Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook

This is quite a good book for those who would like to learn to cook Chinese food. Some of the "Chinese" or "Asian" cookbooks are sort of "Americanized" but not this one. For instance, the "Sweet and Sour Pork" which is very tasteful unlike those which you can get from Chinese fastfood which are dripping with red sauce. Another benefit of this book is that it has step by step instructions, and at the beginning of the book, she explains various types of Asian noodles, what type of knife to get, what is the proper way of cutting the meat or vegetables and how to fry, which I find extremely helpful. Most cookbooks do not explain how to do all this things and just give you the recipes, expecting you to know how to do everything. Also, it comes with colorful pictures of all the dishes which I find motivating (for me to try the recipes.)

This cookbook provides excellent and easy to follow recipes for dishes from around China. Each recipe has a picture and useful information. The binding is of good quality, meaning you can flatten it while you're cooking without tearing it up. The dishes are oriented to authentic Chinese tastes, not Americanized junk food. The only drawback is that the recipes are English-only, without Chinese characters. Sometimes my wife (who is Chinese) cannot tell what ingredient is called for because of this.The recipies in this cookbook tend to be slightly more fancy (and thus more time consuming)than absolutely neccesary, which can be good or bad, depending on your mood and patience. So I recommend having another, slightly simpler book for comparison, such as "Chinese Cooking" by the Wei Chuan company.

When I first came to the states from China I brought a few Chinese cookbooks (in Chinese)with me, knowing how much I liked chinese food and how little I knew about cooking it. However, it was after I got this book that my cooking skills started to sky-rocket. The book is no doubt an excellent, excellent guide to Chinese cusine.

This book introduced me to Chinese cooking, and although I now own a number of excellent Chinese cookbooks by such notables as Nina Simonds, Ken Hom, and Susanna Foo, I return to this book again and again. It covers a wide variety of dishes, from simple to complex. In addition to lots of great photos, there is good information on ingredients with which beginning cooks or cooks new to Chinese cooking may not be familiar. This book is a bargain and I keep mine within easy reach in my kitchen. I've made the simple fried rice time and again; although Susanna Foo's fried rice is delicious, it is much more labor-intensive than the fried rice recipe in Yan-Kit's book. Hint: try them both!

As a Chinese who has eaten his way through incredible home-style and restaurant cooking on three continents, this is by far the best cookbook I've encountered on Chinese cuisine. The recipes are authentic and cover many of the most famous dishes (regional specialities included) familiar to real Chinese food connosieurs. The small, yet important detail of including the name of dishes in Chinese is something most Chinese cookbooks on the US market would do well in adopting. Be aware that the recipes and preparation aren't simple, a loyal reflection of the effort that goes into preparing fine Chinese dishes. Persistence will be rewarded with fine results.