Quick & Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes [Paperback]

Nancie McDermott (Author), Maren Caruso (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

Throw away that take-out menu and turn to one of the recipes in this wonderful new cookbook. Using readily available ingredients and a few simple techniques, Quick & Easy Chinese brings the delicious flavors of Asia into anyone'skitchen. Included are many familiar restaurant classics like Cashew Chicken, Hot and Sour Soup, and even Fortune Cookies—all simplified for easy home cooking. With a wide range of appetizers, soups, entrees, drinks, and desserts, Quick & Easy Chinese will bring everyone good fortune and good eating.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nancie McDermott is a food writer and cooking teacher specializing in the cuisines of Southeast Asia. She lives in North Carolina.

Maren Caruso is a photographer based in San Francisco.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; Original edition (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811859304
• ISBN-13: 978-0811859301
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 8.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Chinese

More About the Author

Nancie McDermott is a North Carolina native, born in Burlington, raised in High Point, and educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand gave her a lifelong love for the cuisines, history and cultures of Asia, and she has spent the last twenty years cooking, reading, traveling, writing, and teaching about Asian food. Her ten cookbooks focus on Asian kitchens, but since moving back home to North Carolina in 1999, she has taken time to look at the foods of the American South, the place she fell in love with cooking in her grandmother's dairy farm kitchen. Now living with her family in Chapel Hill, NC, she writes, researches, and teaches about both her beats, while serving as a contributing editor for Edible Piedmont magazine. Visit her blog at: nanciemcdermott.wordpress.com, to keep track of it pie by pie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the book I have been looking for!, December 30, 2008

By 

Mildred T. Broselow (hickory NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quick & Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes (Paperback)

This is the book on Chinese cooking that I have been looking for. All the dishes you love to eat in the restrauants, and for take out. Wonderful for those of us with no take out worthy of eating. Easy and flavorfull. The cover recipe is delicious... Kung Pao Chicken. Mongolian Beef is divine, but you need to double or triple the sauce. Lemmon Chicken is easy and fantastic as is the Shrimp with Zucchini and Sweet Red Peppers. They are all here..Orange beef, Pepper Steak, Chicken with Cashews, Moo Goo gai Pan, Pot stickers, Mu Shu Pork, and all are tasty and easy to make in an American kitchen. No pretenses to be authentic. Just extremely good American Chinese.... Like P.F.Chang's... I can't reccomend it highly enough.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Americanized Chinese dishes that you love., February 7, 2009

By 

kiwanissandy "Go Bucks!" (Heart of Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Quick & Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes (Paperback)

This cookbook is for those who love Chinese food made the American way. There are 70+ recipes and it is all your favorites. This would make a great wedding present combined with a wok.

I made the soy sauce chicken wings on page 27 and they were fabulous. I needed to increase the sauce because the suggested amount was not nearly enough. I also had the hot and sour soup. It was still a good soup, just different then I've had before.

It had the Kung Pao, Szechuan, 5 spice, etc...all the typical American favorites. The picture on the cover is the Kung Pao Chicken, it's not a very appetizing picture but the dish itself was very good. There are pictures of some of the dishes, the pages are thick and glossy, you'd be able to wipe off spills easy enough.

The chapters are divided into beef, pork, chicken, fish and then vegetables and rice chapters. The fried rice with shrimp and peas was very good.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very tasty!, October 19, 2009

By 

Net Admin / Home Chef (Sterling, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quick & Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes (Paperback)

After making several recipes from this cookbook, I am very happy that I purchased it. My first try was sweet and sour pork and we really enjoyed it. That was followed by orange beef which was also a big hit. Some might complain that these recipes are not completely authentic. For example, neither the sweet and sour pork nor the lemon chicken are breaded and deep fried. Instead they are sauted in the wok, but I found the result delicious. I think the goal is to make preparation simpler and the result healthier and I prefer them this way so it really isn't a negative for me.

Though there are only 70 recipes, they include good suggestions for beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, fish, and vegetable side dishes. The recipes are illustrated with beautiful color photograpy and most of the ingredients can be found in a good chain grocery store with an international aisle. A few things, for example Asian vegetables such as bok choy, will be found more easily or more cheaply at an Asian grocery if you have one nearby. If you don't, substitute napa cabbage for bok choy and young string beans for long beans and the result will still be very tasty.