[.ca] Blue Ginger: East Meets West Cooking with Ming Tsai (ISBN 0609605305)

From Amazon.com:
Thanks to his cooking program on the Television Food Network, Ming Tsai has gone from chef to culinary celebrity, taking recipes from his Massachusetts restaurant, Blue Ginger, and using them to introduce cooking with Asian ingredients in a most appealing way. Beyond being attractive, serene, and engagingly articulate, Ming Tsai makes cooking with Asian ingredients look easy. This book, a companion to his television shows, offers the same approach and low-key instructions that viewers have come to love. To fill in the visual details for those who have not viewed the cooking series, the book includes step-by-step black-and-white photos for filling potsticker dumplings, rolling sushi, and preparing sushi rice, as well as glorious color shots of many of the completed dishes. Tsai's specialty is bringing ingredients and techniques of Asia and the West together. It's not surprising to find Tsai using Asian banana leaves, French foie gras, and Southwestern chipotle chile peppers all at once. In fact, it's only natural for the Ohio-raised son of Chinese immigrants, who trained at the classically oriented Cordon Bleu in Paris and has cooked at U.S. restaurants from San Francisco to Santa Fe. His ability to create easily reproduced, globally influenced dishes is exceptional, and results in delights such as Smoky Turkey Shao Mai (dumplings filled with a chipotle-heated filling) and Asian Gazpacho spiked with ginger and Thai basil. Keeping it simple, Tsai offers a quick roll-up of Prosciutto and Asian Pear Maki. Lemon Basmati Rice, flavored with lemon zest and ginger, or couscous blended with a sauté of onion, scallion, and currants--both are side dishes made in minutes that can dress up a store-bought chicken, grilled meat, or Tsai's salmon teriyaki, creatively flavored with orange juice. Blue Ginger offers many ways to spice up family meals and dishes to surprise guests without too much effort. Cooking from this book is an opportunity to take Asian ingredients you may have eaten in restaurants and master using them in your own kitchen. --Dana Jacobi

Worst cookbook I have ever used:
The recipes in this book seem interesting, the dishes delectably presented by beautiful photos. Too bad they just don't work. I don't know who tested the recipes in this volume before they were published, but that person should be fired and never, ever, ever hired by any other cookbook publisher ever again. Few, if any of the recipes in Blue Ginger actually turn out if you follow them to the letter. In executing the savoury dishes, I had to make severe adjustments -- not just to the amount of each ingredient -- but also to the cooking method. Some recipes LOOK wrong even before you attempt them: The Lemongrass Parfait, which calls for some insane number of egg yolks (18, I believe) are a total flop. The so-called Asian Gazpacho tastes good only if you add about a half dozen more of your own ingredients, and jack up the amounts apparently recommended by Ming Tsai. And I can go on... In short, this is con-fusion cooking at its worst. If only I could get my money back for this sorry collection of recipes. Unfortunately, having been repeatedly hurled against the kitchen wall in frustration, my copy of this book is in no shape to be returned.

Ming Tsai is great but watch out for the editor!:
My husband and I love Ming Tsai's style of cooking. We were printing recipes off the Food TV site before this cookbook came out. So you can imagine our disappointment when we tried a few recipes out of this cookbook and found them riddled with typos, errors in ingredient amounts, and poor editing. The writer of the cookbook, Boehm (?), seems to have done slapdash work in the testing department: the translation of a restaurant-level preparation to that of the home cook is poor. We have had to do a great deal of juggling and rewrites to make the recipes come out right. Ming, please hire a new collaborator for your next cookbook! Your recipes are too good to be messed up by poor editing!

Ming Tsai's wonderful cooking in your own home.:
Every so often, you find a chef who has a genuine passions for food, and a passion to be innovative with his/her approach. Ming Tsai is one of those rare chefs that can make complicated dishes easy to grasp and prepare, as well as show his passion for exotic and innovative dishes. Chinese food is without a doubt my favorite, but even better so when it is something new. Much as I love Dim Sum, sometimes you get sick of the same old thing. Tsai's dishes combine traditional Asian influences with American style, such as spicy southwest or popular dishes like fried chicken and pork tenderloin. The recipes are easy to follow, give accurate details of how much of what ingredient is needed, and Tsai's insights and stories are interesting and fun to read. Best of all, when I prepared the dishes in his book, I didn't mess up once. Not once did I overcook the fish, burn the rice, or broke an aoli, which for me is an accomplishment. Having seen Ming Tsai many times on the Food Network, I have a great deal of respect for the man and his style of cooking. As an aspiring chef myself, I can appreciate the importants of being innovative and different with cooking approaches. Not all of his dishes are for people watching their wasteline, but when the dishes work, they are excellent. I would gladly recommend this book to anyone who wants to try something new in their kitchen.

A Ming fan:
This cookbook contains all the recipes Ming Tsai created for his restaurant, Blue Ginger, and delivered on his show from his early episodes on the Food Network. Pros: - Take the time to make these recipes and one will not be disappointed. - Rather then traveling to Ming's high-end restaurant, save $$$ and eat the same dishes at home. - This is one of the very few cookbooks that produces fantastic results with every attempt. Recipes I've tried and would make again: - Smoky Turkey Shu Mai in Sweet Pea Broth - Traditional Mandarin Fried Rice (already lost count how many times I've made this) - Grilled Ponzu-Marinated Snapper with Ginger Pea Sprout Salad (4x and counting...) - Turkey Breast with Three-Pea Fried Rice (3x) - Asian-Marinated Pork Loin with Gingered Sweet Potatoes and Five-Spice Apples (too many to count!) - Gingered Beef with Leeks and Asparagus (lost count on this one too!) - Five-Peppercorn Grilled Rib-Eye Steaks - Rice Paper-Wrapped Halibut with Foie Gras Mousse and Gingered Spaghetti Squash - Glutinous Rice with Coconut and Mango - Savory Braised Oxtail with Preserved Lemon Polenta (Oxtail was very good, but don't like polenta. Tried the polenta anyway, and, of course, didn't like it. -Just personal taste.) Cons: - All of these recipes are available on the Food Network site (with a little digging). While printing them from the website is at no cost (compared to the purchase price of this book), the book offers organization and color photos within bound material which fits much better on the bookshelf then the wad of papers one will end up with after printing all the recipes from the net. - Novice cooks will find these dishes challenging if one has missed the presentations he provides on his show. - A lot of the dishes are quite time consuming as many have 3 and 4 separate recipes to make one entire meal. Overall: As with anything, you reap what you sow. These recipes are unique, scrumptious and well worth the effort! I had the opportunity to meet Ming and he was gracious enough to sign this cookbook as well as pose for photos. Just like on the show, Ming came off as the same professional, down-to-Earth guy anyone would want to know. Amazon.com ratings scale: 5 stars = Outstanding

Fabulous!:
I love this cookbook! My favorites include pan fried chive and shrimp buns and braised curried lamb shanks. However, as a previous reviewer mentioned, there are some editing problems. For instance, the bun dough called for up to five cups of water when only 1 cup or less is needed! This produced a watery paste-had to remake the dough. With that said, I highly recommend this book.