Cook Real Hawai'i by
The story of Hawaiian cooking, by a two-time Top Chef finalist and Fan Favorite, through 100 recipes that embody the beautiful cross-cultural exchange of the islands. ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR- The New Yorker . ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR- The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Taste of Home, Vice, Serious Eats Evenwhenhe was winning accolades and adulation for his cooking, two-time Top Chef finalist Sheldon Simeon decided to drop what he thought he was supposed to cook as a chef.He dedicated himself instead to the local Hawai'i food that feeds his 'ohana-his family and neighbors. With uncomplicated, flavor-forward recipes, he shows us the many cultures that have come to create the cuisine of his beloved home- the native Hawaiian traditions, Japanese influences, Chinese cooking techniques, and dynamic Korean, Portuguese, and Filipino flavors that are closest to his heart. Through stunning photography, poignant stories, and dishes like wok-fried poke, pork dumplings made with biscuit dough, crispy cauliflower katsu,and charred huli-huli chicken slicked with a sweet-savory butter glaze, Cook Real Hawai'i will bring a true taste of the cookouts, homes, and iconic mom and pop shops of Hawai'i into your kitchen.
Oodles and Oodles of Vegan Noodles: soba, ramen, udon & more by
Soba, ramen, udon, pho--saucy, slurpy noodles of every kind go vegan in this sunny cookbook. TikTok sensation Cheynese Khachame shares her noodle love, with over 50 dishes representing Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, and beyond . . . Soba Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing to fill your belly at lunch Creamy Coconut-Curry Ramen for comfort food in 20 minutes (!) Steamy Drunken Noodles to pick you up after a night out Vietnamese Pho that turns simple spices into taste-bud bliss Cheynese's lovingly crafted recipes meet every craving with 100 percent plant-based ingredients: from summery japchae and zaru soba to classic shoyu ramen and fusion udon "carbonara." For noodle fans seeking oodles of options, these are soups, salads, and stir-fries simply not to be missed!
Inscrutable Eating: Asian appetites and the rhetorics of racial consumption by
"You are what you eat," but what if you're seen as a rat eater, bat lover, or MSG user? In Inscrutable Eating, Jennifer Lin LeMesurier considers how everyday assumptions about Asian food influence the perception of Asian and Asian American identity within the US racial landscape, demonstrating that beliefs about how certain people eat are inseparable from attitudes that support hierarchies around race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on rhetorical theory, affect theory, and Asian American studies, LeMesurier analyzes messages in US popular culture about Asian eating to develop the concept of gut orientations: rhetorically dominant ways of interacting with food that scale upward to feelings of desire and disgust toward social groups. Looking at examples from fears around MSG to uproar over wet markets as the source of COVID-19, she argues that these "gut" reactions establish certain racial views as common-sense truths rather than cultural biases, reinforcing dominant norms about what belongs on whose plate, or who belongs at what table. In demystifying marginalizing discourse around food and eating, LeMesurier shows how exposing the tacit, felt ideas of consumption is necessary to contest broader forms of discrimination.
Cooling the Tropics: ice, indigeneity, and Hawaiian refreshment by
Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi--all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as "essential" for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics. From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawaiʻi's food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can--and must--be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawaiʻi and beyond. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient
Invitation to a Banquet : the story of Chinese food by
Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but today that is beginning to change. In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland. Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.
Family Style : memories of an American from Vietnam by
A moving young adult graphic memoir about a Vietnamese immigrant boy's search for belonging in America, perfect for fans of American Born Chinese and The Best We Could Do! Thien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam. After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don't get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as Thien's mom and dad look for work. Potato chips are an indulgence that bring Thien so much joy that they become a necessity. Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search-- for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.
Land of Plenty by
The food of the Sichuan region in southwest China is one of the world's great culinary secrets. Many of us know it for its "hot and spicy" reputation or a few of its most famous dishes, most notably Kung Pao chicken, but that is only the beginning. Sichuanese cuisine is legendary in China for its sophistication and astounding diversity: local gourmets claim the region boasts 5000 different dishes.Fuchsia Dunlop fell in love with Sichuanese food on her first visit to the province ten years ago. The following year she went to live in the Sichuanese capital Chengdu, where she became the first foreigner to study full-time at the province's famous cooking school, the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. Now she has given us a cookbook gathered on the spot from the kitchens of Sichuan, filled with stories and colorful descriptions of the region itself. Useful for the enthusiastic beginner as well as the experienced cook, Land of Plenty teaches you not only how to prepare the Sichuan recipes but also the art of chopping and to appreciate the textures of dishes.Among this book's unique features: a full glossary of Chinese terms; Chinese characters useful for shopping; a practical introduction to the art of cutting; detailed lists of the 23 recognized flavor combinations and 56 cooking methods used in Sichuanese cuisine; 16 color pictures of the ingredients and finished dishes; double-page maps of the region; and Chinese characters for every recipe
Japan's Cuisines by
Cuisines in Japan have an ideological dimension that cannot be ignored. In 2013, 'traditional Japanese dietary cultures' (washoku) was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Washoku's predecessor was "national people's cuisine," an attempt during World War II to create a uniform diet for all citizens. Japan's Cuisines reveals the great diversity of Japanese cuisine and explains how Japan's modern food culture arose through the direction of private and public institutions. Readers discover how tea came to be portrayed as the origin of Japanese cuisine, how lunch became a gourmet meal, and how regions on Japan's periphery are reasserting their distinct food cultures. From wartime foodstuffs to modern diets, this fascinating book shows how the cuisine from the land of the rising sun shapes national, local, and personal identity.
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express by
Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015-2016 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, Adult Non-Fiction category Finalist in the Culinary History category of the 2016 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards​ From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express takes readers on a compelling journey from the California Gold Rush to the present, letting readers witness both the profusion of Chinese restaurants across the United States and the evolution of many distinct American-Chinese iconic dishes from chop suey to General Tso's chicken. Along the way, historian Haiming Liu explains how the immigrants adapted their traditional food to suit local palates, and gives readers a taste of Chinese cuisine embedded in the bittersweet story of Chinese Americans. Treating food as a social history, Liu explores why Chinese food changed and how it has influenced American culinary culture, and how Chinese restaurants have become places where shared ethnic identity is affirmed--not only for Chinese immigrants but also for American Jews. The book also includes a look at national chains like P. F. Chang's and a consideration of how Chinese food culture continues to spread around the globe. Drawing from hundreds of historical and contemporary newspaper reports, journal articles, and writings on food in both English and Chinese, From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express represents a groundbreaking piece of scholarly research. It can be enjoyed equally as a fascinating set of stories about Chinese migration, cultural negotiation, race and ethnicity, diverse flavored Chinese cuisine and its share in American food market today.
Chop Suey, USA by
American diners began to flock to Chinese restaurants more than a century ago, making Chinese food the first mass-consumed cuisine in the United States. By 1980, it had become the country's most popular ethnic cuisine. Chop Suey, USA offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the rise of Chinese food, revealing the forces that made it ubiquitous in the American gastronomic landscape and turned the country into an empire of consumption. Engineered by a politically disenfranchised, numerically small, and economically exploited group, Chinese food's tour de America is an epic story of global cultural encounter. It reflects not only changes in taste but also a growing appetite for a more leisurely lifestyle. Americans fell in love with Chinese food not because of its gastronomic excellence but because of its affordability and convenience, which is why they preferred the quick and simple dishes of China while shunning its haute cuisine. Epitomized by chop suey, American Chinese food was a forerunner of McDonald's, democratizing the once-exclusive dining-out experience for such groups as marginalized Anglos, African Americans, and Jews. The rise of Chinese food is also a classic American story of immigrant entrepreneurship and perseverance. Barred from many occupations, Chinese Americans successfully turned Chinese food from a despised cuisine into a dominant force in the restaurant market, creating a critical lifeline for their community. Chinese American restaurant workers developed the concept of the open kitchen and popularized the practice of home delivery. They streamlined certain Chinese dishes, such as chop suey and egg foo young, turning them into nationally recognized brand names.
Dubious Gastronomy by
California roll, Chinese take-out, American-made kimchi, dogmeat, monosodium glutamate, SPAM--all are examples of what Robert Ji-Song Ku calls "dubious" foods. Strongly associated with Asian and Asian American gastronomy, they are commonly understood as ersatz, depraved, or simply bad. In Dubious Gastronomy, Ku contends that these foods share a spiritual fellowship with Asians in the United States in that the Asian presence, be it culinary or corporeal, is often considered watered-down, counterfeit, or debased manifestations of the "real thing." The American expression of Asianness is defined as doubly inauthentic--as insufficiently Asian and unreliably American when measured against a largely ideological if not entirely political standard of authentic Asia and America. By exploring the other side of what is prescriptively understood as proper Asian gastronomy, Ku suggests that Asian cultural expressions occurring in places such as Los Angeles, Honolulu, New York City, and even Baton Rouge are no less critical to understanding the meaning of Asian food--and, by extension, Asian people--than culinary expressions that took place in Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai centuries ago. In critically considering the impure and hybridized with serious and often whimsical intent, Dubious Gastronomy argues that while the notion of cultural authenticity is troubled, troubling, and troublesome, the apocryphal is not necessarily a bad thing: The dubious can be and is often quite delicious. Dubious Gastronomy overlaps a number of disciplines, including American and Asian American studies, Asian diasporic studies, literary and cultural studies, and the burgeoning field of food studies. More importantly, however, the book fulfills the critical task of amalgamating these areas and putting them in conversation with one another. Written in an engaging and fluid style, it promises to appeal a wide audience of readers who seriously enjoys eating--and reading and thinking about--food.
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by
If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.
The Five Elements Cookbook: a guide to traditional Chinese medicine with recipes for everyday by
A stunning and accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine, featuring over 50 nourishing recipes to eat for healing every day by TCM chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong. Chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong offers an incredibly fresh, elegant, and authentic approach to food therapy and a truly accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a thousands-year-old practice for holistic wellness. Named after a foundational theory of what balance and optimal health looks like, The Five Elements Cookbook is a stunning introduction to the beginner concepts of TCM and offers a photographic guide to the most commonly used medicinal ingredients (American ginseng, turmeric, reishi, and more), their healing properties, and how to use them seamlessly in your cooking--whether in a warm tea, restorative bone broth, a sweet smoothie, or your favorite dinner. Each of the over 50 delicious recipes ingeniously incorporates a food-as-medicine ingredient, with consideration for seasonality, digestion, and body constitution, and specific concerns, like menstrual pains, nausea, anxiety, blood circulation, respiratory health, and more. For those with dietary restrictions, each recipe also includes a key for vegan, nut free, dairy free, gluten free, plus the TCM energetics and uses. Recipes span all day and every meal, plus beverages and desserts: Sesame Goji Granola Pumpkin and Lotus Seed Hummus with Crudité Reishi Mushroom Miso Soup Steamed Whole Fish with Herbal Soy Sauce Warming Lamb Noodle Soup Saffron Mulled Wine With beautiful photographs throughout, this soothing, practical guide is perfect for those looking to eat for healing, nourishment, and joy.
Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook by
A modern, brashly flavorful guide to cooking Taiwanese-American food, from Brooklyn's lauded Win Son, Win Son Bakery, and Cathy Erway, celebrated writer and expert on the cuisineJosh Ku, born in Queens to parents from southern Taiwan, and Trigg Brown, a native Virginian whose mentor was a Taiwanese-American chef, forged a friendship over food--specifically, excellent tsang ying tou, or "flies' head," a dish of chopped budding chives kissed with pork fat. Their obsession with Taiwanese food and culture propelled them to open Win Son together in 2016. The East Williamsburg restaurant quickly established itself as a destination and often incurs long waits for their vibrant and flavorful Taiwanese-American cuisine. Ku and Brown have teamed up with Cathy Erway, Taiwanese food expert and celebrated writer, to create Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, which explores and celebrates the cuisine of Taiwan and its ever-simmering pot of creative influences. Told through the eyes, taste buds, travels, and busy lives of Ku, Brown, and Erway, this book brings the cuisine of this misunderstood island nation into the spotlight. With 100 creative, yet accessible recipes, this book will unravel the history and influences of this diaspora cuisine. While featuring classic dishes and well-known favorites, this cookbook also stretches this cuisine's definition, introducing new dishes with brazen twists. In the true spirit of Taiwanese cooking, the recipes draw inspiration from their surroundings, creating food that reflects the culinary cultural impression Taiwan has made on each of the authors. This book serves up recipes that are fun, flavorful, and decidedly American-born in style.
The Wok: recipes and techniques by
J. Kenji López-Alt's debut cookbook, The Food Lab, revolutionized home cooking, selling more than half a million copies with its science-based approach to everyday foods. And for fast, fresh cooking for his family, there's one pan López-Alt reaches for more than any other: the wok. Whether stir-frying, deep frying, steaming, simmering, or braising, the wok is the most versatile pan in the kitchen. Once you master the basics--the mechanics of a stir-fry, and how to get smoky wok hei at home--you're ready to cook home-style and restaurant-style dishes from across Asia and the United States, including Kung Pao Chicken, Pad Thai, and San Francisco-Style Garlic Noodles. López-Alt also breaks down the science behind beloved Beef Chow Fun, fried rice, dumplings, tempura vegetables or seafood, and dashi-simmered dishes. Featuring more than 200 recipes--including simple no-cook sides--explanations of knife skills and how to stock a pantry, and more than 1,000 color photographs, The Wok provides endless ideas for brightening up dinner.