Publisher's Synopsis
This is not only a delightful cook book--it is a delightful story too.
The recipes are designed to make the preparation of Chinese food as easy as eating it. In a simple and direct American way, Calvin Lee tells how to make the best of Chinese dishes, the kind you will find in the finest Chinese restaurants and never guess you could make so easily at home.
The great joy of this book is that it tells the story of Chinese food, both in China and here in America. It will acquaint you with Chinatown and a Chinese grocery store so that you will learn each vegetable, each melon, each sauce as well as if it came from your own supermarket (and most of them do!).
You will then learn the few simple ways by which the Chinese have cooked for generations, and how this is done in an American kitchen with American utensils. Above all, with a few minutes' cooking you will be able to turn out these wonderful dishes of inimitable Chinese crispness and color.
There is also the fascinating story of how the American Chinese cook American dishes like hot dogs and Thanksgiving turkey in the Chinese way. There is a delightful chart on teas, and a complete marketing and recipe chart of all important Chinese ingredients and seasonings and how to obtain them.
Calvin Lee's Chinese Cooking for American Kitchens is unique--in this book you will find the understanding, explanation, and information that you could otherwise obtain only through months of study.
Calvin Lee (1934-1983) was a third-generation American, proprietor of the oldest Chinese restaurant in New York, at the most fabulous Chinese address in the city--at Mott and Pell Streets in the heart of Chinatown. Here his grandfather founded not only the first Chinese restaurant, but the first to welcome western guests.
Chinese Cooking for American Kitchens was first published in 1958.
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