Chinese Cuisine (Wei-Chuan's Cookbook) [Paperback]

Su Huei Huang (Author), Lai Yen-Jen (Editor), Gloria C. Martinez (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2006 | Series: Wei-Chuan's Cookbook

The very first of Culinary Master Su-Huei Huang's cookbook successes, this collection boasts a wide range of popular Chinese dishes. Individual sections provide clear guidance for utensils, cooking method, seasonings, vegetables, and special ingredients used in Chinese Cooking. Many people are still discovering the wonders of Chinese cooking through this book and use it as a reference source.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This cookbook features a wide-ranging collection of popular Chinese gourmet dishes from various regions of China. The recipes reflect the tastes and flavors associated with Taiwanese, Cantonese, Hunan, Szechwan, Shanghai, and Peking cooking.

Special effort was expanded to make this a descriptive cookbook which could effectively serve as a ¡§guiding light¡¨, inspiring the reader to further explore the art of Chinese cooking. Complementary to the foregoing, most of the dishes are presented in a manner suitable for small gatherings or large groups.

As a further aid to the reader, this cookbook contains a special section in the front, which provides the following:

1.Special ingredients and Chinese vegetables
2.Special cooking tips
3.Place settings and seating order at a traditional feast
4.Principles of menu planning and a sample menu

Chinese Cuisine was the first cookbook to be published by Wei-Chuan Publishing. It was an immediate hit because it contained recipes collected from the Wei-Chuan Cooking school in Taiwan, the largest and most respected institution of its kind along the Asia-Pacific rim. Over 900,000 copies have been sold.

Because of its authenticity, clarity and broad variety, this book is an invaluable addition to the reader's private collection.

Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Wei-Chuan Publishing (March 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941676080
• ISBN-13: 978-0941676083
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 0.5 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 106 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic without all that "mysticism" January 22, 2001

By Helen L. Limm

Format:Paperback

I bought this book when I was living in Hong Kong, and given the availability of truly excellent Chinese food, cooking the same dishes at home was always a disappointment. This book makes it very easy and keeps the recipes simple and true.

Because I'm Chinese and not fascinated by the history or mysticism or "magic" of Chinese cooking, I cannot tolerate cookbooks that are filled with little details about how some great aunt escaped imprisonment, immigrated across the seas and brought this very recipe to the outside world!

Each recipe is accompanied by a full color photo -- not the most sophisticated presentation, and certainly not as slickly produced as other cookbooks -- which is incredibly useful. This shows how large or small to chop the ingredients, how thick a sauce is supposed to be, how everything looks when it's done correctly.

In addition, there is a explanatory introduction about Chinese cooking tools, techniques and ingredients. This is a very useful section, and above all other cookbooks in my kitchen, this is the most important part of my collection.

81 of 83 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great all-around cookbook May 30, 2000

By Andrew West

Format:Paperback

Several years ago I decided I would learn to cook Chinese food. I was engaged to a wonderful Chinese woman (who is now my wife). She loves good Chinese food but doesn't cook very well. I'm American, and I didn't know how to cook any kind of food, Chinese or American. I started with this book, studied it, and went to the local Asian grocery. Pretty soon, I was competently cooking real Chinese food that my wife liked a lot(and I like it too!).

The book is bilingual in English and Chinese, and every recipe has a photograph to help you arrange it and see approximately how it should look. The instructions are generally simple and well organized. The recipes tend to be on the simple side, not particularly elaborate. Where some cookbooks will call for a recipe to have 4 steps and 12 ingredients, this one may call for 3 steps and 9 ingredients.

Nevertheless some of my most reliable and delicious recipes come from this book. The Ma Po Tofu recipe is quick and excellent for example. I notice that the book is reticent to call for large amounts of spices, especially for Sichuan dishes. So just double or triple the amount of hot bean paste, garlic, etc. if you like.

One drawback I've noticed in this book and the publisher's series is the tendency for the binding to fail, allowing pages to become loose. It doesn't matter that much because if you like it as much as I do, you'll have grease and sauce on the pages anyway.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars the best Chinese cookbook available in English January 14, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book lets you make authentic Chinese dishes, from banquet showpieces to homestyle dishes.These are the most authentic recipes for Chinese dishes I have found in English. Here, you will not find, as in some other cookbooks I have seen, the chicken being boiled when the traditional recipe calls for steaming, or julienned carrots substituted for the julienned bamboo traditionally used in the dish. This book and the other, more specialized Chinese cookbooks published by Wei-Chuan (the venerated and most famous cooking school in Taiwan), are the only Chinese cookbooks I use. _Chinese Cuisine_ lets me create exactly the Chinese dishes I loved as a child, for it's the very same book that my mother used, albeit in an earlier edition, as a young wife and mother in Taiwan.

These recipes are thoroughly tested, both by the Wei-chuan cooking school and by generations of students and readers. As an American-raised Chinese who knew little to begin with about Chinese cooking methods, I have made about half of the recipes in the book and had spectacular results every time. Each recipe is meticulously laid out, step by step, and accompanied by a glorious, mouth-watering photograph of the finished dish. In each recipe, photographs also demonstrate specialized techniques called for by the recipe. I also find very helpful the introductory section of the book that describes and shows clear photographs of the sometimes unusual fresh produce and preserved foods that are used in the recipes, so that someone unfamiliar with them could walk into an Asian food store and buy them by sight, or even by pointing out the picture and Chinese name of the food to a sales clerk, as I have sometimes done.... Also valuable is the introductory section setting forth sample menues for family meals as well as multi-course feasts and explaining the traditional principles that the Chinese have always used in selecting the combination of dishes for a meal.

This wonderful book, along with the other Wei-Chuan Chinese cookbooks, is the only one I recommend when westerners ask me which Chinese cookbook to get. It's the best! Read more ›

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great first Chinese cookbook November 20, 2005

By Peter Isra

Format:Paperback

This was my first Chinese cookbook, and I've been using it almost two years now. The food is fantastic and the first few pages gives a description/introduction of cooking methods and indgredients which I thought was nice. There are so many types of Chinese food (since China is so huge), but the author managed to squeeze in a little bit of everything. I will be definately buy more Wei Chuan books in the future. One thing to note, however, is that most of these dishes are banquet family style dishes. If you are looking to make single serving dishes like "Niu Rou Mian" (Beef Soup Noodles), then buy another book. Some other classic Chinese foods that I was hoping I would get, such as fried rice and dumplings are missing from this book, although I'm sure they're present in other Wei Chuan books.

Another thing I thought was interesting: This book is in both Chinese and English. If you read Chinese, you'll notice the Chinese versions of many recipes tell you to use msg, and to reuse oil, whereas in the English version, msg is omitted and oil is often thrown out and replaced. I guess the author or publisher took local preferences into consideration...