Every Grain of Rice

I love this cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop. Previously I have found Chinese cooking to be a bit intimidating, but these recipes are really simple and come together very quickly. The book also includes an excellent glossary of ingredients, with pictures, to make shopping for some of the more obscure ingredients much easier.

We've had some excellent dinners from this book. The standout recipe so far is a very simple one: you cook greens (e.g. gai lan or choy sum) briefly in salted water with a little oil, so that they are still somewhat crisp. You drain and shake them dry, then put them in your serving bowl. You top them with finely chopped ginger and spring onions. Then you heat up a few tablespoons of oil until they are really hot, and pour the oil over the veggies. Then you add a mixture of half soy sauce and half hot water. Done!

Here you see: (clockwise from top left) Chinese chive (chickpea) omelet; spicy firm tofu with garlic stems; spinach with chilli and fermented tofu; smacked cucumber in garlicky sauce. The second picture shows vegetarian 'gong pao chicken' (though I used tofu rather than mushrooms); the simple greens recipe mentioned above; green beans with black bean and chilli; vegetarian clay bowl 'chicken'. The last picture is ma po dou fu (vegetarian version), but with the tofu crumbled rather than cubed.

As you can see, we had a few fancy meals with lots of dishes, because I really wanted to try everything. But the great thing about these recipes is that you can actually make an interesting and satisfying meal quickly and easily. I threw the ma po dou fu recipe together one night when we were starving. It took less than 10 minutes. It was superb.

The only bad thing I can say about this cookbook is that it has the worst index I have ever seen. Like, I think you would actually have to go out of your way to make an index this bad.