The Art of Chinese Cooking

by Benedictine Sisters of Peking

In the 1950s, American nuns who had been missionaries in China moved to Japan and began teaching Chinese cooking classes. "The Art of Chinese Cooking" collects their recipes, along with whimsical illustrations by M. Kuwata.

Includes the following recipes:

Pork
Braised Pork with or without Bean Curd
Chow Mein
Lion's Head
Lotus Root Sandwich
Pork and Peas
Pork Dumplings
Pork, Egg, and Mushrooms
Pork with Celery
Pork with Cucumbers
Pork with Bamboo Shoots
Wan Ton
Sautéed Sliced Pork
Stuffed Cucumber Halves
Spring Rolls
Taiwanese Special
Pork with Vegetables
Sweet-Sour Pork or Spareribs

Fowl
Braised Duck
Chestnut Chicken
Chicken with Eggplant
Chicken with Vegetables
Chicken Velvet
Chicken and Tomatoes
Loquat Chicken
Mushroom Chicken
Pineapple Chicken
Peppered Chicken
Walnut Chicken

Beef
Beef and Onions
Beef with Cauliflower and Snow Peas
Beef with Peppers
Beef with Radishes
Sweet-Sour Beef Balls with Pineapple and Peppers
String Beans and Beef
Beef with Mushrooms, Onions, and Ginger

Seafood
Sweet-Sour Fish
Dollar Shrimp
Shrimp Foo Yung
Shrimp and Vegetables
Shrimp with Cucumbers
Shrimp on Toast
Braised Prawns or Shrimp

Vegetables
Asparagus Peking Style
Bamboo Shoots and Mushrooms
Cauliflower, Water Chestnuts, and Mushrooms
Spinach and Mushrooms
Bamboo Shoots and Soy Sauce

Soup
Mandarin Soup
Crab Soup
Egg Soup

Desserts
Caramel Squares
Meringue Nests
Coconut Dreams
Dream Bars
Cream Puff Pie
Duette Dew
Eight Precious Pudding
Honeyed Fruit
Lemon Sponge Pudding
Peking Dust
Snowballs
Orange Tea
Walnut Bars
Sour Cream Pudding
Two-Step Cake

Miscellaneous
Chinese Fried Rice
Chinese Salad Dressing
Egg Noodles
How to Cook Rice

Genres: Cookbooks

94 pages, Spiral-bound

First published January 1, 1964

Reviews

[else fine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What makes this cookbook so great is the art - though the pigs are so cute it pretty much puts you off pork forever. Even the illustration in which the pigs are cheerfully dancing themselves into egg rolls is adorable. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but I sure do love the pictures.

[Nadine Hensley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The recipes is simply delicious!!

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are “chiefly from northern China and are the type used in good Chinese homes, not necessarily in restaurants.”

They are certainly easy to make at home, but two of the three recipes I made taste a lot like American Chinese take-out! Both their Pork with Celery and their Pineapple Chicken do, and they’re both even great cold the next morning. Both are also a wonderful use of lots of celery.

They also each call for dredging the meat through a corn starch batter, but with different ingredients and a different amount of liquid. The mix for the pork turned out to be a non-Newtonian fluid! Stir it slowly, and it’s liquid. Try to stir it quickly, or otherwise move it quickly such as tapping on it, and it’s solid. This particular mix is called an Oobleck, after the gooey substance that falls from the sky in Dr. Seuss’s Bartholomew and the Oobleck. It made dredging the meat an interesting experience and ensured that I’d look up the phenomenon.

The Honeyed Fruit recipe calls for apples, but I had some bananas so given the generic title that’s what I used. It also involves dredging, but this time in a cornstarch/flour mix. They are first deep fried until light brown, and then boiled in a syrup. The syrup is brought to 240°, the fried fruit added, and then they’re cooked together “until the syrup turns brown and starts to caramelize”. At the last minute, sesame seeds are added.

This is very good. The recipe says to pour the syrup and fruit out together, and then serve immediately, dipping the fruit into cold water (using chopsticks) before eating. I chose to use a slotted spoon to remove the fruit, and then poured the remaining syrup onto a baking sheet. It cooled into a great banana-sesame flavored brittle!

This is a very interesting collection of recipes, and the three I tried were all very good and easy. I expect the rest of the recipes to be similarly tasty. I’m especially looking forward to the Lotus Root Sandwich. This involves putting a ground pork mix between two slices of lotus root, dipping them into batter, and deep-frying them.

The book is available for reading on the Internet Archive as well.

If you rattle your chopsticks against the bowl, you and your descendants will always be poor.
敲碗敲筷窮死設代