Customer Reviews
Authentic and practical Chinese home cooking - By: Grant A Thompson, 14 Jun 2003 
If any more practical, information-filled & enjoyable anthology of authentic Chinese home cooking exists than "The Food Of China", I have yet to discover it. Our little family group has bought three copies of this wonderful book so that it will be within easy reach at alll times. My own copy soon will become the most soy sauce & sesame oil-spotted volume in my cookbook collection. If you want to know how to tuck the tastiest & neatest jiaozi, how to make home-cooking favourites like Grandma's Bean Curd, congee, tea eggs, turnip cake, or even sheng cai bao (stuffed lettuce leaves or san choy bao) & hot-sour soup, this is THE book.
Thank you authors Deh-Ta Hsiung & Nina Simonds for sharing your investigations, knowledge & obvious joy in Chinese cuisine.
Authenticity made simple - By: steve.holland@axon.co.uk, 03 May 2002 Like most, I buy a lot of cook books but do not end up actuallly cooking from them. How different with this one. One trip to a Chinese supermarket to stock up on the essentials & you are off. The recipes are clear & simple but produce fantastic results. If you only try one - it has to be the Hot & Sour soup. It tastes just like the best restaurant versions I've had.
In summary - I thought I'd never write a review - but the quality of this book deserves it. Food of Italy & Food of France are equallly as good, although China wins by a short head.
Steve
A good overview of Chinese cookery, beautifully illustrated. - By: , 24 Jan 2002 
This is an absolutely beautiful book, which is a pleasure just to pour over. It gives a very good overview of the essentials of Chinese cookery, as well as containing mini-essays on such things as tea, banquets, dimsum, etc. It's recipes cover a wide range of Chinese regions and, for the most part, are clearly set out. My own quibbles with it (as a person who's been cooking Chinese from childhood) are that most of the recipes presuppose a knowledge of how to slice the ingredients & some have rather odd proportions. Also, there is a heavy bias towards a Cantonese cooking style, even in the dishes from other Chinese regions (speaking as a northerner myself). However, apart from these parts, the book provides a sumptious look at eating in China & is worth buying for the illustrations alone!
