The Chinese Cook Book | 1952
Introducing The Chinese Cook Book by Wallace Yee Hong from 1952 as part of Crown Publishers International Cook Book Series.
Beef Curry
Simple enough to execute, Asian curries like this one are just great comfort food. I’ve come across beef and potato curry recipes like this one in many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc restaurants and they all share a certain commonality that distinguishes them from the heavy ghee and coconut milk curries of India. This recipe from …
Pekinese Duck
One of the national treasures of China, Pekinese Duck is often attributed to Beijing in northern China although it actually originated in Nanjing which is about halfway between Hong Kong and Beijing, near Shanghai on the eastern coast. Duck is such a popular ingredient in Chinese cuisine that I knew I had to feature at …
Soy Sauce Chicken
Soy sauce chicken is a staple recipe in Cantonese cooking. Wallace Yee Hong lists it as “Boiled Chicken With Soy Sauce” in his 1952 cook book The Chinese Cook Book or Bok You Guy (Bok Yao Gai) which seems to be listed mostly as See Yao Gai online. Simple and straightforward, this one of the …
Fried Chicken Bites wrapped in Bacon
Listed in Wallace Yee Hong’s The Chinese Cook Book as “Wor Hep Guy” these bacon wrapped chicken bites make for a delightful and filling appetizer. Outside the confines of Hong’s book, this recipe seems to have vanished off the face of the earth however I did manage to find an echo of it in this …
Fried Chicken with Sticky Rice
Listed in Wallace Yee Hong’s The Chinese Cook Book as “Noo-Mei Guy” (No Mi Guy) or “Chicken Stuffed with Glutinous Rice” the result however isn’t quite a stuffed chicken as we think of it in the West. Rather, this is a fascinating recipe in which the chicken and rice are steamed simultaneously in the same …
Beef with Broccoli
The evolution of how Western broccoli infiltrated itself into Chinese-American cuisine as a replacement for ‘Gai Lan’ or Chinese broccoli is a well regarded example of how early Chinese cooks adapted traditional Cantonese dishes with the ingredients on hand in the West. Considering the unabashed abundance of rare, specialized ingredients used throughout Wallace Yee Hong’s …
Chinese-Style Fried Chicken
Fried chicken is a specialty of Cantonese cuisine in southern China. The fluid nature of Chinese cuisine is such that there are probably an endless supply of variations that all, more or less, operate within the same family of flavours. There may be some fierce competition out there but this recipe for fried chicken is …
Pork with Pickled Mustard Greens
Considering that The Chinese Cook Book by Wallace Yee Hong was published in 1952, the dizzying variety of rare and obscure ingredients referenced therein is absolutely remarkable. Dried lilies, dried oysters, Chinese red cheese, lotus roots, snow white fungus, bitter melon–the list goes on and on. Clearly, Hong was not interested in pandering to an …
Northern Style Braised Beef
From what I have been able to discern Cantonese cooking (like Sweet and Sour Pork) is generally located in southern China in cities like Hong Kong and Macau and tends to stay away from heavily spiced dishes. In contrast, this dish, listed in Hong’s The Chinese Cook Book (1952) as “Braised Beef Northern Style” (or …
