The Breath Of A Wok

Award-winning author Grace Young celebrates and demystifies the art of wok cooking for the Western home cook. When Grace Young was a child, her father instilled in her a lasting appreciation of wok hay, the highly prized but elusive taste that food achieves when properly stir-fried in a wok. As an adult, Young aspired to create that taste in her own kitchen. Grace Young's quest to master wok cooking led her throughout the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Along with award-winning photographer Alan Richardson, Young sought the advice of home cooks, professional chefs, and esteemed culinary teachers like Cecilia Chiang, Florence Lin, and Ken Hom. Their instructions, stories, and recipes, gathered in this richly designed and illustrated volume, offer not only expert lessons in the art of wok cooking, but also capture a beautiful and timeless way of life. With its emphasis on cooking with all the senses, The Breath of a Wok brings the techniques and flavors of old-world wok cooking into today's kitchen, enabling anyone to stir-fry with wok hay. IACP award-winner Young details the fundamentals of selecting, seasoning, and caring for a wok, as well as the range of the wok's uses; this surprisingly inexpensive utensil serves as the ultimate multipurpose kitchen tool. The 125 recipes are a testament to the versatility of the wok, with stir-fried, smoked, pan-fried, braised, boiled, poached, steamed, and deep-fried dishes that include not only the classics of wok cooking, like Kung Pao Chicken and Moo Shoo Pork, but also unusual dishes like Sizzling Pepper and Salt Shrimp, Three Teacup Chicken, and Scallion and Ginger Lo Mein. Young's elegant prose and Richardson's extraordinary photographs create a unique and unforgettable picture of artisan wok makers in mainland China, street markets in Hong Kong, and a "wok-a-thon" in which Young's family of aunties, uncles, and cousins cooks together in a lively exchange of recipes and stories. A visit with author Amy Tan also becomes a family event when Tan and her sisters prepare New Year's dumplings. Additionally, there are menus for family-style meals and for Chinese New Year festivities, an illustrated glossary, and a source guide to purchasing ingredients, woks, and accessories. Written with the intimacy of a memoir and the immediacy of a travelogue, this recipe-rich volume is a celebration of cultural and culinary delights.

Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation Award for International Cooking, this is the authoritative guide to stir-frying: the cooking technique that makes less seem like more, extends small amounts of food to feed many, and makes ingredients their most tender and delicious. The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of years—and is the key to quick and tasty meals. In Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, award-winning author Grace Young shares more than 100 classic stir-fry recipes that sizzle with heat and pop with flavor, from the great Cantonese stir-fry masters to the culinary customs of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as other countries around the world. With more than eighty stunning full-color photographs, Young’s definitive work illustrates the innumerable, easy-to-learn possibilities the technique offers—dry stir-fries, moist stir-fries, clear stir-fries, velvet stir-fries—and weaves the insights of Chinese cooking philosophy into the preparation of beloved dishes as Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli, Chicken Lo Mein with Ginger Mushrooms, and Dry-Fried Sichuan Beans.

Here are 140 classic Cantonese recipes--handed down with their importance to health and prosperity. of color photos and 35 b&w photos. 2-color throughout.

New York Times Bestseller: Sweeten special occasions with these easy recipes for creative cupcakes using common candies. With hundreds of brilliant photos, this cookbook features witty, one-of-a-kind, imaginative cupcake designs using candies from the local convenience store, no baking skills or fancy pastry equipment required. Create funny, scary, and sophisticated masterpieces using a ziplock bag and common candies and snack items. With these easy-to-follow techniques, even the most kitchen-challenged cooks can: • raise a big-top circus cupcake tier for a kid's birthday • plant candy vegetables on Oreo earth cupcakes for a garden party • trot out a line of confectionery “pup cakes” for a dog fancier • serve spaghetti and meatball cupcakes for April Fool's Day • bewitch trick-or-treaters with eerie alien cupcakes • create holidays on icing with a white Christmas cupcake wreath, turkey cupcake place cards, and Easter egg cupcakes

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, author of award-winning cookbooks, menu developer for top Asian restaurants, and cooking teacher, presents her life's work. Reflecting on her life in food, including her childhood in Canton, China, where she learned to cook at her grandmother's side, Eileen has created an exhaustive cookbook of extensive scope. Everything about Chinese cooking has cultural significance, and much of what Eileen talks about in this book has never appeared in print before in the English language. There are more than 250 recipes in all, including many classic banquet-style recipes, quite a number presented for the first time in the traditional manner, from Peking Duck to Beggar's Chicken. Dozens of the techniques for preparing these elaborate recipes are shown in full-color photographs in the color insert as well. Eileen also includes many of her own creations, such as infused oils and rich, flavorful stocks, essential for cooks who are serious about mastering the ancient art of Chinese cooking. Everything is here: dim sum, congees, stir-fries, rice dishes, noodles, bean curd, meat dishes, and more. For anyone who loves Asian cuisines, this is the ultimate cookbook, and for cookbook lovers and aspiring food professionals, this is required reading.

Most people think a wok is just for stir-frying Chinese food. Not so! A wok is a versatile and inexpensive piece of kitchen equipment that can be used everyday, for all your meals. You can braise, steam, deep-fry, and stew foods in it. You can even bake a cake in it! Don't stash your wok away in a cupboard. Leave it on your stovetop and use it every day! This book celebrates making American favorites such as spaghetti and meatballs, buttermilk fried chicken, and pulled pork sandwiches using the ancient Chinese cooking vessel. You'll also find easy Asian dishes like kung pao chicken, shrimp and egg fried rice, stir-fried beef and broccoli, and chicken chow mein.

Classic Chinese flavors come home—a comprehensive Asian cookbook. Ordering Chinese takeout is easy--but it's definitely not the healthiest or most affordable way to enjoy Chinese comfort food at home. With this simple cookbook in your kitchen and a mighty wok in your hand, Chinese favorites are now quicker, healthier, and cheaper than delivery. The Essential Wok Cookbook is your guide to mastering the wok, the versatile pan that makes possible all of the Chinese restaurant dishes you love--no extra salt, oil, or MSG required. Beyond tips for selecting, seasoning, and caring for your wok, this cookbook also provides: Step-by-step illustrations for how to fold a dumpling, egg roll, and wonton Fun features on the origin stories and American reinventions of foods such as egg drop soup and fortune cookies Recipe labels to help you decide what to make when you're short on time (30 minutes or less) and tight on cash (under $10) Recipe tips to swap ingredients, save time, make a dish more healthy, or kick up the heat If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, start cooking today with your wok and see just how far The Essential Wok Cookbook will take you. Fire up the wok with recipes like Perfect Pork Pot Stickers, Easy Vegetable Stir-Fry, Lighter Egg Foo Young, Sweet Chili Shrimp, General Tso's Chicken, Better Beef with Broccoli, and many more!

One of the Best Cookbooks of 2021 by the New York Times Experience the sublime beauty and flavor of one of the oldest and most delicious cuisines on earth: the food of Shanghai, China’s most exciting city, in this evocative, colorful gastronomic tour that features 100 recipes, stories, and more than 150 spectacular color photographs. Filled with galleries, museums, and gleaming skyscrapers, Shanghai is a modern metropolis and the world’s largest city proper, the home to twenty-four million inhabitants and host to eight million visitors a year. “China’s crown jewel” (Vogue), Shanghai is an up-and-coming food destination, filled with restaurants that specialize in international cuisines, fusion dishes, and chefs on the verge of the next big thing. It is also home to some of the oldest and most flavorful cooking on the planet. Betty Liu, whose family has deep roots in Shanghai and grew up eating homestyle Shanghainese food, provides an enchanting and intimate look at this city and its abundant cuisine. In this sumptuous book, part cookbook, part travelogue, part cultural study, she cuts to the heart of what makes Chinese food Chinese—the people, their stories, and their family traditions. Organized by season, My Shanghai takes us through a year in the Shanghai culinary calendar, with flavorful recipes that go beyond the standard, well-known fare, and stories that illuminate diverse communities and their food rituals. Chinese food is rarely associated with seasonality. Yet as Liu reveals, the way the Shanghainese interact with the seasons is the essence of their cooking: what is on a dinner table is dictated by what is available in the surrounding waters and fields. Live seafood, fresh meat, and ripe vegetables and fruits are used in harmony with spices to create a variety of refined dishes all through the year. My Shanghai allows everyone to enjoy the homestyle food Chinese people have eaten for centuries, in the context of how we cook today. Liu demystifies Chinese cuisine for home cooks, providing recipes for family favorites that have been passed down through generations as well as authentic street food: her mother’s lion’s head meatballs, mung bean soup, and weekday stir-fries; her father-in-law’s pride and joy, the Nanjing salted duck; the classic red-braised pork belly (as well as a riff to turn them into gua bao!); and core basics like high stock, wontons, and fried rice. In My Shanghai, there is something for everyone—beloved noodle and dumpling dishes, as well as surprisingly light fare. Though they harken back centuries, the dishes in this outstanding book are thoroughly modern—fresh and vibrant, sophisticated yet understated, and all bursting with complex flavors that will please even the most discriminating or adventurous palate.