Simple, everyday Chinese home cooking where vegetables play the starring role, from a leading Western expert on Chinese food
Chinese food the way families cook it
Fuchsia Dunlop trained as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and has spent decades cooking in Chinese homes and restaurants. This book gathers the easy, healthy dishes that ordinary families eat every day, mostly from southern China, where small amounts of meat and fish flavour generous helpings of vegetables, tofu and rice.
Who will enjoy it
Home cooks who want to cook real Chinese food on weeknights, vegetable lovers, and anyone curious about regional Chinese cuisine.
What you will get
An approachable, beautifully written cookbook of everyday Chinese home cooking, with vegetables at its heart and clear recipes that bring authentic flavours within easy reach.
Every Grain of Rice Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Nonfiction · Chinese home cooking · Vegetable dishes · Weeknight recipes
Length
352 pages · ≈ 10 h
More about this book
The opening chapters explain a short list of essential seasonings, which Dunlop calls her magic ingredients, along with tools, knife work and the basics of stir-frying, steaming and red-braising. Once the pantry is stocked, the recipes are genuinely quick: stir-fried potato slivers with chilli, blanched greens with sizzling oil, smacked cucumber, a vegetarian take on gong bao, and simple soups that make a meal with rice.
Dunlop's headnotes are a joy, mixing travel stories, kitchen wisdom and history without ever becoming heavy. She also gives honest advice about substitutions, so cooks far from a Chinese grocery can still manage most dishes. The photography is bright and helpful, and the book is arranged so you can build a balanced family meal from several small plates.
A few ingredients do require a trip to an Asian market or an online order, and meat lovers may want more substantial mains. It won a James Beard award, and it deserves it. For anyone who has only known takeaway versions of Chinese food, it is a revelation, and the recipes are forgiving enough for beginners. About 352 pages in the Bloomsbury hardcover.
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