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Phil's Cookbook Reads of 2021

30K views 177 replies 9 participants last post by  chrislehrer 
#1 ·
I've amassed a backlog of cookbooks--mostly of Asian influence--to read. I thought a thread might be of interest and if nothing else is a shared catalog of what I'm reading and thinking of these books. I'd be interested in seeing such lists from other members in their own threads as well.

  1. Cooking South of the Clouds by Georgia Freedman. I heard of this book through a marketing email I get from Mala Market last year. They're a good source of specialty Chinese ingredients and share interesting recipes, They spoke highly of the book and so I added it to my list. It languished there for quite a while particularly as it was slow to come to market in the US. I got motivated to read it because of another Yunnan regional cookbook I'll talk about below. Overall, I liked this one better for it's greater variety of flavoring approaches. Yunnan is known for it's air cured hams and includes the region we call Tibet in the rise to the Himalayas. Thus the South and Clouds. Seasonings seem to focus more on preserved/pickled foods and chilies though the common soy sauce and oyster sauce do make appearances, just less than you might expect. Fried and boiled squash leaves dishes stuck out to me. I'd not seen those cooked before. I didn't know they were edible. I've eaten the blossom, which are just a specialized leaf so it makes sense. This is the better of the two Yunnan focused books in my opinion.
  2. The Yunnan Cookbook by Anabel Jackson. I get weekly cooking emails from the South China Morning Post as well. One of those emails included an interview with Anabel Jackson who has written more on the food of Macao than most anyone else and how that cuisine is fading away. So I've been looking for her books on Macau and she's written some on Vietnamese food and a few on China. And so now I had two Yunnan focused books to read and contrast each other. This is a pretty and elegant book and is missing page numbers on pages with recipes. Where she's talking about a region or category of food, those pages get numbers. This is annoying to me. I usually write notes in the front end-papers with a recipe name and page number that I'm interested in trying out. Couldn't really do that here. And no index either, but without page numbers I suppose that is reasonable. The recipes are very simple and short for what you may have come to expect for a Chinese recipe. Not as much caught my eye as in Cooking South of the Clouds. A zucchini and dried shrimp dish stood out to me and a pumpkin soup. I've seen hard squashes steamed but not made into soup in Chinese cuisine.
  3. Chinese Cooking: The Food and the Lifestyle by Anabel Jackson. This one sat strangely with me. She covers most of what you'd expect, usually with a bit more exotic content. However there are dishes overly simplified--Hot and Sour Soup-- for a non-Asian reader, but others that were surprisingly unadapted. The Egg Fu Yung, Fu Yung just means eggs, is a fried rice dish and not an omelet in gravy as Westerners might expect. Considering its publication in 2004, I think it runs behind the times even when published for sticking closer to traditional ingredients. This feels like it was from 10 years earlier or more. I found her vegetable section the most interesting with some dressed cold vegetable dishes (cabbage and cucumber one looks good) and even a stir fried potato and cilantro one. There's a scallion pancake recipe that just reads wrong to me. This isn't the flour based one (she includes one of those too) but the more rolled eggy style. The picture shows what I think to be an 8 inch non-stick skillet rolling up a pancake. The instructions say to put in 1 tablespoon of batter, cook it, roll it up and cut in three pieces. I just don't see the pancake shown coming from 1 T of batter. Based on the volume of ingredients and suggested yield, it must be more. Not a must have unless you're an Anabel Jackson completist.
On Tuesday 1/19, Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food is released. The original Chinese Soul Food is a good Chinese cookbook and is worth trying out. I don't think this new one will land right on top of my reading pile though.

Expect updates.
 
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#80 ·
Finished up with Hot, South, Salty, Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

I like the cooking here, the Thai less so than some of the rest. But that probably reflects my tastes more than the cooking specifically. It did seem to fall back on simple Thai dishes focused chile, lime, lemongrass and fish sauce without some of the other flavors as much as I might have preferred. If I were a bigger chile-head, I'd probably have liked those better. My family is even less chile oriented so that influences me too.

The book takes the Mekong River as its organizing theme, but not strictly so. They frequently reach out of the Mekong drainage basin to reach further into Thailand, particularly Chiang Mai and a few other places. Nor do they follow the Mekong from the headwaters on down as an organizing principle itself for the food, but more for the stories.

There are a lot of stories. But more than travelogue, it is a peoplogue about the people who took care of them, taught them dishes and demonstrated their culture. Still more story than I want, but tastes differ.

I liked the Morning Market Noodles and its easy variations built from parts of other recipes in the book. This recycling gives you a built-in path for leftovers and simplifies your next meal besides just tasting good. Similarly, the various ways to build a noodle bowl (Vietnamese Noodle Combos). I've done similar things so these plugged into my notes and practice as convenient augmentations and variations.

I mentioned the lon a few posts back. Simple and good.

There's a ginger beef dish using ginger as a vegetable I'm intrigued by but probably can't pull off. It needs the young pinkish ginger to be tender and I so rarely see it.
KHMER STIR-FRIED GINGER AND BEEF

[saiko cha k'nye-CAMBODIA]
Sao Pheha (see Phnom Penh Nights, page 242) introduced me to several easy dishes from the Khmer home-cooking repertoire. This was perhaps the simplest, and also the most surprising. It's a stir-fry in which ginger has the role of featured vegetable, warming and full of flavor. The ginger is cut into julienne twigs and then fried with a little beef. The result is a mound of beef slices and tender ginger, all bathed in plenty of gravy, a great companion for rice.

Be sure to buy firm ginger for this dish (ginger with wrinkled skin will be tough and stringy), and, if there's a choice, young ginger rather than the tan mature ginger. Serve with a sour stew or soup, such as Khmer Fish Stew with Lemongrass (page 181) or Buddhist Sour Soup (page 58), and some simple greens, such as Classic Mixed Vegetable Stir-fry (page 151).

Generous ½ pound boneless sirloin, eye of round, or other lean beef
½ pound ginger, preferably young ginger
3 tablespoons vegetable or peanut oil
3 to 4 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar


Thinly slice the beef across the grain and set aside. Peel the ginger, then cut it into fine matchstick-length julienne (this is most easily done by cutting thin slices, then stacking these to cut into matchsticks). You'll have about 2 cups.

Heat a wok over medium-high heat. Add the oil and, when it is hot, add the garlic. Cook until golden, 20 to 30 seconds. Add the meat and stir-fry, using your spatula to separate the slices and to expose them all to the heat, until most of the meat has changed color. Add the fish sauce and sugar, toss in the ginger twigs, and stir-fry until just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Serve hot with rice.

SERVES 4 with rice and another dish
Butzy has lamented the index. I too have the ebook, so it's not a hardship to do a whole text search. Within the text, as shown above, it's usefully cross-referenced to related or compatible dishes.
 
#81 · (Edited)
Added Hong Kong Local to the list. For being published in 2020, this is only available in physical print. I found this book as a result of my searches on two classes of eatery: dai pai dong and cha chaan teng. Wikipedia defines them both pretty well. Cha chaan teng also have a kind of reverse American Chinese food. Things like macaroni soup, fried rice with hotdogs and ketchup, baked pork chop on fried rice covered with cheese, a French toast variation and so on.

Have to see if it's any good.

This book is part of a "series". Others so far are Penang Local, Bangkok Local and Tokyo Local. I don't know if there are more entries planned or not.
 
#82 · (Edited)
This is bothering me in "My Shanghai". In the introdcution, she throws around the word pure more than I find myself comfortable with. For example:

To coax out that pure, deep flavor, some dishes take a bit of time to prepare and cook, such as Suzhou Pork Belly Noodle Soup, which simmers on the stove for hours after a lengthy curing process. A look at the ingredients shows that the pork belly is only lightly flavored with aromatics, both fresh and dry, cooking wine, and a touch of soy sauce. Like all good food, it's all about layering. Layering-from the initial prep to seasoning while cooking and the final garnish-builds up the flavors seamlessly. It's no wonder that this is one of the most famous dishes in Suzhou, beloved for its pure flavor and delightfully melty texture.
So what is a pure flavor? How does 5 hours of cooking not alter a flavor, render it therefore less pure? Here are the ingredients.

1¾ pounds (800 g) skin-on pork belly
4 tablespoons kosher salt, plus more as needed
1 bunch scallions
4 slices fresh ginger
3 whole star anise
4 dried bay leaves
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rock sugar
1 teaspoon salt
The weakest flavor there is the scallions IMHO. The rest are plenty to season some pork belly to significant degree.

How is the result purer than the starting point from a flavor perspective? I'll quote from Chinese Gastronomy for what these ingredients are considered to do in Chinese cooking.

Sugar: restores or improves Hsien flavor (Hsien being the "sweet natural delicate flavor" as of fat pork)
Ginger, spring onions: suppresses offensive flavours
Wine, Spirits: suppresses rank flavors
Soy sauce: impart meaty taste

Salt: added for texture control, removing excess water--may not apply here particularly, but worth noting.

Boiling (the long simmer): Extract fat.

This particular idea of purity then seems to focus on what tender fatty pork can become rather than what it is--the pursuit of Hsien flavor. You have to mask the natural but off flavors, amplify it with sugar and soy, purge water, fat and its' natural toughness through long cooking as textural elements are also part of "flavor" in this case I think.

I think the use of pure is meaningless to an English audience, and sloppy writing and editing. Betty Liiu is writing from within a view and experience of a culture we as outsiders can only struggle to understand. She's too close to the culture to see that what this word means to her is not what it means to the rest of us. And her editor didn't catch the idea differences either.

I live within a regional religious culture where "purity" has a particular meaning I find on the oppressive side so I may be overly sensitive to its use here. But I struggle to see the usage of pure flavor when it is so distinctly altered. She should have defined this usage and cultural ideal so the reasons for the seasoning and techniques become clear.

I wouldn't have really clued in without having read Chinese Gastronomy.
 
#83 · (Edited)
My Shanghai by Betty Liu

Plenty of detailed instructions, a lot of new dishes, and fun tweaks on well known ones.

I'm going to quibble with the organization principle of seasonality. I think it's a great way to cook generally, healthy, inexpensive, less planetary impact and all that. But when you're writing an ethnic cookbook for a not-that-ethnicity-nor-location audience, the seasonality basically ceases to exist. I can't get hairy crab from Yang Cheng Lake in October. I'm happy to read about them, but you better give me good substitutions. And she does, recommending blue crabs.

There's a lot of bamboo in here. I like bamboo. I can't find the kind of bamboo she talks about. She differentiates between winter and spring bamboo, the winter being more often used, probably because of availability. I can't go into the local forest and forage spring bamboo. She's less good about substitutions here, talking about using dried or frozen winter bamboo quite often. Except I've not found dried or frozen bamboo of any season in my markets. I can buy fresh of some sort in the produce section, a vacuum sealed variety in the refrigerator case and canned bamboo.

Some of her preferred greens are equally scarce, though she gives options there.

Anyway, there's quite a bit of new content for me. Stuffed lotus, pig trotters, a soy-black vinegar radish pickle, various new vegetable ideas and plenty of "red" cooked dishes.

The red cooking is a departure from what I've seen in the past. My past reading is that you build a master red cooking stock and use it again and again, tweaking the seasoning as it evolves with use. And don't use it for fish as that will change the flavor beyond recovery. Here she builds a comparatively simple broth most of the time and uses it just the once. And she red cooks fish too. There's also a fun variation on Lion's Head Meatballs that get red cooked. I think that sounds like a good idea.

There are few bao dishes that rose to the level I actually want to try. Bao have usually struck me as too time intensive. These seem a bit faster, and perhaps my life has discovered more availability for cooking time from covid. The Morning Pork Bao and the similar Pan-Fried Pork Bao appealed to me.

The Scallion Pancake is the first I've found in writing to use You Su--the flour oil paste that has worked well in my other cooking of these. It also crops up in another dish, the Mooncakes, which I don't recall with other Mooncakes off hand. Her pancake builds a scallion oil for the paste which is a good technique.

Scallion Oil actually figures more than you might think in the cuisine generally. it's one of the core things made in Eileen Yin Fei Lo's Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. As for Liu's book under discussion here, she does include the classic Shanghai dish of Scallion Oil noodles. and also a Scallion Oil-Poached chicken. I've avoided making the noodle dish in the past as I don't digest oily dishes all that well. Her version isn't as oily as most I've seen, such as Mike Chen's.



Liu's includes some dried shrimp and black vinegar as well.

Scallion Oil Noodles
葱油拌面 | cōng yóu bàn miàn | Makes 2 servings

image


You haven't experienced Shanghai until you've had a bowl of scallion oil noodles. It's a quintessential old Shanghai dish, a humble, yet extremely satisfying, bowl of noodles. This dish highlights the secret of that complex umami flavor used in many of Shanghai's signature dishes: scallion oil. Scallions are slowly fried in oil so that their flavor infuses it. This flavored oil serves as the base of this dish. Dried shrimp is an excellent addition that supplies an extra bit of umami. If you're craving something with more protein, fry some ground pork in your scallion oil until browned and crisp, then turn off the heat and proceed with the recipe.

NOTE: You can also make scallion oil ahead of time. Quadruple the recipe (everything but the noodles) below and follow the steps. Let it cool and pour it into a sterile jar; it will keep in the fridge for up to 1 month. Use it anytime to elevate any dish you're making.

1½ teaspoons dried shrimp
6 to 8 scallions, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) segments
3 tablespoons neutral cooking oil, such as canola or grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
½ teaspoon black vinegar
1 tablespoon crushed rock sugar or granulated sugar
pinch of ground white pepper
½ pound (225 g) fresh Shanghai-style thin noodles, cooked to al dente (or 2 servings of any dried noodles-I've used soba and ramen noodles to great effect.

1.Place the dried shrimp in a small bowl with hot water to cover and soak for 30 minutes. Drain and pat dry with a paper towel.

2.Smash the scallions with the side of a meat cleaver. Pat dry with a paper towel to avoid water droplets causing the oil to splatter during stir-frying.

3.Heat the oil in a well-seasoned wok over medium-low. Add the scallion segments and let them fry slowly, so they turn yellow without burning. Stir occasionally so the segments brown evenly. This slowly rendered-out flavor is essential to this recipe-be patient and let the toasty flavor infuse the oil. I usually let the scallions cook for 20 to 30 minutes, but for a deeper flavor cook them at a lower heat for longer, even up to 1 hour. Reduce the heat to low, add the shrimp, and cook for another 5 minutes.

4.Meanwhile, mix together the dark and light soy sauces, vinegar, and sugar.

5.Increase the heat to medium and immediately pour the soy sauce mixture into the wok. Fine bubbles and foam will form in the sauce (if it bubbles too much, your heat is too high) and begin to caramelize. Stir to dissolve the sugar and let simmer for 2 to 3 minutes to thicken. Turn off the heat. Add the white pepper. Add the cooked noodles to the wok and toss to combine. Divide the noodles between two bowls, making sure to scoop up the scallion segments.
And there's plenty of black vinegar, it shows up in many dishes which excited me. There is also pork lard in a lot of dishes, frequently as a sort of melted garnish. She doesn't specify the kidney fat often called for in teaching you to make lard. Westerners select that if available because it lacks the flavor possible in some other pieces of fat. So there will be more flavor to this lard than what a westerner might think of. And there's enough pork belly getting cooked that you could trim out some of the fatty parts just to use to make lard for the other dishes.

And yes, "pure" flavor continues to crop up throughout the book.

The recipes show more of a localized flair than you'll see in a general book of Chinese cooking. And the instructions and background info are pretty good. I do recommend this for fans of Chinese cooking. Probably not the best first book unless your focus is Shanghai.
 
#84 ·
I forgot to mention" exploding into flavor". Liu is only the second author I've seen to mention this method of stir frying. The other is Irene Kuo, author of The Key To Chinese Cooking. Liu's explanation is better, emphasizing a short high heat fry to generate the flavor. For the most part on a home stove, its really not so distinct in my opinion. But it's fun to get this insight into the cultural view that is likely based on traditional live fire technique.
 
#85 ·
Masala Lab by Irish Ashok

Entertaing but didn't contribute to my understanding of Indian food because I don't have the knowledge assumed by the author for ratios of spices, particular words and meanings and so on. And his recommendation of base gravies in the freezer isn't a good match for my cooking style. Unless you already cook Indian food somewhat instinctively,/habitually this book isn't likely to help
 
#89 ·
That one sounds interesting as well.
Did you read the books from Grace Young? Breath of a wok and stir frying to the sky's edge?

And another one that you might enjoy: the science of spice. A bit of a novel way of looking at spices
 
#91 ·
Hong Kong Local by Archan Chan

While I picked this up looking for more info about Cha Chaan Teng and Dia Pai Dong, it does not go in to them much. Organized along the time of day you might eat the kinds of things presented and a final chapter covering some of the mixed condiments and such, it covers ground fairly well covered elsewhere for me. This is not a failing, just that i've become kind of jaded I think.

Early, they offer some different congees, the fried "cruller" bread, fresh soy milk, milk tea, rice rolls, noodles, common dim sum entries, soup, egg tarts and a few other sweetish offerings. The cruller I've mostly seen videos for, so it was good to see a written description. I don't recall a milk tea "recipe" before. Theirs is much stronger than I would have supposed--full disclosure, I'm medically proscribed from caffeine so if I indulge, its' usually Diet Coke. I had the impression from other discussions that milk tea was milder.

The Cheung Fun rice roll is from scratch rather than trying to cludge some other rice product into the role, and the seasoned soy sauce is more complex than most with some cooked off ginger and spring onion in addition to the sugar. Nice touch.

Hong Kong French Toast makes an appearance, a classic Cha Chaan Teng dish. The primary departure from western versions is the kaya jam addition. Savory versions are also described.

Sa Cha Beef noodles were fun to see in print. I rarely see sa cha sauce used in books outside of mentioning it for seasoning the dip sauce for hot pot. Taiwanese cuisine seems more prone to using it than other regions of China.

Now that it's Midday, we have some more Dim Sum entries, a fried rice, more sweet things. A pepper steak, another of the western dishes adopted into Chinese cuisine One new to me is the "double-skin" custard set with egg whites alone. Also a ginger custard with eggs. I've seen one once that use "old" ginger juice which is acidic enough to curdle the warm milk directly. Never tried either of these though.

Late starts off with a number of shellfish dishes. Also a poached goose an ingredient I rarely see discussed. Poached fowl holds a place in Asia that westerners really don't have presented to them in restaurants. Then chicken from poached, white-cut, hot pot, salted, baked, soy sauce style, lemon, kung pao... A few stir fries and back into sweet things.

As far as Hong Kong goes, these do strike me as things I've seen described as popular there. It's not a deep dive, but is good at what it does.
 
#92 · (Edited)
Makan by Elizabeth Haigh.

Much more approachable than the other Singapore/Malay books I've read this year. While this may be because I read those other books, I think it is also a deeper explanation of ingredients, technique and steps. And that it's already Westernized to a degree by what folks in the UK can likely access.

It is not without its hurdles though. The book is unabashedly Metric without Imperial equivalents alongside the measurements. There is a pretty useful table of conversions in the back of the book, but not a big deal generally. I just have to push a button a few times to set my scale to Metric.

There are of course some language usage disconnects. I sometimes get confused which is which with courgettes/aubergines and zucchini/eggplant. She uses the term laksa leaves. I just thought it was a dish, but it refers to what is sold as rau ram in my markets, Vietnamese Coriander. She uses HP sauce at one point, which I've never heard of. It's a British tomato-tamarind condiment. I can certainly get it on line, but its only used once and not in a dish I'm likely to make soon.

The organization system didn't make any particular sense to me. So everything is kind of scattered around through the book.

I liked the Mee Soto. It's not too exotic of a dish. I'll have to see how well my tools will blend for the rempah. I only have a hand held blender and food processor which may not go finely enough for the rempah. I can do it by hand I suppose in the mortar and pestle.

I've encountered a few versions of Hainanese Chicken Rice lately and I might give it a go again now that i have more interesting sauces and some better tips on the rice. Hers looks like a good start. I will probably use different sauces though.

Her Cabbage Rice looks like it would go over well with my family.

The Char Shu looked a little weak, lacking some of the pungency I would expect. But easier for the shorter ingredient list.

The food styling for Braised Chicken with Black Fungus and Shitake seems a little like a mixed plate of organs to me. Usually black fungus gets shredded so you don't get those organic dark blobs folding through the dish. Maybe I'm just channeling the motile intestine scene from the movie Annihilation.

179_1.jpg


She offers a chili crab, pretty similar to the one from The Food of Singapore I wrote about earlier in this thread. Hers is a little less strongly seasoned. I find it a bit odd they both used ketchup in the same amounts. I guess it's a consistent ingredient for the dish.

I enjoyed the callout to Uncle Roger for the egg fried rice. You can watch him cook his version in her restaurant. If you've never seen Uncle Roger, it is satire and colorful.


And she gives a Fish Curry Powder recipe as well as a general curry powder recipe. First Fish Curry powder I've seen in print.

This is the better starting point to the cuisine I think than some others. She gets right to the core of cooking the dishes. Light on tradition and culture compared to some of the others. Also only for the Chinese heritage Nonya style cuisine.
 
#94 ·
The Mee Soto
Food Tableware Ingredient Recipe Staple food


Fairly intense broth experience. Flavor is good and unlike anything I've had before. I'd probably cut back on the white pepper and coriander seed next time just for my own taste preference. And there will be a next time.
 
#96 ·
I made Haigh's Hainanese Chicken. No pix. It was pretty good, better than other versions I've tried. I did not have her "required" Pandan leaves and I should try it with those. I think I can find them. Many recipes do not list the Pandan leaves so I thought it would be an acceptable omission.

The praised and valued gelatinous skin was not a highlight of the dish for us.

I served it with Lau's Scallion Ginger Sauce. My condiment averse daughter liked that sauce a lot. Said she would even eat dumplings with it.

I've not been reading much this week. I've got the first few pages of Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes. This is a pan-asian cookbook, but I've not reached any actual cooking yet. Will be traveling next week and that will limit my reading as well. I tend towards motion sickness if reading in motion.
 
#97 ·
Looked through a couple of books by Kylie Kwong at the public library in Flagstaff Arizona. My China A Feast for All the Senses is more travel than cooking. She had an interesting lamb skewers recipe I copied down.

And in her cookbook with simple in the title the egg section had some ideas I'll want to look at again. I'll have to find it in my local library for a deeper dive.

I found it interesting she recommends malt vinegar to substitute black vinegar.
 
#98 ·
Here's her Xian Lamb Skewers. I was surprised by the turmeric.

1 kg (2 lb) lamb fillets, cut 1 cm (1/2 in) cubes
1 tablespoon sea salt
2 lemons, cut into wedges

Spice paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika powder
1 teaspoon ground fennel
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon roasted and ground Sichuan pepper
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon dried chile flakes
1/3 cup vegetable oil

First make the spice paste. Combine all the spices in a large bowl, then add the oil to form a paste. Add meat and mix well, cover, place in refrigerator leave to marinate for 4 hours. minutes.

Soak sixteen 25 cm (10 in) bamboo skewers in cold water for 30 minutes

Thread lamb onto skewers and cook on a hot grill. Serve immediately, seasoned with sea salt and with lemon wedges alongside.

serves 4 (makes about 16 skewers)

You can also use beef steak or chicken thigh.

My two local library systems (city / county) have none of her books. I'd have thought one of them would.
 
#99 ·
Finally finished Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes. The finally isn't about the quality of the book, rather the quality of my August.

What attracted me to this book was the lighthearted approach to the food. And it fulfills that with entertaining snark and humor throughout. I'm not on board with a lot of their simplifications, but it's not without it's value.

This is a pan-asian cookbook and they acknowledge that some countries don't get equal representation. Their goal was to simplify tools and pantry and they mostly accomplish this. They seem a bit focused on the green papaya salad that they get into the mortar and pestle, at least a mandoline for the cutting and dried shrimp they only use one other time. They value that salad more than I do.

As they give the rundown on specialty ingredients, they mention (and link in the ebook) to recipes that will use that ingredient in an important way. For the dried shrimp, they clarify it is only used in two recipes in the whole book. I appreciated this kind of clarity to help a reader grasp the usefulness of the ingredient to the book as a whole or to their interest in a particular recipe. If I write a cookbook, it's something I think I'd add and hope that other writers would add this value to their books too.

Some snark quotes
When we call for Chinese sausage we are calling for the basic pork variety, though you can substitute others as you like. The kind made "with wine," as some of the packages say, has a nice, buzzy, old-man-with-baijiu-breath flavor that I like,
Real talk: Preserved black beans stink like a dead animal left out on hot asphalt. Another truth: They add an incredibly delicious umami note when added in even tiny amounts to a dish.
People often invoke the slurping of the first raw oyster when they talk about how crazy it is that we humans eat such a wide range of flora and fauna. For me, I think of the first crazy bastard who stood over a barrel of anchovies covered in rainwater that had been sitting out in the summer sun for weeks and thought to himself, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna sprinkle that juice all over my dinner tonight!"

But he was a genius and I doff my cap to him.
So, the recipes. The Hot and Sour Soup looks like something out of the 70s, and not in a good way. Just plain rice vinegar for the sour, even though they use black vinegar elsewhere. No bamboo, no lily buds and sriracha instead of white pepper.

The Miso clam chowder was beyond my brain's apprehension. I just couldn't quite combine cream miso and clams in my head.

The Rotisserie Chicken Ramen looked worthwhile for a dish of efficient re-use.

The Garlic and Greens dish was straightforward, well executed and is a good one. I've used Barbara Tropp's version many times over the years and this one is even simpler.

And one of my favorite sauces, Irene Kuo's Odd Flavor Sauce makes an appearance with a few slight tweaks. She even gets credited.

If you enjoy food writing, this is fun. If you are serious about asian food, this will probably rub you wrong multiple times. But there is value in a simplified approach. I think this would be an excellent book for a young adult on their own for the first time who is interested in Asian flavors. The book teaches efficiency and re-use of ingredients from one meal for another and provides flavor and texture in the Asian style.

I have another book of theirs on sausage coming up. I'm not sure if I should anticipate or fear it.
 
#100 ·
bowls! by Molly Watson

I like the idea of bowls, but too often they're health food fodder chew fests with only a semblance of enjoyment. And this is certainly more in that vein. I would like to see the idea driven more towards simplicity and enjoyment.

Organization is mostly about how to cook the different base ingredients. So various grains and roasted veges, some protien and a sauce, usually a vinaigrette. The cooking is competent and basic. Then there are a some basic combination ideas reflecting various cultures, regions, ethnicities and flavors. Nothing particularly complex though you do dirty a few pans along the way to serve it all in one dish.

The cooking picks up more interest in part 3 full bowls where the recipe is designed together from the ground up with out all the mix and match of the first parts. I still felt like there was a focus on getting all the health categories into play rather than on the design of the food itself, but there were things that were more to my taste.

The Black Pepper Tofu Bowl captures a lot of south east asian flavors and you could sub in some other protein pretty easily. I might change out the brown rice for rice noodles too but I'm not devoted to fiber counting in my diet as much as the author.

Also the Spanish Shrimp looked pretty good though I think the corn was out of place.

Spanish Shrimp
red lentil quinoa pilaf + smoked paprika shrimp + escarole salad + corn

Food Tableware Ingredient Recipe Rotini


ORDER OF OPERATIONS

  1. 1. Cook the pilaf
  2. 2. Make the salad
  3. 3. Cut corn kernels from cob(s)
  4. 4. Cook the shrimp
  5. 5. Assemble the bowls

red lentil quinoa pilaf
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup [180 g] quinoa
1/4 cup [30 g] pine nuts
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup [105 g] red lentils, rinsed
2 cups [480 ml] chicken broth

escarole salad
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 head escarole, cored and torn into bite-size pieces

smoked paprika shrimp
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp hot paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb [455 g] peeled and deveined shrimp
1 Tbsp olive oil

Kernels from 1 (or 2!) ear corn for garnish

FOR THE PILAF: In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the olive oil, quinoa, and pine nuts and stir until the quinoa and pine nuts are lightly toasted, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and pepper flakes (if using) and continue stirring until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the lentils and the broth and bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat to low, and cook until the liquid is absorbed and the quinoa and lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Uncover and fluff with a fork. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

FOR THE SALAD: Heat a small frying pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, add the cumin seeds and cook, shaking the pan constantly, until toasted, about 1 minute. Transfer the cumin seeds to a mortar, let them cool slightly, and crush them with a pestle (or put them on a cutting board and crush them with a meat mallet or the bottom of a small, heavy frying pan).

Put the crushed cumin seeds, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil in a large bowl. Whisk to combine, then season with salt and pepper. Add the escarole and toss to coat evenly. Set aside.

FOR THE SHRIMP: In a medium bowl, stir together the garlic, hot and smoked paprika, and salt. Add the shrimp and toss to coat evenly with the spices. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes. Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the shrimp and cook, turning once, until they are pink and opaque, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat.

TO ASSEMBLE: Divide the pilaf among four bowls. Arrange the shrimp on top of one side of the pilaf and the escarole on top of the other side. Scatter the corn kernels over all and serve.
It was worthwhile but pretty mechanical in the first parts of the book. I liked Buddha Bowls by Kelli Foster better for this topic. Still pretty health focused there too. I seek something more indulgent in the category. And I think Asian cuisine is well suited to the task.
 
#101 ·
In a similar vein, I skimmed bowl by Lukas Volger. This is billed as vegetarian recipes for Ramen, Pho. Bibimbap, dumplings and other one dish meals. This is more to my thinking about bowls although still twisted more healthy/vegetarian than I would approach them. But the Asian focus is a good start.

The organization is wheat noodles, then rice noodles and rice, then other grains, dumplings, and basics. I'm seeing this more and more lately where the oft repeated steps for stock and such is moved to the back. I think this helps limit skip reading gets readers into the more interesting topics.

The Rice noodles and rice was the more interesting to me. Lukas give a vegetarian pho variation for the goods available in each season, some bibimbap and then with the rice two bowls I work with now and then already. A kimchi fried rice bowl and chirashi (sushi bowl) The kimchi bowl gets some par-fried lettuce-an iffy addition in my book but with romaine lettuce I can get on board with the idea. Lukas gives some good advice/instruction on the adding of the soy sauce, about it hitting a hot spot in the pan so it can go through the chemical changes of high heat cooking, bringing out its flavors and complexity.

Kenji calls out this point while making egg-fried rice over three different stoves


Back the to kimchi fried rice, Lukas also makes a quick cucumber pickle. I'm not sure how I feel about this as the kimchi is already pretty acidic. But checking quantities, he only adds 1 tablespoon of the kimchi juice/brine and I've normally added more. So I guess it depends how much kimchi and juice you're using.

The Sushi bowl gets a sort of teriyaki glazed sweet potato that looks to work well. I'll be using that idea to punch up the vegetable content in my sushi bowls. The teriyaki glaze is the sauce.

In the other grains section, he lost me with the black rice burrito bowl. You lose the spanish rice flavors and the presentation is all kinds of wrong.

Dumplings, there are some interesting base ideas, but they really call out for a sauce to accent and unify the ingredients.

Unless you're really looking for vegetarian interpretations of classic asian cuisine, I don't think this is the right bowl book for an omnivore.
 
#103 ·
Thread Summary to date

This is the list as I've tabulated it. This includes the few I did not finish and are noted as such. Also shown separately are the books I just skimmed. Bolded books are the ones that I think had special merit for my knowledge and cooking. Red are books that I found of low value or just bad. These are judged on my personal valuation of the book, not as it may apply to others as much.

1 Cooking South of the Clouds by Georgia Freedman
2 The Yunnan Cookbook by Annabel Jackson
3 Chinese Cooking: The Food and the Lifestyle by Annabel Jackson
4 Indian and Chinese Cooking from The Himalayan Rim by Copeland Marks
5 Sheet Pan Chicken by Kathy Erway
6 A Chinese Street Food Odyssey Helen Tse
7 The Adobo Road Cookbook by Marvin Gapultos
8 The Best of Singapore Cooking Did Not Finish
9 Homestyle Malay Cooking by Rohani Jelani
10 Binging With Babish by Andrew Rea
11 Chinese Feasts and Festivals by S. C. Moey
12 Gok Cooks Chinese by Gok Wan
13 Xi'an Famous Foods by Jason Wang
14 Chinatown Kitchen by Lizzie Mabbot
15 Beans Greens & Sweet Georgia Peaches by Damon Fowler
16 Lao Style Recipes by Barbara Riddle
17 Fried Rice: 50 Ways to stir up the worlds favorite grain by Danielle Centoni
18 Food of Singapore by David Wong
19 Rodney Scott's World of BBQ by Rodney Scott
20 Chinese Cookery by Ken Hom
21 100 Techniques by America's Test Kitchen
22 Simple Asian Meals by Nina Simonds
23 Northern Chinese Favorites by Daniel Reed
24 Chopsticks Cleaver and Wok by Jennie Low
25 The Joy of Chinese Cooking by doreen-yen feng did not finish
26 Chinese Food: Adventures in the World of Eating
27 Wok On Ching-He Huang
28 Mr. Jiu's in Chinatown by Brandon Jew
29 Smoke & Pickles by Edward Lee
30 Parwana by Durkhanai Ayubi
31 Night + market Did not finish
32 Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford
33 My Shanghai by Betty Liu
34 Masala Lab by Krish Ashok*
35 Hong Kong Local by Archan Chan
36 Makan by Elizabeth Haigh
37 Lucky Peach 101 Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan
38 bowls! by Molly Watson

Books I skimmed rather than taking more time with
  • Simple Chinese Cooking by Kylie Kwong--I would like to spend more time with this book, but can't locate a copy in my libraries and I've not purchased it.
  • My China by Kylie Kwong--very travelogue
  • bowl by Lukas Volger
*Masala Lab was of low value to me. I think the book does a good job of bringing a western understanding of technique and flavor Indian food. The importance of browning reactions, that flavors are more soluble in fat and alcohol and such things. But I was hoping for a better understanding of the use and combining of spice mixes in Indian cooking. It did not deliver on my expectations. I don't consider it a bad book per se, just not what I wanted from the early reviews I read.

Currently reading Olives, Lemons & Za'atar by Raiwa Bishara.
 
#104 ·
Added:

Rice by Michael W. Twitty This is the latest release in the Savor The South series, focusing on specific ingredients, or dishes of Southern (USA) cuisine. I've really enjoyed this series of cookbooks. Twitty is best known for his book, The Cooking Gene. It's highly recommended in the foodie culture, but I struggled with it. It's about cooking culture in the south and the racism, not about cooking itself so much.

Japanese in 7 by Kimiko Barber. This is a series of cookbooks focused on using a reduced ingredient set to simplify often complex cuisines. I've seen a few others in this series such as Indian in 7 as well. Generally, this is not an approach I love, but I still find it interesting.

An: To Eat by Helene An, a Vietnamese cookbook
 
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