Chinese-ish: Home cooking, not quite authentic, 100% delicious

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Hu's watercolor illustrations play so nicely with the vivid photography throughout and the recipes are remarkably accessible. The authors spend a lot of bandwidth explaining their merge-y ethnicities and how the recipes are merely Chinese- inspired so don’t come here looking for authenticity.

I wasn’t sure if it had anything new to add to the Chinese / Asian cookbooks we already have in existence but I did want to try a lot of the dishes - regional noodles dishes rarely seen in an English language cookbook, interesting condiments made home made friendly as well as staples like fried rice and congee. Chinese-ish celebrates the confident blending of culture and identity through food: take what you love and reject what doesn’t work for you. Chinese-ish takes questions of culinary identity, tosses them up in the air, and lets them land where they may. The daughter of Chinese–Australian parents, she eschewed a career in law for something she was truly passionate about: learning to taste and being surrounded by creative geniuses.

This book is literally a memoir in food, documenting dishes they love and why they are sharing them with their readers, I think Rosheen summed it up beautifully as ‘ memories and moshu‘…this engaging book is an ode to their complicated heritage (hence the title of the book; as being Chinese-ish, a succinct descriptor of their identities) but their reality is much more complex. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

My personal favourites include the Mango Pudding and all of the steamed dumpling recipes sound divine. The recipes seem like ones that Kaul, a chef, actually makes for herself at home, and the results are delicious. Today, I am going to be telling you all about Chinese-ish by Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu, which is a delicious hybrid biographical recipe book, which I have found utterly sumptuous in its presentation, its pictures and illustrations are gorgeous and informative and they are interspersed with personal reminiscences of family and food which I have found addictively fascinating to read.It can be a little difficult to review a cookbook (especially if you haven’t made any of the recipes yet). Australians Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu confront their blended-Chinese heritage by exploring classics of home cooking like wontons, fried rice and stir-fries--while also going where nobody's grandma has gone before, with 'very inauthentic Shrimp Toast' and 'Microwave Cheong fun' rice noodle rolls. And I’m desperate to try the Microwave Cheong Fun, those wonderful rice flour noodle rolls, which are especial favourites of mine. Rosheen Kaul is head chef at Melbourne’s Etta restaurant, where she cooks a menu as culturally diverse as she is. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.