Customer Reviews

Quick & Easy Enjoy Chinese Cuisine (Quick & Easy (Japan Publications))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

These "Quick & Easy" cookbooks are WONDERFUL! Pictures of the ingredients and you can get them almost anywhere!

If you don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen but want great food...get these cookbooks!

Quick and Easy Enjoy Chinese Cuisine. The title is pretty much straight to the point. The recipes presented in this book are quick, fairly easy and simple to enjoy. I'll reserve comment on how authentic they are for Chinese cuisine though.

The book is laid out by sections and a color code on the side of the book helps you find what you are looking for quickly. You will need a few specialty items. A wok springs to mind but in general that is no great problem and the book even discusses the virtues of different types of woks and what goes best with what type of stove.

Some have said in their reviews this is a "pamphlet" and that did give me pause. "What am I buying?" But it is a book. Bound with over 120 pages, that is a book. What they may have been looking at though is the way it is laid out. Except for some instructions at the beginning and end each page is laid out in a manner that does remind you of a pamphlet.

Lew tries to keep it to a recipe a page, two at most, and while many books have lots of words and a few pictures, usually of the finished dish, this does have several pictures of each dish being created. Since the cooking style is very different from what most Occidental cooks are use to this is important and very helpful. I think you do need to have some small skill as a cook. These are not for beginners or the lack of text may be a bit overwhelming.

I will say that the lay out reminded me of some of my mother's cook books from the 1960's and that can be a little off putting but you're eating the food, not the pages. Looking through the recipes I found myself rapidly marking off ones to try, "That looks good. Oh and that one too...have to try that one" etc. I'm blessed with a wonderful Asian market near my house so the ingredients are easily found but some people who are not so fortunate may have to improvise on some dishes, but that is the nature of the cuisine and not the fault of the author.

I admit that I'm not sure how authentic to real Chinese tables the dishes are. These seem suspiciously like the dishes one gets at a Chinese restaurant in New York or Philly or Chicago rather than Beijing or Shanghai, but hey it's an introduction to the style and helps you get your feet wet

The bottom line is that these are fun, fairly easy and tasty. Are they 100% authentic? Possibly not but this is a GREAT introduction to the cuisine. It will let you know if you want to explore further into it and starts you on your basic skills. The Chinese have been cooking for millennia and you aren't going to get it all in any one book, but if it's a journey you're going to make, this is a wonderful first step.

This whole series of books is so well illustrated and written that anyone can follow them. As a culinary student and personal chef I love the fact that there is a picture of what everything is suppose to look like along the way. If you are wanting to cook and try some authentic tasting Chinese cuisine this is a great book to start with. I am hoping to collect more in the series. The format and food are both excellent!!!

This book is exactly what I was looking for in a Chinese cook book. I own several others and none of them are as easy to use as this one. I don't want to be a professional Chinese cook, I just want to be able to make some of the foods we love to eat from the take out places. This book is easy to read, the recipes are simple, and the ingredients are readily assessable. I highly recommend this book.

covols

I've tried several recipes on this book already and so far, everything is good. The books contains basic chinese recipes which is very easy to follow. Very good for biginners who wants to learn how to cook chinese food.

I had bought this book in the 90s, when it was first out and learnt to do all my Chinese cooking from it...From Sweet & Sour dishes to the best steamed dumplings! Its one of my favourites and I re-ordered it again twice to give it as birthday gifts. I am not chinese but everyone loves 'my' chinese cooking !...

This book is helpful both in the recipes given and the illustrations shown. It also has several glossaries and pages of "how to" instructions which I found useful.

This book has all of the basic recipes a beginner could want. Everything is well laid out and the directions easy to follow. No odd ingredients or difficult techniques.

There are a lot of books that can provide more varied and exotic recipes but if you're looking for a solid primer on Chinese cooking, this is a great place to start.

Wow all I can say is that I just received this book along with the Japanese one and I must say these are fairly easy to make. It has ingredients that are very easy to find in your local supermarket without having to hunt down a asian speciality store for most ingredients like a lot of other books. I agree that this is a great book if one is truly interested in maing asian dishes the easy way, it can't get easier than these books

I love the fact that there is a picture for every recipe. I have tried several dishes from this book. Outstanding!!!