There have been a strong handful of cookbooks written on the subject of Chinese and Asian noodles over the years; unfortunately, the best of them are out of print. But, luckily, they are reasonably easily found through Amazon as used books, or, if you have issues with Amazon, you can always try Bookfinder or ebay. (However, check prices on both Amazon and Bookfinder first–most of the time, the book prices on ebay are inflated. Now and again, I was able to find a bargain, but not very often.)

Of course, the best of the lot of these books is certainly the most sought-after title in the bunch and is certain to be the most expensive. However, I would say that it is worth every penny.

Florence Lin’s Complete Book of Chinese Noodles, Dumplings and Breads by the consummate Chinese cooking teacher and cookbook author, Florence Lin, is well worth the thirty-five dollars or more it is getting in the used book market these days. Why? Because not only does Lin devote her entire text to the myriad products of rice or wheat flour doughs in her book, she explains her methods clearly, thoroughly and in a voice that builds a cook’s confidence.

Lin explicates the minutia of cooking all sorts of Chinese noodles, giving all of the little tricks and tips that Chinese cooks have used for centuries to obtain different textural effects with these noodles. She gives historical background on the types of noodles as well as the cooking techniques involved in them, and for intensive recipes like fresh noodles, she gives step-by-step instructions which are written in a no-nonsense, erudite, yet refreshingly simple manner.

The one deficiency in this book is the lack of photographs illustrating the various noodle dishes. I find that when Americans are tackling unfamiliar recipes from other cultures, they are more often enticed into cooking new foods by delicious-looking photographs than they are by delectable descriptive prose.

The deficiency of Lin’s book is corrected by the Wei Chuan publications, Noodles: Classical Chinese Cooking and Noodles: Chinese Home Cooking, both buy Lee-Hwa Lin. Like all of the Wei Chuan bilingual Chinese/English cookbooks, these volumes are highly illustrated with clear, appetizing photographs that show each step of difficult recipes as well as lovely photos of the finished dishes. Of the two of these books, I have found the first, Noodles: Classical Chinese Cooking
, to be the most helpful, with recipes for dishes I have eaten in restaurants across the country.

There are drawbacks, of course, to both books. One, they are both now out of print, though still available in the used market. Two, I find that the recipes are skewed toward Taiwanese tastes (which makes sense, since the books are the publications of a famous cooking school in Taiwan), and so they often require a bit of work on my part to adjust them to make the flavors come out as I tasted them elsewhere. Finally, three–the format in which the recipes are written can be confusing the first few times they are read, at least until the reader gets used to them. They directions are clear, but abbreviated, and that can lead to confusion, which is not helpful to a new cook, especially one who is unfamiliar with Chinese foods.

Wei Chuan has come out with a new volume of Chinese noodle recipes: Chinese Rice and Noodles: With Appetizers, Soups and Sweets, by Su-Huei Huang and Su-Huei Huang. However, unlike the previous books in their series, this volume is not exclusively about noodles, and so the scope of the book is not nearly as interesting to a cook who wants to learn noodle cookery. That is the biggest drawback of the book–as always, it is lavishly illustrated with gorgeous photography, which nearly makes up for the lack of exclusive content on the subject of noodles.

Jacki Passmore’s The Noodle Shop Cookbook is a good companion to Florence Lin’s book. Although Passmore’s book is more of a survey of general Asian noodle recipes, she leans heavily upon Chinese recipes, gleaned from the favored street foods and noodle stall dishes beloved across every region. The recipes here are generally simple, easy to follow and give an excellent authentic flavor, although, like Lin’s book, there is a lack of photographs to entice a cook new to the subject of Chinese noodles.

Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, like Passmore’s book is a generalized look at noodle recipes from all over Asia. However, Simonds’ book is highly illustrated with great photographs of both processes and finished dishes, and her explication of technique, ingredients and history is impeccable as always. There are more than Chinese recipes featured in this book, but China’s noodle traditions are well-represented and the recipes are all vibrant and flavorful.

Finally, there is the large-format Noodle by Terry Durack. An absolutely gorgeous book, filled with artistic photographs by Geoff Lung, Noodle is a visually appealing survey of the myriad forms noodles take across Asia. The recipes are all illustrated with artfully posed photographs, but there are fewer recipes than there could be. Chinese recipes are present, but are overshadowed by the many other recipes from the rest of Asia.

However, the book is visually inspiring, and is well worth looking at if you can find it in a library or a used bookstore.

These are the noodle cookbooks I have in my collection; there are a very few others available. In addition, there are many great noodle recipes to be found in general Chinese and Asian cookbooks by a great many authors. Some of my favorite noodle recipes, in fact, can be found in the books of Fuchsia Dunlop and Grace Young–both excellent cookbook authors whose explications of the culinary arts of China are invaluable to cooks everywhere.

For another thing, I like different books for different reasons. Some books are excellent teaching manuals; they give the beginner excellent instruction in the fundamentals of the art of Chinese cookery. Other volumes teach one aspect of Chinese cookery, such as dim sum, and do it well. Some are great generalized cookbooks, while others focus on a particular single regional cuisine. Some contain clear photographs illustrating techniques and ingredients, others have beautiful scenic photographs, while others are not illustrated at all.

One commonality to all of the cookbooks I favor, Chinese or otherwise, is that they give a great deal of cultural information.

Every recipe has a story, and my very favorite cookbooks are written by authors who are not only excellent cooks and teachers, but also accomplished storytellers. That is why nearly every book on this list, with a few exceptions, are not only good cookbooks for those setting out to learn Chinese cuisine, but also darned good reads for anyone interested in the culinary arts in general. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite Chinese cookbooks meant to instruct beginners, in no particular order, which I think will be helpful and entertaining to beginning and intermediate cooks.

The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo: This excellent comprehensive cookbook is unfortunately out of print; however, used copies are easily found at good prices via Bookfinder, Amazon, or eBay. Kuo’s precise prose carefully explains the techniques of Chinese cookery in an easily understandable step-by-step format that is illustrated with clear line drawings. Comparable in scope and detail to Julia Child and Simca Beck’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking,, this text is very strong on learning technique, particularly proper cutting and ingredient preparation. With over three hundred recipes (for both simple and complex dishes), many of them requiring simple ingredients, this gem is a perfect introduction to Chinese cooking, even for cooks who have limited access to an Asian market. Each recipe is clearly written and includes relevant cultural and historical information, as well as thorough background on ingredients and successful substitutions.

The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking by Barbara Tropp: Another great introduction to the Chinese kitchen, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking stands as an enduring legacy of the late writer, chef and restaurateur, Barbara Tropp. Not only was Tropp a great chef and teacher, she also told great stories of her experiences in China, many of which were humorous or poignant. In addition, her clear instructions delineate the hows and whys of Chinese cookery, while presenting recipes which are not only authentic in flavor, but are still quite accessible to Western palates. Some readers may criticize her instructions and methodology for being long-winded and needlessly wordy, but I disagree. Her explanations of technique are not wordy, but -complete- with the sort of clear writing necessary to explain complex series of tasks to rank beginners. Anything less thorough runs the risk of losing new cooks. My one quibble with this book is that it lacks sufficient photographic or line-drawing illustrations. Many people learn visually, and I have found in my years of teaching that some students can read a passage of text one hundred times and still have trouble folding a wonton or cutting grass-like slivers of ginger, but when I show them how just once, they understand it completely, and can take their first steps in replicating the action immediately.

Yan-Kit’s Classic Chinese Cookbook by Yan-Kit So: For those who learn visually, this heavily-photograph laden cookbook is the answer to a prayer. Every technique outlined in this book by Yan-Kit So’s simple, elegant prose, is illustrated by clear, close-up color photographs. Most recipes are similarly illustrated, though not all of them, and every unusual ingredient, particularly the fresh and dried condiments and vegetables, are also photographed. However, this is not just a photographic reference book; it is also a very well-written overview of modern Chinese regional cookery that includes recipes famed in China and abroad. An extremely useful book, this one is destined to be well-thumbed and bespattered with soy sauce and various other condiments from becoming indispensable in the kitchen.

The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young: Some may think this is an odd choice for a beginner’s Chinese cookbook, and in some ways it is. However, I think it is very useful for a student to understand the history and the culture surrounding a cuisine at the same time as they learn the more practical aspects of it. In this light, The Breath of a Wok makes much more sense; it is both a personal and historical view of the culture surrounding the development and use of woks in Chinese cookery. The recipes included in the book are an eclectic mixture of homestyle cooking and restaurant fare, with examples of traditional interpretations and modern innovations. In a sense, this very stunningly illustrated book is a testament to the enduringly ancient, yet flexible nature of Chinese cookery, both in its homeland and around the world. In addition to narrative about the wok in history, there is extensive information on how to find and buy one in the here and now, as well as instructions on how to cook in one on a modern American stove to most effectively attain wok hay–the elusive fragrance that comes from high heat and oil-seasoned metal.

The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung: This book is less of a cookbook, and more of a reference work on the ingredients common to the kitchens of China. Liberally illustrated with clear photographs, Hsiung’s text is encyclopedic in scope and very easily read and used by a beginner. Filled with cultural information, cooking tips and with recipes for each ingredient entry, The Chinese Kitchen gives the beginner a verbal and visual reference point to many of the unfamiliar staples, foods, condiments and packaged goods at the neighborhood Asian market. The descriptions are written so as to give plenty for the curious beginner or intermediate cook to chew on without being overwhelmingly technical, and the photographs, whether of the ingredients themselves, of finished dishes or of Chinese open air markets, are enlightening and inspiring. I cannot recommend this book enough–it is one that I return to often as a cook, a writer and a teacher.

There we have it–my favorite Chinese cookbooks for beginners. Look for further entries in the future on the subjects of Chinese cookbooks for advanced cooks, for instruction on regional cookery and cookbooks on specialized topics.

Until then, happy reading, cooking and eating!

Kylie Kwong is a successful Australasian restaurateur, chef, television personality and cookbook author whose aim is to demystify Chinese cookery and make it accessible to the average home cook.

While her new book Simple Chinese Cooking is a really good step in that direction, there is too little emphasis on technique to truly explicate even a simplified version of Chinese cuisine. Each recipe is lushly illustrated in true food-porn style with sexy closeups of perfectly wok-seared meats and produce all garnished with precisely cut slivers of chile or scallions. However, there are precious few photographs showing how to shred vegetables or slice meat evenly in order to get such gorgeous results. Nor is there much description of how to do it in clear, precise prose.

Instead, the oversized book is laid out more like a coffee-table art book; in fact, the sheer size of it (approximately 9.5″X10.5″) makes it awkward to use in the kitchen. Which is a shame, because the minimalist recipes are very useful and quite scrummy.

Each recipe takes up one full page, however, there is scant instruction on method, so there is much white space. Opposite each recipe lays the finished dish, simply presented on plain white plates, but gussied up with colorful fringes of aromatics so precisely cut they look like feathers or blades of grass. It is all quite artistic, but I am sure it will look less so after soy sauce is dribbled all over that pristine white space and notes are scribbled in the margins.

But what about those scrummy recipes, you ask? Are they good? Are they simple? Can I make them?

Yes to all of those questions. I have cooked from the book, and the recipes are not just workable and simple, they give excellent results.

Kwong’s recipes are minimalist to the point that at first I wondered how well they would taste. However, Kwong’s Cantonese family taught her well the art of taking the freshest possible ingredients and with precise preparation, the application of high heat and a gentle hand with the seasonings, and turning them into dishes that emphasize the natural goodness of food. The first recipe I tried didn’t even use soy sauce; instead, only Shao Hsing wine, salt, garlic and scallions seasoned the dish. The results were delicious. When I cooked it a second time, adding my own subtle touches (a tiny pinch of raw sugar and a drizzle of sesame oil), the results were similarly fantastic.

Following Kwong’s recipes is a lesson in keeping a light touch and learning to appreciate the inherent beauty in food.

Because of her minimalist approach, Kwong emphasizes the use of the best possible ingredients. She instructs the cook to use organic eggs and free-range, organic meats and organic vegetables and fruits whenever possible, noting that the difference in flavor is well worth the extra expense. (She also uses only tenderloin in her beef recipes, suggesting that it is the only truly good cut for stir-frying. This extravagance–which is fine for upscale restaurant cooking–strikes me as odd in a book that is meant to make Chinese food accessible to home cooks.) In addition, Kwong notes that seasonal foods are to be preferred and that these foods all are more ecologically viable as well.

I wish that Kwong had spent more time instructing the newcomer on how to successfully stir fry in a wok on a home stove, and how to cut meats and vegetables with the precision necessary for successful stir frying, she did an admirable job in presenting really interesting recipes with a minimum of ingredients, most of which are available at typical American supermarkets. While I was disappointed that some of her vegetable recipes were repetitive (you really don’t need separate recipes for bok choy with oyster sauce, choy sum with oyster sauce and gai lan with oyster sauce–they could have been presented as variations of each other on one page, with the other two pages devoted to different recipes), Kwong made up for it by presenting interesting variations on Chinese-style soft-boiled eggs. In fact, she presents quite a few egg recipes, all of which looked and sounded amazingly good and are nothing like what is found in most Chinese cookbooks.

In short, I think that this cookbook, while it suffers from a few significant shortcomings, does succeed at showing home cooks unfamiliar with Chinese cookery that it doesn’t have to be difficult, time consuming or require a whole new pantry full of unfamiliar foods. I’d like to see more from Kwong, especially if she could manage to combine more in-depth lessons on technique while presenting more recipes that are simple, yet amazingly delicious.

Pardon me while I jump up and down (virtually) for a while and do the happy Barbara dance, because a long-awaited cookbook is not only finally out, but it is out a full month earlier than I expected!

Yes, folks, Fuchsia Dunlop, the author of the definitive Sichuan cookbook in English, Land of Plenty, has taken herself to Hunan province in order to bring us an equally beautiful and well-researched volume on the cuisine of that region.

There is really a dearth of good cookbooks in English on Hunan food; the best is Henry Chung’s book, Henry Chung’s Hunan-Style Chinese Cookbook. (And, it is, alas, out of print.) After reading and cooking through Dunlop’s first book, I have been on pins and needles waiting for the publication of this second book.

Needless to say, look for a review of the book soon, along with a presentation of several recipes from it in the next week or so. Zak looked at the pictures and recipes and said, “So, uh, we are having Hunan for dinner right?”

(The answer was no, because I had a new chicken curry planned, and he suffered through it, though he kept glancing longingly at the cookbook as he dished up a second helping of rice for himself.)

I answered Scott in email, but I thought that the answer I gave might be of interest to other readers, so I expanded upon it and present it here.

The good news is, yes, I know of and have read five vegetarian Chinese cookbooks that deal specifically with some of the Buddhist recipes that Scott asked about. The bad news is–all but one of them are out of print. However, the bad news is softened by the fact that all of them are readily available at no great cost from Amazon, Bookfinder and, most likely eBay.

First of all, I suppose I should explain what exactly we mean when we talk about Chinese Buddhist vegetarian cooking, shouldn’t I?

Many, but not all Buddhists, take the tenet of “Do no harm,” to extend to diet: thus they are vegetarians.

However, the vegetarian monks of China, did not believe that all pleasure must be sacrificed in order to do no harm to living beings, so they cleverly invented a cuisine, which is called, “zhai cai” which roughly translates to either “purification cuisine” or “disciplined cuisine.” In this highly developed and fascinating variant on Chinese cookery, meat is replaced by tofu, wheat gluten, black mushrooms, agar-agar, and other meat analogues. Wheat gluten, in particular, is used in highly creative and very flavorful ways to very closely imitate chicken, or other meats.

Every dish in the repretoire of Chinese cuisine is replicated in zhai cai, from dim sum specialties (steamed buns filled with lotus seed paste are said to have been invented by Buddhist nuns to replace char sui bai–steamed pork buns), to festival dishes to soups, red-braised dishes, noodles, soups and stir-fries.

Scott is right: most Chinese cookbooks in English do not dwell for very long on these Buddhist specialties. It is assumed that Americans are not interested in such foods, or that they would not enjoy the flavor of tofu or wheat gluten, so short shrift is given to this fascinating and very worthy cuisine.

However, as someone who has gone out of her way to order “vegetarian” sesame chicken in Chinese restaurants because I really like the flavor of deep fried wheat gluten, I can say that if Americans get a taste of Buddhist food, they’d like it. Fully vegetarian ma po tofu is really good, too, and there is nothing better than a good steamed lotus seed bun. (I like them much better than the pork buns myself, but not as well as I like my very own steamed mushroom buns.)

On to the books!

First, the one that is in print: Authentic Chinese Cuisine for the Contemporary Kitchen by Bryanna Clark Grogan. To be honest, I was wary of this book, because the author is not Chinese, and it comes from “The Healthy World Cuisine Series.” While the title promises authenticity, I wasn’t very sure about it until I got my hands on the book.

Grogan did her homework, and she presents a good selection of authentic Buddhist-style recipes that utilize wheat gluten. She gives instructions on how to make one’s own wheat gluten, and on how to make vegetable stocks which do indeed, as Scott surmised, use black mushrooms as an ingredient. She also makes good use of typical Chinese vegetarian ingredients such as fermented tofu, Sichuan preserved vegetable, and gives instructions on how to make one’s own homemade bun dough. Some of her recipes are not as authentic as others, but most of them utilize the ingredientsand techniques that I have come to expect from a cookbook which is presenting mainly Chinese recipes, as opposed to “Chinese-inspired” recipes.

However, if you don’t know much about Chinese techniques of cutting, stir-frying, steaming, braising or frying–you might not want to use this book on its own, but in conjunction with other books on basic Chinese cookery. While her historical background and discussion of ingredients is very detailed, her ability to explain the basics of the Chinese kitchen is limited.

A fine book which is sadly out of print, but should not be is Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s From the Earth: Chinese Vegetarian Cooking. Born in Sun Tak, a suburb of Canton, Lo has been teaching Chinese cookery at the China Institute of America in New York City for thirty years and has written a number of excellent cookbooks. While Grogan is not good at explaining the basics, Lo is more than capable of taking a beginner by the hand and leading them into the mysteries of the Chinese kitchen.

Even so, the basics are covered quite briefly in this book, but the reason I picked it up was for the recipes–Lo presents such classics as “Romaine Lettuce with Black Beans,” “Braised Chinese Turnips with Vegetables,” and “Shark Fin Soup,” made with bean thread noodles and pea sprouts instead of shark’s fin. She also presents a long chapter of Buddhist tofu recipes, along with many recipes of her own invention for stir fried vegetables. Included are recipes for noodles, soups (with vegetable broths that include Chinese dates and buckthorn seeds), desserts, and a handful of seafood-based recipes, because as Lo notes, many Chinese who are mostly vegetarian will eat “the occasional fish.”

The Buddha said: “One will enjoy longevity, by not killing or harming others, one will seldom be sick, if one relieves others’ worry and grief.”

Thus opens the preface to Florence Lin’s Chinese Vegetarian Cookbook by noted teacher and author, Florence Lin. Included in her book are separate chapters on tofu and soybean products, wheat gluten, eggs, seeds and nuts, and rice, noodles and breads. Each chapter has handy charts describing the nature of each dish in the chapter; this is meant to help the cook prepare a Chinese meal balanced in flavor, texture, color and cooking style. Lin’s recipes are excellent, and there are many line drawings illustrating various techniques throughout the book.

The last two books are very slender volumes put out by Wei Chuan, which is the publishing arm of a very large, very famous Chinese cooking school in Taiwan by the same name. The Wei Chuan books are all filled with photographs illustrating the finished dish as well as some of the techniques needed to complete them, and the text is presented in both Chinese and English. Most Wei Chuan cookbooks are full-sized books, but Very! Very! Vegetarian by Chen-Hsia Wang and Tofu! Tofu! Tofu! by Mu-Tsun Lee are half-sized. Were it me, I would have combined the two into a single volume, but as I am not on the editorial board, no one asked my opinion! (I [probably would have ditched the weird, kinda westernized recipes in the vegetarian one, too–but again–I was not consulted.)

While the vegetarian book is strictly vegetarian, the tofu book does include recipes where meat or seafood are used as a seasoning, stuffing or featured ingredient with the tofu. This is a very Chinese way of presenting tofu, where the small amount of meat is used to flavor the bean curd, but it really doesn’t count as vegetarian or Buddhist. However, quite a few of the recipes -are- completely vegetarian, and the author goes out of the way to use tofu in many guises from pressed tofu to bean curd sheets to fermented tofu.

Very! Very! Vegetarian utilizes a lot of prepared Chinese ingredients such as “vegetarian cuttlefish” and “wheat gluten rolls,” but it also includes a lot of black mushroom recipes, and recipes that use various Chinese sea vegetables. (I picked it up for the mushroom recipes, primarily.) There are also some really weird recipes that include “western cream soup,” and “hamburger” made of chick peas–the only reason I am mentioning this book at all is because I really like some of the mushroom recipes. (But, there is a reason, I left it for the end–basically, if you see it at a garage sale and it is cheap and you like black mushrooms–get it–but if not–don’t bother. Or, if you want the black mushroom recipes–you can always ask me.)

There we have them–five books–three of them excellent, one of them pretty good and one of them, only a little good. All of them have recipes that can be considered part of the Chinese Buddhist tradition, and all but perhaps the last are worthy additions to the collector’s bookshelf.

So, if you are interested in learning how to cook like Buddha–get thee to a used bookstore, and then run to the kitchen!