Chinese Cuisine (Wei-Chuan's Cookbook) (Paperback)

~ Huang Su-Huei (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The very first of Culinary Master Su-Huei Huang's cookbook successes, this collection boasts a wide range of popular Chinese dishes. Individual sections provide clear guidance for utensils, cooking method, seasonings, vegetables, and special ingredients used in Chinese Cooking. Many people are still discovering the wonders of Chinese cooking through this book and use it as a reference source.

From the Publisher

This cookbook features a wide-ranging collection of popular Chinese gourmet dishes from various regions of China. The recipes reflect the tastes and flavors associated with Taiwanese, Cantonese, Hunan, Szechwan, Shanghai, and Peking cooking.

Special effort was expanded to make this a descriptive cookbook which could effectively serve as a ¡§guiding light¡¨, inspiring the reader to further explore the art of Chinese cooking. Complementary to the foregoing, most of the dishes are presented in a manner suitable for small gatherings or large groups.

As a further aid to the reader, this cookbook contains a special section in the front, which provides the following:

1.Special ingredients and Chinese vegetables
2.Special cooking tips
3.Place settings and seating order at a traditional feast
4.Principles of menu planning and a sample menu

Chinese Cuisine was the first cookbook to be published by Wei-Chuan Publishing. It was an immediate hit because it contained recipes collected from the Wei-Chuan Cooking school in Taiwan, the largest and most respected institution of its kind along the Asia-Pacific rim. Over 900,000 copies have been sold.

Because of its authenticity, clarity and broad variety, this book is an invaluable addition to the reader's private collection.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Wei-Chuan Publishing (June 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941676080
• ISBN-13: 978-0941676083
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #258,522 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic without all that "mysticism", January 22, 2001

By	Helen L. Limm "greathera" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book when I was living in Hong Kong, and given the availability of truly excellent Chinese food, cooking the same dishes at home was always a disappointment. This book makes it very easy and keeps the recipes simple and true.

Because I'm Chinese and not fascinated by the history or mysticism or "magic" of Chinese cooking, I cannot tolerate cookbooks that are filled with little details about how some great aunt escaped imprisonment, immigrated across the seas and brought this very recipe to the outside world!

Each recipe is accompanied by a full color photo -- not the most sophisticated presentation, and certainly not as slickly produced as other cookbooks -- which is incredibly useful. This shows how large or small to chop the ingredients, how thick a sauce is supposed to be, how everything looks when it's done correctly.

In addition, there is a explanatory introduction about Chinese cooking tools, techniques and ingredients. This is a very useful section, and above all other cookbooks in my kitchen, this is the most important part of my collection.

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great all-around cookbook, May 30, 2000

By	Andrew West (Scotch Plains, NJ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Several years ago I decided I would learn to cook Chinese food. I was engaged to a wonderful Chinese woman (who is now my wife). She loves good Chinese food but doesn't cook very well. I'm American, and I didn't know how to cook any kind of food, Chinese or American. I started with this book, studied it, and went to the local Asian grocery. Pretty soon, I was competently cooking real Chinese food that my wife liked a lot(and I like it too!).

The book is bilingual in English and Chinese, and every recipe has a photograph to help you arrange it and see approximately how it should look. The instructions are generally simple and well organized. The recipes tend to be on the simple side, not particularly elaborate. Where some cookbooks will call for a recipe to have 4 steps and 12 ingredients, this one may call for 3 steps and 9 ingredients.

Nevertheless some of my most reliable and delicious recipes come from this book. The Ma Po Tofu recipe is quick and excellent for example. I notice that the book is reticent to call for large amounts of spices, especially for Sichuan dishes. So just double or triple the amount of hot bean paste, garlic, etc. if you like.

One drawback I've noticed in this book and the publisher's series is the tendency for the binding to fail, allowing pages to become loose. It doesn't matter that much because if you like it as much as I do, you'll have grease and sauce on the pages anyway.

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best Chinese cookbook available in English, January 14, 1999

By A Customer

This book lets you make authentic Chinese dishes, from banquet showpieces to homestyle dishes.These are the most authentic recipes for Chinese dishes I have found in English. Here, you will not find, as in some other cookbooks I have seen, the chicken being boiled when the traditional recipe calls for steaming, or julienned carrots substituted for the julienned bamboo traditionally used in the dish. This book and the other, more specialized Chinese cookbooks published by Wei-Chuan (the venerated and most famous cooking school in Taiwan), are the only Chinese cookbooks I use. _Chinese Cuisine_ lets me create exactly the Chinese dishes I loved as a child, for it's the very same book that my mother used, albeit in an earlier edition, as a young wife and mother in Taiwan.

These recipes are thoroughly tested, both by the Wei-chuan cooking school and by generations of students and readers. As an American-raised Chinese who knew little to begin with about Chinese cooking methods, I have made about half of the recipes in the book and had spectacular results every time. Each recipe is meticulously laid out, step by step, and accompanied by a glorious, mouth-watering photograph of the finished dish. In each recipe, photographs also demonstrate specialized techniques called for by the recipe. I also find very helpful the introductory section of the book that describes and shows clear photographs of the sometimes unusual fresh produce and preserved foods that are used in the recipes, so that someone unfamiliar with them could walk into an Asian food store and buy them by sight, or even by pointing out the picture and Chinese name of the food to a sales clerk, as I have sometimes done. Also valuable is the introductory section setting forth sample menues for family meals as well as multi-course feasts and explaining the traditional principles that the Chinese have always used in selecting the combination of dishes for a meal.

This wonderful book, along with the other Wei-Chuan Chinese cookbooks, is the only one I recommend when westerners ask me which Chinese cookbook to get. It's the best!