Chinese Enough

In an exploration of her own experience as a first-generation American, Kristina Cho, author of the award-winning baking book Mooncakes and Milk Bread, offers 100 recipes that blend the flavors of traditional Cantonese cooking with California ingredients and a midwestern sensibility.
 
In Chinese Enough, Cho turns to the savory side of cooking with recipes that are neither entirely Chinese nor entirely American, but Chinese enough. Here is an array of dishes to pair with rice, the cornerstone of Cantonese cuisine, including Triple Pepper Beef, Miso Pork Meatballs, and Seared Egg Tofu with Honey and Soy. Recipes like Smashed Ranch Cucumbers and Saucy Sesame Long Beans honor the Cantonese focus on vegetables. There’s a chapter dedicated to the joy of noodles, with creative takes on traditional dishes, birthed anew in a California kitchen—from San Francisco Garlic Noodles to Creamy Tomato Udon. Plus, a chapter of Banquet-Worthy Dishes teaches the Chinese art of food as celebration, a step-by-step guide shows how to employ friends and family in the kitchen to make dumplings, and the fruit-focused dessert section acts as a lesson on finishing a meal with a small, sweet act of affection. Woven throughout, Cho’s stories of her grandmother’s Chinese garden situated in the middle of Cleveland and falling in love over dim sum are a warm tribute to the nuanced and personal ways in which one can discover and define their own culture.

• A great resource for everything from easy weeknight meals to project cooking for the whole family. Kristina Cho introduces the reader to traditional ingredients . . . I am so ready to add thousand-year-old eggs to my grocery list.
   

  Sohla El-Waylly, New York Times bestselling author of Start Here

• Chinese Enough is Kristina’s nuanced journey of creating a cuisine and culture that is all hers—and for everyone. The food is sensational (the dessert chapter, unsurprisingly, is a real knockout), the writing calm and soothing, and the ideas creative and immersive. But to get such a rich glimpse into Kristina’s personal history and her warmhearted reflections is a real bonus, and a true gift.

  Natasha Pickowicz, chef and author of More Than Cake

• A delicious and poignant exploration of identity, culture, and family, and how these things indelibly shape the food that we cook. Chinese Enough is Kristina Cho’s culinary coming-of-age, an evocative, joyful, and utterly modern celebration of what it means to exist, and cook, between two cultures.

  Hetty Lui McKinnon, cookbook author and food writer

• Kristina's comforting approach will have readers making dumplings from scratch in no time.

  Brandon Jew, chef/owner of Mister Jiu’s

• Chinese Enough serves as a universal hug to anyone who has ever felt that pervading sense of not being quite enough of any one identity. Kristina’s recipes, both warmly familiar and original, are a healing balm. I am thrilled to add Chinese Enough to my shelf of most-reached-for cookbooks.

  Lauren Ko, founder of @lokokitchen and author of Pieometry