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The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook
 
 
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The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook [Paperback]

Gloria Bley Miller (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 1, 1984
An essential resource in the American kitchen and a classic for nearly four decades, this is the definitive Chinese cookbook, perfect for cooks at every level

Here is the largest, most comprehensive Chinese cookbook ever published for the Western world. A Tastemaker Award winner, Gloria Bley Miller distills centuries of Chinese recipes and techniques into concise and easy-to-follow directions that will enable any cook to produce dishes that please the eye, delight the palate, and suit the budget.

With verve and wit, Miller tells you how to prepare everything from egg drop soup and drunken pork to sizzling rice and delicate wontons. There are 150 recipes for chicken alone, plus dozens of variations on pork dishes, vegetables, and noodles, as well as other Chinese favorites. Using Miller's recipes, ordinary meat and seafood become delicacies, while vegetables retain their color and texture. And Miller's delicious recipes are splendidly high in nutrients and low in calories.

The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook contains everything the cook needs to know about Chinese cooking, including how to:

  • Use special Chinese cooking techniques such as steaming and stir-frying
  • Create unique seasonings and sauces
  • Substitute hard-to-find ingredients with those available in any supermarket
  • Plan menus suited to every time constraint, budget, and occasion

The classic Chinese cookbook, this is the only book you'll ever need to master one of the world's greatest and most versatile cuisines.


Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with The Everything Chinese Cookbook: From Wonton Soup to Sweet and Sour Chicken-300 Succulent Recipes from the Far East (Everything Series) $10.74

The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook + The Everything Chinese Cookbook: From Wonton Soup to Sweet and Sour Chicken-300 Succulent Recipes from the Far East (Everything Series)


Editorial Reviews

Review

Craig Claiborne The New York Times A labor of love...Should be treasured by anyone with a serious interest in the Chinese cuisine.

Mark Bittman The New York Times Stands the test of time...still the best guide to Chinese cooking for those with little or no experience.

The Washington Post Gives enormous amounts of information absolutely not available elsewhere. Far and away the best.

The Wall Street Journal This is the best and most comprehensive Chinese cookbook yet published in America.

About the Author

Gloria Bley Miller is a professional writer with a varied background in education and the fine arts. Unable to find a complete basic Chinese cookbook, she began to pursue the knowledge of Chinese cooking on her own, haunting Chinese grocery stores, eating in all kinds of Chinese restaurants both at home and abroad, comparing notes with Chinese friends, and, most important, constantly cooking and experimenting in her own kitchen. This cookbook is the result. Miller lives in New York with her husband, a sculptor.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 927 pages
  • Publisher: Touchstone (November 1, 1984)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0671509934
  • ISBN-13: 978-0671509934
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #112,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

46 Reviews
5 star:
 (33)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (46 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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155 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Size Isn't Everything!, May 7, 2002
By 
"littlechair" (landlocked in Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook (Paperback)
My parents are Cantonese and I grew up eating home-style food. When I left home for college in the 1980's, I lugged Miller's book with me, hoping to satisfy my ethnic belly. My dad, a professional cook who owned a restaurant, doubted the efficacy of the recipes and he was right -- they were a disappointment! It wasn't that I lacked cooking skills (I spent most of my weekends helping Dad in his kitchen, so I was competent in that way). He thought Miller's understanding of basic cooking principles was less than complete. Take her recipe for Steamed Eggs. Whenever my parents made this dish, the resulting custard was beautifully silky. But when I followed Miller's recipe to the letter, I wound up with a rubbery mat of inedible green protein. Eggs should never be overcooked, and that's what Miller's 'steam for 20-30 minutes' instructions did to them.

I won't go into the gory details about the other recipes I tried. (There was always some crucial bit of knowledge missing that made a mess of a dish.) I suspect Miller didn't actually put the vast majority of her recipes to the test. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in her zeal to amass 1000 recipes for her opus, she relied too heavily on her sources and then opted not to make the time-consuming effort of actually testing ALL the recipes herself.

At the time I bought this book, it never occurred to me to question the author's accuracy or skill. The sheer mass of the book seemed to be so thorough, so complete. Well, size isn't everything! I have a puny Cantonese cookbook featuring less than 75 recipes, but every single one of them turned out dishes as tasty as anything my folks fed me. (Sadly, this book is out of print.)
Chinese cookbooks have come a long way since Miller got published, so shop around. For homestyle Cantonese cooking, I like and respect Grace Young's "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen". Her directions and tips produce good food. She also included some folk remedy recipes I've rarely seen in print. (For those of us who remember how our moms used to drink quarts of a special tonic after giving birth to one of our sibs, well, guess what? here's your chance to find out exactly what grandma put into that evil-tasting soup!)

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo also wrote some decent books. I particularly liked "From the Earth: Chinese Vegetarian Cooking". (Her method for cooking Stir-Fry Lettuce was dead on.) As for her most recent work "The Chinese Kitchen" ... well, it IS a beautiful book ... some of her recipes are suitable for every day cooking (I thought her seafood dishes were quick and easy), but a good many of the other recipes were not dishes I'd want to tackle after a long day at work, so I can't recommend these to a beginner. If, however, you are an experienced cook who likes a weekend cooking challenge, then go for it!

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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reference book of the most common dishes, November 16, 2001
By 
Peter Lin (worcester, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook (Paperback)
I am a first generation chinese-american and love cooking. I bought the book hoping to get a good reference book. I do most of the cooking and was hoping there would be some of the more exotic dishes. The book provides a solid basis for beginners, but it doesn't contain regional dishes that one can find in china town in SF or monterey park in CA. If you're looking for taiwanese, cantonese or schzwan favorites, they're not in this book.
But then again, those dishes (dan dan mien, da bien, wonton noodle soup) are not typically served at your local chinese restaurant outside of CA or NY. If you're looking for an introduction to chinese cooking and don't particularly care to adventure into the exotic regional dishes, this book will serve you well. If you're a food nut like me, it will serve as a nice reference. If you want cookbooks that cover regional recipes, look at your local asian marke, they may have chinese cookbooks which also have english.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on the subject., December 28, 1998
This review is from: The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook (Paperback)
Our family has used this book for Chinese cooking extensively since 1965. This is the most useful book on the market because it includes descriptions of all of the basic methods of Chinese cookery as well as complete information on buying and storing special ethnic ingredients. The recipes are simple to use and each method may be mastered in turn. If I had to choose one Chinese cookbook this would be it. In 1965, before everyone was cooking Chinese food, I went to a hardware store in New York's Chinatown to buy my basic equipment. I was carrying this book. The Chinese proprietor stopped me to say that he had just bought this book for his Americanized daughter so that she should not forget her heritage. He thought the book was that good. I do too.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
CHINESE FOOD has been called the diet of the future because it is high in nutrients, low in calories and invariably well-balanced. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
mince ginger root, cut scallion stalks, peastarch noodles, cup canned button mushrooms, blend remaining cornstarch, marinade for barbecued pork, reserving liquid for stock, cup smoked ham, shred ginger root, pan containing several inches, abalone liquid, cup lily buds, red bean cheese, cup white meat chicken, let bird cool, parboiled noodles, parboil noodles, soy jam, cup roast pork, sweet vegetable sauce, crush ginger root, shred bamboo shoots, slices fresh ginger root, cup lean pork, substitute chicken fat
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Tabasco Sauce, Simple Fried Rice, Stir-fried Chinese, Basic Congee, Peel Chinese, Add Chinese, Slice Chinese, Worcestershire Sauce, Chinese New Year, Pickled Chinese, Dice Chinese, Lobster Cantonese Stir-fried, Shred Chinese
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