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The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing (Hardcover)
by Grace Young (Author) , Alan Richardson (Photographer)
| Category:
Chinese cuisine, Cookbook, Original books |
| Market price: ¥ 308.00
MSL price:
¥ 288.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
With the ancient secrets, Grace Young encourages readers to experience the joy of authentic Chinese cooking - as Amy Tan said, it is "a cookbook of family secrets that the Kitchen God's Wife would have been proud to write for her daughter." |
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Author: Grace Young (Author) , Alan Richardson (Photographer)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pub. in: May, 1999
ISBN: 0684847396
Pages: 304
Measurements: 9.4 x 7.7 x 1.3 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00959
Other information: ISBN-13: 9780684847399
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- Awards & Credential -
The author Grace Young is the Test Kitchen Director and Director of Food Photography for Rebus, Inc. in New York for 16 years. And she is the recipe developer for The Best of China and The Best of Thailand. |
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- MSL Picks -
In The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, along with sharing recipes from her family, Grace Young immerses the reader in Chinese culture and the Chinese American experience of San Francisco's Chinatown, where she grew up. Each chapter opens with an essay intertwining biographical stories with information about Chinese food and healing.
No fancy dishes here - only comfort food need apply. The book is divided into the following:
1) Rice from steamed, fried, dumplings and porridge
2) Stir fry - including tomato beef and beef chow fun
3) Steamed cooking- egg custard, sponge cake, spareribs with black bean sauce
4) Cooking with ginger - drunken chicken, cabbage noodle soup
5) Seasonal market dishes - braised taro and Chinese bacon, stir fried bitter melon with beef
6) Celebratory dishes - stir fried clams with black bean sauce, pepper and salt shrimp, sweet and sour pork
7) New Year's dishes - turnip cake, seasame balls
8) Authentic recipes from the homeland - savory rice tamales, pork dumplings, stuffed noodle rolls
9) Chinatown favorites - soy sauce chicken, roast duck, barbecued pork and salt roasted chicken
10) A slew of healing soups and dishes.
The dishes are truly authentic to the Chinese family experience or those who seek authenticity. Young also includes a handy guide to shopping and mail order resources.
Grace Young's writing style is very thoughtful and a testament to her ability to embrace her Chinese Heritage and prescribe its finer aspects in cooking to a reader who has only a basic familiarity of that culture. Her writing is reflective, beautiful, nostalgic, concise, thoughtful, and with an elusiveness that only a true philosopher could have that motivates the spirit in wanting to learn more not only about cooking, but about how everything in life is balanced together.
The book is well organized with a vivid introduction of her life growing up in San Francisco Chinatown; her observations thru family anecdotes. Then she breaks down recipes with wonderful introductions in categories from rice, wok cooking, steam cooking, and two broader sections related to cooking and "The Art of Celebration" and "Achieving Ying Yang Harmony."
There are excellent instructions, pictures, and descriptions of key ingredients written in Chinese with a photo so that while in a Chinese supermarket, you can find the ingredients. There's also and excellent reference section in the back on the ingredients. Young expertly reveals ancient secrets encouraging readers to experience the joy of authentic Chinese cooking.
- From quoting Debbie Tam and Tony Ukena
Target readers:
Food lovers, housewives, professional cooks, or hotel and restaurant managers.
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Grace Young, recipe developer for The Best of China and The Best of Thailand, has been the Test Kitchen Director and Director of Food Photography for Rebus, Inc., a New York publishing company, for sixteen years. A native of San Francisco, she currently lives in Manhattan with her husband Michael. While her family lives in the United States, they still have relatives in Hong Kong and China; Grace has been to China four times since 1979 and has traveled extensively throughout Asia.
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From the publisher
The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, with its 150 recipes culled from a lifetime of family meals and culinary instruction, is much more than a cookbook. It is a daughter's tribute - a collection of personal memories of the philosophy and superstitions behind culinary traditions that have been passed down through her Cantonese family, in which each ingredient has its own singular importance, the preparation of a meal is part of the joy of life, and the proper creation of a dish can have a favorable influence on health and good fortune. Each chapter begins with its own engaging story, offering insight into the Chinese beliefs that surround life-enhancing and spiritually calming meals. In addition, personal family photographs illustrate these stories and capture the spirit of China before the Revolution, when Young's family lived in Canton, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.
The first part, "Mastering the Fundamentals," provides instruction on the arts of steaming and stir-frying; the preparation of rice, panfried, and braised dishes; the proper selection of produce; and the fine arts of chopping and slicing. Part Two, "The Art of Celebration," concentrates on the more elaborate, complex, and meaningful dishes - such as Shark's Fin Soup and West Lake Duck - that are usually made with rare ingredients, and sweets such as Water Chestnut Cake and Sesame Balls. The final part, "Achieving Yin-Yang Harmony," explores the many Chinese beliefs about the healing properties of ginseng, gingko nuts, soybeans, dong quai, and the many vegetable and fruit soup preparations that balance and nourish the body. The stories and recipes combine to demonstrate the range of Cantonese cooking, from rich flavors and honored combinations to an overall appreciation of health, well-being, and prosperity.
In addition to the recipes, Young provides a complete glossary of dried herbs, spices, and fresh produce, accompanied by identifying photos and tips on where to purchase them. Unique traditional dishes, such as Savory Rice Tamales and Shrimp Dumplings, are also illustrated step by step, making the book easy to use. The central full-color photo section captures details of New Year's dishes and the Chinese home decorated in celebration, reminding one that these time-honored traditions live on, and the meals and their creation are connections to the past.
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Introduction
In Chinese cooking, every ingredient and dish is imbued with its own brilliance and lore. When I was a young girl growing up in a traditional Chinese home in San Francisco, this knowledge was passed on to me through a lifetime of meals, conversations, celebrations, and rituals. I felt every food we ate in our home had a story. "Eat rice porridge, jook," Mama would say, "so you will live a long life." Or, "Drink the winter melon soup to preserve your complexion and to cool your body in the summer heat." Early on, my brother Douglas and I observed that the principles of yin and yang - a balance of opposites - were integrated into our everyday fare. For example, vegetables considered cooling, such as bean sprouts, were stir-fried with ginger, which is warming. Or stir-fried and deep-fat fried dishes were eaten with poached or steamed dishes in the same meal to offset the fatty qualities of the fried dishes. After a rich meal special nourishing soups were served to restore balance in the body.
Today, the brilliant harmony of Chinese cooking is gaining recognition. Chinese cuisine uses spare amounts of protein and a minimum of oil. Carbohydrates comprise essentially 80 percent of the diet and, in Southern China, this is primarily vegetables and rice, a nonallergenic complex carbohydrate that is one of the easiest foods to digest. Herbs and foods like ginseng, soybeans, gingko nuts, and ginger, which the Chinese have integrated into their diet for thousands of years, are now being accepted by the West as particularly beneficial for health. Many of the vegetables in the Chinese diet, especially greens like bok choy, are rich in beta carotene, other vitamins, phytochemicals, and minerals, and the favored technique of stir-frying preserves the vegetables' nutrients.
My parents have impressed upon me their love of food as they had learned it in China. l grew up to appreciate every aspect of cooking, from shopping to preparation to the rituals of eating. This lifelong influence led me to my career as a food stylist and recipe developer. My father, Baba, often warned Douglas and me about certain foods. Chow mein and fried dim sum, he said, were too warming, yeet hay, or toxic, if eaten in excess. On the other hand, most vegetables and fruits were cooling, leung, and therefore especially good to eat during the summer. He never actually explained to us precisely what "too warming" or "too cooling" meant but, somehow, we accepted it and allowed that he was right.
Still, my brother and I listened to our parents' stories with only half an ear. When Mann served Dried Fig, Apple, and Almond Soup and reminded us that it was "soothing for our bodies, yun," we didn't really care. Instead, we could hardly wait to sink our teeth into a pizza, a hamburger, or a Swanson chicken pot pie, foods that we somehow knew were yeet hay, but were too much a part of the all-American life we led outside our home that we craved them anyway.
Both my parents brought from China the traditions of food and cooking as they had practiced them in their homeland. To this day, they maintain one of the few traditional Chinese households among the members of our extended family in America, which numbers well over two hundred relatives. Although some of my relatives eat more pasta than rice, nay parents and the older uncles and aunties take pride in their expertise in classic Chinese cooking. They still center their diet around the principles of Chinese nutrition.
My family's kitchen was often fragrant with the aroma of homemade chicken broth simmering on the back burner of the stove. Invariably, bok choy was draining in a colander, while a fresh chicken hung on a rod over the counter to air-dry briefly before it was braised or roasted. Instead of boxes of commercial cereals, our kitchen cupboards were filled with jars of indigenous Chinese ingredients like lotus seeds, dried mushrooms, various soy sauces, cellophane noodles, and curious-looking herbs like ginseng, red dates, and angelica, or dong quai. Instead of milk and butter (dairy products are not part of Chinese cuisine), our refrigerator shelves were more likely to have tofu, ground bean sauce, ginger, and lotus root. In the pantry sat a 100-pound sack of rice.
Like many first-generation Americans, I didn't give my culinary heritage much thought until I was well into adulthood. Growing up in San Francisco, I ate Cantonese home-style food every day. These were not dishes found on restaurant menus, but rich, savory dishes with pure, simple flavors that are the hallmark of a home cook. Whether it was a simple weeknight supper or a more elaborate weekend meal, my parents wanted us to know why, in all of China, the Cantonese were considered to be the best cooks. Their cuisine is the most highly developed - it has the broadest range of flavors, yet the subtlest of tastes. Later I would learn that the concept of foods having "warming" and "cooling" characteristics is especially revered by the Cantonese and manifests itself in their cooking. All the special soups we drank for nourishing and harmonizing our bodies came from a distinctly Cantonese tradition, one not found in any other part of China.
Only recently have I realized that I had taken my marvelous Cantonese culinary heritage for granted. Even members of my extended family have, like me, expanded their diets far beyond Cantonese fare. My cousin tells me that his wife is an excellent Italian cook. When it comes to Chinese food however, she cannot surpass the quality of their local take-out. While the cousins of my generation and their children enjoy Chinese traditions, only a few of them seem to have maintained the knowledge of the traditional recipes they were raised with. Who has time to learn the family recipes and digest their meaning and importance? My Auntie Bertha, who cooked countless memorable meals for me when I was a child, tells me she has forgotten most of her Chinese dishes; she says it is easier to cook simple American-style meals.
On my visits to San Francisco, Mama's delicious cooking stirred my taste memory, and I began to notice how much healthier I felt after several days of home cooking. As I began to record my family's recipes, I realized there were huge gaps in my knowledge, having learned Chinese cooking only through casual observation and not from formal study. Even with my professional cooking experience and natural familiarity with Chinese cuisine, it required energetic detective work to decipher and understand some of the recipes. For Chinese cooking is as ancient as its culture, with layers of meaning and wisdom that cannot be easily explained. No one member of my family could teach me every recipe or answer all my questions. I acquired most of my knowledge from my parents, but relatives and family friends all offered little bits of information that I pieced together. The power and wisdom of Chinese cooking goes far beyond simply mastering the more complex cooking techniques or even knowing the ingredients. For me, the principles that govern Chinese cooking and nutrition are far more intriguing than the Western notions of nutrition, with its focus on cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, fiber, carbohydrates, protein, and fits in the diet. It is a cuisine based on opposites, the yin-yang principles of cooking. This philosophy is so instinctively ingrained in my family that it was hard for them to articulate it verbally. I recognized that if I didn't begin questioning my parents, grandmother, aunts, and uncles, the wisdom of their diet and the lore of our culinary heritage would be irretrievably lost. It became clear that I needed to look to the past to understand the present.
I recorded my family's recipes without Americanizing the ingredients. There are those who offer substitutes for traditional Chinese ingredients, but this fails to acknowledge the genius of Chinese cooking. There is a reason for thousands of years of reverence for certain combinations. Recipes that offer, for example, Kentucky string beans as a substitute for Chinese long beans fail to grasp the Chinese nutritional perspective. While both vegetables have a similar crunchiness and might seem comparable, the Chinese long bean is the only vegetable the Cantonese consider neutral, neither too yin, "cooling," nor too yang, "warming," and is the only vegetable women are allowed to eat after giving birth. Cantonese believe most vegetables and fruits are "cooling" and, therefore, dangerous for a new mother, especially in the first month after she gives birth.
The recipes in this book include some that do not require exotic Chinese ingredients. Not every dish needs a specialty ingredient of labor-intensive chopping and shredding but, in all truthfulness, if you genuinely desire to cook Chinese dishes, you will need exotic ingredients, along with the time to properly prepare them. Some cooks will suggest using canned water chestnuts in place of fresh, but it is my feeling that if fresh are not available, the recipe is not worth making. For me, using canned water chestnuts is like using canned potatoes. In some areas, I've simplified recipes by calling for the food processor to puree ingredients. But, overall, I have tried to preserve the traditional ingredients and techniques as much as possible, preferring to hand-shred ginger and vegetables rather than feed them through a food processor.
The recipes reflect the range of mastery of the Cantonese home cook. The rich flavors of home-style cooking include basic stir-fry recipes, steamed recipes, rice dishes, braises, and soups; my family cooked these on most weeknights. Also included are the auspicious and more elaborate foods connected with New Year's and special occasions. Some of these recipes have an old-world quality about them, reflecting an era when people had more time to cook. Finally, the healing remedies are intended to restore harmony and strength to the body for proper yin-yang balance.
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Macy Mills (MSL quote), Canada
<2007-02-26 00:00>
Having been born in Hong Kong and having lived there and in Taiwan for the first 15 years of my life, this cookbook brought back vast memories. I love cooking, and have a wide range of cookbooks. But until now, I have never come across a Chinese cookbook that captures so much of the "essence" of Chinese cooking as in Ms. Young's The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. Reading this cookbook is like looking back into my childhood and how I grew up. I am astounded at how accurate Ms. Young described all the traditions the Chinese attach to food. The section on Chinese New Year is especially meaningful to me; all the dishes are ones that I ate as a child during Chinese New Year. It was indeed a nostalgic moment for me as I read it.
I have tried several of the recipes, and the results have been excellent. What I find most helpful is the glossary and the pictures of the food items that are more unique to Chinese cooking. With this aid, I can now go shopping at an Asian supermarkets with much more confidence.
In all, this is a terrific tome that takes away some of the "mysteries" of Chinese cooking, and in turn, allows everyday cooks like myself to be able to enjoy Chinese home cooking. |
John Szeto (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-26 00:00>
I bought this cookbook about 6 months ago. When I finished reading the book, I immediately sent an e-mail to the author thanking her for her work in this book. I also watched the CBS Sunday Morning Special about this cookbook. I ,too,was a Chinese immigrant and learning cooking from watching my dad and mom without any measurement of the "stuff" you put in a dish. Often as I cook, I do not measure the ingredients. Many of my American friends want the reciepes of the dishes I cook and too often I am too lazy to write them down. Now, I have Ms. Young to thank you for writing this cookbok. Many of the fine reciepes in this cookbook I shared with my Amercian friends. They too have read and said they enjoy the history and the philosophy of the Chinese cooking. I would recommended this book for anybody who is learning about Chinese cooking. This cookbook by far are on my number one list of the chinese cookbook of this decade. Oh, by other way(Ms. Young), the most frequent reciepes that I shared with American friends is "Tomato Beef." Your brother was right! (You should not omit this receipe.) |
Jadepearl (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-26 00:00>
This cookbook is not just a list of recipes but an interesting biographical journey into the interior. Grace Young writes well about her family providing a personal context for the recipes that she provides.
I found the information very good indeed. It is rare to find in one location certain details about buying produce and items from an asian grocery store. The section on what the sauces, vegetables and other items that you can find at the grocers is nice indeed. Usually you would have had to buy a book dedicated to this, but Young provides a good section to get you through.
This is my favorite Chinese cookbook so far this year. I find material for personal reflection and also, a source for Chinese food information (almond soup being good for the skin). I agree that Young could have been more lavish with technique and photos but she did very well otherwise. Also, the indexing could have been more detailed, but these are small quibles. Good stuff. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-26 00:00>
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! |
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