CHINESE FOOD MADE EASY: 100 simple, healthy recipes from easy-to-find ingredients (Hardcover) 
by Ching-He Huang
Ching-He Huang is one of the brightest stars in modern Chinese cooking in the UK. Each week in her new BBC2 series she re-invents the nation's favourite Chinese dishes, modernising them with fresh, easy to buy ingredients, and offering simple practical tips and techniques. These are brought together in this beautiful book to accompany the series. Drawing on the experiences of top chefs, her family and friends, growers and producers and celebrity enthusiasts Ching sets out to discover the best Chinese cooking in the UK today, introducing easy-to-make Chinese food to sometimes resistant Brits, and painting a picture of modern Anglo-Chinese life in the UK as she goes. Chinese Food Made Easy begins with some of the most familiar dishes from a Chinese takeaway menu - Sweet & Sour Prawns, Chicken with Cashew Nuts, Chop Suey and Cantonese Vegetable Stir Fry, each with Ching's special and imaginative twist. Later we explore spicy Szechuan food: Noodles, Dumplings and Dim sum; Seafood; Fast Food; Desserts and finally Celebratory Food, where Ching presents a complete banquet of dishes to celebrate the Chinese New Year.Ching's knowledge, charm and enthusiasm shine through as she shares the 'basic principles' of Chinese cooking including some of the simple techniques and tips taught by her Grandparents for tasty results.
Using ingredients from high-street supermarkets and some imaginative suggestions for alternative ingredients, these classic Chinese dishes are updated, fresh and healthily prepared so that anyone can make and enjoy them.
Interviewed by Geoff Elliss for Radio Times
Is the Typical Chinese Takeaway menu really Chinese?
It’s certainly not Chinese home cooking. Some of these dishes do come from Canton – that’s because of the British connection with Hong Kong – but they’ve been westernised. Wherever Chinese food has gone in the world, it’s been adapted to use healthy dishes at home that are not laden with monosodium glutamate.
So what should I keep in my Chinese store cupboard?
You may already have corn flour and good-quality stocks. Add dark and light soy sauces, five-spice powder, black rice vinegar, a good chilli sauce to get you going and toasted sesame oil for dressing – for cooking I use groundnut oil. Some olive oils are too strongly flavoured and conflict with the Chinese flavours. Then the rest is fresh, including the typical flavourings: ginger, garlic, spring onion, chilli and coriander.
What about Stir-fry sauces that you can buy in jars?
I hate those. The only sauces that are OK in jars, if they are good quality, are oyster sauce and chilli bean sauce. They’re both proper preserved sauces. For sweet and sour sauce, use pineapple juice, brown sugar and ketchup for colour.
Should I be looking for Chinese Supermarkets?
I’m surprised and pleased to see authentic Asian products on some supermarket shelves. In general I’d say you have to experiment. You often find that even good brands do only one excellent product. I can recommend Kikkoman soy sauce, for example. That’s my honest opinion – they don’t pay me!
Can you give an example of the sort of thing you cook?
When I cook dinner at home, I’ll make a one-pot meal, chao mian, meaning "stir noodle" or chow main as you probably call it. Marinate some sliced chicken in five-spice powder and minced garlic for a few minutes. Cook noodles in boiling water – buy dried, long wheat-flour noodles; don’t bother with ready cooked. Drain and put to one side; you can toss in a bit of sesame oil to stop them sticking. Chop red pepper, bok choi and spring onion. Mince some ginger. Get your wok nice and hot. Cook the chicken until it’s fully opaque. Put to one side. Add the other ingredients, stir then and add a splash of water to create steam to help cook the veg. After about 40 seconds return the chicken to the wok, season with soy sauce, sesame oil, and add the noodles. And that’s it a modern, one-pot dish.
Not the same as other Chefs
These recipes really do work. My family have been cooking
Asian food for 15 years, and over that time, have accumulated
many Chinese cook books.There are no silly recipes in here.
Just quick and easy. The Chow Mein was plain sailing. I had
never seen a version of sweet n sour cooked like the
recipe, but it was so tasty. I like the way Ching
explains which sauces are essential in her cupboard
collection. There are no recipes which tell
you to marinate for 24 hours.Its all NOW,
and that is life....
If you have one Chinese cook book in your collection,
make sure it's this one, and ...impress friends with your
cooking. Ching makes it look easy, and it is!!
The Forgotten Garden (Paperback) by Kate Morton
How fairytale can have reverberations to the past
THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN is the second novel by Kate Morton; THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON being her first. Whilst I did not greatly enjoy THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON, I found THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN to be better.
The story revolves around Nell who, at the age of four, is seemingly abandoned by her mother. Found on the docks in Australia, Nell is taken under the wing of another family as they cannot bear for such a young girl to be left there on her own. Years later, Nell is told the truth that she is not their own, which of course causes her to wonder about her who her parents were and why she was left in such a way.
As Nell's story begins to unfold the reader is tossed from one age to another - Nell was abandoned in 1913, but the story goes back to 1900 and stretches to 2005 as Cassandra, Nell's granddaughter, begins to trace her grandmother's story.
That is all I shall try and convey in regards to the plot - there are a lot of twists and elements which all finally draw togteher to make a whole, and doubtless other reviewers have likely tried to include more of these in their thoughts about the novel. So I shall now describe what I enjoyed about the story, and what I felt a little let down by.
First of all, this novel did not grab my attention from the very beginning. This book, so dense and heavy in your hands, is one which slowly grew on me. In the end perseverance did pay off, so do not give up straight away if the same happens to you. As more and more of the charaters are introduced, especially the time which involves the Blackhurst estate, my attention was hooked. Morton has managed to create more complex and satisfying characters, in my opinion, compared to those within THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON.
What I also loved about the book was the way that fairytales played such an integral part to the story. There is a magical sense to this book - the forgotten garden itself, the maze leading to it are just some ways Morton has achieved this. But she also includes a few 'fairytales' which are penned by one of her characters. This is an original way of adding more to the main body of the plot, giving the reader the sense that life is not always so greatly removed from such magical tales.
One of the reasons why I have not awarded the fifth star to this book is that there are times during Cassandra's hunt into the past that things feel just too convenient - as another reviewer said, the fact that an incredibly important part of Nell's story was discovered through a long forgotten letter did smack a little. But I suppose artistic licence has to be taken into account.
All in all, this was an enjoyable read - not too demanding but offering enough of what it is to be human for it to be engaging. Recommended as a summer read.
Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga) (Hardcover) by Stephenie MeyerBreaking Dawn is going to be a phenomenon...
I am an aspiring writer, and after reading this saga i am absolutely insipred to become as well a writer as Stephenie Meyer. She combines two people with love that cannot be seperated. these books show that love hasd no limitations. I highly recommend these books to anyone who loves romances with a twist of fear and hope for anyone who needs it. even in the darkest of times will there be a dim light that shows that there is a hope for an even briter futuree. read these books ! and the host it's even better !
The Road Home (Paperback) by Rose TremainAnother fine book from a true original
Rose Tremain can, it seems, do just about anything. Each one of her books is utterly different from the last, each creates a detailed and authentic world for her characters and their quests.
In The Road Home, Tremain tells the story of Lev, an Eastern European migrant worker who has left his village and travelled to England so that he can finance a better life for his mother and daugther. He takes with him his grief for his dead wife. There is an almost fairytale-like quality to Lev's chance encounters and where they lead him, although, that said, they also feel natural and possible; Tremain has always been good on the essential randomness of experience.
Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency - an ugly picture of the way we live now - but there is nothing polemical about the book. The world Tremain creates feels real, and she allows her characters to negotiate it, and make their compromises with it, in a way that is both convincing and very poignant. There is also a rich vein of humour that runs through the book, much of which comes from the stories about and conversations with Lev's friend Rudi, who has stayed back in the village.
The 1983 Granta list of best young British novelists famously includes: McEwan, Rushdie, Pat Barker, Amis, Graham Swift. Tremain was among this group but in my view remains a little underrated. Both Music & Silence and Restoration have found critical acclaim and broad readerships, but The Colour - a fine, fine book - did less well, and The Way I Found Her is a book far less well known than it should be. Almost alone amongst that stellar group of 1983, she hasn't yet put a foot wrong.
No Time For Goodbye (Paperback) by Linwood BarclayFantastic first half, disappointing second
I'm with the reviews that say this book was very promising, but doesn't live up to its potential. The first half of the book was excellent - the action starts immediately, sucking the reader in; as the drama unfolds the plot seems to thicken, with some moments that were truly chilling to the bone. There was never a moment where I felt bored as the story moves with breakneck speed, and I managed to finish in one sitting.
The second half of the book was, however, a letdown. The story, while it cleverly ties up all the loose ends together, starts to border on the ridiculous in its incredulity and some of the characters seem to have been created for the sole purpose of slotting into the jigsaw very conveniently. Indeed, the story may have been salvaged had more of the characters been better developed: the main 'villain' in the story in particular was so laughably one-dimensional that I was hoping it was a red herring. The main twist in the story was good, one that you would never have guessed from the onset - but the writer eases you into it too gradually so that by the time it arrives, it feels as though it was almost predictable.
At the risk of sounding rather pedantic, I also became increasingly irritated by the unnecessary amount of swearing and the slangy style, mainly within the dialogue. For example, the writer frequently omits the first verb in a question, so that it reads "You going to pick her up?" instead of "Are you going to pick her up?". While I am not against swearing or colloquialisms at all, it feels odd to read such writing in print so many times and I feel that it degrades the novel somewhat to a second-rate genre. However, this may be just hair-splitting on my part and may not be something that will annoy everyone.
All in all, I feel that the basic skeleton of the book is based on a very ingenious idea, one that could have made a great novel. However, the writer's use of clichés and stereotypic characters means that this original concept was never realised to its full advantage. While this book, with its exhilarating and breathtaking speed, would be a good read on a plane journey, it will not be one that will be listed among the greatest of thrillers.
