Customer Reviews

A Spoonful of Ginger : Irresistible Health-Giving Recipes from Asian Kitchens

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the best books for busy people who want to eat healthy, flavorful meals. I've prepared several dishes from this book and every one is a winner. Simonds' recipes use easy to find ingredients; they are quick to prepare and, best of all, they are delicious. The flavors are crisp and clean. If your only experience with Asian food is the local carry-out Chinese outlet, you will be amazed at what Asian home cooking can taste like.In addition, Simmond provides a fascinating insight into traditional Chinese medicine. This is a wonderful companion book her excellent "Asian Noodle."

I got this book online a week ago after thumbing through it at my local bookstore. Already I've made two of the recipes in the book, and they tasted heavenly! This cookbook is a MUST for the Asian foods enthusiast. Very easy to follow instructions, and easy to find ingredients. Contains recipes from many different Asian cuisines. I bought it primarily because I was looking for good oriental soup recipes, and the soup recipe I tried last night is just outstanding (Chicken Miso Soup with Snow Peas). My 19-month old toddler just loved it, and asked for seconds. I also tried a vegetable dish with a nice sauce, and again my little girl surprised me by eagerly eating all the veggies. The sauce is very versatile, and I've used it a second time with other vegetables I had on hand. Highly recommend this cookbook!

I absolutely love this cookbook! I have searched for years to find a good Asian cookbook and this is it. Next to my Joy of Cooking, I can't live without it. The recipes are delicious, simple, easy to make; the ingredients easy to find (and I live in an area where not many people seem to be into Asian cuisine, unfortunately). Even those who don't care for most Asian food will find recipes they love in this book. My children love these recipes, and they are typical McDonald's lovin' preschoolers. Two thumbs up! You must give this cookbook a try! It is definitely the best Asian cookbook I have ever tested.

I love this cookbook! The first day I recieved it I cooked from it, and the food is great. It is part cookbook, part reader, and part picture book. I highly recomend this!! Anyone who loves flipping through cookbooks will have hours of entertainment and lots of tasty dishes.

So far, the recipes I've prepared from this book have garnered nothing but raves. Many of the recipes are simple enough to prepare for weeknights, using few ingredients but very fresh ones. The result is fabulous flavor that you just can't get from your local takeout joint. The section about home remedies is really neat (I have yet to use the hangover helper recipe, but I'm sure it will come in handy one day).

I got this and Ming Tsai's "Blue Ginger" cookbook around the same time. I've barely cracked open Ming's book-the recipes are gorgeous but mostly inaccessible. If you are a newcomer to Asian cooking, I think "Spoonful of Ginger" is a delicious introduction.

Very versatile and informative. It has a little Eastern philosophy mixed in for those who are interested (I am not).

I consider myself pretty strong as amateur cooks go (favorite book to cook from is the French Laundry cookbook), and am now able to include many Asian themes in my cooking.

Favorite recipes:
* Cinnamon-braised tofu with spinach (this will keep your guests guessing for about 10 minutes about what the heck they're eating)
* Poached pears in a sweet ginger sauce (not the actual recipe name, but that's what it was)
* Yin-yang shrimp (absolutely astounding)

I found this book to be the best gift book for anyone interested in cooking, herbal healing or just a beautiful coffee table book. The recipes are savory and easy to follow. The stories are fascinating. The photos are so luscious you can almost taste the food. I highly recommend it.

I first saw Nina on PBS and ran to the computer to see if I could find her book. I have ordered many a cookbook and resold a few because they only had a recipe or 2 that I could use. Not this one. It has many soy sauce and oil stains because I use it so much.

This book is great because it is truly authentic. I say this because I found several recipes for dishes that my Chinese mother-in-law cooks when she comes over from Honk Kong. Nina's Noodle Cookbook is a great book to get, too. My husband's favorite recipe is the spicey Chinese peanut sauce, which we have a lot of during the summer as a cold noodle salad.

Nina also gives lots of variations on her recipes so it is easy to vary a recipe according to what you have on hand or what you are able to find in the grocery store. Speaking of that, many of the ingredients are easy to find in non-Asian food markets.

I was given this cookbook as a gift a few weeks after I returned from a semester living in China. I was so excited, expecting that I'd be able to replicate (or at least approximate) the wonderful Chinese textures and flavors that I missed so much. Unfourtunately, most of the recipes in this book didn't achieve authentic (or, frankly, even very good) tastes. This could be because Simonds seems intent on lowering the fat/oil content of most dishes, but there are two other persistent problems with the recipes: most sauces are thicker/stewier than they should be and flavors aren't strong enough.

The photos and anecdotes are interesting, but there are too many of them. I felt like Simonds was more intent on dropping Asian foodie names than she was on sharing the techniques and ingredient ratios that make Asian cooking so enjoyable.

If you want to learn how to make good fried rice, this book has somethign to offer you. If you want to learn how to make other Chinese (and other Asian) dishes, I'd advise that you look somewhere else (you might try Madhpur Jaffery's World Vegetarian - all of the Chinese dishes I have cooked from that book have been excellent).

I've had this cookbook for a number of years, and I freely admit that I haven't made every recipe in the book. There are some dishes, however, that have become standbys, such as the saucy ground turkey wrapped in lettuce leaves. (In fact, I just grabbed the book so I could make those lettuce wraps as my contribution to a potluck Halloween party -- everyone says, "This is better than PF Changs!")

It's not that these are the most authentic, knock-your-socks-off recipes. If I'm ready to spend a couple of hours putting together an awesome Asian meal, I'll turn to Barbara Tropp or to The Key To Chinese Cooking. However, the recipes in this book are solidly GOOD, with an underlying sense of healthful eating, and many recipes are vegetarian (or nearly so).

However, what makes this cookbook a winner is that the recipes are straightforward enough to make during the week, after an exhausting day at work (when something to balance your energy sounds most appealing -- doesn't "hot and sour salmon with greens" sound restorative?).

Plus, there's a good chance you have most of the ingredients you need in the house already, and can whip together something more interesting than "maybe I'll just open a can of chili." That's how the book falls open to the recipe for chile chicken with cashews -- I usually have a bag of frozen chicken breasts, a can of water chestnuts, scallions, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, cashews... it doesn't ask for a heck of a lot more. A few minutes of rummaging around in the refrigerator, and I have a meal that sounds like I planned it.

Also, the healthy stuff -- yin-yang, and advice about food-based remedies (mussels are good to strengthen the kidneys, for instance) -- is enjoyable and educational.

Nice book. I recommend it.