Asian Wraps: Deliciously Easy Hand-Held Bundles To Stuff, Wrap, And Relish

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688163009 ISBN 13: 9780688163006

Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks, 2000

The author of Asian Noodles and A Spoonful of Ginger furnishes more than seventy-five delectable recipes for a wide range of wrapped Asian delicacies, including Flaky Curried Turnovers, Lemony Thai Salad Packages, Seared Garlic Beef with Roasted Rainbow Peppers, and more.

Review:

Asian Wraps will surely add to the way you enjoy food, tempting you with a wide assortment of highly flavored, Asian-accented dishes eaten without benefit of fork, knife, or chopsticks. Nina Simonds, known for her impeccable versions of classic Asian dishes, cuts loose in this book, offering, for example, a creative seafood and rice salad tucked into lettuce leaves and a clever adaptation of Chinese Lion's Head. This dish is usually meatballs with a mane of cabbage, served floating in a soupy casserole; Simonds transforms it into stuffed cabbage rolls served with the rich broth in which they cook. For bite-size appetizers, there are skewers of grilled pork sâté, unexpectedly enveloped in radicchio leaves, a more classic Flaky Curry Turnover filled with ground meat and green peas, and colorful smoked salmon spirals filled with sushi rice, capers, and red onion.

Going still further afield, Simonds fuses Asian and Caribbean flavors in her Chinese Jerk Chicken in a flour tortilla, including ginger, scallion, and rice vinegar in the jerk paste. Her Hawaii-style grilled swordfish kebabs served with pineapple salsa almost dare you to skip the wrapper and enjoy the lightly soy-sauce-marinated fish simply with its piquant accompaniment. As in her previous book, Asian Noodles, Simonds details all you need to know about special ingredients, covering 17 kinds of wrappers, from wonton skins and rice paper to lotus leaves and Indian flatbread. To make dishes accessible to everyone, particularly when there is not an Asian food store nearby, Simonds offers more readily available tortillas, pita bread, and lavash as substitutions. Asian Wraps resembles other recent books by Simonds, including A Spoonful of Ginger, in its generous use of beautifully styled color photos of prepared dishes and key ingredients. --Dana Jacobi

About the Author:

Nina Simonds is a regular contributor to Gourmet and Eating Well magazines and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of four books on Chinese cuisine and culture. Newsweek magazine named her one of America's Top Twenty-five Asia Hands. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.