Beyond Bok Choy: A Cook's Guide to Asian Vegetables [Hardcover]

Rosa Lo San Ross (Author), Martin Jacobs (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 1996

Beyond Bok Choy is the first book to help consumers identify, choose, and--most importantly--cook the enormous variety of increasingly available Asian Vegetables. Top chefs discovered these tasty leafy greens, squashes, peas and beans, mushrooms, and herbs several years ago, and many varieties are appearing in supermarkets, farmers' markets, and seed catalogs as well as in Asian flavors, there has been little information available to home cooks on how to add these vegetables to their repertoire.

With this book, Rosa La San Ross, a New York-based cooking teacher and caterer who grew up in Hong Kong, guides readers through the many varieties of bok choy, mustard cabbages, melons, edible gourds, sprouts, and shoots. her 70-easy-to-prepare recipes--including both classic Chinese stir-fries and original fusion recipes--will send curious cooks to unexplored regions of their supermarkets and then to the kitchen. The book's guidebook-like format makes it east to carry on shopping expeditions.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ross tells how to recognize, buy, store, cook the intriguing produce found at Asian markets and appearing in ever more supermarkets. This book includes color photos of 55 vegetables and 70 recipes. Take it to the market then back to the kitchen, feeling secure about what to do. Recipes range from simple, classic Chinese dishes like Sesame-flavored Flowering Cabbage (Choy Sum) to exotic fusion dishes like aromatic Shiso Risotto. Ross also shares memories of life in Hong Kong, a little Asian history and fascinating cultural tidbits, all food-oriented.

From Publishers Weekly

Asian cuisines once considered exotic are now commonly enjoyed in the West. Many Asian vegetables and herbs, however, may still be difficult for American cooks to identify, much less to prepare at home. Though this is not a vegetarian cookbook, Lo San Ross (365 Ways to Cook Chinese), a New York cooking teacher born in Macao, does a wonderful service for Asian food lovers and vegetarians by detailing the appearance (with large color photos), taste, cultivation, storage and preparation of dozens of vegetables used in Asian cuisines, from Chinese to Thai to Indonesian. The book is divided into five sections: Leafy Greens (from delicate, cabbage-like bok choy to leafy Chinese broccoli); Gourds, Melons & Squashes; Roots, Rhizomes, Corms & Tubers (including ginger and sweet, starchy taro); Sprouts, Shoots & Beans; and Herbs. A concise run-down on each vegetable is followed by one or two recipes. Dishes range from such classic stir-frys as Long Beans Dry-Fried with Peanuts and Spicy Sauce (in which the beans are fried twice, the second time with very little oil) to "fusion" dishes like Shiso Risotto (shiso is a parsley-like herb with a "hint of licorice, mint, or cinnamon?depending on your taste buds"). Though more recipes would have been welcome, this is an attractive and very usable introduction to a wealth of intriguing Asian vegetables.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Artisan; First Edition edition (January 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885183232
• ISBN-13: 978-1885183231
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book; should have more of other Asian/Chinese veg, January 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Beyond Bok Choy: A Cook's Guide to Asian Vegetables (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully crafted book with wonderful photographs. It's an excellent book even for Chinese. My only complaint is that I wish Lo San would have included more vegetables in her book. There are a lot more other Chinese vegetables she hasn't included. Some of those absent are from the fungi family (if that's a vegetable!) and other Chinese green leafy/root vegetable.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully presented and informative, August 29, 2001

By 

Jasmine Guha "Jassa" (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Bok Choy: A Cook's Guide to Asian Vegetables (Hardcover)

This book is a great introduction to Asian vegetables. The photographs are very useful and the general presentation is very good. Information is given as to how to prepare and cook with these vegetables, and there are many recipes to that effect. My only disappointment was that there weren't more vegetarian recipes, although many are adaptable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Vegetable Guide, February 17, 2005

By 

Anonymous (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Bok Choy: A Cook's Guide to Asian Vegetables (Hardcover)

I bought this book after I left school and had to start cooking on my own. As an ABC, the first time I went to an Asian grocery store was very intimidating; my first impression of the vegetable aisle was a huge wall of leafy greens. Although, I haven't tried any of the recipes, I find the book useful for identification, storage and preparation of the vegetables. More importantly, each page includes a picture and the name of the vegetable in English and Chinese (both character and the popular English phonetic name
form - usually Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations).