Customer Reviews

Chinese Technique

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Every recipe has not only a photo of the completed dish but many step by step black and white photos of the cooking process.
Instructions are accurate. The book covers the core of Chinese cooking technique. It is great for learning how things are done in Asian cuisine. I have never come by a more instructive book. This book has no color photos like the new books on the market. But if you were never taught how to cook Chinese and really want to know how to cook this cuisine - You will not find a better book than this.

Not as glamorous as much of todays stuff but full of terrific information and recipes.

Out of print I beleive so you need to track it down but it is worth it.

Although I only recently bought this book, it is not at all a new publication having been written almost thirty years ago. That fact, however, should not dissuade people from purchasing this excellent culinary work. I have been cooking Chinese cuisine since around about the time this book was written and I was still able to find some very useful tips and techniques within its pages. Indeed, this is the first book I have come across that gives a decent description of how to cut-up a whole fish for 'squirrel fish' type dishes. Most of the recipes are very good and a few were really unique.

My sole disagreement with the book was the quality of the illustrations. Although each technique is illustrated with several photographs, the pictures are gray-scale and often not very clear. There is a section of color photographs showing various dishes in the middle of the book and I cannot help but wonder why these could not have appeared alongside the appropriate recipes instead of in a group together. I also find it difficult to believe that making the 'technique' photographs in color would have made the book prohibitively expensive even back in 1981.

The above criticism aside, though, this book will be useful to beginners and advanced cooks should find it a great addition to their collections.

In the intro the author says he tried to emulate Jacques Pepin's seminal work, La Technique. Mr. Hom does a good job, filling the book with pictures from beginning to end. The recipes themselves are not "modern", but really the book is useful for illustrating techniques which can be applied to other recipes. Plus, the 70s food styling is most appetizing.