Chinese Home-Style Cooking

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Simple and nutritious, Sharon Wong’s “home-style” recipes are
designed for family meals and made from local ingredients. The selection
covers soups, salads, vegetables, noodles, egg dishes, seafood, tofu,
and main dishes using chicken, beef, or pork. At the back of the book,
there are menu suggestions for dinners from one to eight persons, as
well as a detailed index. At the front, there are five welcome pages on
cooking hints and “the basics” of Chinese cooking, such as the
handling of ginger root or tofu, the making of Chinese-style chicken
broth, and the place of tea in Chinese cuisine and culture.

Recipes include vegetarian meals and spicy or plain dishes. Following
the recent trend in cookbooks, Wong’s style is colloquial and
friendly. Background information is added occasionally, such as comments
on the many varieties of noodles, along with methods of cooking,
possible substitutions, and cooking times. Cultural information is added
occasionally, as with the comment that “[i]n northern China, potatoes
are one of the main sources of food in the winter,” which accompanies
a recipe for garlic-fried potatoes.

For anyone wishing to embark on an attractive but unfamiliar path,
Chinese Home-Style Cooking is an excellent book with which to start. It
includes half a dozen pages of color photographs, each showing numerous
dishes cross-referenced with page numbers, at the end of the recipes.