All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China [A Cookbook]

This is a vast book. It is almost overwhelming in scope. And some cook book readers will want to disregard this one because it does not have pictures. I think that would be a mistake, especially for cooks who want to delve further into Chinese dishes than what they have already found in general Chinese cooking books. "All Under Heaven" introduces the reader into the intricacies of Chinese food culture regions. It is not an introduction into Chinese cooking. I think this book might be a bit overwhelming for an inexperienced cook; someone unfamiliar with Oriental ingredients. Although, if you glance through the very exemplary "Look Inside" feature on this product page, you will see that many recipes are very approachable, and ingredients readily available from a large well-stocked grocery store. If you are inexperienced, yet very interested in discovering the regional cooking of China, you will be able to tackle these recipes with gumption and determination. While a large oriental grocery store would surely be a great help, it is not mandatory for maybe a third-to-half of the recipes. If you are out in the middle of nowhere, Amazon's vast array of foodstuffs can come to your rescue. While many of the line drawings are beautiful, without even a few full-color photos, the book is a bit difficult to plow through if your intent is to just glance at the recipes and whiling away a peaceful afternoon. This is a serious book, loaded with information, and not suited for light reading. Each region is covered, but no region is really covered in depth. Each region has sub-regions, and there is a sprinkling of recipes for each. For instance, I was hoping to learn more about Hakka dishes. While there were a few recipes, I yearned for more. Hence, I call this book an "introduction" despite its 500+ pages. There is enough information on each area to whet your appetite. I've written quite a few cook book reviews, and I usually include some of my favorite dishes before I wrap it up. Not this time. This book is truly vast in scope, and I don't really have any favorites. I can say that I started with a temporary download of the book from the publisher Ten Speed Press, and today, now that Amazon has it offered for sale, I have purchased my own copy. I can say that the recipes I tried so far produced the predicted results. Now, I want to have the book for my own; to have and hold a hard copy to study it better. It is that kind of book. I bought a hard copy because I think it will be easier to manage than the Kindle version. I want to flip pages back and forth between the recipes, the decent glossary in the back, and the extensive index. Maybe it would give you some insight, if I told you that I now live in a large motor coach, and I do a lot of cooking outdoors. And I am really trying to downsize my cookbook collection, and have gone from over a thousand cook books to a single cabinet-full in the bus. And I still indulged myself with this book.....I am looking forward to really getting to know the recipes in All Under Heaven during the cooler months coming up. *I received a free, temporary download of the ARC of this book from the publishers.

A serious home cooking who wants to go deeper and understand what is Chinese cooking all about should get this book. So this is divided into 7 major regions of Chinese cuisines. There are some illustrations made by the author, and she provides essential ingredients for these recipes. The instructions are easy to understand, if you are an experienced home cook, and wonder if it were possible to make these dishes at home. Most of the dishes on this book are available on higher end Chinese restaurants, Chinese eateries and cafe's in America. The author often stresses to use Chinese ingredients, or make your own from scratch which taste better without any of the preservatives and other chemicals listed from brand names products sold in Chinese or Asian markets. This is one of the greatest books about Chinese cuisine which explains the food history of each regional Chinese cooking, she gives recipes that are popular, and recipes that comes from many generations of familiies that specialize few particular dishes on each region. The author knows the differences between American and Chinese ingredients, when a particular is not available to you locally. So she gives you the best alternative to make those at home, and then can be added to a particular recipe you wanted to make. I had tried the preserved egg and pork congee, Fried rice with salted fish and chicken (my favorite, yet really satisfying and comforting), mooncakes with dates and egg yolks, gailan with oyster sauce, Hainan chicken and rice. There are many more that I have to try out. This book is an extensive and comprehensive how each region specialize in particular tastes and ingredients. If you are a novice in cooking, I suggest you buy Wei-chuan's Chinese Cuisine - if you are looking for more techniques, and popular gourmet Chinese cooking. Then if you want a more thorough, comprehensive guide about Chinese cuisine using Chinese ingredients, or make your own from scratch - then this is the book for you. Carolyn has a passion and somehow obsession cooking Chinese Cuisine by writing the food history, anthropology of each region, and how the ingredients came about on different taste, and recipes that had evolved throughout many generations. This is probably one of the best Chinese Cuisine cookbooks taught in English. I bought the Kindle version, and it was really interesting to know each region more thoroughly about their food history where the Silk Road Trade, ingredients, their people came about in many recipes for each region. It has illustrations drawn by the author, Carolyn Phillips, illustrating specific techniques to make these dishes successful. Glad I bought it, and will keep on cooking more recipes from this book- as it taste authentic and can remember how I enjoyed when I was in Hong Kong.

This is a remarkably scholarly cookbook, the sort that's rarely published these days. As another commenter noted, the best comparison is Barbara Tropp's The Art of Chinese Cooking and that's very high praise indeed. It's not a book for those primarily looking for easy or familiar recipes, though it does include a few of those. It's a book for enthusiasts of Chinese cuisine who want to understand its many aspects in a rigorous manner. No Western author I've ever read matches Ms. Phillips' overarching knowledge of Chinese cuisine, from the well-known (Sichuan and Cantonese) to the lesser-known (Hakka and Fujian and others). Even Ms. Tropp, for all her contagious enthusiasm, didn't have the structural understanding of China that Ms. Phillips does, or at least didn't communicate it as clearly. I've made a dozen plus recipes from this book over the last year, with results ranging from solid to amazing. Ms. Phillips' recipes are traditional and authentic but not slavishly so. She is confident enough in her understanding to make modest revisions to very old techniques when she feels it beneficial, and I appreciate that. She does assume reasonable access to Chinese ingredients - though she does suggest substitutions at times, this will be a hard book to cook from if Amazon is your only source for ingredients. A local Asian market will be huge asset. But there is a thorough glossary of ingredients at the back of the book, so don't feel you need to be an expert going in either. And techniques or concepts that might not be familiar to Western cooks are detailed and illustrated well. Finally, Ms. Phillips runs a blog (search "Madame Huang") that includes many of the recipes from this book as well as many, many more along with lots of narrative and reflection. It is an absolutely amazing food blog, for its humanism and humility as much as its recipes. Ms. Phillips is quick to respond to comments there and the couple of exchanges I've had with her there and via email only confirmed my opinion of her expertise, spirit, and generosity. Carolyn is a wonderful person, and I deeply appreciate how much of herself she's put into this book. This is absolutely a "best of the best" cookbook. It's not for everybody (and that's fine), but hopefully the above comments make it clear whether it's right for you.

A wonderful historic/geographic food and recipe guide. Thorough instruction with drawings but no color photos of finished dishes - smply would have made the book too long. I find this a nice addition to my existing Chinese cookbooks that stick with the types of foods and dishes that are traditionally considered Chinese. All Under Heaven includes cuisine that has had influence from the likes of Russian and Muslim traditions so you will see more unusual ingredients and dishes, including things like crystalline jellied pork, beam curd quenelle soup, and sea moss sandies. While I'm not sure how many recipes I will attempt, there are definitely ones that I am anxious to try out.

This book is an amazing piece of scholarship. I've been a follower of Carolyn Phillip's blog as soon as I found it, and obsessively read her weekly Monday posts after I worked through the entire contents of her blog. (Check it out, she's just put up her latest post on eggplants, even though it's the U.S. Labor Day and directly after her book release!). Right now I'm working through the Shanghai/Yangtze region. My mom is old school Shanghainese (90+) and I'm recognizing recipes and ingredients I haven't seen in years. This is for real, stuff I haven't seen in the U.S. since I was a kid going to banquets, dinners with my parent's friends and restaurants where someone native to Shanghai was ordering. I don't even know how to order many of the dishes or buy the ingredients, and it's killing me! That being said, she's also giving subs and encouraging readers to cook it even if there are ingredients missing. Go for it. Cooking chinese is adapting yourself to whatever's available. The only comparable author I can think of is the late, great Barbara Tropp, who authored The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking. Until now, that was my definitive reference and tour on the breadth of chinese cooking through it's many regions. Carolyn Phillips' book is a step forward, with her identification of regional tastes and examples of regional dishes. Barbara Tropp didn't break out the regions and tastes as clearly or rigorously. I'll report back when I work my way through further chapters. This book is huge. I can tell I'm going to be spending a LOT of time going through this and gaining a better understanding of what's simplistically referred to as "chinese cuisine". additions : If you're fairly new to Chinese cooking, start with the intro basics section of the book. It's actually a section toward the end of the book. There are going to be some sections, especially in the glossary where some pictures for identification would've helped. Google is your friend. Stick close to PC or tablet when you're going through this section. I've been cooking chinese for 30+ years after being taught by my mom, and I'm still reading about ingredients in this book I've never even heard of. This book is almost purely recipes, so I recommend pairing it with another chinese cookbook for chinese cooking techniques if you're not familiar with them. If you're serious about your chinese food, buy a copy. I paid for a copy. Zippo influence from anyone or anything.....

This book is breathtaking. I received the book today and could not put it down. This book is for anyone who wants to learn about and cook AUTHENTIC Chinese food. I grew up in China and my mom is a fantastic cook. I now live in the United States and cooking is my passion. Every page in this book sends me through a wave of nostalgia AND teaches me something valuable about Chinese cooking. Even if I already know about a point the author is trying to make, I thoroughly enjoy the engaging and elegant writing by Carolyn Phillips. The design of the book is beautiful and the drawings by the author are relevant and impressive. I am an experienced and passionate cook and this book has inspired me to take my cooking to a whole different level. Thank you Carolyn Phillips for your invaluable contribution to spreading to the love for and knowledge of Chinese cooking.

I will be the first to say that one of my pet peeves is recipe authors who wax and wane about their daily life and the weather that day they made the recipe for the first time etc etc only to finally list the recipe an hour of reading later. This book does none of that. What it DOES do is share brief but concise and fun-to-read histories behind the recipes so you can better understand and connect with the food you're cooking beyond just the ingredients themselves. I feel that with the understanding she imparts comes better technique and the ability to cook it more fluently and authentically, and I love the conversational voice behind the words—like learning from a friend! For people who don't just want to eat the food but understand it too, this book is for you.

A culinary history of China that also happens to have recipes. This book excels because it helps you understand regional Chinese cuisine. From a technician standpoint, it's actually the very back of the book—Fundamentals, Techniques and Handy Advice—that has been most helpful. I do wish this had pictures, since the illustrations don't give you a clear sense of what dishes should look like after you're done cooking (sometimes the drawings are just of raw ingredients). I've enjoyed learning about new ingredients I can find at the wet market (for example garlic stems) and ways to prepare them. Because of the way the book is laid out, it can be challenging to find specific recipes if you wanted to work with a specific ingredient like chicken. For that, I might suggest Phaidon's China: The Cookbook, which is organized by ingredient and has beautiful images.