Product Description

With eight major national cuisines, and dozens of regional variations, a comprehensive exploration of Asian cuisine might seem too daunting to present in one volume. But with Essentials of Asian Cuisine: Fundamentals and Favorite Recipes, award-winning author Corinne Trang successfully brings the fundamentals of Asian cooking into the home kitchen in a collection that includes both contemporary and time-honored recipes.

Trang takes the reader on a journey of Eastern culinary discovery as seen through a practiced Western culinary lens. Explaining how and why Chinese cuisine is at the root of all Asian cooking, she describes in familiar terms the techniques that incorporate the five senses and embody the Chinese yin yang philosophy of balanced opposites. Trang uses Asian ingredients commonly found in supermarkets and through mail-order sources -- such as fish sauce, lemongrass, and rice noodles -- to guide home cooks through the preparation of healthy, sensual meals. She illuminates the mysteries of authentic Asian cooking, explaining the aromatic herbs and spices that make Asian cuisine vibrant, colorful, and distinctive.

Trang brings together more than three hundred traditional and cutting-edge recipes for condiments, appetizers, main courses, vegetables, and sweets and drinks from China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Mouthwatering items include Chinese Scallion Pancakes, Filipino Fried Spring Rolls, Spicy Indonesian Crab Fried Rice, Japanese Miso-Marinated Black Cod, Japanese Spring Water Tofu with Sweet Sake Sauce, Stir-Fried Leafy Greens, Chinese Pork Ribs with Black Bean and Garlic Sauce, Green Tea Ice Cream, and Thai Coffee.

In organizing the book by type of food, Trang allows cooks to see both the common elements and the distinctive individualities of Asian national and regional cooking. Trang explains the roots of major recipes and discusses where they appear in various guises in different countries. Vietnam's Canh Ca Chua (Hot and Sour Fish Soup), for example, can also be found in Cambodian, Indonesian, and Thai cuisines; Trang provides the recipes for both the master soup and its variations.

Trang includes a comprehensive glossary of Asian ingredients, plus a detailed list of resources for purchasing special ingredients and equipment. She offers sample menus, including a Chinese Dim Sum, a Filipino Dinner, and a Japanese Lunch. A special section on feng shui demonstrates how to organize and beautifully present a meal.

In this lavishly designed and illustrated volume, more than eighty-five original black-and-white and color photographs bring to life the ingredients, dishes, and people of Asia. The book is rich with personal anecdotes and intriguing information about Asian culture, and nowhere else will you find such a clear, comprehensive, and accessible treatment of Asian cuisine. More than a cookbook, Essentials of Asian Cuisine is a celebration of exotic culinary delights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259596 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 608 pages

Amazon.com
For so many of us, Asian cuisine beckons like a beautiful tropical pool. And yet, the most we ever do is test the water with a tremulous toe or two. But now Corinne Trang, award-winning author of Authentic Vietnamese Cooking, has taken on the prodigious task of being both swimming teacher and siren, lifeguard and fearless mariner, to lure us into the deep water with her Essentials of Asian Cuisine.

At 590-plus pages, this is a big book. It is beautifully illustrated, for those who need to see where they are headed, and just as beautifully thought out, for those who want to get where they are going. The destination is the food of Asia, with China as the wellspring. The territory Ms. Trang has mapped includes Indonesia and the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and Korea--as well as greater China. She does not pretend to be definitive--that would take an encyclopedia. Rather, Ms. Trang assures the reader that much of what they know of western cooking applies to the east. She begins with familiarity then builds in self confidence, chapter by chapter, recipe by recipe.

There are detailed sections on the Asian pantry, the basics of tools and techniques, an overview of the working fundamentals of building a dish or a meal. Then the book breaks out into chapters on "Condiments, Stocks and Starter Soups," "Rice, Noodles, Dumplings, and Bread," "Vegetables and Herbs," "Fish and Seafood," "Meat and Poultry," and "Sweets and Drinks." She ends her book with notes about Asian food rituals and sample menus and sources. The recipes are refreshingly short, concise, and to the point. A reader could begin by cooking what is already familiar, then expand into the many delicious alternatives Essentials of Asian Cuisine has to offer. Before you know it you'll be swimming like a natural without a second look back. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
There are some books you never knew you needed until they appear, and then you can't imagine how you did without them. Trang's newest (after Authentic Vietnamese Cooking) is an encyclopedic summation of the history, techniques, ingredients and recipes of the major Asian nations (China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines). It's an ambitious undertaking, but Trang delivers and shows an astonishing mastery of the often subtle differences among the cuisines. (For example, she clearly differentiates between three kinds of hot pots-Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese.) In this vast catalogue, some recipes are relatively familiar, like Bibimbap, Tempura, Hot and Sour Soup, Chicken Adobo; Curried Conch Shells, Fish and Coconut Custard and Oxtail braised in Peanut Sauce are more exotic. While some staples have not been included (such as Kungpao Chicken), the book can hardly be accused of brevity. A true instructor, Trang spends 60 pages on fundamentals before offering any cooking instruction. She fills out each chapter of recipes with an extensive essay on the different permutations taken by shared ingredients-there are 140 pages on "Rice, Noodles, Dumplings, and Breads" alone. The protein chapters are somewhat less impressive; still, this volume should be a first port of call for home cooks eager to undertake a serious study of Asian cooking.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Though she now lives in New York, food writer and former Saveur magazine editor Trang grew up in Vietnam as well as Paris, and she has traveled widely throughout Asia. In her impressive new cookbook, she explores the "continuities" among the centuries-old Chinese culinary tradition and the cuisines of the rest of Asia, from Japan to Vietnam and Thailand to the Philippines. She starts with a detailed, illustrated pantry section and another on equipment and techniques, followed by an overview of the "fundamentals," the guiding principles of Chinese cooking, along with brief introductions to the foods of the other Asian countries. The following chapters, from "Condiments" to "Rice, Noodles, Dumplings, and Breads" (the longest one and, to a certain extent, the heart of the book) to "Sweets and Drinks," offer more than 250 recipes. Trang's readable and informative headnotes provide provenance and explore the connections among similar dishes found in the various cuisines; she also includes useful tips on using unusual ingredients and suggests substitutions if necessary. The lengthy chapter introductions are equally impressive, serving as mini-encyclopedias in themselves. Authoritative and thoroughly researched, this will be invaluable as both a reference and a cookbook. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Essential


This is a book for the beginning student of Asian Cuisines. It removes the mystery and introduces the real life mechanics and aesthetics of constructing delicious food using ingredients that are new to many Euro- and Afro-Americans.
Trang manages a very light touch in these recipes-the instructions are easy to follow and indeed sometimes you feel like you knew this stuff all along. Perhaps it's her unique background as a French-Cambodian child of the restaurant business that gives her this special sympathy to both the student and the thing explained.

There are a few must-do recipes here. The Lumpia dipping sauce (brown sugar, garlic) is one of those why-didn't-I-think-of-that accompaniments. In my house, it's been used to lend some interest to a variety of prepared foods bought to please the children. Indonesian Peanut Sauce is a perfect salad dressing in the delightful gado-gado mix of vegetables and it's also a way to get fussy eaters (children and Americans) to eat their veggies.

Trang is also adept at explaining the basics. Her instructions for making stock and her encouragement to do so are masterful and blissfully simple.


"The kitchens of the East were my nursery." Corinne Trang says, but this is a much better cookbook than one that might have been written about one's native cuisine. It's Trang's good fortune in having been a translator of traditions for herself that pays off for the reader.


Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and the essential novel bang BANG: A Novel

Pass by this book, there are much better out there.
Once again Ms. Trang has put out a cookbook that leaves much to be desired. The recipes are boring and uninspired and I feel that there are many better cookbooks of this type out there. Ms. Trang continues to pump out cookbooks instead of spending some time really learning the intricacies of food and working on her taste level.

very good
bordering on exhaustively in-depth, this is a very well written cookbook/encyclopedia for asian cooking.