A Great Big Book on Chinese Food

The ‘70s and ‘80s were the heyday of the cookbook primers--big books that walked you step by step through the nuts and bolts of the various international cuisines that we Americans just then happened to be “discovering.” That trend has slacked off over the last decade. Maybe our taste for exploration has waned. Maybe all the good stuff has been done. Maybe there were just so dang many Italian books on the market there was no room for anything else.

Every once in a while, you still come across a throwback, though. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s “The Chinese Kitchen” (William Morrow, $35) is a particularly handsome example. Lo is no newcomer to the cookbook world. This is her eighth book. Canton-born, she has lived in the United States since 1959 (her husband is Fred Ferretti, the former globe-trotting columnist for Gourmet).

“Chinese Kitchen” is part primer, part recipe collection. Though there are an interesting essay on Chinese food history and a good run-down on ingredients, it is the recipe part that works best. Almost every part of China is visited, with a special emphasis on Cantonese and Sichuanese foods. I particularly like the fine collection of Chinese pickles, condiments and “little bites”--things that seem to have been neglected in many previous books. Anything worth visiting is worth revisiting, especially when it’s done this well.