Damn Good Chinese Food
By Chris Cheung
ISBN: 9781510758124
208 Pages
Available in Hardcover and on Kindle
Synopsis:
From acclaimed chef Chris Cheung comes a cookbook inspired by growing up in New York's Chinatown—with a foreword by Maneet Chauhan, celebrity chef, author, and judge on The Food Network's Chopped
There is a particular region in today's renaissance of Chinese cooking that is often overlooked: the food of Chinatown.
Like many of his predecessors, chef Chris Cheung was inspired by the place where he grew up, lived, worked, and ate. From take-out orders at tiny hole-in-the wall teahouses to the lush green vegetables piled high at the markets, celebration dinners at colossal banquet halls to authentic home-cooked meals, Chinatown’s culinary treasures and culture laid the groundwork for his career as a chef and serve as the creative force behind this book.
In addition to learning the technique to make his widely revered dumplings, this cookbook includes fifty mouth-watering dishes that pay homage to the cooking traditions of Chinatown and celebrate this remarkable, resilient neighborhood. Cheung shares his thoughtful tour de force takes on timeless Chinese classics like potstickers, spring rolls, wonton soup, General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli, scallion pancakes, har gow (shrimp dumplings), chicken chow mein, salt-and-pepper shrimp, lobster Cantonese, egg cakes, congee, and dozens of other delicious, authentic recipes perfect for cooks of all skill levels.
Through personal insights, stories, and recipes, the author walks you through the markets, restaurants, and streets, providing a stunning portrait of this important cuisine and its countless contributions to American culture.
My Thoughts:
Damn Good Chinese Food is a fountain of knowledge about the history of Chinese food and Chinatowns as a cultural phenomenon. If you want to know how your favorite Chinese dishes came to be, this book may teach you that. The book is split into chapters in a way that feels more like a literature book than the standard "chapter is a food category" cookbook format. The entire first two chapters are dedicated to covering and Chinese cooking tools and techniques. You don't even get to a recipe until chapter three.
Once you do get to the recipes you will see that there are several familiar recipes to be found in this book, as well as some new ones. If you can find them. The book reads like a food/recipe blog, where there is all this exposition and background, and then a recipe thrown in the middle of it all, or at the end of it all. This is great if you really love all that history and exposition, but I know very few people who go out and buy a recipe book for the history - or who think fondly of the food blog format. Personally, I love learning history and interesting facts about foods I like, though I would prefer it much more if that information came as a footnote, or after the recipe. Because when I am looking for a recipe, usually that is because I am on a mission to cook and want it to be easy to find. And in this book (at least in the Kindle format that I was provided) the recipes are NOT easy to find. They are in the middle of walls of text and there is nothing to warn you that the recipe is about to start. It is not on a fresh page. The dish title is not repeated. It just jumps into it. And then you are back to another wall of text about the next dish. Except when you aren't. Some of the dishes get the elaborate treatment, and then some don't. Instead they fall back to back with another recipe. It feels very off balance.
The writer also covers cultural issues. He touches on the recent wave of xenophobia and Asian hate that has sprung up as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This is nice because it is something that people should be having a conversation about. He also accuses all anti-MSG people of being xenophobic. This is not so nice because it is massive generalization. Sure, just like with everything, there are people out there who probably fit into this description, however there are also people who do not. Lumping all those people together is irresponsible, because it causes people to not take others seriously when they walk into a restaurant and say that they cannot have something with MSG for very valid health reasons. This puts those people at risk. You may not believe it, but it happens all the time. People with food allergies often don't get taken seriously because servers and cooks will take it upon themselves to believe that diners are just "following fads" and they will put things in their food that can poison them. In some cases it's gluten. For me it's nuts. For my mother it's MSG. I remember all through my time in middle school and most of high school, her getting headaches so bad that she had to lay in her room in complete darkness for 6-8 hours, crying in pain. Until the doctor told her that she had an allergy to MSG. We started checking every label and cut out all food with that and the headaches went away. For some people, MSG toxicity is very real.
There was one other thing that I can only assume is a result of awareness of or concern for cultural differences. Scattered throughout the book are occasional pop culture and American culture references. Sometimes they make sense, but sometimes they don't work at all. For example, at one point the writer refers to his Old School Chinatown Vegetables dish as the "Bionic Man" of vegetable dishes, and that is a concept that (at least the older readers) can relate to. Then at another point he refers to Joong as "wraps of Khan" and says they "may allow you to live long and prosper." Which, as an offhanded comment in a non-geek themed book, is a stretch. Phrases like that always remind me of the scene from 30 Rock where Steve Buscemi is trying to blend in with the high schoolers.
Which is to say that it comes across as trying too hard. And really, it takes something away from the experience. Not a lot of kitchen cooks are going to know what a DK Milly Maker is, or understand how it could have anything to do with cooking. Because it doesn't - it's a sports reference. Of which there are a few of in this book. The author makes claims like "Like Barry Bonds, a fish on tofu can hit seventy-three home runs a year." Which, again, seems like a grasp at relevance. One recipe actually ends with the final instruction line "Watch some baseball." We get it, you want Americans to relate to your recipes. Alongside the sports references are a scattering of tv references (like the Bionic Man and Trek mentions) but the one that caught my eye and gave me the most pause was where, in regards to lychees, the author said "blessed be the fruit." Ummmm, that's a big no. Not only does that not make sense in the context as a pop culture reference but it is not really something any man should be writing into his work considering the source of the quote. It made me uncomfortable about the whole thing and, rather than making the whole book more relatable as intended, it just widened the disconnect. My advice is to skip the random references and let your recipes speak for themselves. Americans love food. That's all they need to relate to you.
Overall, the book is... ehhh. The history is cool, but misplaced. As a cookbook it is disorganized but the recipes are sound. However it's hard to read it as a cookbook when it reads more like a food blog. Or a high school essay, complete with the last chapter being a textbook perfect essay summary, recapping every little thing previously mentioned.
I received a complimentary preview copy of Damn Good Chinese Food via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Parent's Guide:
I mean, it's a cookbook. 😅 But if they are interested in food, it does teach a lot of great things.
