Chinese Cooking

Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous cookbook by Ken Hom
Review: Ken Hom has established himself as my favourite Chinese recipe author with this book.

He begins with a brief history of the varied cuisines of China, and moves on to describe most of the ingredients used later in the book. Mr. Hom's attempt at describing the techniques needed to produce the dishes in the books are, however, not as enlightening as his ingredients section. He also includes a few suggested menus to get you started.

The recipes themselves are quite good, but I would definitely say they are not suited for the beginner. He does not give advise on the actual cooking of the meal, but mearly a list of ingedients, how they should be prepared, and when to add them to the dish. As for the variety of dishes, it is quite good. Mr. Hom draws his inspiration from all corners of China.It should be noted none of them recipes could be considered authentic, but rather as a sort of neo-Chinese variety.

The only major downfall of this book, as I see it, is that almost all of the recipes are for meat dishes. Only 29 of the 214 pages of recipes are dedicated to vegetables. This is definintely not the book for vegetarians. This asise, I believe Mr. Hom has written a marvelous book for both westerners and those more familiar with traditional Chinese cuisine.