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(More customer reviews)My parents are Cantonese and I grew up eating home-style food. When I left home for college in the 1980's, I lugged Miller's book with me, hoping to satisfy my ethnic belly. My dad, a professional cook who owned a restaurant, doubted the efficacy of the recipes and he was right -- they were a disappointment! It wasn't that I lacked cooking skills (I spent most of my weekends helping Dad in his kitchen, so I was competent in that way). He thought Miller's understanding of basic cooking principles was less than complete. Take her recipe for Steamed Eggs. Whenever my parents made this dish, the resulting custard was beautifully silky. But when I followed Miller's recipe to the letter, I wound up with a rubbery mat of inedible green protein. Eggs should never be overcooked, and that's what Miller's 'steam for 20-30 minutes' instructions did to them.
I won't go into the gory details about the other recipes I tried. (There was always some crucial bit of knowledge missing that made a mess of a dish.) I suspect Miller didn't actually put the vast majority of her recipes to the test. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in her zeal to amass 1000 recipes for her opus, she relied too heavily on her sources and then opted not to make the time-consuming effort of actually testing ALL the recipes herself.
At the time I bought this book, it never occurred to me to question the author's accuracy or skill. The sheer mass of the book seemed to be so thorough, so complete. Well, size isn't everything! I have a puny Cantonese cookbook featuring less than 75 recipes, but every single one of them turned out dishes as tasty as anything my folks fed me. (Sadly, this book is out of print.)
Chinese cookbooks have come a long way since Miller got published, so shop around. For homestyle Cantonese cooking, I like and respect Grace Young's "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen". Her directions and tips produce good food. She also included some folk remedy recipes I've rarely seen in print. (For those of us who remember how our moms used to drink quarts of a special tonic after giving birth to one of our sibs, well, guess what? here's your chance to find out exactly what grandma put into that evil-tasting soup!)
Eileen Yin-Fei Lo also wrote some decent books. I particularly liked "From the Earth: Chinese Vegetarian Cooking". (Her method for cooking Stir-Fry Lettuce was dead on.) As for her most recent work "The Chinese Kitchen" ... well, it IS a beautiful book ... some of her recipes are suitable for every day cooking (I thought her seafood dishes were quick and easy), but a good many of the other recipes were not dishes I'd want to tackle after a long day at work, so I can't recommend these to a beginner. If, however, you are an experienced cook who likes a weekend cooking challenge, then go for it!
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An essential resource in the American kitchen and a classic for nearly four decades, this is the definitive Chinese cookbook, perfect for cooks at every level Here is the largest, most comprehensive Chinese cookbook ever published for the Western world. A Tastemaker Award winner, Gloria Bley Miller distills centuries of Chinese recipes and techniques into concise and easy-to-follow directions that will enable any cook to produce dishes that please the eye, delight the palate, and suit the budget. With verve and wit, Miller tells you how to prepare everything from egg drop soup and drunken pork to sizzling rice and delicate wontons. There are 150 recipes for chicken alone, plus dozens of variations on pork dishes, vegetables, and noodles, as well as other Chinese favorites. Using Miller's recipes, ordinary meat and seafood become delicacies, while vegetables retain their color and texture. And Miller's delicious recipes are splendidly high in nutrients and low in calories. The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook contains everything the cook needs to know about Chinese cooking, including how to: Use special Chinese cooking techniques such as steaming and stir-frying Create unique seasonings and sauces Substitute hard-to-find ingredients with those available in any supermarket Plan menus suited to every time constraint, budget, and occasion The classic Chinese cookbook, this is the only book you'll ever need to master one of the world's greatest and most versatile cuisines.
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