Notes about Recipes in this book

• Celtuce salad

  • hyperbowler on December 29, 2016

    It's best to strain the Sichuan peppercorns out of the cooking oil before adding the ginger and chilies. They pack quite a punch and will have already lots of good stuff to the infused oil. The celtuse is supposed to be cut into "strips." I wasn't sure whether that meant rectangular planes or a matchsticks, so I used a mandolin to cut it into matchsticks and used 1 tsp. of kosher salt (the equivalent of 1/2 tsp. of table salt).

  • kitchen_chick on August 08, 2017

    I agree the instructions are a bit unclear. I did rectangular planes, which worked well enough. I might try thin cross-sectioned slices cut on a bias next time. We enjoy the peppercorns and their numbing punch and so leave them in.

• Fish maw and corn soup

  • chawkins on January 17, 2024

    Quite good. Could use a little bit more corn.

• Pork and bok choy soup

  • takstephe on March 17, 2022

    The broth is killer!

• Stuffed tofu puffs with winter melon

  • chawkins on February 11, 2023

    I had no dace, so used the suggested shrimp as the stuffing for the tofu puffs. I had the mini puffs, so they did not hold much stuffing. This is just like the dish my mom used to make, just that my mom would turn the puffs inside out, so they will hold more of the fillings and she used to fill them with minced pork.

• Shrimp with vermicelli

  • chawkins on February 14, 2023

    I halved the recipe for everything except the shrimp. I like the way the bean thread noodle was cooked. Most recipes would have you pre-soaked the noodles, this one instructs you to add the dried noodles directly into the pan with a lot of liquid and let the noodles saoaked up the sauce. As a result, the noodles were al dente with a chew rather than soft which is usually the texture of the pre-soaked ones and I like that, however I am a fan of this sauce, I'll go back to my normal recipe for this dish but I'll adopt the technique for cooking the noodles.

• Shrimp and cucumber

  • chawkins on August 31, 2023

    The recipe looked dubious. The 1 oz of pork seemed to be overly seasoned, there were a ton of garlic and fish sauce. Turned out it was shrimp and cucumber in lobster sauce. It was delicious. Always looking for something new for my garden cucumbers.

• Spicy chicken with Sichuan peppercorns

  • takstephe on April 03, 2022

    This is one of the best recipes I have made with sesame paste, though I modified and mixed the sauce and chicken with wheat noodles instead of serving with rice. Could cut down the amount of chicken juice because the sauce was very loose.

• Chicken in lotus leaf

  • chawkins on July 12, 2021

    I skipped the jujube dates because I don’t have any. Considered substituting regular dates, but I didn’t. Very similar to Fuschia Dunlop’s version in Every Grain of Rice.

• Chicken in zhuhou sauce

  • chawkins on October 17, 2019

    Excellent dish that came together easily. Instead of cutting up a whole chicken for this, I used 4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, each chopped into three pieces. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly, the delicious sauce thickened nicely from the corn starch in the chicken marinade.

• Chicken with cashew nuts

  • chawkins on October 19, 2024

    This was okay. I used orange pepper from the garden.

• Drumsticks in sauce

  • chawkins on February 22, 2019

    Quite tasty. However, next time I make this and there will be a next time, I'll do it quite differently in the instant pot. Instead of deep frying, I'll just saute them in the IP, cook the sauce and add the drumsticks back and pressure-cook them instead of steaming and finally reduce the sauce with the saute function, then I only have one pot to clean.

• Chicken with chestnuts

  • chawkins on July 25, 2023

    Finally, a Cantonese version of this dish, so much lighter than the other red-cooked ones that use dark soy. I used vacuum packed cooked chestnuts from the Asian grocery store.

• Xinjiang-style chicken

  • chawkins on September 14, 2022

    Aka big plate chicken. I only had it once before at a local Chinese restaurant and I found two such recipes on my bookshelf. This and one from All Under Heaven, this one uses chili bean paste and the other doesn't, the version I had at the restaurant definitely had chili bean paste in it, so I chose this recipe. I substituted green for red bell pepper, jalapeno for the red chile and pappardelle for the wheat noodle. I turned out delicious even though mine looked more like a stew whereas the restaurant dish looked more like a stir-fry, but I might have put in too much water. Next I'll try Adam Liaw's recipt I found on the internet.

• Aromatic meatballs

  • takstephe on March 17, 2022

    Would not recommend using cornstarch instead of lotus root flour, it came out gritty

• Spareribs with salted plums

  • chawkins on January 30, 2026

    Very different from other versions of this dish that I had made, they usually involved sugar to temper the salted plums. This one is all savory with bean paste added and spicy with the red chile and pickled ginger. I used jalapeno instead of the red chile.

• Pork tenderloin with cilantro

  • kitchen_chick on July 11, 2019

    We really enjoyed this dish. Egg white is used to give the pork a velvety texture, and the cilantro... well, if you love cilantro, then this dish is for you. The instructions are a bit odd. They call for "4 bunches" of cilantro and unfortunately doesn't specify an equivalent weight. The "bunches" sold at my grocery store are quite large, and four of them would be proportionally wrong when compared to the photo of the dish. Use your judgement on this one.

• Pork belly with lotus root

  • chawkins on May 03, 2021

    Made half a recipe using pork ribs because that is what I have on hand. Because the ribs were cut in small pieces and would cook quicker than pork belly, I added the lotus roots to the braise as soon as it came to a boil. This tasted a tad more complex than my mom’s because of the bean paste, my mom only used the red fermented bean curd for this dish.

• Cauliflower and peppers

  • takstephe on March 17, 2022

    If you don't have a wok, don't make this on a cast iron that isn't well seasoned!

• Pumpkin and taro casserole

  • kitchen_chick on October 17, 2022

    Delicious and simple. I didn't have pumpkin on hand, but it worked great with sweet potato.

• Tomatoes with scrambled eggs

  • chawkins on September 09, 2021

    Liked the addition of ginger to this childhood comfort food. I also learned a new way of beating eggs to get a homogeneous mixture.

  • kitchen_chick on August 17, 2022

    I made this with tomatoes fresh from my garden, and it was delicious! I agree that the ginger is really good in this. (I think if I have to use grocery store tomatoes that I would add some tomato powder/paste to punch up the flavor.)

• Ridged luffa with clams

  • takstephe on March 17, 2022

    I can't really judge how the luffa came out, because I think I used the wrong kind, but the clams and sauce were great

• Oyster mushrooms with spiced salt

  • paisleymonsoon on January 18, 2021

    I was happy to find an oyster mushroom recipe in one of my cookbooks for my freshly-foraged oyster mushrooms. This was so simple yet so good. Fried mushrooms sprinkled with a mixture of ground Sichuan peppers and salt. I like how the Sichuan pepper leaves a kind of minty numbness at the back of your tongue.

• Black fungus and cilantro salad

  • DayOwl on March 27, 2021

    Outstanding. This recipe surprised me - the oyster sauce and sesame seeds seemed like odd additions, but really worked well with the cilantro.

• Pan-fried lotus root patties

  • chawkins on May 03, 2021

    What a surprise, it seemed to be such an odd combination of ingredients but the end result was delicious, my husband even told me that it could go on the repeat list. No salt was added to the mix, the only seasoning was just a half teaspoon of soy sauce, but the duck liver sausage adds a lot of flavor. Real duck liver sausage is hard to source, need to check the ingredient list to ensure that they are not substituting turkey liver for the duck liver. One small quibble about the recipe, it requested a bunch of cilantro not a specific amount. You are supposed to get 8 to 9 patties. I got 9.

• Steamed ham and winter melon sandwiches

  • chawkins on February 14, 2023

    Quite good but the dish was swimming in broth. I skipped the step where the ham was cooked in honey because I used honey glazed spiral cut ham and instead of cutting a slit in a piece of melon and inserting a piece of ham in the slit, I just sandwiched a ham slice between two slices of melon, may be my ham slices were too thick, it was impossible to insert them into the slits.

• Stir-fried green beans

  • kitchen_chick on July 12, 2017

    I used yard long beans, and I stir-fried them instead of deep frying. I also used twice the pork amount and a bit more Sichuan pepper. I really like this version of stir-fried beans.

• Braised tofu

  • chawkins on December 27, 2019

    This was just okay, a little bit on the sweet side, the Sichuan peppercorn did not come through for me.

• Gongbao tofu

  • kitchen_chick on August 08, 2017

    We're not vegetarian, so I used chicken broth in place of the water used in the recipe.

• Mapo tofu

  • MarciK on December 09, 2025

    I made this for a friend from Chengdu who gave me some authentic ingredients, except that I used cayenne for the chili powder. He said it tastes authentic, and he feels like at home. Best compliment I could have. I would probably cut back on the cayenne next time. Note, do not drain the tofu prior to cooking. I did and needed to add extra water because not enough was released during cooking to make a sauce. I’m adding this to favorite recipes and will definitely make again.

• Egg foo yung

  • chawkins on February 22, 2023

    This was okay, used ham instead of char siu. Had trouble flipping even though I only made half a recipe and it was much smaller. I slid it off onto a plate and then tried to flip it from the plate back to the pan, should have used two plates to invert onto another plate and slide it back in the pan.

• Pork omelet

  • chawkins on March 14, 2022

    Labor intensive but quite tasty, as you have to cook each pocket individually. My mom used to make these when I was a child, her version did not have the sweet preserved turnips, I think it was a worthy addition as it added some textural difference. I wished they had explained the reason for adding a bit of cornstarch to the egg mixture.

• Steamed eggs with dried shrimp and vermicelli

  • chawkins on March 09, 2022

    True comfort food. My mom used to make this a lot, hadn’t have it for probably over thirty years. Not an easy dish to make because the cellophane noodles absorb a lot of liquid, my mom usually put in a lot of noodle and not enough liquid, so the eggs puckered up a bit. This version, however, had too much liquid and not enough noodle. I drained the excess liquid from the leftovers and reheated in the microwave, the resulting texture was better than when the previous day, the custard remained very silky.

• Baked pork chops over rice

  • chawkins on August 04, 2021

    My husband said it should be on rotation every week. The chops were brined for an hour, so remained quite juicy. I used one giant black Krim from the garden rather than 2 tomatoes.

• Spareribs with glutinous rice

  • chawkins on August 26, 2022

    Very good and very easy but takes time. The assembled dish was steamed for an hour and a half and the rice was pre-soaked for an hour. Probably can cook the assembled dish in the IP and shortened the cook time.

• Shanghai pork chop noodle soup

  • chawkins on December 22, 2023

    Quite good. I made a few substitutions, used gai lan instead of bok choy and soba noodle instead of Shanghai noodle.

• Char kway teow

  • chawkins on March 03, 2022

    Very good. This is the Hong Kong style char kway Teow that I’ve grown up with. I did not have bean sprouts but I had gai lan so that was what I used.

• Glutinous rice balls with black sesame filling

  • chawkins on July 18, 2021

    Very good and easy for me because I have a jar of black sesame powder that I got from the Chinese grocery store. I also cheated with the ginger tea: instead of ginger juice, I just steeped a smashed piece of ginger. I used vegetable shortening rather than lard because that was what I had.