[Fuchsia Dunlop's Top 5 Books on Chinese Food]

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Bu Wei Yang Chao was my bible almost 50 years ago when I was a peripatetic young adult who needed a Chinese food fix once in a while, and my elders weren't there to guide me. I will freely admit (confess) that I have a very extensive collection of Chinese cookbooks which are neatly shelved in my kitchen, but rarely used, Buwei is my "go to" girl if I ever need a reminder of a procedure or ingredient.

I couldn't agree with you more! Why is that great book out of print!? Just last year I found an older hard-cover edition to go with my falling apart paperback. PS Buwei invented the English term "stir fry".

[Flagstaff Restaurants]

Good Thai. Pato Thai is my favorite. Good east Indian - forget the name, by the Walmart. Check out Yelp.

[Chinese cookbooks]

In fact no photos at all, except the cover. My problem is it's only a paperback and the pages are brittle with age.

Written with great wit and charm, she coined the word "stir-frying".

[Chinese cookbooks]

Some of the deepest insights into Chinese cookery are found not in cookbooks, but in essay collections.  The aesthetics of Chinese cookery were covered extremely well in three books that were published quite a while ago (they also contain a recipe or two):

Buwei Yang Chao, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (London: Faber and Faber, 1956). 

F. T. Cheng, Musings of a Chinese Gourmet (London: Hutchinson, 1962).

Hsiang Ju Lin and Tsuifeng Lin, Chinese Gastronomy (London: Thomas Nelson, 1969).

I also strongly recommend two ethnographic / historical reviews of Chinese cookery: 

K. C. Chang (ed.), Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (Yale University Press, 1977)

E. N. Anderson (ed.), The Food of China  (Yale University Press, 1988).

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I am only familiar with the first one, *How To Cook And Eat In Chinese* - but it IS a cookbook - and I think it is the best Chinese cookbook I have ever seen, by far! It was first published in 1945 - and it needs to be back in print!!!