1 hour ago, heylow said:I am so impressed with All Under Heaven and am facinated with your involvement! Fuchsia Dunlop and Carolyn Phillips have done so much to reveal the cooking of China to English speakers
Carolyn is a member here @Carolyn Phillips, but hasn't been active for over four years. She knew me from here and contacted me privately when she was researching her book, to ask some questions about Guangxi cuisine. We had a few conversations then and have done since. The book is a good introduction, but with only a half dozen or so dishes from each of 35 cuisines, is necessarily limited.
1 hour ago, heylow said:I've seen several of your posts that are wonderfully detailed and illuminating as well.
Thank you!
1 hour ago, heylow said:It seems that one will always have a very limited understanding of Chinese cuisine, as long as you are limited to reading about it in English. Are there Chinese language cookbooks you would recommend?
I would say more that to fully understand Chinese cuisine (no one ever will) you have to eat it in China. Chinese language cookbooks are very different from western cookbooks. They often assume a lot of prior knowledge and suggest things like
"Add the correct amount of ..."
"Cook until cooked"
"Serve in the usual way"
etc.
I have a few, but I couldn't really recommend any of them. Several of my friends were amazed by Fuchsia's Sichuan book. It has been translated into Chinese and they have all bought it!
