The Stephen Yan Seafood Wokbook

Priscilla Galloway was an English consultant in Willowdale, Ontario.

Stephen Yan is the star of television’s “Wok with Yan,” whose first five cookbooks sold over one million copies. In the seafood wokbook, Yan provides step-by-step instructions for steaming, stir-frying, or deep frying, along with very clear, illustrated directions for every step from purchase and preparation of ingredients through to the final dish. If you have never ventured to cook exotic seafood such as octopus or eel, Yan makes the adventure easy; his directions are thorough, but also concise and direct.

Eight of the 130 dishes of this book are shown in color photos; it looks as if the whole 130 recipes for fish, crustaceans, and molluscs will delight the eye and titillate the palate. Here is the poetry of food: crab meat rolls, prawns in blackbean sauce, mother and daughter shrimp, sesame perch, scallops and apples, or squid with tomatoes; the names conjure up sights, smells and tastes of the exotic Orient.

Yan personalizes the recipes with little tags “very popular in China,” “popular in our restaurant,” or “the most famous soup in Thailand.” I won’t rush to make the fried potato basket; with this exception, however, this exciting cookbook is realistic, possible, even for the beginner, and fun; it would be an ideal basis for a dinner party where two or more cooks worked together to prepare several dishes. The seafood wokbook would be a happy addition to an entertainment-minded family’s specialized cookbook library.