Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood (Knopf Cooks American)

The recipes are super, and the cooked results are superb. No more struggling to cook authentic Chinese family food! There are 150 recipes, and I reckon to cook and eat them all over this winter.Delivery was prompt (from Housing Works Cafe NY).Reckon I'll buy and send several more copies of this book to family and friends.

for those of us who are second generation chinese this is highly recommended. stories are all very familiar and brings back many happy memories of home.

Good book...Thanks.

PRACTICAL, WELL EXPLANED

This is the cooking of my own childhood, and I'm very happy that Ken Hom has put these recipes into this very personal book. He includes anecdotes from his own childhood as well as those from other Chinese Americans. I use this cookbook regularly and have my own favorites. I agree with "Ms. Reese" that there tends to be an over-use of salt, but I simply reduce the amount of salt or cut it out altogether when soy sauce or other salty seasonings are used. For those who are nostalgic for the food of their Cantonese mothers and grandmothers I recommend two other titles: My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons  and Every Grain of Rice, by Ellen Blonder and Annabel Low  Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America . The former has old photos which parallel those in my own photo albums, and the later has beautiful illustrations. Both contain remembrances of growing up Chinese American.

The title of this cookbook is what attracted me to it in the first place. As a Chinese-American, I have rarely found - especially since I now live in a small New England town - excellent and authentic Chinese cooking that compares to what my mother used to make. And unfortunately, since she suffered a stroke last year, I've been unable to reproduce the many wonderful dishes she used to feed us, since she kept them all "in her head." Ken Hom's cookbook brought back wonderful memories. I have raved about this cookbook to my brothers and plan to make gifts of it. My Caucasian husband truly loves these recipes also. The first dish I made reminded us both so much of my mother's cooking that I almost cried. Hom's dishes are flavorful, delicious, authentic, and relatively easy to make. A trip to a Chinese market for some ingredients is required for many of the recipes, but it is well worth the trip! Anyone who loves quality Chinese cooking and finds the standard, Americanized, often tasteless dishes you get in so many "Chinese" restaurants unpalatable (unless you happen to be lucky enough to live in NYC, DC, or SF), will love this book! Please try it - this is what quality Chinese cooking is all about!!

Back in the 70's I loved a trip to Chicago's Chinatown. We walked the streets, had our favorite shops to visit and our favorite restaurant where we finished up the evening. When I read the blurb on this book, I ordered a copy, hoping to see some pictures, read some history and find the recipes for the dishes that we were offered in the restaurants. No such luck.If you just consider the recipes, well, there are newer and much better Chinese cookbooks to be had now-a-days.

There is very little left to say about this book. I agree with all the glowing reviews and would like to add my 2 cents! Last year I gave my parents a copy of Grace Young's new book The Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen. My father said thank you very much and he handed me this book and said this is real food for real people - and he was right! In this book the meals of my childhood have been replicated! Ken Hom gathers up an amazing treasury of recipes. They are easy to follow, not overly complicated, and offer an easy dose of comfort food.