Chinese food is popular throughout the world, with many people going out to eat or getting a take-away meal on a weekend or for a special occasion. This is nice but it is very pricey, so why not invest in a Chinese cookbook instead? Katie Chin’s Everyday Chinese Cookbook: 101 Delicious Recipes from My Mother’s Kitchen is our new on our recipe shelf.
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Tuttle Publishing’s sent us a copy of Katie Chin’s Everyday Chinese Cookbook: 101 Delicious Recipes from My Mother’s Kitchen, only published this year. We were well-pleased with Tuttle’s My Japanese Table so we were all looking forward to trying even more new recipes and working our way though my goal of trying 12 new recipes a year.
We do enjoy Chinese food, but like most people, we tend to stick with what we’re familiar with. This Chinese cookbook has lots of familiar recipes in it, as well as many new-to-us ones.
The photos are big and look delicious. Everything is well presented and inviting. The sections of the cookbook are colour-coded, which always appeals to my sense of organisation.
The chapters are:
- Sauces
- Starters and Dim Sum
- Salads
- Soups
- Poultry
- Beef, Pork and Lamb
- Seafood
- Vegetables and Tofu
- Noodles and Rice
- Drinks and Desserts
One thing I love about this Chinese cookbook is that there are recipes for sauces! No need for store-bought hoisin sauce, hot hot chilli oil, or sweet-and-sour sauce. These recipes look so easy and you’ll know exactly what is in them – none of those bad preservatives, colours, or fake flavours. The refrigerators here in the UK are small so there isn’t a lot of room for shelves of sauces, so making our own as we need it really appeals to me!
To date, we’ve made four recipes, all with success. But I would encourage yo to not be like me – read the instructions first before you dive right in. This will make the process much easier!
The first recipe I tried for the hungry bunch was Lemon Chicken. This is where I learned my lesson to read first, then start. I cut up the chicken into little pieces before cooking instead of after, but it did work just as well 🙂
This was a delicious dish! It didn’t take the 35 minutes it stated – at least not for me – it took me 2 hours from start to finish, working non-stop along the way. I’m sure next time won’t be so long. BUT it was worth the time, according to the happy faces at the table. Phil said it was restaurant-quality and that I could make it any time; the children agreed by nodding their heads with mouths full.
I agree, this was a delicious meal, and would be great to prepare ahead for a get-together, just doing the final fry and sauce heating before serving. It fed all of us for dinner, as well as having plenty of left-overs for Phil and I for our Saturday evening date night meal. This is a meal we’ll be making again in the future.
The second meal I made, along with a little help from Kallista, was Pepper Steak. We had the ingredients in the freezer and fridge, which was great. I love to make recipes that use foods that we already have – just put together in new ways. I don’t like to spend money on ingredients that will be used only once and may not be appreciated.
The pepper steak was very easy to assemble (more so because we had beef strips already cut and I used frozen peppers rather than fresh to save some money-when you have a growing family, sometimes you must).
Again, this was another keeper recipe, with only a fraction being left for the next day’s lunch.
Our most recent recipe was Lychee and Ginger Sorbet, and was a great way to cool down during a hot day. Tristan enjoyed this much more than Kallista, but that’s not a bad thing. Tristan has a dairy allergy so he can’t enjoy ice cream – but now he CAN dish up his very own sorbet!
I have no less than 6 tape flags poking up from the pages of this book for recipes I want to try. I know Phil’s looking forward to General Tso’s Chicken (we’ve only had this once – using a flavour packet Mom sent to us) and homemade is always better, so I was happy to find it in here.
I love to use my wok, and now with so many recipes to try in it, I have my eye on a couple of cooking utensils that would make using it a little more authentic. My Christmas wish-list will be easy to fill in the Asian Markets this year!
If you’d like to know more or would like to follow Tuttle Publishing, you can connect with them through their website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (and you can see our other Tuttle reviews here).
If you’re interested in purchasing this book or other Chinese items found in it, here are some Amazon links (affiliate) for you:
