Customer Reviews

Quick & Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I LOVE this cookbook. It meets all my qualifications for a good cookbook -- simple to follow, desirable recipes, great results, beautiful photography. The ingredients were easy to find and the food turned out exactly as I hoped without a lot of effort. The author didn't just make it possible for me to follow her directions, she taught me basic principles of how Chinese food is generally made that I can apply across my cooking. I highly recommend it.

Bought Nancie McDermott's "Quick and Easy Thai" and LOVED IT. Great book for any novice chef! This book is good....recipes are not as dynamic. Not bad if you are starting out...but it didn't knock me out.

I have this book, as well as the Vietnamese & Thai versions and I love them all! The recipes are delicious and easy to follow. I've recommended all 3 books to many people and will continue to do so :)

I had tremendous success with the author's Thai cookbook and hoped for the same with this one. My youngest daughter loves Chinese food, and ever since moving out to the country we have been hard pressed to find a Chinese restaurant, let alone a good one. So I went on Amazon and figured I'd bring McDermott to the rescue.

I tried the chicken cashew. While the Thai cookbook version was adored by our family, the Chinese version was greated with "meh...". And my youngest daughter asked if we could eat out next time - Ouch!!! So then I tried Kung Pao Chicken. Again, I followed the recipe to the letter. First comment from my son - "tastes funny." My youngest daughter simply stared at me. Was it the sesame oil? I dunno. So I then decided to try the Moo Shu Pork (sp?). I spent over two hours shredding raw pork, mincing fresh garlic and ginger, shredding carrots and cabbage, and making the various sauce mixes. This was truly the most labor intensive meal I had ever cooked. The results again were "meh..."

Its a shame since the Thai book is truely fantastic. So far, this Chinese food however tastes BLAND, with a capital B L A N D. One reader compared the cooking results to the cuisine of a national chain. I found that chain to be too sweet. Even so, I wish the meal's I prepared had even come close.

Oh well. The author had lived in Thailand and had cooked Thai for some time. No such similar stories in this cookbook. And the cooking results show the difference. Maybe I'm a bad cook. But 3 strikes? I'm really just not that bad. The author needs a strong next book, or the brand of Quick and Easy will be diluted....

I was looking for some new Chinese recipes when I saw this book. It was very inexpensive and the recipes looked good. While I have only tried a few, they have came out very well. It is a good addition.

Basic stir fry cookbook that dosen't require running to an Asian store for the ingredients. Every new wok should have this book included with purchase price. And the dishes are easy to make and great tasting. If you want specialty meals and you've got several hours to prepare, fine. But that's not what this book is all about.

I was looking for a cook book to gift. Naturally being very up-to-date I wanted a new ones with lots of pretty pictures. When I first picked it up it was like a book, it even has flaps to mark your page(very handy). The recipes are light and delicious. I would recommend it for anyone who likes Chinese food.