Author(s): Gloria Bley Miller
Publisher: Fireside
Publication Date: 1984-11-01
Pages: 927
Review: The book’s title led me to think I would be buying a treasure-trove of fabulous recipes. Instead, I found it a helpful resource for understanding Chinese ingredients. I tried several different recipes, and they were equally flavorless and boring. It seems that neary every recipe is flavored with tiny amounts of soy sauce and sherry, and the end result required trying to add ingredients to step up the flavor. I am going back to the other Chinese cookbooks I have come to rely on. Funny as it sounds, every recipe I have used in my Betty Crocker Chinese cookbook has been superb, and it remains my source for delicious recipes and flavor combinations. This disappointing book will stay on the shelf as an informational resource only.In 1966, this book was an epic. A doorstop-sized compilation of Chinese cuisine written by a Westerner, this book remains a staple of used bookstores. For what it is, it’s not bad — it’s dated, but the recipes are generally pretty tasty. Overall it’s got roughly the same feel as a typical Chinese restaurant menu, and it is, as a general rule, a classic. However, I’ve tackled the issue of anachronistic books before, and the results usually aren’t that pretty.

I have to say right up front that this book suffers from one massive and nearly unforgiveable fault — the near total lack of Chinese names for dishes and ingredients. Even if the recipe for a favorite dish is in here, you won’t be able to find it by its Chinese name unless its name was already well-established when the book was written. (Incidentally, there is no recipe in here for chop suey; Miller evidently felt very strongly about keeping authentically Chinese.)

That said, your mileage may vary. Some of the reviews from when it was published indicate that it was quite popular among Chinese-Americans in the 1960s, and the recipes do seem largely authentic, if a bit unadventurous at times. But the language issue is a huge stumbling block that would probably destroy a book written now. Buy it used if you can’t get a good deal on it, but make sure to get a more recent book to complement it.I have always enjoyed good Chinese cuisine. Recently, I’ve developed a far greater interest in cooking it for myself — I’ve moved from the SF Bay Area to the wilds of northern Massachusetts, and good Chinese restaurants and takeout places around these parts are few and far between. So, I decided to learn how to cook those fabulous dishes I always enjoyed.

At the bookstore, I was taken in by the glowing reviews on this book’s cover, but I didn’t take the opportunity to truly browse through it. In retrospect, I wish that I had. Although this book does contain a broad variety of recipes, and does introduce a novice into the mystique of experimenting with Chinese cooking, it lacks in more or less all of what many would consider key recipes.

Kung pao chicken? Nowhere to be found. Mongolian beef? Nada. Orange chicken? Nope. Peking spareribs? Zero. Spicy Szechuan chicken? Not a chance. Fresh bao, or dumplings, or shu mai? Can’t find it anywhere. Ginger chicken? Nary a one. Cashew chicken? A solitary recipe.

What it does have, on the other hand, are ten pages of recipes to do with chicken livers and gizzards prepared in various manners. Sure, there’s the few recipes that look as though they might be worth trying, but to find them you have to thumb through the hundreds of pages of dross looking for those few pieces of gold.

In all, an impressively weighty work, but hardly containing a great deal in the way of useful reference to someone whose life doesn’t entirely revolve around trying out new and questionably useful recipes.I’ve had this book for many years and always go back to it. The recipes are very basic and like the ones my mom cooked but never documented. Who ever wrote down family recipes to pass on? How do you measure when the recipe is in the cook’s head? This year I purchased a copy for each one my children to have. They are all grown and out of the house. This way they have a starting point and can embellish on the recipes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t contain photos, but I know the dishes just by the topic, descriptive receipe name and the ingredients. The book is excellent, with a wide variety of recipes and detailed explanations about chinese cooking.
Price: $24.00   Buy This Book