Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown: Recipes and Stories from the Birthplace of Chinese American Food

Chef Jew brings food from his Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant to the home kitchen in this formidable collection of 90 recipes that elevate homestyle Chinese American cooking with rigorous professional cooking techniques. His section on soups includes oxtail soup and a classic hot and sour soup, while vegetable entrees offer a tasty Taiwanese style eggplant. Among the small bites is a delicate prawn toast, while the lengthy meat and barbecue chapter has a poached chicken galantine and a roast duck. Jew’s desserts are particularly inventive, with a banana black sesame pie and frozen whipped honey. The food is unapologetically complex restaurant fare, and many recipes require equipment not found in many home kitchens (one for potstickers, for example, calls for a juicer and a meat grinder) while others are multiday affairs (barbecued pork buns take four to five days). The techniques can also be daunting (Jew suggests oil-blanching is best accomplished with two separate woks). But, for home cooks who are up to the task, this is an exciting challenge well worth taking. (Mar.)