Book Review: Yan-Kit’s Classic Chinese Cookbook
The title says it all – Classic Chinese. I personally am not a Chinese food lover – some of the things that are in those dishes just don’t appeal to me; and I am allergic to high doses of mono sodium glutamate. So you can imagine what a fun date I used to be.
But, back to the book. I can now prepare my own Chinese food anytime I want, and know exactly what’s in it. The first portion of the book deals with what exactly the ingredients look like – true, color pictures of each item. I didn’t know what Red-in-snow was, but I do now, and what it looks like.
Yan-Kit uses a big, giant cleaver to cut his vegetables, meat, and just about everything. It was a very scary looking piece of cutlery that I’ll pass on, but each illustration shows you step by step how-to. Then there’s the wok – I don’t own one and I have an electric stove. So if you think you can’t improvise, think again. Use a Dutch oven, or whatever else you’ve been using to fry stuff.
These recipes are not the “Quickly get out of the Kitchen” type, so you do have some shopping research to do, and quality kitchen time. But it’ll be well worth it. I’ve tried to get other Chinese cookbooks in the past and they were just not as well-written as this one; plus Ms. Kit has pictures for every single recipe. That’s a big plus for a lot of folks out there.
We have a few picky eaters in my household, so tweaking recipes to suit our needs is standard operating procedure. Therefore, we enjoyed the recipe for Sauteed Northern Dumplings and the Sweet and Sour Pork was to die for without any tinkering.
You may only use about 40-50% of these recipes, but the ones you use will be well worth the time spent.
Rating: 
[...] Daniel Ritchie wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBut, back to the book. I can now prepare my own Chinese food anytime I want, and know exactly what’s in it. The first portion of the book deals with what exactly the ingredients look like – true, color pictures of each item. … [...]
On the contrary, you might find it shocking to learn that it is quite common in restaurants in around Asia puts msg in their food (not just chinese food).
But home cooking you actualy hardly see chinese family have msg in their cooking. the only msg present in them are like in processed can food like in ketchups, soup in cans, and manufactured stuff.
your blog is interesting, like it loads!
Thank you Constance!