My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons [Hardcover]

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 2006

Award-winning cookbook author and celebrated food expert Eileen Yin-Fei Lo learned how to cook from her talented grandmother. This inspiring and instructive book collects 100 recipes the author learned in her grandmother's kitchen, along with the life lessons, observations, and other gifts she hopes to pass on to readers and future generations.

Cherished holiday recipes include steamed buns and fish congees for birthdays, vegetables prepared during the Lunar New Year, and rice dumplings made for the Dragon Boat Festival. All the essential techniques of the Chinese kitchen are represented, including stir-frying, steaming, roasting, stewing, braising, and more.

A volume to cook from, to share, and to read as a memoir in its own right, My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen celebrates a great culinary tradition by sharing family wisdom and timeless recipes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The most enchanting parts of this cookbook are the author's atmospheric essays about learning to cook at her grandmother's stoves as a child in Canton Province, bringing the rituals of pre-revolutionary China to life. Alongside elegant descriptions of her grandmother's bound feet and fields of rice, vegetables and mulberries-the latter of which she grew to feed silkworms-is a treasure trove of family recipes. Lo (The Chinese Kitchen) includes familiar Cantonese favorites like Won Ton, a time-consuming dish that's worth the work, and more obscure choices like Romaine Lettuce with Black Beans, a true winner that's mixed with a garlicky, peppery sauce that won't drown out the freshness of the produce. Other noteworthy dishes include crackling Guangfu Chicken, included in feasts "celebrating a child's first month since birth," and Salted Pork with Silken Bean Curd, a traditional New Year's dish. Also included are a number of recipes for steamed buns, soups and congee, as well as a helpful chapter of ingredient notes. Though beautifully designed with old photos of Lo's family, the volume does not include any photographs of the dishes, a challenge for home cooks who aren't sure what, say, Steamed Whole Wintermelon Soup should look like after an hour or more of cooking. But that's a small objection against what is, on the whole, a cookbook worth holding on to, and even passing down.
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About the Author

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo is the author of nine previous Chinese cookbooks. She has written about Chinese cooking for the New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Travel & Leisure, and has taught Chinese cooking for more than 20 years. She is married to Gourmet columnist Fred Feretti.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HP Trade (December 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557885052
• ISBN-13: 978-1557885050
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Chinese

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen, December 24, 2006

By 

Benjamin C. Asher "Chen" (No Caldwell NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons (Hardcover)

This delightful book will transform the way you think about cooking, about food, and likely about life as well.
Tracing her own skills back to the critical lessons she learned at a tender young age from her beloved Grandmother, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo takes you on a journey from simple baby steps (how to make perfect rice) right up to more
exotic Holiday dishes. But more than just helping you to understand how to cook properly, how to respect the ingredients, the Gods of the kitchen and more, she also shares a whole philosophy of life. An insight into how the Chinese look at things.
You could read this book without lifting one spatula, nor steaming one precious fish, and feel enriched and ennobled by the experience.
I can personally strongly recommend this profound tome to all.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cantonese cooking for the Cantonese, November 9, 2007

By 

Lucky Bill (Philly) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons (Hardcover)

My Cantonese wife is very much enjoying this cookbook. And I am enjoying the results. The cookbook is filled with lots of little tips, in addition to great recipes and background stories. Would make an excellent addition to the cookbook shelf, though it will probably be kept (well used) on the countertop!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal book on Chinese home cooking, July 7, 2007

By 

C. Fong (Upland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons (Hardcover)

I love this book for its author's personal entries and photos. The recipes are good, but some were not a part of my personal experience. For those recipes I go to Ken Hom's Easy Recipes from a Chinese American Childhood Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood (Knopf Cooks American Series) and Every Grain of Rice, by Ellen Blonder and Annabel Low.Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America However, it is fascinating to learn about cookbook author and cooking instructor Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's life. I own some of Ms. Lo's other cookbooks and look forward to trying some of the recipes in this one. I'm sure each recipe has been meticulously tested.