Chinese Immigrant Cooking

Mary Ts'ue-Ping Yee's happiest memories of growing up in Pennsylvania are associated with the meals her mother cooked every day. A Chinese hand laundry is an unlikely setting for great food, but for eighteen years Yee thrived on dishes that boasted the authentic flavor and variety of the best Cantonese cooking. As an adult, she's tasted fine cuisine in many places, but for food that pleases the palate and warms the heart, she always prefers the home-cooked meals of her childhood, which are lovingly collected in this volume.

This style of cooking -- the chief characteristic of her parents' native province of Guangdong -- demands fresh ingredients, so Yee's parents followed the tradition of adapting the produce of their new home to the flavors of the old. Like all Cantonese cooks, her mother took pride in her creative variations and put her unique stamp on everything she cooked. Day in and day out, she created meals that were tasty, nutritious, and never boring. Yee also recalls the "comfort" food that her mother cooked for her when she came down with a cold: a hot bowl of rice juk (congee, or gruel) topped by a poached egg, green onions, and a bit of oyster sauce for seasoning. It went down a sore throat very smoothly. Chewing a piece of ginger effectively "cleared the system".

Yee's family believed that food and health were vitally linked. If the balance of elements -- "heating" and "cooling" foods -- was not matched to the season, then illness was more likely. It was a low-fat, high vegetable diet that contributed to the family's well-being -- and will appeal to today's health-conscious cook.

This title is the second of many to come in the First Glance Immigrant Cookbook series.