepare, and preserve them. The recipe section features 100 authentic dishes, including shrimp in hot garlic sauce, fragrant crispy chicken, shredded pork in bean paste, stir-fried silk squash with garlic, and spring onion and ginger noodles. Beautifully enhanced with 100 color photos, Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen both demonstrates and demystifies the art of Chinese cooking. Ken Hom teaches cooking worldwide; his many books include The Taste of China and Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery. 200 pp 7 1/2 x 10 1/2 100 color photos American measures

Customer Reviews:

My Favorite Chinese Cookbook.......2001-10-25

I pride myself on authentic tasting Chinese food and I used to think Hom was too 'white bread' for my tastes. This book changed my mind about him. I bought this book for its first half which gives extensive information on Chinese cooking ingredients likely to be unfamiliar to non-Chinese Americans. However, I've come to value it more for its recipes. Hom's meals run to the slighty dry but very tasty side. You won't find thick, syrupy, sweet concoctions here. I've since also bought his book "Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood" and find it consistent with this one (which means I recommend it nearly as highly).

Great Book.......2000-12-02

It's a shame this one is so hard to find. There is another one by Martin Yan, with similar ingredient brand-name comparisons.

To the reviewer who rated it only 2 stars because its conventions weren't 'American' enough, it's a matter of education. In case you haven't noticed, the rest of the world (including our Canadian neigbors) uses the metric system. Do the math (it's not that hard), or get a Metric conversion chart -- not all of the world's cookbooks were written just for Americans.

Buy this book if you want to learn to cook Chinese.......1999-11-29

Unlike the reviewer that hated this book, I found Ken Hom's guide to Chinese ingredients extremely helpful in navigating the unfamiliar world of Chinese cooking. Mr. Hom lists all of the essential ingredients, and tips on what brands to buy. If you want to step away from the gooey Sweet-n-Sour glop of Americanized Chinese cuisine and into the THE REAL THING, buy this book.

It appears the book was first published in the UK, where Mr. Hom has a BBC TV cooking show, and some of the ingredients are listed in metric with English names for ingredients (i.e., corn flour instead of corn starch).

Best Chinese cook book in the U.S.A.!.......1999-04-16

Hey have you ever wondered how do they do it? Look no further when you have tried the rest now try the best! Of all the chinese cook books I have read i never could get what you find at the good resturants. This is the one to buy. Frist of all he tells you where you can find all those so foriegn ingrediants. Heck who knows or what for that matter where you can get black bean sauce. If you ever tried to make a dish from some other chinese cook book and thought this doesn't tastes so good maybe it's because you couldn't find the right stuff! I say get this one you will be happy there's no other chinese cook book in the world that will give what this one can!

With lot of wasted pages & confusing measurements.......1999-01-22

This book's author and editor have wasted 95 pages out of 199 pages just to elaborate the "essential ingredients." and once the recipes started, they used very disturbing quantity measurements almost on every item with xxx g/xx lb/xxx oz, then used weird names such as "spring onions(US scallions)" for the already known "scallions, green onion," cornflour(US cornstarch), and furthermore, divided a dish with confusing and/or unnecessary "shopping list," "staples," with "preparation time" and "cooking time." The type of the printing is also too small to be read smoothly and fast. The oz/g/lb and USxxxx names almost drove me nuts! Some of the photos even placed food in chipped plates or bowls is another rarity in recipes books. Also, why treated readers as morons and need to repeat in all the recipes with the same "how to wash," "how to mix" the same ingredient?! Lot of the photos and food were placed in greasy, ugly containers and on dirty, shabby (back)ground. The only good stuff of this book is that some of the dishes are actually pretty okay, albeit authentic.

Books:

Books