The Chinese Kitchen

Rating:
Summary: good information & nice photos
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: R-e-a-l Chinese Food
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Fine content shameful binding
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The basic GO-TO book for beginners to gourmets.
Review: 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".