Customer Reviews

Dim Sum (Essential Kitchen Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

For the price, this book gives less recipes than any you would find on any ethnic food site! Almost half the recipes for dim sum involved DEEP-FRYING. For anyone who has actually experienced the traditional brunch menu in chinatown, you'll know the vast majority of dishes are STEAMED. Except for the a scant handful of the basics (i.e., pork buns, shrimp dumplings, etc.), i didn't recognize ANY of these recipes! somewhat of an oddity, given the fact that i am actually chinese. it was particularly galling to see someone try to pawn a glossy, overly westernized 'chinese' cookbook as an authentic representation of dim sum.

while it's understandable that most people who buy this book will not be chinese, this is NOT the book to get if you want to duplicate the dishes you've tasted before.

And why did i give it 1 star instead of the 0 it deserved? it has nice pictures.

This is a REALLY bad book. I was very disappointed in the complete lack of authenticity of the recipes. That they should be simplified is something I've come to expect, but that they should be so inauthentic is inexcusable in this day and age when Chinese ingredients are so widely available--in supermarkets, Chinatowns, or online. Here are some examples:

In the section on ingredients, Ms. Liley includes (Vietnamese) rice paper wrappers (although the Chinese do in a very few cases use a type of rice paper wrapper, it bears no resemblance whatever to the hard, glassy Vietnamese kind); she states erroniously that Spring roll wrappers are made of rice flour (see Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's "The Dim Sum Dumpling Book" for the authentic recipe and method); and she labels as wonton wrappers, which are square and egg-based, potsticker/gyoza wrappers, which are round and water-based.

In the recipe for Pearl Balls (p.26), she lists short-grain rice instead of glutinous rice for the coating, and suggests that the rice be soaked for 30 minutes. I have been making pearl balls since I was 16 years old, and you *must* use glutinous rice, because even short grain non-glutionous rice won't soften in the relatively short steaming. Also, the rice needs at least 1.5 or 2 hours soaking.

Finally, Ms Liley in recipe after recipe suggests fish sauce (widely used in Vietnamese, Thai, and Filipino cooking, but never in mainstream Chinese) as, presumably, a substitute for light soy sauce, since most Chinese recipes specify light soy sauce (or a combination of light and dark soy sauces) for fish or seafood-based dishes.

The photos are exquisite, but what good are glamourous photos when the content is so falsified? Better to take the extra money and buy Lo's dim sum book, or the book "Dim Sum" by Rhoda Yee (the text is excruciating, but the recipes are good and really work), or for those who really want to get into this in depth, the dim sum books by Wei-Chuan Publishing.

A friend of mine has given me this book as a gift because she knew I love dim sum and eat it every week with my Chinese family every single Sunday. It is a Chinese tradition to have dim sum frequently with friends and family, especially in a city like Vancouver that is so filled with so many excellent dim sum restaurants. This book does have plenty of pretty pictures of what the food should look like when it is made and also has an excellent section on how to prepare and cook the food. Most of the recipes in this book are not even found in dim sum restaurants. Recipes that are most common in dim sum restaurants like ha gow, sui mei, chicken feet, low bac gow (chinese turnip pancake) and many others that are not even in this book at all even though they are some of the most eaten dishes in the restaurants. It is extremely disappointing to have a book that is specific for dim sum but hardly have any of the most common dim sum dishes in it. There are recipes in the book like "salmon money bags" and grilled mushrooms that are not even heard of in the restaurants. I do have to admit that the instructions are easy to follow and most of the ingredients are quite easy to find in the markets.

I didn't buy this book. I actually borrowed it from the library. The glossy pictures attracted me and I was convinced to buy it here on amazon.com. Then I flipped through it and I'mglad I didn't buy it! Only some of these recipes are the traditional chinese dim sum you'd find in chinatown. The rest seem to be gourmet style dim sum; like maybe something in a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Anyhow, if you want authentic chinese dim sum...look elsewhere.

Truth is, the pictures are quite nice and it makes for a nice cofeetable book but I think several reviewers here pointed out correctly that this is not an authentic chinese dim sum book. The recipes have incorrect ingredients (fish sauce in chinese cooking?) and the few recipes I tried didnt have complete lists of ingredients and lacked in flavor. This is made for an uneducated, simplified western audience. With more and more people dining in dim sum establishment nowadays, our palates are more discriminating. I really liked the "Dim Sum - The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch" by Ellen Leong Blonder.

Beautiful photos. Absolutely terrible recipes for dim sum. I tried making several of the items in this book, more than once. Each time I repeated a recipe, I tried to add more flavor, but I finally gave up. These recipes produced the most bland, tasteless, forgettable dim sum I have ever made. I agree with another reviewer. Search out Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's, The Dim Sum Dumpling Book, or Rhoda Yee's, Dim Sum. Both books have recipes which will produce dim sum worthy of eating.

There is almost nothing to commend this book. There are only 40 recipes (excluding the 7 recipes for dipping sauces) and none of them are very good in my opinion. There are illustrations for each recipe, which is usually a plus, but in this case even the pictures were not very appetizing for the most part. I found very little in the book that looked much like anything one would find at a dim sum restaurant and there are too many recipes which recommend store bought won-ton wrappers even for steamed items. Quite frankly, it strikes me that the author has perused a few cookery books and thrown together this production without any real understanding of, or expertise in this particular style of cuisine.

If I could give this more than 5 stars I would! This book was lovingly given to me for my birthday by my fabulous boyfriend! And is a great cookbook with yummy recipes!

True, this book doesn't have tons of recipes like one reviewer suggested, but more importantly (at least to me) each recipe is presented next to a glorious full color picture of the finished dish. Seeing the finished product is important to me. The recipes are not difficult to make and there are several pages in the beginning of the book that outline ingredients and cooking technique to make the recipes in this book. Many of the ingredients we already had in our cupboard because we like making Asian dishes. Anyone could easily obtain ingredients from the ethnic section in their grocery store-- we go to Kroger.

The book is excellently organized and we are already planning to make salmon money bags and steam pork ribs to accompany an Asian entree.

One reviewer complaining that most recipes call for deep frying. I disagree and also you can be creative and steam them yourselves. Frying is not neccessary.

Buy this book- you will not be disappointed!!!

This is an excellent cookbook. I had borrowed one from a friend of mine and decided that she couldn't have it back. I had to buy a new copy to get one back to her. The recipes are a good sampling of and introduction to authentic Chinese Dim Sum. A beginner can follow these recipes and get authentic results. ... some recipes could/should have been included, but I feel that a book like this is an introductory level and stands well on its own. I also felt that the recipes were not very Americanized. The Chinese restaurants near here (O.K. It IS Vermont) typically have steak teriaki and egg rolls as appetisers and nothing that even comes close to the recipes in this book. The ingredients are relatively easy to obtain in an American market or in an Asian market in American cities. The beginning of the book shows a great lesson in some of the techniques and some ingredients. As an American trying to learn more authentic Chinese recipes, I found this book most useful.

I was looking for a complete book on dim sum food because my daughter is such a big fan. We found almost all of the foods she loves to snack on except one so our search continues but we are enjoying the book and all it offers - yum!