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

I am by no means a Chinese food expert, but I do spend way too many hours investigating and browsing cookbooks (I own over 150).

All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China is not by a native Chinese author but she lives in China and the food is absolutely her passion. She pours her soul into this cookbook. My understanding is everything including the illustrations were done by her.

What's neat about this book is it covers all the geographies of China including ones that don't really reach the Western world.

Edit: wanted to add like another poster pointed out this really only whets your appetite recipe wise - there's just too much to cover but she does a phenomenal job explaining the high level differences between regions.

Asia's a big, ancient place. Even within each nation there are unique styles of regional and ethnic fare.

With that in mind, I'd love to see some recommendations here for awesome Indian, Filipino, Hmong, Uzbek, etc. cookbooks.

Japanese

Lets get beyond sushi and hibatchi.

Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art is a great starting point. If you want to get technical you should check out Ando's Washoku or Hachisu's Preserving the Japanese Way.

If you want to start simple, Hachisu also has a great book on Japanese Farm Food. Ono and Salat have written a great noodle slurping opus in Japanese Soul Cooking.

Chinese

What we've come to think of as Chinese food in the US is a natural part of human appropriation of food styles, but with all due respect to Trader Vic's, crab rangoon and other buffet staples really aren't the real deal. Food in China is extremely regional. You don't have to go very deep to see the vast differentiation in spicy Schezwan recipes and Cantonese Dim Sum culture.

For your reading pleasure:

Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.

Breath of the Wok by Grace Young and Alan Richardson.

Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees by Kian Lam Kho and Jody Horton.

All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China by Carolyn Phillips.

Some people might freak out that I'm placing Erway's The Food of Taiwan under the Chinese category, but I'm not going to get into a political debate here. Taiwan has had a lot of different culinary influences due to migration / occupation and that is really the take away here.

Go forth, make bao.

Korean

Korea is having it's moment right now and if you want the classics, Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall's Growing up in a Korean Kitchen is a good baseline. It has all the greatest hits.

You also can't cook Korean food without kimchi. The only book I've read is Lauryn Chun's The Kimchi Cookbook which is kind of underwhelming considering the hundreds of styles of Kimchi that have been documented. The process of making kimchi (kimjang) even has a UNESCO world heritage designation. With that in mind, I think it's only a matter of time before we see a English book on the subject that has depth.

Given the cuisine's popularity, there are several other cookbooks on Korean food that have recently been published within the last year or so, I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet, so I won't recommend them here.

Thai

David Thompson's Thai Food and Thai Street Food are both excellent. /u/Empath1999 's recommendation of Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is excellent but it focuses on Northern Thai cuisine, so if you want to venture into central and southern Thai fare, Thompson's the other farang of note.

Vietnamese

Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen provides a nice survey to Vietnamese cooking. Charles Phan also has a couple of cookbooks that are quite good but I'm sure that there are zealots out there who would bemoan authenticity in either Vietnamese Home Cooking or The Slanted Door, but seriously, who gives a shit, the dude has Beard Awards under his belt for fuck's sake.

TL;DR OP means well but its long past time to bury "Asian" as a catch-all for such a large and diverse part of a continent, no?

I personally recommend All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, by Carolyn Phillips.

It goes through the different regions of China and describes their food, different influences and flavors.

It has Uyghur food from Xinjiang, Hakka food from the South, Russian food from Dongbei.

It doesn't have pictures like some cookbooks, but the illustrations are charming and will explain how to do some more complicated maneuvers. I checked it out from my library a last year, and loved it so much that I bought it when it went on sale a little bit ago!

The absolute best resource I've come across on the myriad regional Chinese culinary traditions is All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China by Carolyn Phillips. It's incredibly compare wove, covering the THIRTY-FIVE distinct food cultures that exist in China. I highly recommend this book.

I won't attempt to pick one as the best, but here are some good resources:

• Madame H's Kitchen -- covers a wide variety of Chinese food. She has a book coming out in August.
  
  
• China Sichuan Food This site deals primarily, but not exclusively, with the food of Sichuan province, where the author lives.
  
  
• The Woks of Life Includes some Americanized dishes and a wide variety of more traditional Chinese cooking.
  
  
• Fuchsia Dunlop has written several excellent cookbooks and has a new one coming out in October.
  
  
• Garden Time Homemade Cuisine Most of these videos have an English-language version, or at least English subtitles. There are a lot of recipes that you won't find elsewhere, at least not in English.
  

I was in the mood to experiment, so dinner was kind of late while I farted around...

1. Oyster Spring Rolls, a Southern Fujian dish from Carolyn Phillips' All Under Heaven. Damn... these were way better than I expected. I love oysters on the half shell but have never much enjoyed cooked oyster recipes. But these spring rolls really carried the oyster flavor perfectly without muddying it or burying it under other junk. Superb.
   
   
2. First shot at making my own Char Siu. I was lazy and just used Lee Kum Kee sauce instead of going crazy hardcore and searching out all the different components to do it from scratch. Maybe next time. Results were fine... not amazing, but bottled sauce and pork off the shelf at the market only take you so far. Certainly cheaper than ordering from the semi-local Hong Kong BBQ joint, and not much work. The leftovers from tonight will go into Singapore Noodles tomorrow and probably some Char Siu Buns and other goodies in the future.