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

Deh-Ta Hsiung (Author), Ken Hom (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

About the Author

Deh-Ta Hsiung is the author of several bestselling cookbooks, and is an internationally recognized expert on Chinese food and cooking. Born in Bejing, he now lives in London.

Ken Hom is the author of several Chinese cookbooks, including Foolproof Chinese Cooking: Step by Step to Everyone's Favorite Chinese Recipes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312246994
• ISBN-13: 978-0312246990
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,308,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good information & nice photos, September 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chinese Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Easy and Authentic Recipes (Hardcover)

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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars R-e-a-l Chinese Food, September 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chinese Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Easy and Authentic Recipes (Hardcover)

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!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The basic GO-TO book for beginners to gourmets., October 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chinese Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Easy and Authentic Recipes (Hardcover)

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".